Two Ways to Look at the Iran Ceasefire
Another TACO or a masterful use of Madman Theory?
For ten hours and 26 minutes on Tuesday, the world held its breath.
President Donald Trump had already spent the last several days espousing some of the most apocalyptic rhetoric of his administration, as he threatened to attack Iran’s bridges and power plants unless the country reopened the all-important Strait of Hormuz. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Easter Sunday.
At 8:06 a.m. on Tuesday, he ratcheted up the ultimatum even further, declaring that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” unless Iran agreed to a deal by his 8 p.m. deadline. Uncertainty reigned at capitals across the globe, with officials abroad (and in his own administration) admitting they had “no idea” what Trump might do next. More than 80 Democratic lawmakers called for his impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment, describing his behavior as erratic and unstable. Executives worried about the price of oil; lawyers worried about potential war crimes; the people of Iran worried about losing electricity, or their lives. As they day rolled on, some news outlets reported that negotiations had collapsed; others said that they continued. “Only the president knows where things stand and what he will do,” the White House said.
An hour and a half before the deadline, at 6:32 p.m., Trump returned to Truth Social. The U.S. and Iran had agreed to a two-week, “double sided CEASEFIRE,” he announced. Trump’s planned attacks on civilian infrastructure were called off. One of the most dramatic periods of his presidency had come to a close.
Many points of uncertainty remain.
Some of the biggest concern the Strait of Hormuz, the channel through which 20% of the world’s oil typically passes and which Iran had effectively kept closed since the beginning of the war, sending prices skyrocketing. Trump said that the ceasefire would only take effect if Iran agreed to “the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING” of the strait while the truce was in place. A statement from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that, during the two-week ceasefire, “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations.” It was unclear exactly what that meant, or whether it would involve Iran charging fees to ships passing through. (During the war, Tehran reportedly began demanding payments as high as $2 million per voyage).
As of this writing, two ships have been seen passing through the strait since the ceasefire began (one flagged to Greece and the other to Liberia), though it is not known whether they had to pay Iran.
The extent of the ceasefire also remains hazy: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped mediate the ceasefire, said that it would apply “everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere,” while Israel has said it “does not include Lebanon,” where Israel has carried out a large ground invasion in recent weeks. It is also unclear whether the truce has even fully taken hold: there have been reports of continued Iranian attacks against Israel, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates since the ceasefire, while Iran claims that one of its oil refineries was hit this morning. It is possible that the post-ceasefire attacks can be attributed to frayed communications within the Iranian government.
Predictably, the ceasefire seems to have confirmed everybody’s intuitions about how the war was already going.
This was true at the highest levels: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the ceasefire as a “victory for the United States that President Trump and our incredible military made happen,” while Iran’s Supreme National Security Council released a statement declaring that Iran had “achieved a great victory.” (When CNN reported on the Iranian statement, Trump wrote on Truth Social that it was “a FRAUD” and that “CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw this Statement with full apologies.” The statement appears to be real.)
Within the U.S., as well, those who already oppose Trump said that the ceasefire was proof of an American defeat, while those who already support him hailed the deal as a triumph. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) called the arrangement a “history-changing win for Iran,” for example; the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt said it was “a big win for @POTUS.”
So, which is it? You can tell two stories.
In the first story, this is yet another TACO (short for “Trump always chickens out”). Trump pulled back from the brink at the last minute, as he always does, in order to buy himself two more weeks, as he always does. The regime in Iran remains in place. Iran’s nuclear program remains in place. The biggest difference from before the war is that Iran now appears to control the Strait of Hormuz, and may even be profiting off of it — and now knows that it can quickly stop all passage through the strait if it ever wants to (and just how harmful that can be for the global economy), giving the country incredible leverage in any future conflict.
In the second story, Trump’s threats worked. This wasn’t a TACO, it was a masterful use of Richard Nixon’s Madman Theory, which holds that as long as an adversary believes you are crazy enough to carry out maximum destruction, you can get them to agree to all sorts of things they otherwise wouldn’t. Trump wanted the Strait of Hormuz open, and now it is, proving that Trump’s bluster successfully scared Iran into conceding the thing he had been asking for. The Iranian regime has been completely hollowed out, from the Supreme Leader on down, with layer upon layer of top officials killed; even if the regime is still standing, it has been hugely weakened and now knows that Israel has the intelligence capability to peer deep into its government, and the U.S. has the military capability to execute on that intel, a potent combination that can bring Tehran to its knees.
To give you the most annoying answer, I think it’s way too early to say which of these stories is the right one. So much will depend on where things actually shake out once the peace negotiations yield a final resolution. The talks are starting with a 15-point U.S. plan and 10-point Iranian plan that couldn’t be more different: the Americans demand an end to Iran’s nuclear program; the Iranians make no offer to cease their nuclear ambitions. Iran demands compensation for its losses; the U.S. offers nothing o the kind. Washington that the Strait of Hormuz “must remain open and function as a free maritime corridor”; Tehran’s proposal calls for the “continuation of Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz.” (The only point of overlap is that both sides say a deal would involve the lifting of sanctions on Iran, although Iran has so far offered to concede nothing — except ending its current round of attacks — in exchange.)
This is much too large a gap from which to have any certainty as to how the negotiations will end (or, even, if they will be able to strike a deal: we could just end up with the war restarting in tow weeks). Ultimately, the war will be judged on how much either country has gained relative to the status quo before it started: on Iran’s nuclear program, on sanctions, on the Strait of Hormuz. We don’t yet know where any of those negotiating points will end up, so it’s hard to judge the war’s success.
It is also hard to know who to trust in the meantime.
President Trump has been far from a reliable narrator throughout the war — in part, it seems, because he may not be receiving accurate information from his advisers. One administration official told the Washington Post that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is “not speaking truth to the president” (and that Trump is “out there repeating misleading information” as a result). Trump has reportedly started each day of the war watching a sizzle reel of U.S. military successes; per TIME, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has grown concerned that “aides were giving the president a rose-colored view of how the war was being perceived domestically, telling Trump what he wanted to hear instead of what he needed to hear.”
Trump’s war aims shift by the day: sometimes he wants regime change, sometimes he doesn’t, sometimes he says it has already happened. Last week, Trump told Americans in a primetime address that “we don’t need” the Strait of Hormuz, that it was a problem for other countries to solve, and that it “will open up naturally” after the war. This week, he was apparently willing to end a civilization over it.
In the past few hours, Trump has undergone a rhetorical shift that is enough to give you whiplash. He went from declaring that Tuesday would be “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one” to announcing that it was “a big day for World Peace!”
All of a sudden, Trump’s menacing rhetoric has given way to incredibly optimistic language. “The United States of America will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote at 12:01 a.m. this morning. “There will be lots of positive action! Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process. We’ll be loading up with supplies of all kinds, and just ‘hangin’ around’ in order to make sure that everything goes well. I feel confident that it will. Just like we are experiencing in the U.S., this could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!!”
He followed that up at 7:22 a.m. this morning, by saying that many of the U.S.’ 15 points “have already been been agreed to,” and that “there will be no enrichment of Uranium, and the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried (B-2 Bombers) Nuclear ‘Dust.’” In a phone call with ABC’s Jonathan Karl, Trump even said he was fine with the Iranians charging a toll for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, and that “we’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture” between the U.S. and Iran.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” Trump told Karl.
Is all of this an accurate read on how the negotiations are going, or is it just happy talk? It’s impossible to say, making it even harder to judge where things stand. Of course, statements from Iran — which is clearly riven with its own factional disputes, as evidenced by the competing statements from the country’s foreign minister and more hardline National Security Council — are no more credible.
Whatever happens next, the last 24 hours were still extraordinary.
One man claimed the power to end a civilization, and for several hours, it seemed like he just might. There were a handful of congressional Republicans who balked at Trump’s threats (Texas Rep. Nathaniel Moran: “That is not who we are”; Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowksi: “This type of rhetoric is an affront to the ideals our nation has sought to uphold”), but the vast majority either cheered him on or stayed silent. Congress is not even in session right now, meaning lawmakers couldn’t have even constrained Trump if they wanted to.
If you read one thing today, I recommend this deeply reported account of how the war began (gift link) by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, whose book about Trump’s return to office will be out in June.
Two takeaways from the piece: First, Trump is operating with supreme faith in himself and his own abilities. According to the Times, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Trump that U.S. attacks would lead to an uprising on the ground in Iran and to regime change. Trump’s advisers told the president that this was unlikely (“it’s bullshit,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly said). Trump plowed ahead anyways.
“I know you’re worried about it, but it’s going to be OK,” Trump reportedly told Tucker Carlson on the phone before the war began. How did he know that? Carlson asked. “Because it always is,” Trump said.
Second, not only has Congress opted not to restrain Trump’s war powers, but there are few guardrails coming from within his administration. The Times reporting makes clear that many of the people around Trump had deep concerns about the war, but that none of them were willing to go to the mat to dissuade him. “Everyone deferred to the president’s instincts,” Swan and Haberman write. “They had seen him make bold decisions, take on unfathomable risks and somehow come out on top. No one would impede him now.”
Unlike Trump’s advisers in his first term, his subordinates now view it as their role to execute his wishes, not discourage them. Wiles, his chief of staff, said as much in her interviews with Vanity Fair last year. According to the Times piece, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, frequently repeats that it “is not his role to tell the president what to do”; instead, he presents the president with both sides of all disputes, though the Times reporters said that Trump “would often seem to hear only what he wanted to hear.”
Wiles and Caine may be correct about their roles as a constitutional matter, but it is worth noting that this is a far cry from how their predecessors from Trump’s first term, like John Kelly and Mark Milley, interpreted their responsibilities. The end result is a president who trusts himself completely, and whose aides do too, leaving him with few constraints in the warmaking space.
“Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage?” Times reporter Katie Rogers asked Trump in January. “Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to?”
“Yeah, there is one thing,” Trump replied. “My own morality. My own mind.”
These are the key factors to keep in mind as negotiations continue, potentially leading to an end to the war — or just an interlude in it. There are reasonable questions about how many times the Madman Theory approach can work. The answer, of course, is it continues to work exactly as long as your adversaries genuinely believe you are willing to execute your threats. Once the threats aren’t credible, the gambit can’t succeed.
Speaking only for myself, I genuinely believed on Tuesday that there was a sizable chance that Trump might move forward with large-scale attacks. Clearly, so did Iran. That means Trump continues to retain, for now, the credibility to squeeze out concessions via extreme rhetoric, although it doesn’t mean that believability will remain forever.
The war has come at a clear political cost for Trump, and it seems at times that he is excited to have it behind him, as evidenced by his sudden switch to rosy rhetoric this morning. But what happens if two weeks pass and Iran refuses to make nuclear concessions, or seems unwilling to share its Strait of Hormuz bounty with America? Trump clearly “can” respond with utmost force, in the sense that neither his advisers or his party seem prepared to stop him, even when he makes the harshest threats imaginable. Whether he is willing to pull the trigger — or on the other hand, as he’d prefer, whether he’ll be able to Madman Theory his way towards a superior status quo for the U.S. in the Middle East than existed six weeks ago — both remain unclear.
Today’s Fairytale of the War, Chapter 3: Once upon a time there was a little boy who yelled Fire! in a theater. He was bored. He saw with glee the chaos he caused.
But the resulting stampede caused injury. How could he know what would happen? asked his babysitter, BB Gunn. He's only seven. But someone must be held responsible for this horrible crime! yelled many in the town, so they punished the two ushers who failed to open the doors in time. Two weeks later, it happened again, this time in a school. This time, children died, and again, much of the town demanded accountability for the crime. But he didn't mean it, testified his friend Em B. Ess. Two female teachers lost their job. (They weren't very good at their jobs anyway). Two weeks later, he walked into a grocery store and opened his mouth to yell, but nothing came out. Terror ensued. And then he left. Planning is hard, but chaos is easy. The End
The so-called Madman theory requires two things to work: a genuine belief on an adversary's part that the "madman" really will pull the trigger, and that the "madman" will stick to whatever bargain is struck afterwards. In both cases, the president shows he is utterly incapable of either. So the "madman" theory here is simply not at work. It didn't work for Richard Nixon, either, the case many think about when they think about this--the Soviets knew he was bluffing (just as the Russians and everyone else except the president's most loyal base know he is bluffing). I agree with you, Gabe, that the negotiations will tell the tale--but I'm willing to bet the Iranians will end up having some control over the Strait of Hormuz regardless. Our appetite for more attacks will lessen as the negotiations take place.
I recall standing in the desert in Iraq in 1991, listening to the countdown to the Gulf War ceasefire on both BBC shortwave and our armored division command net--the scale of destruction, from what we saw around us, was vast--but the core Iraqi ground forces were largely intact, even though they were retreating. I thought then that we should have gone one more day and really tackled the Republican Guard divisions. As we know, we bungled the peace in that conflict, giving Iraq the ability to move troops around by helicopter, which they promptly used on their own citizens to quell a revolt in the marsh land around the Tigris and Euphrates. We allowed them to keep much of their military intact--to counterbalance Iran, ironically. I thought then that we'd have to go back some day--and of course we did, though for all the wrong reasons.
I see the same things happening here: A desire to declare a quick and decisive victory based on an incomplete set of results. This takes nothing away from the brave men and women doing the fighting, but it does highlight how domestic political calculations, invariably short term, makes their sacrifices insignificant.