After addressing the nation on a muggy Saturday night, president Donald Trump made a Herculean effort to stay away from the lights and microphones and remained out of sight all day Monday.
Seldom has he made his radio silence so effective. First thing on Monday morning, Trump had heightened Maga – and general – anxieties after idly speculating about a new era for Iran involving the end of the Ayatollah Khamenei’s 30-year reign.
But by sundown, after a day of brutal June heat in Washington, the president took to Truth Social to announce a “complete and total ceasefire” between Israel and Iran.
There would be a few more mutual strikes as the warring neighbours wound down their retaliatory strikes, he stated. But after 24 hours, he confirmed, “an official end to the 12 Day War will be saluted by the World”.
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“On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both countries, Israel and Iran, on having the stamina, courage and intelligence to end what should be called the 12 Day War. This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t and never will!” he continued before administering God Blesses to Israel, Iran, the Middle East, the United States of America – “and God Bless the World!”
It was a startling and singularly Trumpian outcome to a crisis which had bamboozled everyone – if it is an outcome: sceptics will note the planet-sized equivocation contained in “on the assumption”.
[ Israel and Iran ceasefire ‘now in effect’ says Donald TrumpOpens in new window ]
But the radical switch of fortunes suggested that Trump’s uncanny instinct for whom to back, and when, had served him well again. The ceasefire declaration was arguably the most statesmanlike delivery of Trump’s political life – he didn’t feel the need to mention himself even once.
Minutes after it was posted, vice-president JD Vance popped up on the 7pm Brett Baier show on Fox News. He was, understandably, cock-a-hoop. The president had been working the phones all day, Vance said. He and Trump had been working on finalising the statement when Vance left for the studio so he was learning of its wording even as Baier read it aloud: international diplomacy intersecting with broadcast news entertainment, in real time.
“We have to talk to Iran and Israel about what the future holds,” Vance said.
“Because while we have obliterated the Iranian nuclear programme, our hope and expectation is that they are not going to try and rebuild that programme. And I think that’s what the president is trying to figure out here – is to build a long-term settlement here to where we can have peace in the region.”
Vance offered a rosy vision in which the Iranian regime, having absorbed the futility of trying to go nuclear, would negotiate in good faith and restore diplomatic relations which would gradually stabilise the region.
All day, the broadcast networks had wheeled out foreign policy expert after Middle East expert who spoke gravely in ifs and buts while conceding that they hadn’t a clue what was going to happen next. How could they?
As though Saturday’s bombing mission in Iran had not caused sufficient international alarm and projection, Trump lobbed into the already-furious swamp of broadcast media conjecture and speculation his Sunday Truth Social grenade in which he postulated on the possibility of a new era for Iran.
“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
The post had the immediate effect of seeming to pull Trump even further away from the promises his Maga loyalists hold dearest. And it also stood in direct refutation of the messages that his senior cabinet members – Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio and, to a more limited extent, defence secretary Pete Hegseth – had insisted on the Sunday talkshows: the daring bombing raid had not been about the Iranian regime, merely its capacity to produce a nuclear weapon.
Not for the first time, the divergent opinions suggested that even those who work closely and daily with the president are as much in the dark as everyone else as to what he will say and do next.
“Trump keeps crossing up his own team, all of whom were on TV yesterday, proclaiming that ‘regime change’ in Iran was not a goal,” noted former Obama adviser David Axelrod.
“Then he drops a post this AM that explicitly suggests it. Why do we even bother to quote the VP and SecState? They’re clearly clueless as to what he’ll say next.”
By Monday afternoon, Iran had responded to the US strikes with a relatively mild retaliatory volley of missiles at military bases in Qatar. Trump, in one of his strange lapses into formal diplomatic courtesy thanked the regime for the heads-up and gave a heavy signal that as far as he is concerned, the military hostilities ended there. Crude oil prices fell, reflecting relief.
Trump’s desired narrative began to take shape. Militarily, Saturday’s mission had been carried out in exemplary fashion, with a Top Gun gloss. Stung by the recent “Taco” (Trump always chickens out) jibe, the president must have privately enjoyed the shocked global reaction to his Saturday night announcement and the projection of strength it afforded him.
Pacifying the discontented in the Maga movement was the other mission of the day. Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene cast herself as one of Trump’s loudest supporters throughout his election campaign and was adamant, in a social media post on Monday, that the weekend bombing mission had contravened three of Trump’s key election promises. These she listed as: “No more foreign wars. No more regime change. And world peace. And this is what people voted for.
“Only 6 months in and we are back into foreign wars, regime change, and World War 3. It feels like a complete bait and switch to please the neocons, warmongers, military industrial complex contracts and neocon tv personalities that MAGA hates and who were NEVER TRUMPERS!”
She noted the swift equivocating in the messaging about the extent of damage caused to the Iranian nuclear bunkers, which started with the president’s Saturday night boast of total “obliteration” which was downgraded to JD Vance’s concession that the enriched uranium material may already have been moved by the Iranian military as a precautionary measure.
“Contrary to brainwashed Democrat boomers think and protest about, Trump is not a king, MAGA is not a cult and I can and do have my own opinion.”
On Thursday last, Trump had Steve Bannon for lunch at the White House – in both senses, as it turned out. Bannon had made impassioned arguments advising against joining Israel in its war with Iran. By Thursday, anxiety over Trump’s intentions regarding Iran was palpable within Maga world. The high-profile interview between Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz, in which Carlson humiliated Cruz over his lack of surface knowledge about Iran, was indicative of the deep tensions over the issue. Other prominent Trumpians such as Charlie Kirk had registered their deep discomfort with the idea of the United States intervening.
On Thursday afternoon, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read out a direct message from the president designed to end the speculation.
“In light of that news, I have a message from the president,” she said. “And I quote: ‘Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.’ That’s a quote from the president for all of you today.”
Given that the seven B-2 spirit bombers departed from Missouri just 24 hours later, Thursday’s White House messaging was subsequently interpreted as part of a grand ruse to disguise the administration’s true intent.
“This is not true at all,” claimed serial Trump-book writer Michael Wolff on the Daily Beast podcast on Monday.
“This is completely made up. And many people in the White House are chuckling about this. He dithered right up until the last minute. He went into Thursday – he had seen Tucker’s interview with Ted Cruz where Cruz got massacred. And that’s what he said: ‘My God, Cruz got slaughtered’. And that was very much a there-but-for-the-grace-of God moment for him.
“And then he went into Friday, and congressional leadership, the Republicans, strongly a neo-con group, came back to him and were like: ‘you have got to do this and you are going to look bad if you don’t do this. And you have an opportunity to look good, to be a winner’. They kept repeating this. They know how to play this guy. And by Friday afternoon, in a series of phone calls, it became f**k Tucker. And it was interesting that Tucker became the real enemy here.”
Wolff dismissed the B2 mission as “a vanity bombing” on Trump’s part. But by late Monday afternoon, Marjorie Taylor Greene sounded pacified when she gave an interview on Capitol Hill. “He wants peace. He wants this to end. And he is going to urge Israel that it is time for this to end,” she said. This was before Trump had even made his announcement. Taylor-Greene was back in the fold. The believers believed again.
On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the politicians from both sides of the aisle will be seeking more information about why congressional approval had not been sought for the mission.
“We don’t know what’s true and what’s not at this point,” Democratic congressman Jason Crow said on Monday night.
“I’m a member of the House Intelligence Committee and we received briefings today. We don’t know what’s fact and fiction at this point. There are still reports of bombings and strikes in Tehran. I agree it would be great to have a ceasefire. But that really would just set us back to where we were a couple of weeks ago. What success ultimately looks like here is a permanent and verifiable agreement that Iran will not get nuclear weapons. That did not come out of these strikes. That actually would have been part of the deal that Donald Trump tore up in 2018.”
Those debates will rage on the Hill. Donald Trump himself is expected to reappear at the Nato summit in The Hague on Tuesday, in full Churchillian mode.
