Anticipating Donald J Trump’s “most consequential” State of the Union speech

“It is going to be a long speech, for I have a lot to say”, said Donald Trump hours before this year’s tensely anticipated State of the Union speech, expected to be much of a protracted, more or less scripted, and triumphant account of the state of affairs in a US profoundly affected by a first year of the second mandate period of the second Trump administration, including his assessment of the economy in general and the thorny question of the way ahead of his tariff policies after the Supreme Court ruling in particular.

So, yes, we can expect a very long speech – how long we shall learn shortly. How long and how informative?

This text is written, or begun to be written, without the guidance of knowing how he, Trump, chose this time to formulate objectives with regard to two major issues of foreign policy, Ukraine and Iran. These two issues, together perhaps with the major prestige project, the Board of Peace as the new Trump-led alternative to the established and legitimate UN, stand out as key measurements of where this Trump administration can be assessed to be headed, in front of this autumn’s mid-term elections and beyond: success or fiasco?

Will, for instance, Trump tonight state clearly – in response to president Zelinskyj’s minimum request earlier tonight, “I want him to stay on our side” – that he, and the US, are unequivocally on the victim’s side, against the aggressor’s side? Or not. Or something much murkier, perhaps even to the point of leaving us Europeans including us Ukrainians with the inescapable impression that the US under Trump is indeed not on Ukraine’s side, against the aggressor, but rather and at best a kind of third party mediator, with an own agenda tending to prioritize longer-term economic and political relations with the aggressor? In view of the stakes involved, perhaps the best we can hope for before tonight’s speech is empty references to the need for peace and an end to killing fields.

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But what about Iran and the enormous built-up tension in anticipation of a high-probability war, limited or largely unlimited?  If at all, assuming some kind of last-minute, mutually acceptable agreement, or “deal”. What might be announced on this uniquely vexed issue tonight? We shall see. But regardless, dramatic tidings are for sure in the offing. The way things are these days, even though a new round of negotiations are announced to be held in Geneva on Thursday this week, it cannot be entirely excluded that Trump will use tonight’s speech before both Congress chambers as an (or the) opportunity to promulgate the launch of a military attack against Iran, for maximum surprise and maximum publicity. For it is to be remembered that this is more or less what happened last June (“the 12 days war”); a new round of negotiations was planned for Oman, but before convention of these, Israel launched a full-scale air campaign against Iran, upon which team Trump decided to follow through with massive B-2 bombardments. And moreover, anyone anxious about likely Iranian retaliatory measures in response to an attack is likely to prioritize some key elements of surprise in order to preempt retaliation.

But assuming that this time the talks in Geneva will proceed as planned, with preemptive surprises, what about the prospects for these talks, held as usual these days by team Witkoff/Kushner with Iranian counterparts and Omanis doing the go-between job? Now that the US has amassed unprecedented (since Iraq 2003) military resources in the area, including one carrier group in the Red Sea for deterrence and attack readiness and one in Eastern Mediterranean tasked to deter possible Iranian retaliation against Israel in case of a US attack against Iran.

So is Trump’s US “sleepwalking into war with Iran” (Max Boot, WP), and if so, why is that, what are the motives stated, and since no official (single) explanation has been offered and no congressional endorsement has been sought (before tonight!), as constitutionally required, why is that? This selection of extremely relevant questions boils down – before Thursday’s next round of Omani monitored talks – to whether the positions of the main contenders, the US and Iran (but many other players are sticking around), are completely irreconcilable, or not, i.e., whether there exists some kind of compromise outcome that could serve as an offramp away from otherwise inevitable war. That in turn begs the question of what the current US demands in fact are, for there to be a “deal” on something less than total Iranian surrender (and total US victory) and hence allowing Trump to justify calling off plans and readiness for military attack. Is it conceivable that a deal along those lines could be achievable already this Thursday? And if not, how long is Trump able and willing to wait, in view also of colleague Netanyahu’s anxious impatience.

So what are the US demands, are they limited to the nuclear area only, or do they (as the Israeli leadership insists) encompass also other relevant areas, such as limits to or dismantlement of the rebuilt stock of missiles – the currently most relevant threat to Israeli security – and/or the role of Iran’s remaining regional proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon? Reportedly, focus on the talks have been so far focusing on the nuclear area where some kind and degree of compromise outcome is less inconceivable, albeit there too the positions are close to irreconcilable – so long as the US demands, and Iran rejects a priori, zero enrichment of Iran’s nuclear capacities. With the scope of US demands remaining unclear, to us outsiders, at least, and in view of known difficulties to reach compromise on the nuclear file alone, it would appear to be practically mission impossible to expect a compromise deal between the two contenders, and mission impossible to expect Trump to abstain from using his formidable military resources amassed around Iran without a “historical victory” (something much “better” than Obama’s JCPOA 2015 deal) to justify abstention from attack, against a shaken but not entirely stirred Iranian regime seeing the threat as existential.

So, war is inevitable, and soon? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Clearly, the current waiting game (of there is one) is profoundly affected by an assortment of signals of warning and caution, from inside the US military establishment as well as from all those neighboring regional countries, notably Arab/Golf states and Turkey, that fear for regional stability and see themselves as targets of possible Iranian retaliation. Anonymous sources are currently informing US media about the perceived, profound, dilemmas pertaining to the planning of various attack scenarios, should the negotiating “efforts” at the “table” be declared to have failed – and in case the mere projection and threat of massive military power prove insufficient to enforce total or near-total Iranian surrender. So that for credibility (and prestige) action must follow upon threat.

 What about targeting and aims of an attack? Remembering that the current military resource mobilization remains unexplained in terms of achievable aims (until tonight?), we may not be overly surprised to note that discourse speculation on this is strikingly wild and bewildered.

To what extent – this is but one question – are the protesting masses in Iran concretely assisted in their desperate struggle against brutal regime repression for freedom and regime change by more or less limited/unlimited US military intervention? Even though many of them are said to have now drawn the conclusion that only through foreign intervention can there be hopes pinned for regime change. But is Trump’s US – or any of the neighboring countries (Israel possibly excluded) – ready for and interested in regime change in Iran?

But if regime change is not the aim – other than, perhaps, if a so-called “Venezuelan solution” were to be considered, special forces kidnapping ayatollah Khamenei and the US then leaving the rest untouched – then what? Destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities? But that was supposed to have been achieved, by the US and Israel combined, in the “12 days war” last summer. Knocking out important IRGC facilities as a means to weaken but not destroy the regime? Destroying Iran’s missile (and drone) facilities, the deployed missiles, those in stock and their production factories? Again destroying Iranian air defenses, like last year? The list could be long, but it is a list of options and questions. Perhaps even Mr. Trump and his closest allies at home have still not made up their minds. Because all such options have their negative sides and their counterproductivity risks, including retaliation and domestic chaos. And timing is of essence, timing and secrecy, managing the challenges of Iranian retaliation.

In conclusion, for now, soon we shall learn what the busy current president of the US has to say, or not say, on these matters in the Congress podium. On Iran, whatever he may choose to say needs to be interpreted in the light of these considerations, for these exhibit a huge US security policy dilemma, one of several. Ukraine, on the other hand, represents quite another kind and degree of policy dilemma. Perhaps one could say that if Iran is a US war of choice – with motivations still unclear and mixed and vexed – then Ukraine is or should be a US war of necessity.

Michael Sahlin