Donald Trump has delayed making a decision on attacking Iran. What's his strategy?

Australia Broadcast Center

6 hours ago

Deal-making? Decisive? Dithering? Or just momentarily deferred?
Everyone will take their pick trying to determine why Donald Trump has bought himself time to make the most consequential decision a US president can make — whether to plunge his forces into another foreign conflict of unknown risk and uncertain duration.
As ever with Trump pronouncements, there's a little something in this for everyone.
"Within the next two weeks" is a timeline vague enough to simultaneously exasperate the Netanyahu government, confound the Iranian leadership, delight nervous allies and bewilder financial markets.
On the domestic front, it could prolong the civil skirmish among Republican MAGA (Make America Great Again) forces over whether armed conflict passes as a form of American "greatness" or not these days.
Why the US president settled on a timeline of an ill-defined decision-making period of anywhere between one and 14 days is anyone's guess.
Make no mistake, leaders and officials in almost every government, not to mention military and foreign policy analysts the world over, are feverishly making their best guesses right now.
So here are a few entries to guide this global guessing game.
Trump is taking strategic and tactical ambiguity to a new level and has been for days.
Earlier this week on the South Lawn of the White House, we probably got the most revealing insight into his mindset when asked by reporters about direct US military involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict.
In any event, he scoffed at publicly telegraphing any decision he may make on bombing missions in Iran so that the world's media could "be there and watch".
The obvious conclusion is that advance notice would not be given.
This, at least, would be consistent with the approach taken by most commanders in chief — think George W. Bush in Iraq, Obama on killing Osama bin Laden, or more recently, Biden's authorised strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Taking the current president at his word, we're not likely to know until after US forces have fired any shots.
If they never do, we may be left to deduce ourselves whether this was the result of an active decision Trump took, or a passive one that passed with the moment into the mists of time.
The White House has offered very limited reasoning on the significance of the time allocated for extra presidential musing.
The clearest explanation for settling on it was offered was by press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who's suggested two weeks is the difference between an latent nuclear weapon program and an active one.
"Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon. All they need is a decision from the supreme leader to do that," she said.
"And it would take a couple of weeks to complete the production of that weapon, which would of course pose an existential threat, not just to Israel, but to the United States, and to the entire world."
A US deferral carries with it no apparent obligations on Israel or Iran to cease their missile assaults on one other.
It does allow time for diplomacy to do its work.
According to the Reuters news agency, that work's been quietly going on in the background throughout the week since Israel launched Operation Rising Lion with its attacks on Iran.
Quoting diplomatic sources, Reuters has reported that Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi"have spoken several times by phone" during the week.
Separately, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is hitting the phones to counterparts from Canberra to Paris, trying to build consensus around a campaign of maximum pressure on the Iranians.
Through another channel, the so-called "E3" group of European foreign ministers from Germany, France and the UK are holding their own in-person talks with Araghchi in Geneva to explore a possible nuclear deal.
Crucially, any extra time available also allows the Pentagon to ready its plans, forces, weapons, ships, planes and intelligence for potential strikes.
Despite his ambiguity, those strikes deliberately and firmly remain as options underpinning the US president's prolonged timeline.
Israel's Operation Rising Lion, together with Tehran's ferocious missile response, has already proved costly in lives, injuries and damage inflicted in both countries, but ripples into the broader global economy have so far been minimised.
Oil prices are marginally up by about 3 per cent and shipments are still getting through the Strait of Hormuz, regardless of Iranian threats to blockade it if necessary.
As they've proven before, ongoing uncertainty about military escalation doesn't mean financial markets will remain calm or rationally in an extended "holding pattern".
The White House seems to be alert to the brittleness of oil pricing, with Leavitt giving an assurance that Trump is "paying attention and monitoring that".
It's prudent to consider oil price sensitivities because it's via the fuel tank and the family budget that many Americans will decide on the merit or folly of another foreign military venture.
The possibility of direct US miliary involvement is tearing at the seams of the MAGA movement which has twice propelled Trump to office on a foreign policy of war avoidance.
"America First" is the guiding principle behind MAGA's approach to all things defence and security related.
The idea that after only five months in the White House their president might see greatness in the deployment of a "bunker-busting" bomb half a world away in the interests of what they call "neo-con warmongers" is staggeringly incomprehensible to keepers of the flame, like commentator Tucker Carlson and Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
They're pitched against more hawkish pro-Israeli Republican figures including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Texas senator Ted Cruz.
Perhaps unintentionally, Cruz exposed the size of the rift within the MAGA clan in a combative on-camera interview with Carlson, revealing that for all his swagger, the Texan knew dangerously little about the foe he would have bombed into nuclear submission — unable to place any figure on simple facts including Iran's population.
The internal MAGA fight might cause Trump some political discomfort at home, but he's just guaranteed the combatants can slug it out for a couple more weeks, or longer, until he makes a final decision.