A Quagmire of Trump’s Own Making

By Mike Nelson

Wednesday, May 27, 2026

 

If Ulysses Everett McGill were asked to describe President Donald Trump’s current situation with Iran, he might exclaim, “Damn, he’s in a tight spot!” Almost three months into the conflict that he initiated sua sponte, Trump finds himself in a sticky situation. He doesn’t want conditions to remain as they are, with a mutually imposed blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Whatever advantage has come from stressing the already fragile Iranian economy also comes with the cost of increasing energy prices around the globe. The second-order impacts of these costs will only get worse as the price of moving goods is passed on to consumers.

 

Trump was already facing concerns about affordability before the war, and those concerns are now growing while his approval rating is declining. He doesn’t want to be weighed down by a continued face-off over the strait. And he doesn’t want to restart the combat operations that have been on pause for a month and a half—operations that he naively believed would quickly bring the Iranian regime to its knees with no cost to the United States. Instead, they have depleted large quantities of some of our most critical capabilities, resulted in hundreds of American casualties, destroyed American aircraft and military infrastructure in the region, and caused pushback from Gulf Arab allies who have been targeted for Iranian retaliation—while not bringing about any signs of Iranian surrender.

 

Over the weekend, reports of a negotiated settlement between the United States and Iran met with a chorus of disapproval for being too generous toward the regime. The settlement is not yet finalized, nor have the details been announced, but if even a small portion of what was reported appears in the final version—including Iranian retention of their enriched uranium, a system of tolling an international waterway, or a financial windfall with which the regime can fund their proxies—we can expect an even more acrimonious reception, including from several voices who had previously been reliable Trump supporters.

 

So here we are, with a president who can’t stay where he is, can’t move forward, and can’t step backward, mired in the quicksand of a poorly managed confrontation. A president who ran a campaign in which he said each problem facing the United States had a simple solution that he alone could provide, now finds himself alone with no good options.

 

This dilemma is one of his own making. Not just the decision to go to war without a full understanding of the costs, risks, goals, and complications—Trump undoubtedly did that, and it’s been written about in great detail. But also the fact that he is alone—without political support in government, without allies, and without the will of the people in prosecuting this war, or at least navigating his way out of it.

 

While Trump may be surprised and frustrated by where the path of unilateral decision-making has led him, his sojourn down it is entirely predictable. He is absolutely enamored by the authority of his office, reveling in the decisions he’s empowered to make without outside input. In just the first year of his second term, he has issued more executive orders than any other president in an entire single term since Carter, and he has amassed more than 10 times the pardons and commutations than he did in his full first term (admittedly, the mass pardoning of the January 6 rioters and get-out-jail-free cards to finance and crypto scammers who have dealings with the Trump family runs up the score).

 

But the president hasn’t been satisfied to merely abuse the unilateral power of his position. He has also sought to extend his reach beyond the boundaries of the Oval Office and assume authority that isn’t his. The Supreme Court ruled his attempt to implement widespread tariffs were an unconstitutional attempt to usurp authority assigned to Congress. Hundreds of federal judges have shot down thousands of specious claims about the administration’s authority to deny civil liberties and due process protections as part of its immigration enforcement.

 

Trump’s disregard for collaboration and consensus has extended past domestic policy and legal matters to beyond the water’s edge. Not only has the president suggested he would withdraw or fail to meet the obligations of treaties ratified by Congress, he has thumbed his nose at Congress’ role in matters of war and peace. The administration didn’t even notify the Gang of 8 before removing Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela, and the White House’s approach to dealing with the (as of yet untested in court) timelines of the War Powers Act is to either ignore them outright or play clever word games as to whether a “ceasefire” where both combatants still shoot at each other pauses the stopwatch. Both Operation Southern Spear in the Caribbean Sea and the conflict with Iran have extended past these timelines without a vote from Congress authorizing them.

 

Whether Trump is unaware of or unconcerned with the constraints on his power is largely academic—he does not abide by them regardless of the cause. A man with neither the curiosity to learn about the constitutional processes of the government he leads nor the patience to work through them if he had, has been emboldened by a pliant Republican-led Congress, more concerned with being sufficiently obsequious than in fulfilling its duty to provide checks and balances between branches of government.

 

But the comfort level the president has developed, the enabling he has received, and the momentum he has created with this style of decision-making have served him poorly, leading to the situation in which he now finds himself. The administration’s decision not to put the war to a vote means the burden and the blame for stalled progress, regional instability, and American losses rests solely on the president’s shoulders. Not only did he fail to create a political coalition that shared the decision and responsibility to go to war, he is starting to see defections as once supportive Republicans cross the aisle and vote for war powers bills designed to force an end to the conflict.

 

Perhaps most damning, Trump never made the case to the American people. The will and passion of the people are essential to continued effort in any war, especially when wars face inevitable setbacks and require reassessment of the strategy (a truth written about by Von Clausewitz and studied at the war colleges that Secretary Pete Hegseth rails against as too woke). The fact that the president’s model prior to ordering Epic Fury—the Maduro raid—was not a full campaign and was over before it was publicly disclosed seems to have inspired Trump to believe he never needed buy-in from the public.

 

Any president has a limited amount of political capital to expend and a finite amount of focus they can command when using their bully pulpit. It would seem odd, therefore, under normal circumstances, that this president has spoken with more frequency, greater specificity, and deeper passion when trying to make a case to the American people for a ballroom than the war in which we are entangled. The fact that the president is far more animated and informed about his pet beautification projects might just suggest the seriousness, or lack thereof, with which he is taking war—the most serious undertaking into which a president can enter.

 

Insomuch as he does speak to the American people about the war at all, his argument can be summarized as, “Other wars were longer, why are you complaining?” Hardly a rallying cry.

 

But perhaps the greatest burr in the president’s saddle are the allies he spent years saying we don’t need, suggesting their previous wartime contributions were worthy of mockery, or whose territory he threatens to annex (even the weekend’s negotiations with Iran, so taxing that he could not attend his son’s wedding, didn’t stop the president from taking his eye off the ball of aggravating the tensions over Greenland). Building coalitions with annoying Europeans is beneath him, and listening to or addressing the concerns and input of the allies during the planning process would have been a frustrating timesuck for someone whose impulsivity and desire to implement orders make Veruca Salt look like she has the patience of a saint. Now, because of his own disregard for international coalitions in the march to war, he finds himself demanding support from one he does not have, lashing out and venting his rage via social media posts and through wildly fluctuating decisions about military presence in Europe.

 

The Europeans were not the only American partners who were not consulted before the war. The Arab Gulf  states, which have paid the cost of Iranian reaction in lives and destroyed infrastructure, have expressed objection to the handling of the war in their backyard, to the point that they have rallied together to pressure and attempt to limit some of Trump’s options, lessening further the wiggle room available to squeeze out of this mess.

 

That the president thought so little of needing consensus from others on the war is evidenced by the fact that he initiated it with a middle-of-the-night social media post—providing less focus and fanfare than a Friday afternoon news dump. But now, three months on, Trump finds himself paying the delayed costs of his approach, with no shared skin in the game from Congress, cratering public sentiment for a war that began with underwater polling, European allies sitting on the sidelines, and Gulf partners voicing opposition to some of his options. Had he sought a consensus, he would likely have a wider range of options and a longer time horizon to deal with the conflict.

 

The lesson with which Donald Trump is now contending (but not learning) is that the freedom of going it alone when it comes to decision-making brings with it the burdens and consequences of going it alone when things go poorly. The man who loves to take sole credit for any positive outcome and pass blame for any negative one now finds himself flailing as he tries to make the fault for his current dilemma stick elsewhere. But his usual playbook hasn’t shifted the polls, hasn’t brought down inflation, and has not compelled the Iranians to concede.

 

The words he once belted out at his rallies to adoring crowds, his campaign boast—“I alone” —these words now take on new meaning, as he alone is left with the consequences and complications of a situation he never had the focus in understanding, nor the patience to prepare for any contingency other than the most optimistic, and unrealistic, result. And now he must navigate a way out—and deal with the consequences—alone.