Donald Trump Has Deterred Himself

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

 

It was not long after the Pentagon revealed that a U.S. Apache attack helicopter that crashed near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday was, in fact, shot down by hostile Iranian fire that the president told the Wall Street Journal that it “wasn’t a big deal.”

 

You could have fooled me. The Pentagon certainly acted as if it were a significant event. U.S. forces touted the successful first-of-its-kind rescue of the two downed airmen by an unmanned drone boat, stripping the Iranians of the opportunity to hold American service personnel hostage. What’s more, the scale of the American response to the attack on the Apache, which was itself executing retaliatory strikes against Iranian targets in response to Tehran’s cease-fire violations, sent some rather unmistakable signals.

 

In three waves, U.S. Navy and Air Force jets struck 20 targets, mostly in and around the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. forces targeted Iranian ground control and radar stations, as well as air defense sites. This represents the largest volley of fire the U.S. has meted out against the Iranians since the cease-fire took effect in early April, although CENTCOM called its actions a “proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.”

 

But the Iranians proceeded to aggress once again without much regard for proportionality. “Iranian state media reported that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had targeted 21 American air and naval bases across the region,” Stars and Stripes reported, “including the Bahrain installation and Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, which has been known to house F-35 fighter jets.”

 

The Iranian attack may have been more calibrated than Iran’s previous deadly strikes on Gulf region and Israeli civilian infrastructure. Tehran might have received the message that CENTCOM’s latest barrage attempted to communicate — limiting its targets to American military installations. Donald Trump isn’t the only party to this conflict that does not want to return to high-tempo combat operations.

 

“Avoiding a return to large-scale operations is beneficial for Iran because it allows Iran to drag out the economic and political pressure on the United States and Israel,” last night’s analysis from the Institute for the Study of War read. “Iran faces its own economic pressure due to war damages and the US Navy blockade, but the Iranian regime only cares about economic damage insofar as it damages the regime’s parochial interests and threatens regime security.”

 

As of this writing, there have been no indications that Iranian strikes resulted in U.S. casualties or fatalities. That’s good news for the Islamic Republic. After all, as Trump reportedly told his subordinates, according to what they leaked to the Wall Street Journal, the president will only put the cease-fire to bed if Tehran manages to “kill American troops.” Preemption to prevent that horrible outcome is, apparently, off the table.

 

The inability of Iranian forces to inflict significant damage suggests that the president’s reluctance to return to war is not a response to conventional deterrence. He’s not intimidated by the prospect of the damage that Iran can deal out directly. Rather, the Iranian threat is indirect, and the president has been discouraged by the prospective horrors that could follow from an all-out Iranian assault on regional infrastructure relating to energy production, desalination, and the like. This dynamic should be familiar to students of Cold War-era warfighting strategy. The president is self-deterred.

 

“Rather than external adversaries threatening consequences (as in deterrence), self-deterrence consists of a distinct set of consequences articulated internally by policymakers that negatively affects their cost-benefit calculus,” reads a U.S. Army War College summary of the concept:

 

More precisely, whereas an adversary might threaten military punishment to deter an unwanted action, many other plausible or fanciful consequences that will affect the decision to take that action fall outside the purview of whatever the adversary threatens. These consequences can include reputational damage from a hostile domestic or world audience, third-party intervention, and the long-term political, economic, social, and military problems that would arise regardless of any short-term military success.

 

Of all the undesirable consequences that could result from this war, the evidence of American self-deterrence might be the worst. It raises the possibility in the minds of America’s adversaries that the United States will not respond at all to aggression if Washington can be convinced in advance that it cannot absorb the asymmetric pain the enemy can inflict.

 

America’s adversaries are almost certainly emboldened by Trump’s restraint. A deal that codifies the status quo that prevails today in the Strait of Hormuz would all but guarantee that hostile foreign powers will test America’s resolve.

 

The president is, however, still banging on the table. “The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!!” he wrote with what now looks like hollow bluster. Actions speak louder than social media posts. So far, the president’s actions are the sort that will invite future aggression against American interests and allies.