Trump Is Impotent vs. Iran

By Kevin D. Williamson

Friday, August 21, 2026

 

Donald Trump is promising economic warfare “on an unprecedented scale” against Iran, an “economic D-Day.” Trump makes these kinds of dumb, empty threats all the time—previous menacing pronouncements have run the gamut from war crimes to outright genocide—and the Iranians probably are right to shrug them off. One is reminded of the placeholder headline the Boston Globe accidentally printed over an editorial about Jimmy Carter: “Mush from the Wimp.”

 

“ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences,” Trump—or Natalie or whoever—wrote.

 

Safe bet: Trump ain’t gonna do jack.

 

The reason for that: “Any country” is mostly one country—China.

 

Beijing, nearly alone, maintains the economic lifeline for Tehran, buying something in excess of 80 percent of Iran’s seaborne petroleum exports. Effective economic warfare against Iran would mean either confronting or co-opting Xi Jinping and his filthy little junta, and Trump, being both a bully and a coward, assumes a naturally submissive posture when he encounters a genuine strongman of the type he aspires to be. Trump is the social-media-addicted Walter Mitty of Augusto Pinochets, whereas Xi is an old-school tyrant who murders his enemies and then cuts them up to sell for parts, and who does not tweet much about it.

 

The Trump administration is not in much of a position to lean on Beijing—and does not much seem to want to.

 

Instead, Trump is kowtowing to China’s terroristic nuclear cat’s-paw in Pyongyang, insisting that the North Korean psycho-state has been “unthreatening and respectful” during his time in office. North Korea has conducted two ballistic-missile tests this month alone and responded to Trump’s suggestion of a meeting with leader Kim Jong Un by launching another barrage of missiles.

 

While Trump is making kissy faces at North Korea, he is micturating from a great height on the two key U.S. allies in the region: South Korea and Japan. South Korea is being punished for not rushing headlong into Trump’s illegal, imbecilically conceived, and incompetently executed war in Iran, with the administration cutting back on a long-standing program of military collaboration—one whose main purpose is ensuring that Korean and U.S. forces can work together effectively in the event of a confrontation with North Korea and/or China. Trump, being Trump, was explicit in framing this as retaliation.

 

Japan has it a bit worse than South Korea, being pinned in on three sides by the autocratic axis that Trump has unwittingly helped to forge and strengthen: Russia, North Korea, and China. Japan has as much to worry about from North Korean nuclear threats as South Korea does, and dominating Japan is a necessary step in China’s bid for true regional hegemony. Japan has a reasonably pro-American leader at the moment, Sanae Takaichi of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, whom Trump has just humiliated by placing economic sanctions on the head of the International Criminal Court, Tomoko Akane, a Japanese national. Knowing that Trump conducts international relations by tantrum, Takaichi’s government could only murmur that the development is “unfortunate.”

 

Meanwhile, it has not gone unnoticed in Tokyo that Russia’s failures in Ukraine have been mitigated by the Trump administration’s moronic hostility toward Ukraine and its president, notably voiced by the vice president in a display of diplomatic suavity of the sort one might have expected from a chimp. (A Yale chimp, sure, but still.) And Tokyo can see that China has been emboldened by being served a steady diet of TACO—Trump Always Chickens Out—while Beijing has made a point of beating the stuffing out of the American president at his own trade war game.

 

The United States has long kept an aircraft carrier parked off the coast of Japan, the mission of which is basically to sit on China in case Xi et al. decide to get froggy. But there is a hole in the water there now, with that carrier having been dispatched to the Arabian Sea as an emergency measure necessitated by the fact that aspiring social media influencer Pete Hegseth has never successfully handled a logistical challenge more complicated than delivering a keg of beer to a frat party.

 

U.S. government debt hit $40 trillion this week. Trump is repaving the White House driveway with white granite.

 

Economic D-Day? It is coming for someone—but maybe not Iran.

 

Just before leading the actual D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower wrote a note taking personal responsibility for the campaign, should it fail—a catastrophe that he thought was a real possibility. He judged the potential benefit to be worth the risk. “The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone,” he wrote.

 

But Donald Trump does not do his homework, does not plan, does not put himself at risk in pursuit of the national interest, and does not take responsibility for … anything. You know this. I know this. The Japanese and the South Koreans know this.

 

And the Iranians know it, too.