Commentary: Trump is suddenly waging two wars—one with trade partners and one with Iran

Life can get complicated awfully fast. President Trump hoped his first year in office would bring victories on tax cuts, trade realignment, and deregulation. Five months in, however, he has not just one war on his hands, but two. First is the trade war with dozens of nations, which many economists say is bound to end up an unwinnable quagmire. And now, Trump has stepped into a risky Middle East war by green-lighting US attacks on three Iranian nuclear weapons sites, a step other presidents have considered and averted. The June 21 American attack on Iran may turn out to have been a risk worth taking. It came after a week of attacks on Iranian nuclear and military targets by Israel, which says Iran was days or weeks from having the capability to build a nuclear weapon. Iran’s Islamic theocracy has long threatened Israel’s destruction, and a nuke would give them the means to do it. Starting June 13, Israel mounted a brilliant campaign that neutered Iran’s air-defense network, killed several military leaders, and damaged Iran’s nuclear complex. But it needed American help to finish the job. Only American “bunker buster” bombs had the heft to penetrate deeply buried facilities at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program. Trump okayed the raid, and American warplanes dropped at least a dozen of the giant bombs on June 21. Trump says Iran’s nuclear program is gone. Maybe. It could take days or weeks to determine if the bombs destroyed everything on the target list. The Pentagon may never know for sure. Iran could have moved some nuclear material or other parts of the program to reconstitute later. Trump obviously hopes the June 21 strikes are a one-and-done operation. That would allow him to refocus on a trade war that has key deadlines approaching and a huge tax bill that’s bogging down in Congress. But Iran may not cooperate. “Wars are easy to start, but difficult to end,” Byron Callan of Capital Alpha Partners wrote in a June 22 analysis. “We are highly skeptical that Iran ‘surrenders.’” Iran is in a weak position, yet it may influence the outcome of Trump’s economic agenda, not to mention other Trump priorities such as immigration enforcement and anything else that depends on Trump holding a reasonable level of popular support at home. Wars can boost a president’s popularity and political capital if they go well (and quickly), but they can also drag down a presidency if they bog down or go off the rails. President Lyndon Johnson, most famously, dropped his 1968 reelection bid as opposition to the Vietnam War exploded. Drop Rick Newman a note, take his weekly economy quiz, or sign up for his newsletter.