As the clock ticks down to President Donald Trump’s Tuesday evening deadline to reach a war-ending deal with Iran, Gulf Arab countries are in the dark. The U.S.’s European allies are clueless. Even people close to the White House are unsure what’s next.
And Trump’s Tuesday morning threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight” — unless “something revolutionarily wonderful” happens in the scant hours that remain — has some fearing the worst case scenario: that the president would use nuclear weapons against Iran.
It is exactly the kind of made-for-television, edge-of-your-seat moment that has become one of the president’s hallmarks — replete with a primetime deadline. And it comes with a grim, apocalyptic tinge that has left Washington — and indeed, the world — on a knife’s edge.
Trump has given Iran until 8 p.m. on Tuesday to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which it has almost entirely closed by wielding drones to target tankers passing through it without permission. Absent a deal, Trump has threatened strikes on critical infrastructure, like power plants and bridges.
Asked about the status of talks with Iran, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that “only the president knows where things stand and what he will do” and that Iran has until the deadline “to meet the moment and make a deal with the United States.”
A senior Gulf official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that their country had “no idea” what Trump was thinking.
“It could be a tactic to try to get Iran to accept what is on the table, the deal that Pakistan has brought to them. But we don’t have any visibility into the plan, if there is a plan,” the person said. “And if he attacks Iran, then we know Iran is going to retaliate against us and other countries in the region.”
Trump has long wielded uncertainty as a negotiating instrument, not wanting to deprive himself of any options that might increase his leverage. But in a moment when the stakes are potentially the highest they have ever been for the president, his inscrutable behavior is producing something beyond strategic ambiguity.
It’s generating genuine fear across allied capitals, regional powers, and within his own orbit about what comes next — and at what cost.
“It’s incredibly unsettling to see the American president talk about war in these ways,” said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist who served in Trump’s first administration. “Most people are used to the president popping off on social media as he has for over a decade now, but now the consequences are war and peace … No one knows how to make sense of it. Our allies don’t know, our enemies don’t know. And no one is really convinced that really the president knows what comes next.”
Human rights groups say the president’s threatened attacks on Iranian infrastructure — including power plants and desalination plants, which are crucial for supplying potable water to millions of people — would have a devastating impact on the country’s civilian population, which is already suffering from outages.
A massive strike on Iran would almost certainly deepen the nearly-six week regional conflagration that has threatened oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of global oil supply flows. Already, the war has ricocheted across the global economy, threatening virtually every supply chain and damaging the affordability argument the president’s political advisers set out to make earlier this year. Oil prices have risen more than 50 percent since the war started just over a month ago, and more energy disruptions could send prices even higher.
But international leaders, including some of the U.S.’s closest allies, are signaling hope for some kind of 11th-hour deal that pulls the U.S. back from the brink. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, asked about the president’s social media post Tuesday morning, suggested that there is a gulf between public and private conversations on the U.S.’s next steps.
“I’ll just observe there are some negotiations going on, and that there is often a gap between what’s said publicly and what’s happening privately,” Carney said. “We are not at the centre of those negotiations, although we have some visibility to them.”
Carney also strongly condemned the suggestion that the U.S. would target civilian infrastructure.
“We urge all parties in this war to follow those responsibilities,” he added.
Still, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking to reporters before his meeting with New Zealand’s foreign minister on Tuesday, said that “Iran is violating every law known by striking commercial vessels” in the strait and “it’s a big problem for the world.”
“This is a regime that doesn’t believe in laws, rules, or anything like that,” he added. “It’s a state sponsor of terrorism, so it’s not surprising that they’re now conducting terrorist activity against commercial vessels.”
Many of the president’s allies on Tuesday seemed hopeful that the U.S. would deescalate, or launch a smaller attack on Iran that would fall short of the mass destruction the president has promised. Instead of attacking energy infrastructure, he could, for instance, choose to target bridges.
“I’d be surprised if he actually went forward. He’s had two previous times to go forward. He blinked,” said one person close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “That’s always been his MO throughout the history of business. Whenever he can’t get something he steps in and says something provocative and he lets others create the off ramp for him.”
And some in Washington are outright dismissing the prospect that the president would use nuclear weapons, with some former Trump officials seeing the White House’s silence on the issue as more a negotiating tactic than a true threat.
“I do not think he is contemplating nuclear weapons at all; I think there is zero possibility. Nor is there any reason for their use,” said Elliott Abrams, who served as special representative for Iran and Venezuela in Trump’s first administration.
But he warned that even the kind of devastating action that Trump is threatening may not move Iranian leadership.
“They don’t care about the Iranian people, which is why they murdered 30,000 of them in January,” he said. “They may just hold on, because they do not worry about the economy of Iran in the future; they worry about their own necks.”
Cheyenne Haslett and Nick Taylor-Vaisey contributed to this report.
