America, and so the world, are split. He inspires excitement in his supporters and the hatred of his opponents. His enemies are many, and his supporters are not few. Some say that his shadow weighs heavily on those who despise him - and that among them are those who dream of erasing him, that a bullet is searching for him.
Either way, he dominates the screens, gushing when he adores and rails when he hates. This applies to both individuals and states. Let us set aside the latest episode at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Donald Trump rushed to preserve the image. His great test today lies in the Middle East and along the shores of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran cannot stand his tone or his style. It certainly resents his repeated boasts of destroying its warships and of sending them on a one-way trip to the deep end. Iran hates that he brags about the damage to its nuclear facilities and air forces. Iran resents that he summons it to the negotiating table as though it were a defendant called to give testimony at his own trial. It surely resents that in response to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a blockade was imposed upon its blockade, undermining Iran’s revenues, its storage capacity, and the bounty of its wells.
Iran has been swallowing cup after cup of poison since the man returned. Every day, Iran thinks of how he is the man who ordered the killing of Qasem Soleimani - the man who reshaped the contours of more than one map. Most dangerous of all, however, he seeks to take Iranian-American relations off of the trajectory they have been on since the revolution. He spoke of American soldiers who returned from Iraq wrapped in flags or dragging prosthetic limbs as a result of Soleimani's machinations. The same applies to Iran’s actions against Americans in Beirut.
Trump, for his part, cannot stand the way Iran addresses his country and the world. Iran speaks with an arrogance unmatched even by the Soviet Union, which once sat atop a massive nuclear arsenal. The heirs of Mao Zedong, all the way down to today's emperor, do not take this tone either. Trump believes Iran owes its strength to the leniency of his predecessors and that the confrontation should have begun 47 years ago when the revolution first incited against the "Great Satan." He says Iran's fingerprints are evident in everything that has targeted America in the Middle East, despite its attempts to cover up its actions.
The battle for the image is the most important one of all. It is the real battle for the master of the White House. For him, the image is an opportunity to declare victory regardless of actual developments and details. First and last, a leader addresses his soldiers and his public. No one likes the word defeat or admitting to defeat. It is impossible for Trump to have his name associated with defeat. He considers the battle’s outcome to be a forgone conclusions: he is a strong man, the president of the most powerful country in the world, and the supreme commander of the strongest army in history.
Moreover, the war did not come to him; he went to it. He chose it. So, he must justify it and its human and financial costs. This man cannot return defeated or with a humiliating agreement. He knows the press would sink its claws deeper into his image if he were to return defeated. He knows his enemies are many, and that countries near and far are waiting for the right moment to gloat and celebrate his fall. That is why he cannot return from the war without results.
It is not true that the American-Iranian war began under Trump. This war is as old as the Khomeinist revolution itself. The slogan "Death to America" was raised at protests that preceded the Shah of Iran's departure. Signs that the war had begun first appeared when Khomeini openly supported the students who had taken Americans hostage at their embassy in Tehran. Their prolonged detention was a way to humiliate the "American Satan." America could not free its hostages by force; it had tried and failed. Its image was visibly wounded.
The war would enter a phase of direct killing when an unknown attacker - said to be "Abu Zaynab" - stormed the headquarters of the Marines stationed in Beirut and detonated his truck, leaving scores of casualties among American soldiers. Washington chose to withdraw and pull back. The image of the United States suffered another injury. The prestige of the American empire would be struck again when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps engineered kidnappings of Western hostages in Lebanon, including several Americans. The game of humiliation was clear: by detaining a hostage, Tehran's allies could drag a great power into a "small cage." The country to which the hostage belongs itself becomes a hostage unable to walk away from its citizen's fate and unable to risk a rescue operation. Negotiations and concessions become inevitable. Some form of humiliation becomes unavoidable.
What held true in the eras of his predecessors does not hold in his. Araghchi arrived in Islamabad replaying the old game. He suggested his country would behave as though the war had not happened or as though it had won it. Iran was in no hurry and not seeking a way out. The IRGC generals also insisted on not losing the battle for the image. The response came swiftly: Witkoff and Kushner would not go begging for an appointment nor wait on the Iranian negotiator.
Not all the threads of what happened at the Correspondents' Dinner are clear. Had a bullet succeeded in taking him out, the whole scene would have changed entirely. All threads converge on this man. His powers are vast, and he himself is stronger than his powers. The battle remains open. Do the IRGC generals prefer playing at the edge of the abyss even at the risk of slipping into it?
This is a battle for image: not Trump's image alone, but the Supreme Leader's as well. Can the wounded leader who has lost his family and his country's military capabilities open the Strait of Hormuz under the pressure of Trump's blockade? Can he renounce the nuclear dream and signal exhaustion to the proxies? And what would remain of the revolution and its image if Khomeinist Iran agreed to end its military conflict with America and Israel?
