US troops killed: has Trump lost control of Iran war? – The Latest
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This is The Guardian.
Iran still has the capability to hurt the US. They were lucky. The casualties could have been far worse.
We hit him very hard again tonight and we did that in honour of the great patriots.
He couldn't accept American casualties. The real problem for him is to get to somewhere, some agreement that he can claim is a diplomatic triumph.
From The Guardian's Today In Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hough. We're now in the 10th consecutive day of renewed strikes between the US and Iran as tensions re-escalate in the region. Julian Borger, you're our senior international correspondent. I think most significant for Trump is the deaths of military personnel over the weekend in the Middle East, in addition to the nearly 100 that have been injured in the region in the last two weeks. What are the implications for Trump on that, do you think?
Well, they're very serious because this is already a very unpopular war in the U.S., public opinion, mostly for economic reasons up to now, price of petrol. But if you add into that American servicemen and women are beginning to get killed and injured, then that is a whole other level. And that's something, if there's one consistent thing about Trump over the years, is he's been very reluctant to put American soldiers in harm's way. He has no problem with bombing other people and likes to see war in that way, just bombing the enemy and keeping American soldiers away from it. So this is something he is trying to avoid, and yet it has happened now. And so the stakes for him are growing and the jeopardy for him, especially politically with the elections coming up, that is getting worse.
Yeah, because we have these very crucial November midterms coming up, don't we? As you say, this is a war that is enormously unpopular and increasingly so in the United States, not just because of the impact on consumers at the petrol pump and elsewhere. But when you start to then have US military personnel coming home in coffins, the visuals of that are likely to increase that unpopularity. The stakes are enormous for him. He has responded for now by saying that Iran will pay many times over and has carried out a series of US strikes. Do you think those will continue?
Well, there are two things really. One is the sort of the revenge and that, you know, he couldn't accept American casualties and then said, OK, well, let's call it off. That's not in his DNA and that doesn't work politically. The longer question is, Will he keep on up these attacks in the hope that it will shake something loose in the Iranian negotiating position and he can get what he wants on the negotiating table? Up to now, that really hasn't worked. And there's no sign that it's going to begin to work. But he's, apart from that, really out of ideas. And, of course, he has the military at his shoulder who always have a plan of how things can be done and more things to bomb. And so for the time being, as there isn't a...
diplomatic solution. That's all he has. And so without any real strategy, that is going to carry on until something else comes up, something shakes loose in the negotiations.
Yeah, which is still ongoing. And we'll talk about those in more detail. But in terms of the options available to him, I mean, as ever, it is impossible to work out what's going on in Trump's head. But will he be looking to achieve another kind of fragile truce? And I think crucial to that is the fact that Israel has said that they have no interest in getting involved in this issue.
How did renewed US–Iran strikes escalate after three American soldiers were killed?
latest round of fighting. So that leaves him quite isolated on that front, doesn't it?
I think it's more a problem for him if Israel gets involved. It's a problem in terms of perceptions, political perceptions at home, which was originally that it was Israel that had led the U.S. into this war. And it makes very little military difference, Israeli involvement. So that probably is not a huge factor. But the real problem for him is to get to somewhere, some agreement that he can claim is a diplomatic triumph.
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