Marion McKeone: Trump's clown car ploughs on into Iran war with Netanyahu in driving seat
For the solemn occasion of initiating Operation Epic Fury, Commander in Chief Donald Trump donned a baseball cap and several layers of pancake make-up. Picture: AP/Jose Luis Magana
Cometh the hour, cometh the clown car.
Previous US presidents have spoken of ordering of American soldiers to war as their "highest burden". For the solemn occasion of initiating Operation Epic Fury, Commander in Chief Donald Trump donned a baseball cap and several layers of pancake make-up.
His location of choice was not a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF) within the White House. Instead it was a curtained-off section of his Mar-A-Lago members club, prompting one late night comic to quip: “I’m pretty sure it’s the first war ever to be started next to an omelette station."
Intelligence Community Directive 705, which lays out the precise construction and kit-out standards for SCIFs was breached "just about every way you can imagine," according to a former FBI counterterrorism agent, who pronounced herself "stunned, kind of flabbergasted really" by the jerry-rigged contraption.
One of the official photos released by the White House revealed two heads poking through from the outside.
Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was photographed wearing a Whoop fitness tracker, a clear violation of regulations. Luckily the Whoop CEO took to X to reassure the nation that his product couldn’t be used to hack into the meeting or track her location.
And for good measure the official photos partially revealed an Operation Epic Fury map that partially displayed joint US-Israeli airbases in the region. To paraphrase Epictetus, circumstances don’t make the man, they reveal him.
Some rise to the moment. For others, the crucible of crisis exposes their deficiencies in a way that’s almost painful to witness. That Trump has no comprehension of what he may have unleashed in the Middle East comes as little surprise, but it retains the capacity to shock.
His first public appearance came almost two days after the war started. During a Medal of Honour ceremony for three Army veterans, he barely acknowledged the first casualties of his war of choice — four US soldiers killed in an Iranian retaliatory strike on their Bahrain base.
Instead, he focused on a lengthy paean to his gold curtains and ballroom construction project. Unsurprisingly, his team of acolytes have likewise shown themselves to be wholly unequal to the moment.
Marco Rubio, stammering and sweating on Capitol Hill, inadvertently ignited a MAGA firestorm when he answered the "Why now?” part of the equation by revealing that Trump had been bounced into war by Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu.
Sectors of the MAGA world have long suspected that Netanyahu has been leading Trump around by the nose.
But Rubio’s apparent confirmation enraged some of his most influential online supporters who don’t need much prodding to unleash their inner anti-Semite.
His admission didn’t sit well with Trump either. Rubio was forced into an embarrassing walk back as he tried to convince reporters that their lying ears had tricked them again.
The ridicule heaped on Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s pantomime theatrics and Dr Seuss-level rhyming rhetoric is justified.
For all his desire to be front and centre, he’s a backseat occupant of Trump’s clown car along with Rubio, albeit a far more dangerous one in the current context.
Trump is in the passenger seat and Netanyahu is at the wheel.
And in case you’re wondering, vice president JD Vance is along for the ride; hiding in the footwell as he tries to balance his proximity to power with the MAGA blowback that could torch his chances of becoming the GOP candidate for 2028.
Decisions to go to war, even by sober and serious leaders, are often based on imperfect intelligence, false perceptions and outright lies. But these are not serious people.
Never have War Room principals been so at odds in their accounts of the rationale, strategy, duration, objective or endgame. Trump doesn’t just contradict his advisers on a daily basis. He rebuts himself.
If we’re to believe the mediators in Oman, Iran did not, as Trump claims, walk away from the table. Rather, Iranian negotiators were ready to agree to a ban on stockpiling any enriched uranium.
Objectively, this would be a better deal than that negotiated by Obama in 2015. But Trump failed to take a win that would have allowed him to lord it over the predecessor he’s obsessed with denigrating. It’s something he’ll almost certainly come to regret.
As Israeli and US warplanes continue to blitz their ways through the layers of Iran’s theocratic hierarchy, the options for a quick exit are narrowing.
The idea that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard would willingly hand over their weapons to the civilian population they’ve oppressed for almost half a century — and slaughtered by the thousands in recent weeks — is only useful as a yardstick by which Trump’s ignorance can be measured.
His outsized ego made him the ultimate useful idiot for the wily Israeli prime minister. That Trump’s supine devotees on Capitol Hill are now portraying Netanyahu and Trump as a latter-day Churchill and FDR provides one of the few moments of pitch-black comic relief.
And while Netanyahu and Trump are locked in the same car for now, they may have very different destinations in mind.
While Trump may be willing to cut a deal with anyone who emerges from the rubble, it seems that Israel at any rate is determined to keep targeting replacements until the only man standing is Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the former Shah of Iran.
The US-backed dictator was no slouch when it came to repression, brutality and corruption.
Pahlavi claimed he was always prepared to ‘fight the fight’ for Iran’s freedom since he moved to the United States 47 years ago.
“We were committed to fight regardless of outside intervention,” he says referencing the US-Israeli bombardment. Which begs the question, now that he’s 65 years old, when exactly did he intend to start?
Regime change requires sinking vast amounts of time and resources into nation building. It’s an investment Trump isn’t willing to make.
But for Netanyahu, who has already suckered the US into facilitating the obliteration of Gaza, the decimation of the West Bank and the annihilation of Hamas and Hezbollah, there’s no reason to stop when he believes the ultimate victory is in sight.
There is a slim chance that, despite himself, Trump could succeed in laying the groundwork for a new Iran that wishes to peacefully prosper alongside its Middle Eastern neighbours and end its perennial enmity with the US.
The Persians were the world’s first capitalists with a sophisticated market economy dating back to the 6th century.
It’s not such a leap to presume that a country that boasts a highly educated population and the natural resources to become another prosperous potentate in the region wouldn’t seize the opportunity to do so.
But not before the Revolutionary Guard has used every last missile, drone and bullet against Israel, the US and its military hosts in the region and the Iranians pushing for its ouster.
The armchair generals who pontificate on America’s cable news channels and online media outlets have expressed surprise at Iran’s resilience and puzzlement that Iran would target US-friendly states that might otherwise have stayed neutral.
Their surprise that a regime with its back to the wall wouldn’t try to inflict as much damage as possible on its enemies and their hosts in the region is rather more surprising.
Especially since its unlikely that the smaller Gulf states share Israel’s appetite for destruction. Every day the Strait of Hormuz remains off-limits is another direct hit on their economies.
As well as an estimated 45,000 US troops, the region is host to as many as one million US citizens, tens of thousands of whom are highly paid expats who live in opulent compounds and socialise in the seven-star hotels of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Manama.
Now they’re fleeing in droves, taking their dollars and their expertise with them. And the 100 million tourists who visited in the region in 2025 will be taking their billions to other overpriced resorts in 2026.
Iran has few friends but the risk that Iraq’s Shia militias could join the fray is a real one.
There are cultural and ethnic differences between Iraq’s majority Arab Shia population and Iran’s Farsi-speaking Persians. But they share the same holy sites and a loathing for the US and Israel.
Both Iran and Iraq have majority Shia populations and share holy sites but there are cultural and ethnic differences; more than two thirds of Iraq’s population of 48 million is Shia Arabs. Farsi speaking Persian Shias account for 90% of Iran’s 93 million citizens.
Trump may already have his eye on the exit ramp but the biggest risk to his quick fix gamble comes from inside the White House.
Hegseth isn’t just dangerously out of his depth. He’s fuelled by a Christian fundamentalist zeal and an antipathy towards Muslims that should have disqualified him from his role.
According to US Military Freedom Religious Foundation president Mike Weinstein, more than 110 complaints have been filed since the war began by soldiers in 40 different units spread across 30 military bases.
The complaints are lodged against Hegseth-appointed military commanders who are framing the war with Iran as part of a Biblical prophesy with one military commander telling his troops: "President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
Framing the war as an End of Days reckoning is a spark that could ignite a conflagration that engulfs the region. It’s hard to fight an enemy that has no fear of death, much less one that relishes martyrdom.
Iran can’t win this war but it can make sure it’s not the only loser.
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