WANA (May 11) – By now, it’s widely recognized that Donald Trump’s foreign policy is driven more by prestige-seeking and “threats for leverage” than by any real appetite for costly, open-ended wars. While he occasionally falls into the trap set by hawkish figures like John Bolton or Mike Pompeo—who exploit his vanity and naivety to escalate tensions—he often snaps out of it and quickly distances himself from them.

 

In what seems to be a similar scenario in Trump’s second term, this time it was Netanyahu and Mike Waltz playing the roles of the cunning fox and manipulative cat, dragging Trump against his campaign promises into early confrontations with Yemen and heightened tensions with Iran. Trump appears to have been easily convinced that a poor and under-resourced nation like Yemen would be an easy target—an effortless win to boost his prestige.

 

Adding to this miscalculation were false assurances from Israeli officials claiming that Iran’s air defense network had been neutralized in a recent Israeli strike and that the absence of Iran’s Operatiom True Promise III was proof of its vulnerability. These misleading claims seem to have given Trump pause, making him briefly consider a broader confrontation.

 

But Trump didn’t take long to wake up. After three months of fighting, spending $3 billion, and losing two F-18 fighter jets, the myth of a “quick and decisive victory in Yemen” collapsed.

 

Realizing the failure, Trump dismissed Waltz, distanced himself from Netanyahu, called off the war in Yemen, and quietly ordered the return of the B-2 bombers that had been deployed with fanfare to Diego Garcia.

 

Clearly, Trump came to understand that if a war with Yemen could turn into such a costly fiasco, then a war with Iran would be nothing short of a nightmare.