Take a moment to digest the following, quite extraordinary sequence of events. At the end of last week, US officials leaked to the Washington Post that Russia had been giving Iran target data to strike US military assets in the Persian Gulf. These attacks have killed seven American service members and wounded more than 150 to date. They also damaged a $1.1 billion radar that's among just six of its kind in the world. A subsequent CNN report said Russia was also helping Iran with drone tactics learned from fighting Ukraine.
The Iranian barrage consisted mainly of roughly $40,000 Shahed attack drones, some of which US Gulf allies had to shoot down with PAC3 Patriot air defence missiles that cost $3 million to $4 million apiece. They have burned through about 800 of these high-end interceptors.
As all this was going on, Ukraine offered and then provided some of its unique, low-cost counter-drone technologies to defend the very same Gulf targets that the Kremlin was helping Tehran to hit.
And now comes the surprise: It wasn't that Russian President Vladimir Putin helped an ally against the US, a country both see as their primary enemy; it was the response of the US president.
Donald Trump didn't thank Ukraine or reprimand Russia, as one might expect. He dismissed any Russian sharing of target data as inconsequential. He got on the phone to Putin for a "good" chat about the war in Ukraine. And he said he'd be lifting oil sanctions, a move that would inevitably reward Russia with fresh revenues to pursue its invasion of Ukraine.
This is so perverse that it has to raise the question of whether there is anything Putin could do that would sour Trump's relentlessly optimistic view that he can make a friend of the Kremlin. I suspect the answer is "no."
For no matter how random and undisciplined Trump may often be - just consider his latest flip-flopping over whether the Strait of Hormuz was open or mined - he has proved enormously consistent in his core beliefs, many of which were formed some 40 years ago. In fact, his foreign policy agenda resembles nothing so much as a Spotify 1980s playlist, belting out the same tunes four decades late. Among the highlights of his golden oldies: Befriending Moscow, bombing Iran, belittling NATO and making trade tariffs great again.
The impact of this back-to-the-future phenomenon is hard to exaggerate, because of the enormous military, political and economic power that Trump now has at his disposal. His playlist is forcing the world down a range of unexpected, unhealthy and potentially transformative paths.
Take Russia. Trump has been a fan of Moscow since at least 1986, when he was first courted by the Soviet Union's then-ambassador to the US Yuri Dubinin and his daughter Natalia. They flew him to the USSR by private jet the next year, to look at the potential to build and manage two "Trump Tower" hotels in a joint venture with the Soviet tourist agency, Intourist.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning cardiologist Bernard Lown has said that in 1986 Trump told him he could end the Cold War in an hour. On his return from Moscow in 1987, he hinted at running for president and spent close to $100,000 on full-page newspaper ads that argued the US should stop letting Japan and Saudi Arabia freeride on US defence dollars. He said the same of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on TV talk show Larry King Live soon after.
When Trump entered the White House for a second time in 2024, the USSR was no more. Russia had invaded Ukraine with demands that included dismantling much of NATO. But Trump's views remained as they'd been in the 1980s. He still looked at Russia as an untapped financial opportunity the US should befriend. He still believed he could resolve any impediment (in this case a hot war) - in hours. He still wanted NATO members to pay more (indeed the case was by now stronger), and remained unconvinced of the alliance's benefit to the US.
Trump's views on Iran have been just as consistent. As far back as 1980, he said in a TV interview that the US should have sent troops into Iran and taken over the nation's oil supplies as soon as the new regime seized American hostages. In 1988, he said the US should take Kharg Island, Iran's primary oil export terminal, the moment it next misbehaved. According to some reporting, taking Kharg Island is under White House consideration again today.
Trump's zero-sum views on trade also took shape in '80s. He complained in the same Larry King Live interview about how free trade was an illusion and the US was being ripped off. The one thing that has changed since is the identity of his main villain of global commerce. Back then it was Japan. Now it's China.
There is value and integrity to being consistent. But having a point of view is one thing. Forming a strategy and the adaptive policy suite to achieve your goals is another. Events change things. A president whose convictions aren't subject to analysis or review, and who surrounds himself with sycophants instead of expertise can certainly disrupt the status quo; but it takes the luck of a blindfolded darts champion to produce the desired result.
Current events provide a vivid example of how this failure to evolve distorts policy making. Months ago, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made a power-point pitch to Trump offering to provide the US with counter-drone technology in the Gulf. White House officials told to look at it dismissed the offer as grandstanding – despite the clear need and Ukraine's unique, demonstrated ability to deliver. Even when the US was building up Gulf air defenses in preparation for war, nobody thought to call Kyiv until the Shaheds were already raining down.
This was a mistake that had significant costs. It was born of prejudice against a leader who was trying to persuade Trump take his country's side against Russia, plus a fundamental failure to understand how the Iranian regime would react to an attack it saw as existential. And if Iran's Thursday statement in the name of new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is any guide, it's digging in for a long war.
Another example of how Trump's immovable beliefs have affected policy making is the dizzying array of nonsense justifications and incoherent goals that he and his administration rolled out to explain their decision to go to war with Iran. The truest explanation is likely much simpler – that this was something Trump had wanted to do since 1979, in revenge for Iranian attacks and slights against the US, and that he now had an opportunity he couldn't pass up.
Trump has a consistent vision for the Middle East that's longstanding and embodied by the Abraham Accords he negotiated during his first term. This involves the logic of the market replacing religious fanaticism, enabling Israel's regional integration and the reintroduction of Iran and its energy rich economy to a US-dominated global economy. It just isn't clear that the actions he's taking are the way to achieve it.
We're finding out in real time whether Trump, or the seven prior Oval Office occupants who made the cost-benefit analysis of going to war with Iran and decided against, were right.
Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
