Trump may be in over his head with the Iran crisis – and he could pay for it at the ballot box

Division has been a staple of the president's tenure in the White House – but it is the last thing he needs now

Related video: Who was powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani? (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty)

In the Netflix world of Frank Underwood, war was the only option when journalist Tom Hammerschmidt exposed his misuse of authority, a scandal that put him on the verge of impeachment.

The president didn’t hesitate. He declared war on the terrorist organisation ICO and aired scenes of ICO members killing American hostages. He needed a powerful distraction, and he got one.

The parallels between that House of Cards plot and Donald Trump's style of leadership are not hard to find. The president's instinct for recklessness is always there with political gains and keeping his supporter base happy always top of his agenda. Trump sees his Impeachment as itself a distraction from his mission to "Make America Great Again" and in turn he wants to distract the public away from proceedings in Congress. Whether it it was meant this way or not - the killing of Qassem Soleimani achieves this aim and the fact that it is an election year will not hurt.

The impeachment hearings are a nuisance for Trump in a year where he wants essentially a procession back into the White House. But now he has thrown himself into a fight with Tehran. Democrats in Congress are complaining that the legislative body was not informed about the airstrike that killed Soleimani ahead of time - as rules dictate, and this Iran crisis may just end up extending rather than curtailing a push for impeachment. If the situation with Tehran escalates too far, Trump may end up paying with his career at the ballot box.

Thanks to Trump's move, it is now US - not Iran - who is standing on its toes, waiting for a hit that could drag the country (whether you like it or not, and whether you want it or not) to war. Iran owns all the cards, the US and its allies (including the UK, of course) are pleading for a de-escalation, with their hands essentially tied.

If Iran hits hard (and I believe they almost certainly will) the US will be compelled to respond, because if it doesn’t, the administration will look weak. And recent history has shown us that is not a position Trump enjoys. This edges the whole Middle East closer to war, although it is clearly not something any nation involved would want.

While Trump's voter base don't want the president to look weak, nor would most of them want the country in another costly war. A poll conducted by the University of Maryland in September 2019 shows that the majority of Americans don’t want a conflict with Iran. Three-quarters of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, said that war with Iran would be unwarranted. The public mostly blames the Trump administration for heightened tensions with Iran and disapproves of Trump’s Iran policy - but Americans are deeply divided in assessing Trump’s goals in Iran.

Trump has been strident in his tweets, but his administration has struggled at times to justify the airstrike. Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, keeps arguing that the Middle East is "unstable" and the US is "creating a place and an opportunity for that stability." However, that ignores the fact that war, unlikely but still possible, is actually the least stable condition in which the region can be. And thanks to Trump, who once thought war could win Obama the elections, war is one step closer.

Unpredictability is a feature of this conflict. Starting one is the easiest part of the job, and the only part you can control. Killing Qassem Soleimani is widely seen in Iran an “act of war”, and many in the West seem to share the same view, including Sir John Sawers, the former MI6 chief. This puts the US in war stance, at least from Tehran’s viewpoint.

This unpredictability is rocking the US allies in the Middle East. They don’t know what the outcomes might be, and if American troops will leave Iraq soon - the country that is most likely to become a proxy battleground. Weakening the US influence in the country or departing it altogether will give Tehran a boost when it comes to influence in the region.

Washington will hope that killing Soleimani could still have a silver lining: a significant degradation in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) effectiveness in continuing the assassinated commander's policy. Managing to maintain the US military presence in Iraq, and avoiding an all-out military clash would also be positives. The US is not in a position to gain more than those minimum strategic objectives.

The US just did a great service to the Iranian regime, with the public response to Soleimani's funeral rites papering over the fact there had been mass civil unrest recently and distracting attention from the outrage at the economic and political situation in the country. While there is this - at least temporary - show of unity in Iran, Trump has left his allies guessing all while the nuclear agreement signed between Tehran and a number of global powers slowly falls apart.

Such division is trouble. Frank Underwood was unable to unite the nation in House of Cards, and Trump is rushing the United States in the same direction.