I meant to write this piece last week, but was sidetracked by President Donald Trump’s threats to Greenland and his derision for allies who lost soldiers fighting alongside the United States in Afghanistan.
Put simply, I want to recognize that it was idiotic of me to strongly suggest that a U.S. military attack on Iran was imminent on Jan. 14. I did so in an X post referencing flight tracking data that showed numerous U.S. Air Force refueling aircraft simultaneously departing Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Alongside the closure of Iranian airspace, the shuttering of Western embassies in Tehran, and other suggestions from a source, I took this flight data to suggest that a strike was imminent. The Air Force would surge refueling aircraft in the event of major military strikes or would relocate those aircraft away from Al Udeid to reduce their vulnerability to Iranian retaliation.
Of course, no U.S. military strikes actually occurred that day or subsequently. In the end, far better analysis was given by Inez Stepman on Jan. 14. Stepman rightly observed, “Bombing – or SOMETHING – imminent in Iran tonight.”
While Trump has bolstered the U.S. military’s footprint proximate to Iran, including with a carrier strike group, he appears open to some kind of diplomatic engagement with Tehran. The lesson here is that educated indications of an impending event are not the same as actual knowledge of an impending event. But my error went beyond misreading the military maneuvers.
Because I also assumed that Trump would enforce his red line against Iran’s slaughter of thousands of its own citizens, if only to consolidate the credibility of his future threats. And in so doing, I blinded myself to Trump’s defining unpredictability. I thought more about the June 2025 air strikes Trump ordered on Iran’s nuclear program and the recent Delta Force raid to capture former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and less about Trump’s aborted retaliation following Iran’s downing of a U.S. drone in June 2019.
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Again, indications, however strong, do not ensure imminence of action. This understanding will be important over the next three years of Trump’s assuredly unpredictable foreign policy. And especially as China increases its military training and posturing off the coast of Taiwan.
I’ve learned my lesson. Still, I apologize to those who trusted my analysis to be accurate. To borrow from a memorable line in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), we must always remember that “assumption is the mother of all f*** ups.”