Trump's ceasefire may be a 'windup' for the nuclear option: ex-GOP operative

Former Republican operative Rick Wilson suggested that President Donald Trump's ceasefire with Iran could lead to an even more dangerous situation.

Wilson, the co-founder of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, described in his Substack on Wednesday how the current halt on military action could reveal what might come next after the president reversed course on his serious threats against Iran.

"Every TACO in Trump’s career has been followed by a larger escalation, because the reversal itself becomes a wound he has to cauterize," Wilson wrote. "The pause is never the end. The pause is the windup. And the windup on an Iran war, a war he chose, a war he cannot define victory in, a war where the adversary gets a vote and the adversary is furious, is going to arrive inside a man who has spent his whole life believing that the answer to any problem is to hit it harder than anyone expected."

Wilson also cited another lingering fear.

"I’ve been thinking about the most consequential, most dangerous change that could come from this doomed and deranged war with Iran, not from where it is tonight, but from where it will be two weeks from now, when the ceasefire is rubble and Trump is cornered worse than he’s ever been in his life, by markets, by allies, by his own collapsing story, by the mirror," Wilson wrote.

He argued that Trump wouldn't just stop at the ceasefire.

"A 'demonstration.' That’s the word they’d use," Wilson added. "A clinical, bloodless word. A focus-group word. The kind of word that sounds like it belongs in a McKinsey PowerPoint deck, not attached to a mushroom cloud clawing its way into the stratosphere.
Donald Trump, cornered by a collapsing strategic position in Iran, boxed in by markets in revolt, oil spiking, allies fleeing, by his increasingly obvious mental infirmities, a domestic political environment turning from brittle to shattered, decides to send a message."