At that time, there was a genuine optimism that Trump would not latch on to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s daredevil mission. 

Trump after all was elected into his second term in office on the platform of withdrawing the US from its various regional entanglements. In fact, one of signature pledges from the campaign trail was that he would bring peace to Ukraine on the first day in office.

Without doubt, any potentials for another foreign policy adventures, or misadventures, would not sit well with the MAGA crowd.

In the days and weeks following the intelligence leak, there were enough gestures and statements from Trump indicating that there would not be endorsement of Netanyahu’s plan to strike Iran.

Instead Trump has championed diplomacy in dealing with Iran, dispatching his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to negotiate a nuclear deal. 

Many have seen Trump’s decision not to have a stopover in Israel during his first international trip to the Middle East in May as a slight towards Netanyahu.

For a brief period, optimism prevailed with US officials saying that they were “encouraged” with the progress in the negotiation, the highest level contact between the two adversaries since Washington in 2018 withdrew from a landmark deal signed under the Barack Obama presidency.

The Iranian themselves were also hopeful that a breakthrough would be possible. In May, an Iranian official said the meeting was “difficult but useful.”

Only three days ago, when missiles and rockets started to rain down on both Tehran and Israel following Israel's surprise attack, President Trump still played the role of the adult in the room by vetoing Netanyahu’s plan for eliminating Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

But what a difference does two days make? 

As Israeli missiles continued to pound more Iranian locations, Trump began to shift his position taking a more belligerent tone, threatening to do the very same thing that he said no to only days before.

On Tuesday, he threatened to kill the Ayatollah in the most brazen way possible on his social media platform Truth Social. “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump said. 

As we went to press on Wednesday, there were expectations that Iran was preparing missiles for retaliatory strikes on US bases in the Middle East, which was an apparent response to a statement from Trump calling for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and suggested that the US could join Israel’s war effort. 

The consequences of a war in the Middle East involving three nuclear-armed powers is terrifying. Everyone in the world today is indeed living in one of the darkest days of recent history.

Today’s conflagration in the Middle East may be the consequences of a multipolar world, where no one country can impose terms and conditions onto others. 

Many have pointed out the relative decline of the US in recent years, but the truth of the matter is that the Trump administration could still have the leverage to change the equation, if not the outcome, in the Israel-Iranian conflict. 

The US, after all, still has the mightiest military muscle in the world that it could deploy to de-escalate the situation. 

The Americans should know better from their experiences in Vietnam and Afghanistan that participating in a war in a faraway place could suck them deep into a quagmire that would take years to emerge from.

In 2004, US tanks rolled on to the streets of Baghdad to topple Saddam Hussein. It took them twenty years to be able to leave Iraq. 

Tehran is only around 800 kilometers from Baghdad.