Trump's Batshit Iran Threats Are Not About Iran

On Easter Sunday, today, as Christians worldwide celebrated resurrection and Pope Leo XIV implored world leaders to lay down their weapons, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to demand that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow Persian Gulf waterway critical to roughly 20 percent of the world's oil supply — threatening to bomb Iranian power plants and bridges by Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time if it did not comply, and signing off his expletive-laden post with "Praise be to Allah." Oil markets spiked. Foreign ministries issued statements. Legal scholars warned of war crimes. Cable anchors convened emergency panels. Podcasters and Substackers went online to issue dire warnings and to once again act surprised the madman is, in fact, a madman. The world, it seemed, held its breath.

I am not holding mine. I was raised by a malignant narcissist. I know this behavior. And I know exactly what it is for.

The serious foreign policy analysts are making the same mistake they always make when they try to understand Trump's stupid shit. They are assuming this is about politics and war, the things presidents tend to concern themselves with. It is not. It is about one very pathetic, very broken man's severe and specific personality disorder — and his bottomless need for adulation. Trump's social media threats are not for Iranian eyes. They are for the sad sacks who are starting to realize they might not be able to keep attending his rallies because they suddenly have to sell a kidney for gas money to get there.

This is Trump gaslighting his newly wavering and awakening base, like the two-bit conman and petty thug he has always been. This is a pathetic performance for the mother who never loved him. He doesn't want war. Not real war. Because he doesnt know what that even is. He wants movie war. He wants a standing ovation.

Consider the pattern. Trump issued his first 48-hour ultimatum on March 21. Then extended it five days. Then ten more. Tuesday's deadline is the fourth iteration of the same threat. Each extension came wrapped in a claim of progress, resetting the emotional cycle before anyone could tally the broken promises. And in a tell that renders the entire exercise transparent, Trump has publicly stated that the United States does not "need" the Strait of Hormuz — the ostensible red line animating the crisis. A commander in chief serious about his ultimatum does not telegraph that he can live without the outcome he is demanding.

The only reasons a malignant narcissist like Trump would make such asinine threats is to control the people who think they love him. It is likely how he manages his family, his friends, and now, his country. He realizes he is a failure, somewhere in that pea brain. But such truth is intolerable. So he screams. Such tactics have worked so far, for his cult. But there are signs that might be shifting.

Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe Trump has no clear plan for the war. Gas prices have surpassed $4 a gallon. The conflict is deeply unpopular.

What Trump understands intuitively, from decades of practice, is that his base does not track contradictions. They track emotional states. The profanity, the exclamation points, the theatrical deadlines — these are stimulants, engineered to produce a feeling of vicarious toughness in people who are frightened and angry. The cycle is familiar to anyone who has lived inside a narcissistic system: manufacture urgency, perform dominance, declare victory, repeat. The audience never notices the goalposts moved because each new threat erases the memory of the last one.

Iran's culture minister observed last week that Trump "constantly shifts between contradictory positions" and that neither Iranians nor Americans can fully analyze him. The confusion dissolves the moment you stop looking for strategy and start recognizing the structure. There is no endgame. There is only the need — raw, insatiable, and utterly indifferent to the consequences for the people of Iran, for global oil markets, or for the American service members already dying in this war — to be seen as powerful.

Tuesday will come and go. The deadline will move. Trump will claim Iran blinked. The analysts will debate whether his strategy worked.

His base will cheer.

He will drink in the narcissistic supply and be satisfied for a day or two, until his abysmal incompetence begins to haunt him once more.