'He doesn't think strategically': Historian Anne Applebaum slams President Trump over Iran conflict

Anne Applebaum, a renowned journalist and historian, has criticized the Trump administration's strategy around Iran, saying that the current leadership is leading the world into recession without appearing to care about it. In a recent interview with Charlie Sykes, she explained that President Trump did not expect the war with Iran to last this long. "I imagine he was being told that this was something that was going to be easy. If there were people in the room telling him that it wasn't going to be easy, he ignored them."

Applebaum argued that Trump does not know much about Iran, given his lack of awareness around the issues stemming from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. She also suggested that Trump did not anticipate the fallout of the war. Applebaum alleged that Trump was surprised by the Iranian response, which involved attacks on the U.S. bases in the Middle East. "It's a war he doesn't want to think about. He doesn't want to think about the consequences. He keeps looking for somebody to blame for it," she stated.

The problem, according to Applebaum, is that President Trump is stuck between a rock and a hard place. "He's faced with a frustrating problem that he can't solve. This is not somebody who wants to deal with or think about problems that have difficult solutions," she told Sykes.

Applebaum questioned Trump's decision to blame the Europeans for the war, who were neither responsible for starting it nor consulted about it. "The war is extremely unpopular. It's extremely unpopular in Spain. It's extremely unpopular in Italy. It's very unpopular everywhere. There's almost no good way out for American allies," she said.

The journalist contended that it must be frustrating for an average European to process Trump's silence over Russia and China lending military and other kinds of support to Iran. "To a lot of Europeans, it looks like he's in league with the autocratic world. He is no longer interested in the fate of the democratic world."

Meanwhile, there seems to be little progress in negotiations for ending the war, as per a report by Associated Press. Iran was said to be reviewing the U.S. response to its proposal for ending the war. The proposal calls for the U.S. to lift sanctions, end its blockade, withdraw forces from the region, and cease all hostilities, including Israel's operations in Lebanon. Trump said that he had received the proposal but was unlikely to find it acceptable given the lack of clarity around Iran's nuclear program, which Iran said it is tabling for a later date.