Donald Trump acknowledges the limits of Jacksonism

On June 21 and 22, 2025, President Donald Trump ordered the bombing of Iranian nuclear sites (Operation Midnight Hammer). Officially, it was about destroying any ability to produce an atomic bomb. Unofficially, this operation was mainly aimed at depriving Israel of an excuse to use an atomic bomb against Iran, as several politicians had mentioned.

Regardless, the Pentagon found that Iranian facilities were so deeply buried that it could not reach them. Moreover, we do not dare imagine what the consequences of these bombings could have been if they had reached their targets.

This operation was an opportunity for Washington to questions its abilities to overthrow the Khomeinist regime and, above all, about its general strategy. When his government was formed, Donald Trump agreed that his vice-president, JD Vance, would place one of his friends, Elbridge Colby, as undersecretary of war. This strategist had already participated in Trump’s first term. He explained to him his “theory of denial”: to ensure that the United States would remain the leading world power and that China would not surpass them, it must not be fought militarily, but deprived of energy and raw materials necessary for its development [1].

Elbridge Colby is the only personality linked to the Obama-Biden era who found his place with Donald Trump. He was indeed influential in Democratic policy towards Iran and worked for WestExec Advisors, Antony Blinken’s company.

From Operation Midnight Hammer, Donald Trump’s speech began to change. Until then, he had been primarily concerned with saving the dollar from its abysmal public debt. He had requested financial support from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and made numerous sweeping declarations, ensuring that he had no cash flow problems. He had successively announced pharaonic investments for a “golden dome” and for a “golden fleet”. All this was just window dressing, the Gulf States having already exhausted their liquidity and the arms projects having no beginning of realization.

Colby approached John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, to imagine how to deprive China of its resources abroad. He himself was the grandson of William Colby, Richard Nixon’s CIA director. It was he who installed the dictatorships of Latin America with his old friend, the French general Paul Ausaresses [2].

In September-October 2025, Colby and Ratcliffe sent agents to meet Delcy Rodríguez, vice-president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and Yussef Abou Nassif Smaili, her lover, in Qatar. It was about testing the waters and seeing how the young woman could help put an end to Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian drift [3].

When the possibility of seeing the vice president pacify the situation in Caracas was verified, the operation was prepared by SouthCom, while the CIA took it upon itself to make people believe that its goal was to put an end to drug trafficking. Its true purpose is masked by the destruction of a few boats carrying drugs. In reality, it is about ensuring that Venezuelan oil will no longer reach China (the “denial strategy”). The whole world sees nothing but fire, with the left thinking —wrongly— that the capitalists want to appropriate Venezuelan oil (“Operation Absolute Determination”, January 3, 2026).

Colby and Ratcliffe are already preparing the next operation. This time, it is a question of depriving China of Iranian oil, which represents 40% of its energy imports. The two men then activated their contacts in Tel Aviv. This is to suggest to Benjamin Netanyahu that he will be given free rein if he attacks Iran. Indeed, he immediately proposed to the United States to organize regime change in Tehran.

Colby and Ratcliffe are both convinced that regime change is unlikely and that Iran is not preparing an atomic bomb. Their goal is only to strangle China. President Trump is confident that NATO allies will once again help the United States orchestrate regime change. He gets France to train Kurdish snipers in Iraq to shoot demonstrators and police officers and thus cause the chaos which will precede “the fall of the ayatollahs”. Meanwhile, Scott Besent, the Secretary of the Treasury, organizes the bankruptcy of the Ayandeh bank [4] which houses the savings of the bazaar traders.

On October 23, 2025, Ayandeh Bank went bankrupt. Depositors begin to demonstrate. They are ruined. Some of them are rich bazaars. Society is in turmoil, but no one disputes the regime. In January 2026, Kurdish snipers began murdering demonstrators and police officers. Everyone thinks that the opposite camp is solely responsible, even though it was third parties who did it, but who are invisible.

Donald Trump assures that he will not let the Revolutionary Guards massacre their own people. Westerners, convinced that non-Westerners are not civilized, support the “defense of democracy”. That’s it. Israel, which does not respect non-Jewish religious leaders, assassinates the supreme leader. The United States immediately follows.

What happened next was not planned: Iran, which has been preparing for 48 years to free itself from the colonial powers, then to liberate the rest of the world, is well protected. Israeli-US bombings managed to decapitate the country, which instantly grew back like a hydra. However, this is not surprising: in 1981, the People’s Mojahedin managed to assassinate 70 leaders in one fell swoop, including Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini Beheshti, then number 2 in the country, and around ten ministers. The next two days they had all been replaced.

Worse, Iran, which had anticipated the attack and prepared its response for a very long time, is firing on US military bases in the region. In a few hours, he put an end to Western air domination by destroying the US super radar which monitored the entire Middle East [5]. Then, he destroyed radar planes which made up for the absence of the terrestrial super-radar. It took the Pentagon some time to understand that Iran had a satellite that allowed it to see the entire region [6]. Not only is the United States blind, but Iran sees everything in detail. The response is so spectacular that Iranian public opinion is rallying against the aggressor. An entire generation is asking to join the Bassijis and the Pasdaran, that is to say the body of the Revolutionary Guards.

The State Department is no more effective than that of War: Iran exhumes a resolution of the UN General Assembly, adopted unanimously without a vote, according to which international law proves it right [7]. Tehran emphasizes that the Security Council resolution, condemning its response on the Gulf States, violates international law. The Gulf States no longer know which way to turn. They persist in denouncing the Iranian attacks, but must resolve to admit that they committed a very serious mistake: by hosting US military bases, they thought they were militarily protected. They discover that in reality, they have bowed down to a power that has drawn them into a war that is not theirs.

As a result, NATO allies, realizing that there will be no military solution, are no longer responding to calls from the White House, even if they had participated in the preparation of the massacres during the demonstrations. While, for its part, China is redirecting its missiles, no longer against Taiwan, but against United States military bases in the Indo-Pacific [8]. The whole world is adapting to the US paralysis.

Misfortune never comes singly, Iranian embassies broadcast summary videos depicting, in a caricatured manner, the objurgations of Donald Trump. Humor turns world public opinion against the aggressor.

When you make a mistake and refuse to admit it, the temptation is always to do more. Since the first bombings yielded nothing, President Trump decided to intensify them until the Iranians gave in. [9]. And even block the Strait of Hormuz. However, ammunition stocks are starting to run out. The Pentagon must requisition the weapons it intended for other theaters of operation.

Donald Trump notes his failure when he escalates: if the classic bombings have achieved nothing against “the regime”, we must therefore try to win by using an atomic bomb. Not a strategic bomb like in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but a tactical bomb. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then rose up against him. He declares to him that he is opposed to it and will not, for his part, trigger nuclear fire [10]. Donald Trump must make up for it in front of the press.

President Donald Trump can only note the failure of the United States. By analyzing it, he realizes that his approach, as a business leader, with on the one hand his personal way of negotiating and, on the other hand, his Jacksonian ideology of replacing war with trade, does not allow him to react effectively. So he has to turn around. This is why he decides to bring back to him supporters of a more classic ideology. As a gesture of appeasement, he renamed a room in the White House annex, the Old Executive Building, “Henry Clay Room” [11]. Henry Clay was Andrew Jackson’s main opponent.

For three weeks, the Maga (Make America Great Again) base of Donald Trump supporters has been breaking away from him. Many are talking out loud about the possibility of declaring him unfit and having him succeeded by Vice President JD Vance. On April 25, 2026, at 8:30 p.m., a sniper burst into the vicinity of the ballroom where the Trump administration was receiving press correspondents. He is trying to assassinate the President of the United States. The Secret Service (service for the protection of high-ranking personalities) then withdraws the president, his family and members of his government. He does not intervene first to save Donald Trump, but his vice-president, JD Vance. The shooter is overpowered. The message got through.