The world is raining on Donald Trump’s parade. That’s not only the meteorological forecast — the president’s caudillo-style military spectacle in Washington on his (and the army’s) birthday, Jun. 14, may be a downer owing to bad weather. It’s also the case metaphorically, now that Israel has started attacking Iran, possibly causing another war or even, in the worst case, drawing in the United States and ruining Trump’s foreign policy.

The launch orders given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu are awkward for Trump and the U.S. at many levels.

First, Trump keeps claiming that all the wars that broke out under his predecessor, Joe Biden, would never have happened on his watch, because he, Trump, is so strong and universally respected. Well, here is a close U.S. ally, Bibi, ignoring Trump’s wishes just as he disregarded Biden’s and igniting yet another conflagration.

Moreover, Trump wants to leave a legacy as a masterful dealmaker and to earn a Nobel Peace Prize for being a “peacemaker.” Since the Russian president keeps snubbing his efforts at ceasefire negotiations in Ukraine, Trump’s best hope for success was negotiating new limits on Iran’s nuclear program. (As of this writing, the next round of talks between Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Iranians was still slated to take place in Oman on Sunday.)

Now an American victory at the negotiating table is hard to imagine. How could Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, make major concessions to the Americans while his regime is being battered by America’s main ally in the region?

Trump’s nightmare scenario is that instead of making peace he’ll end up fighting yet another Middle-Eastern war, exactly what he promised his MAGA base to keep the U.S. out of. That could happen if the Iranians retaliate not only against Israel but also against U.S. bases in the region, where about 40,000 American service members are stationed. (The U.S. started bringing some of them to safety before the strikes began.) Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state and also national security advisor, already warned Tehran to leave U.S. assets alone; Iran may heed his advice, since it has no interest in drawing in the world’s mightiest military.

Not so Bibi, who would love to fight alongside the U.S. After all, the U.S. has many things that Israel lacks, including the bunker-busters that could take out uranium centrifuges buried deep inside Iranian mountains. As Iran retaliates against Israel, we should expect Netanyahu and pro-Bibi Jewish lobbies in the U.S. to press Trump to intervene.

Trump was hoping to avoid that test. He can’t be seen to abandon Israel to its fate, nor to be maneuvered by Bibi into a war he doesn’t want. For that same reason, he’s already tried to walk away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by neither condoning nor stopping Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza or its creeping annexation of the West Bank.

In effect, Trump has given up on even trying to find a lasting solution: His ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told Bloomberg that the U.S. no longer endorses an independent Palestinian state, departing from two decades of official White House policy.

Instead of spending Saturday basking in the majesty of the U.S. armed forces from a review stand, Trump will now be in and out of the situation room with Rubio and his national security council. That’s his next problem. In the first five months of his second term, Trump has allowed all of his foreign-policy, intelligence and defense organs to descend into various forms of chaos, strife and incompetence.

The Pentagon — run by a former Fox News host and Trump toady, Pete Hegseth — is consumed by its internal war against DEI and wokeness, while top officials have quit in frustration or been forced out. The State Department is following a similar trajectory, with a reorganization that, as I keep hearing, looks on the inside like a MAGA takeover.

Moreover, Rubio, the department’s nominal head, is distracted by his other roles, above all that of national security advisor. In that function, he’s just gutted the national security council, defenestrating about a hundred policy specialists and losing valuable expertise.

One irony is that Trump apparently fired the previous national security advisor, Michael Waltz, in part because of Waltz’s effort to coordinate with Bibi on attacking Iran. Trump didn’t like that manipulation. Now it falls to Rubio, with a staff that’s still figuring out who does and knows what, to present options to a president who is more comfortable with affirmation than analysis.

The Israeli strikes on Iran may or may not succeed in setting back Tehran’s nuclear program, and may or may not set the wider region ablaze as Hamas tried to do on Oct. 7, 2023. But the attack certainly damages U.S.-Israeli relations that were already troubled, and puts the U.S. president in the worst possible position.

The wannabe peacemaker and strongman now risks presiding over war or looking weak. Happy birthday, Mr. President.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.

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