The Observer view: Trump is a man without a plan

Early in his war on Iran, President Trump urged captains of civilian ships in the Gulf to “show some guts” and continue using the Strait of Hormuz. Later he was accused of underestimating the risk that Iran would shut the strait by mining it and targeting tankers and bulk carriers trying to pass through. The White House said it had not underestimated anything.

The truth is, Trump did understand the strait’s significance and went to war anyway, putting his faith in US air power. What he underestimated was the resilience of the Iranian regime, and the ability of its armed forces to continue striking this critical choke point after two weeks of bombardment and the loss of its leader.

Regime change in Iran is a legitimate goal. No other country murders its people and threatens its neighbours so systematically. The question is not whether it is justifiable to try and hasten the end of this regime, but how.

It was never going to be straightforward. Iran is a vast country of 90 million people with a multilayered government, 3 million civil servants, 1 million men and women under arms and a parallel paramilitary chain of command in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). It sits at the fulcrum of Eurasia – closely bound to some of its neighbours, in permanent enmity with others, and next door to Iraq, where America’s last big experiment in regime change and replacement was, by most metrics, a disaster.

The moral argument against the rule of the ayatollahs is their cruelty to their own people. Tens of thousands were gunned down by police in January for daring to demand change after decades of economic mismanagement and IRGC corruption. Trump promised these people that help was on its way, but at first it did not come, and when his military arrived there was no sign of a thought-through strategy to empower the opposition. There was only ordnance and a target list, and the prospect of another domestic bloodbath at the first hint of dissent, should the regime survive.

Trump and Pete Hegseth, his defence secretary, have more than matched the regime for puerile rhetoric. Iran’s leaders chant “Death to America!”; America speaks of bombs, killing and obliteration as if strapped into a first-person shooter game. So it is easy to recoil from its tone – but it is the recklessness of its actions that is impacting lives on every continent. Energy bills are rising for billions of people who can ill afford them. Russia and its war machine are thriving. The lessons of Iraq, Libya and Syria have been forgotten.

Trump has now bombed Iranian military installations on Kharg Island, Tehran’s main oil transshipment point, and said he will do whatever it takes to restore shipping through Hormuz. Five thousand US marines en route to the region from east Asia may be tasked with that, but in the meantime Washington is asking China, France, Japan, South Korea and the UK to send warships to help keep the strait open. It will be hard for Keir Starmer to say no. His advisers will tell him the special relationship depends on saying yes. But no responsible leader should send troops or warships into harm’s way without a clear goal and a realistic plan for accomplishing it. Trump has blundered into this war without either.

More than a quarter of four- and five-year-olds going to school for the first time are showing up in nappies. Nearly a third are unable to eat and drink independently. One in four lack basic language skills, such as saying their names. The UK is looking away from a national emergency in the first years of education.Disadvantaged children are playing catchup when they should be learning, and teachers are stepping in for parents when they should be teaching. The policy challenge is to invest properly in the early years, and to treat this as education, not care. The parenting challenge, daunting as it may seem, is to replace screens with human interaction.

Photograph U.S. Navy via AP