US President Donald Trump (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

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It would be so easy for U.S. President Donald Trump to escape from the trap he has built for himself in the Persian Gulf. Just declare a victory and leave.

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So what if the Iranians also declare a victory? The nuclear weapons that gave Trump (and Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu) a pretext for attacking Iran never really existed. This would be as close to cost-free for the United States as a lost war ever gets: only a dozen American dead.

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The only audience which really matters for Trump is the MAGA supporters back home, and they would be so glad to see him drop this nonsense they wouldn’t say a word against him. The oil price would drop and Republicans might even manage to hold onto both Houses of Congress in the November mid-term elections.

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But Trump just can’t accept defeat, either in politics or in war. That’s why he’s still re-litigating the presidential election he lost in 2020 long after everybody else has moved on. It’s why he is escalating a lost war in the Persian Gulf, even though the consequences may be catastrophic for the region.

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He may not recognize the phrase “threshold of pain,” as bone spurs on his heels spared him from having to take a close personal interest in the Vietnam War. However, when that war was getting problematic for Americans in the mid-1960s, this was the catch-phrase pro-war advocates used to promise victory in an increasingly unpopular war.

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The idea behind it was the U.S. should bomb North Vietnam in order to force it to the negotiating table. You just keep raising the dosage (of bombs) until eventually you reach the enemy’s pain threshold, whereupon they will come to the table and make a deal just to make the pain stop.

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This strategy didn’t work on the British in the 1940 Blitz, and it didn’t work on the Germans in the mass bombing of 1943-45. It certainly didn’t work in Vietnam, and it almost certainly won’t work on Iran, now.

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The people under U.S. bombs in Iran are in their homes, near their family and friends, and well within reach of the regime that controls their fate. Even if they dislike the government, what are they going to do about it in the middle of a war? Commit treason? Safer to suffer in silence.

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Meanwhile, the relentless logic of escalation already is driving Trump to approve attacks on Iranian civilian infrastructure (bridges and power plants). In practice, that affects water as well, since the deep ground-water wells on which much of the country relies get their power from the national grid. Iran’s desalination plants also are vulnerable to power cuts.

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The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the smaller, richer countries on the southern side of the Gulf from Kuwait to Oman, are even more vulnerable. Their population has grown from nine million to 60 million in the last 60 years, and almost all of that extra population depends entirely on desalinated water supplied by 56 giant plants.