The Method behind Trump's Apparent Madness: An Essay by Ida Turan
A provocative interpretation of how Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, and the Abraham Accords may fit into Trump's broader strategy.
Ida Turan regularly offers her analysis of the war against the Iranian regime. In this recent post on X, she gathers the chaotic pieces we can all see and argues that they fit into a strategy designed by Trump to topple the Islamic Republic and bring greater stability to the Middle East.
The broad outlines of Trump’s regional vision are well known. The Abraham Accords are its centrepiece, and Saudi normalisation with Israel has long been a major objective. Hamas’s October 7 attack disrupted the momentum toward that goal.
But we have also watched Trump zigzag: a deal with Iran, then no deal; an attack, then no attack; an attack, then a larger attack; negotiations revived, then apparently abandoned.
Turan extrapolates from visible developments into a theory of where events are leading and why. Her argument is that the apparent chaos has been part of a larger plan, and that we should be patient as what now appears impossible gradually unfolds.
Here she is in her own words:
Among all the news about military and diplomatic moves surrounding Iran, this Trump’s post about the Saudis stands out as by far the most important.
The stage is almost fully set for regime change in Iran, except for one critical missing piece: Saudi Arabia’s cooperation, AKA joining the Abraham Accords.
A month ago, Lindsey Graham repeated it twice: If the MoU with Iran fails, the next step is Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. He said that after 4.5 hours of discussion with @potus.
Now we are seeing exactly that. The MoU failed as expected ( and designed), and Trump is offering MBS incentives and concessions to persuade him to drop the game and join the Abraham Accords.
Trump doesn’t just want to end the war with the terrorist regime in Iran. He wants to cut it off at the root. He wants to end the nearly century-old Arab-Israeli conflict once and for all.
Remember: October 7th was a suicide operation designed by the Islamic regime and Hamas to derail Saudi Arabia’s accession to the Abraham Accords. The truth is that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states profit from regional instability. By keeping Iran crippled and fighting their “Palestine cause,” they shine without competition. They have always known their security is guaranteed by the US, and that Israel (for their own survival and security), neutralizes major threats in the region. So not only did they not help, they actively poured fuel on the fire of this endless Middle Eastern war.
It was a filthy double game: publicly allies of the West, privately financiers, diplomatic protectors, and propaganda machines for terrorist groups all around the world. Remember when Trump, in January 2025, tried once to get the hostages back and Hamas refused to cooperate? After he greenlit an Israeli strike in Doha, Hamas immediately handed over all the hostages and started behaving. This shows that without cutting off their financial and political lifelines, these terrorist networks cannot be controlled.
The key to permanently ending this “Axis of Resistance” filth, is for Saudi Arabia and Qatar to stop playing the game, just like the UAE recently did. Trump smartly chose not to fully neutralize the Islamic regime’s threat for them this time, and gave the Arabs time to face the consequences of their clever games and understand that the era of free-riding is over.
Now, if they want security, they must share the risk and take responsibility. Remember when he said the Islamic regime is entitled to have a missile program because Saudi Arabia has one too? That was a direct threat to Riyadh: “US has no obligation to defend a country that wouldn’t even let him use American base on its soil to strike the shared threat.”
Among the regime’s proxies, the only ones not yet fully neutralized are the Houthis, who share a border with Saudi Arabia, and Trump seems to have deliberately left them untouched so that Saudi Arabia is forced to finally abandon its double game of supporting the Islamic regime and face its own war.
How is this America First? If Saudi Arabia steps back, Qatar will follow, and gradually the funding for anti-Israel and Islamist propaganda networks in the US will dry up (sad day for Tucker Carlson and woke right).
Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords is the last major piece left on Trump’s chessboard. After that, he can finish the job with the Islamic regime.
He has built up the alliance: the UK finally dropped the game and let the US use its bases, cutting the regime’s lifeline. French embassy workers in Tehran (while under protection) were beaten and detained by IRGC thugs, and it seems France is also on board now.
Marco Rubio is having discussions with Russian Foreign Minister, and has a lot of leverage to force them to drop their support for the regime, and China seems to be handled. A regime without its free oil has no use for China and has already become a headache by disrupting the economy.
This is very important, because for any UN resolution against the regime, Russia and China could veto. Riyadh and Doha are the regime’s last remaining lifelines.
And why do they want nuclear energy while sitting on fossil energy? My guess is they need something to tell their domestic public: “Even though we joined the Abraham Accords, we got the nuclear plan”, just to calm their artificially stirred opposition to Israel. Yes, they want to plant the seed in their people’s minds that they are going to pursue the battle themselves, after Saddam, Gaddafi, and the Islamic regime failed to build the nuclear weapon. But I am confident Trump will make sure not to give them the capability. He knows Saudis and their clever games better than anyone else. He is not naive.
In this scenario, not only will Iran be freed, but it will have a bright future, because Saudi Arabia will no longer try to sabotage its freedom and progress.
Never forget that a large part of the propaganda campaigns against Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi is currently being funded by Saudi and Qatari money, and Riyadh has a long history of backing terrorist and destabilizing groups across the region.
Trump (and actually @jaredkushner ) gave Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE a powerful incentive: instead of making money off regional chaos and Iranian people misery, move toward a prosperous, cooperative regional economy. He waited and forced them to rethink their calculations.
Iran will soon be free. The Shah will return. And with its young, civilized, and capable population, Iran will rapidly become a major economic powerhouse in the region, Iran will rise from the ashes.
Trust President Trump. Trust the plan.
As with any broad strategic interpretation, readers can judge for themselves whether the evidence supports the conclusions or, if the evidence is not yet sufficient, does the theory make sense?
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The Islamic Republic made a gross miscalculation when it gambled that it could intimidate the Gulf Arabs into taking its side. The Trump Administration used the MOU to demonstrate to the Gulf countries that the Iranian regime will not willingly back down from its insistence on turning the Gulf into a Persian lake, no matter what appeasement they offer. Ms. Turan makes a great point about the Houthis: the US deciding to delay decisive action against them puts additional pressure on Saudi Arabia to commit fully to the American vision for the Gulf.
One hopes that there is a clandestine effort to equip the Iranian people to conduct an armed uprising once the IRGC and Basij are sufficiently degraded and vulnerable. That presumes that the main military campaign continues and has the effect of weakening the internal security forces in Iran.
Makes a LOT OF SENSE ‼️‼️