Speak loudly and carry a small schtick

YOU can always count on him and his chaotic decision-making to get everyone in Washington, supporters and rivals alike, perplexed if not unhinged, making it difficult to figure out what the man is doing. With The Disrupter at the helm, it becomes close to impossible to deconstruct the way the balance of power is evolving in the White House and on Capitol Hill - and on whose side exactly you are on.

Hence the bewildered response in Washington and around the country and around the world to US President Donald Trump's incomprehensible last-minute decision to pull back from a retaliatory strike on Iran.

For days, against the backdrop of growing tensions between Teheran and Washington and after an Iranian missile shot down a US drone, military hawks on the political right were applauding the tough stand by Mr Trump who tweeted that "Iran made a very big mistake" and told reporters that they would soon "find out" how he would deal with the Iranians.

Indeed, with news reports suggesting that the president had approved military strikes against Iranian assets, including radar and missile batteries, there was a growing sense that America was about to go to war with Iran, and perhaps even try to do what the president's national security adviser John Bolton and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have been advocating for years - to oust the ayatollahs in Tehran from power, or at least use military power to force them to renounce any intentions to acquire nuclear military capability.

Which explains why while the militarists on the political right were ecstatic as they read the president's threatening tweets, in anticipation of an Iranian surrender to the White House's dictates, critics in the anti-war camp were warning that Mr Trump's approach would lead the United States into another costly Iraq-like military quagmire in the Persian Gulf.

The critics - who included some Republican and conservative anti-interventionists like GOP Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky - recalled that Candidate Trump ran for office pledging to bring to an end US military meddling in the Middle East and proclaiming "No More Iraqs!", only to now drag the Americans into another war in the region.

But then to the surprise of almost everyone, Mr Trump ended the game of Brinkmanship with Iran and decided on Thursday not to move forward with a military strike against Iran, explaining that he did that after learning from his generals that it could lead to the death of 150 Iranian civilians. "I did not like it," Mr Trump told reporters. "I did not think it was proportionate," said the same man who had earlier threatened to "end Iran".

So military hawks - like Representative Liz Cheney from Wyoming, the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney - were flabbergasted, warning that Mr Trump's calling off the strike amounted to a form of "capitulation" to Iran and projected the kind of indecisiveness and weakness that could invite more aggression on the part of Iran.

After all, what was the difference between Mr Trump's conciliatory move vis-à-vis Iran and former president Barack Obama's 2013 decision not to launch military strikes against Syria after threatening to punish the regime in Damascus for using chemical weapons against its own civilian population?

While hawkish Trumpists were disappointed and were venting their anger, some of the president's political adversaries in Washington who have been depicting their nemesis in the White House as an uncontrolled warmonger, and who criticised him harshly for revoking the nuclear deal with Iran that was concluded by his predecessor in office, suddenly found themselves high-fiving The Donald, complimenting him for his show of statesmanship and the way he stood up to Mr Bolton and Secretary Pompeo and averted a war with Iran that could have ignited an explosive regional military conflict - with the United States in the middle of it.

But even more intriguing has been the way Mr Trump and his die-hard supporters have been spinning his latest move in the game of Chicken with the Ayatollahs - in which Trump the Driver swerved in order to avert a collision with the Iranian car - by portraying the president as a sharp-witted chess player who is outfoxing and playing a long game with the Iranians that would end with their capitulation.

From that perspective, Mr Trump's strategy of "maximum pressure" - of imposing punishing economic sanctions on the Iranians - has proved to be effective by strangling the Iranian economy and producing domestic political discontent that would leave the ayatollahs no choice but to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Washington. It will take time - but eventually it would work.

This strategy also had a military component. If the Iranians decided to attack American targets or threaten the flow of oil from the region by disrupting international shipping in the Persian Gulf directly or by using its regional surrogates, the Trump administration (unlike the "weak" Obama administration) would not hesitate to retaliate through the use of US military power. You have been warned!

But then that is exactly what the Iranians have been doing since early May - by targeting oil tankers and most recently, shooting down the American drone - the message being: "We are going to make you pay for your policies and wait to see what you are going to do about it!" In short, the Americans want a long game, but the Iranians will force them into a short game.

By not launching a military strike against Iran in response to the shooting down of the American drone, the Trump administration supposedly demonstrated to Teheran that it would not be dragged into Iran's short game but continue to pursue the long-term strategy of pressuring Iran through economic sanctions.

Yet by not using military force against Iran last week, Mr Trump may have also sent a signal to Tehran that he does not have a lot in its arsenal except for the tool of economic sanctions and perhaps cyberattacks, which were the tools that former president Obama used in order to get Iran to the negotiating table and to conclude a nuclear deal with his administration.

Mr Trump and his aides insist that just by making it clear that he was prepared to use military force against Iran - and despite the fact that he decided to cancel the strike at the last moment - the White House would be able to convince the ayatollahs not to continue challenging the Americans.

It is not clear, however, what exactly the Trump administration would do if Iran continues to harass international shipping in the Persian Gulf. What happens if the "maximum pressure" strategy fails to incentivise the Iranians to negotiate a new nuclear deal and that if instead they start re-activating their military nuclear programme or encouraging its regional proxies to mount attacks against Saudi Arabia and Israel?

Mr Trump seems to believe the negotiating tactics that may work for him in the the business world can also be applied to international diplomacy, to negotiating issues of war and peace with North Korea or Iran: You start by embracing an unyielding position and threatening your adversary until it makes the necessary concessions - and then it is all the way into making a deal. Whether that delivers the expected results in the real world of international relations remains to be seen.