With strikes on Iran, Trump has chosen a path of insanity

There's nothing quite like the U.S. entering a war to drive home the risks involved in electing a mentally ill person president. Since Israel attacked Iran, Donald Trump, the clearest example of malignant narcissism most of us have ever seen or even heard of, has rampaged about Washington — and, earlier this week, the G7 in Canada — hunting the attention he craves. With Saturday night's attacks by the U.S. on three Iranian nuclear sites, it appears he has gotten it.

There are lots of good reasons for not psychoanalyzing politicians. But when a leader suffering a severe mental illness poses a grave risk to the nation and the world, we can’t just close our eyes. We are in such a moment now.

In the lead-up to last night's airstrikes, which Trump immediately declared a "spectacular military success" in a hyperbolic 3½ minute speech from the White House, his behavior has been marked by manic outbursts and abrupt changes of course. His actions strongly suggest that his mental condition is driving his foreign policy, and that it has now drawn us into war, however limited he promises it will be, with Iran.

With so much at stake, it's time we connect the political and psychiatric dots.

Narcissistic personality disorder is a condition recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The manual lists nine "diagnostic criteria" and 50 related "diagnostic features." A person exhibiting five of the nine criteria is said to meet the diagnosis. Trump checks every box.

If you’re reluctant to label Trump, turn to page 760 of the manual — it’s available online — and ponder the listed criteria. The terms all apply to him: "pattern of grandiosity," "fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance," "lacks empathy," "requires excessive admiration." But they fail to capture the magnitude of his disorder. It's what earns his narcissism the modifier "malignant."

Trump needs attention like Dracula needs blood, and the Israel-Iran war, in which the U.S. has now become an active participant, struck at the worst possible time in his feeding cycle. On Saturday, June 14, he’d just staged a disastrous military parade — presumably to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, but actually held in his own honor — at which there was no John Phillips Sousa, no red white and blue bunting and, worst of all, no adoring crowds. There were only camouflaged soldiers in a silent procession closer to the Stations of the Cross than a Fourth of July parade.

Meanwhile, millions of his severest critics were throwing a raucous bash in honor of our democracy. The "No Kings" rallies may have been the biggest protest ever held in America. A palpably joyous celebration, it was everything Trump dreamed his parade would be, and just like his parade, it was all about him, only not in a good way.

As a malignant narcissist, Trump experiences only two strong emotions: rage and embarrassment. Though immune to shame, he embarrasses easily. At his parade, you could tell from his face he felt humiliated, and was seething.

He’d already been having a rough few weeks: adverse reactions to his mass deportations and step-by-step imposition of martial law, the slow crumbling of his foolhardy tariff regime, growing opposition to his "big beautiful bill." And now this. Anyone could see it was more than a man, especially a narcissist, could take.

The next day he flew off to the Canadian Rockies. There he was subjected to the gross indignity of being treated as if he were no better than the six other world leaders gathered there to discuss policies in which he has scant interest.

He was preening for the press, warming to another of his vicious, incoherent jeremiads when his Canadian host suggested he join the others in a bit of work. In the meeting, the president of France and the prime minister of Italy seemed to share a whispered joke at his expense. He doubtless saw purple.

Starved for attention, Trump staged a second public "announcement" of a U.K. trade deal that hasn’t even been drafted. The alleged agreement he unceremoniously dropped at an open-air press conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer was just a copy of his executive order memorializing U.S. concessions. The press didn’t notice.

For Trump, it was as if the nightmare of his parade hadn’t ended. To make matters worse, as he sat cooling his heels in the 51st state, his dear frenemy Bibi Netanyahu was bestriding the world like a colossus due to his assault on Iran.

Trump has long lusted after two quite different honors: a military parade and a Nobel Peace Prize. The parade was a bust. No one told him that the Nobel committee doesn’t give medals to people who exhibit no grasp of the underlying conflict and do nothing to resolve it. Then, just when Trump felt he needed it most, Netanyahu grabbed the attention of the whole world, attention that was Trump’s by right. That Netanyahu's "preemptive" strike violated international law only made him stand larger in Trump’s envious eyes.

Trump wanted in, he needed in, and his compulsion has led us directly to where we are today: with U.S. war planes striking Iran and bringing the American military directly into Israel's war, and the president threatening that any retaliation would be "met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight."

In Canada, he gladly abandoned the G7 summit, skipping out on a vital meeting with, of all people, Volodymir Zelensky. His press secretary said he did so “because of what’s going on in the Middle East.”

Trump has long vowed to apply his mythical negotiating skills to the world’s thorniest problems. In Ukraine and Gaza, he failed utterly. Striking a nuclear deal with Iran was his last best chance to shine. Negotiations began in April, which to Trump was a lifetime ago. He needed a fix and would wait no longer.

Last week, Trump proclaimed negotiations the right path to peace with Iran — but hey, things change. A bad parade, a boring G7 and Netanyahu's sudden stardom were all it took for Trump to drop everything he, or rather people in his employ, had worked for. Peace was out. War was in. His mission now was to take the reins from Netanyahu, or rather to foster the false impression he’d held them all along.

Then a book he didn’t write, and a TV show he didn’t conceive or produce, turned him from a celebrity punchline into someone truly famous. Before that, Trump had failed at everything he tried. Were he not lucky in bankruptcy, he’d have lost his entire inheritance. With "The Art of the Deal" and "The Apprentice" franchise, he at last found his calling: branding other people’s work with his name.

Until last night's airstrikes, it's what he had been doing in Iran. Trump rushed home from the G7 not for an important meeting but to spend as much time as possible on TV, where he did nothing but try to steal Netanyahu's thunder. He told the people of Tehran to flee their homes to escape an attack he was not leading. He took it on himself to threaten to assassinate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and to demand Iran’s "total surrender." He has bragged and bullied in a way that has shamed America, insulted Iran and embittered Muslims throughout the world.

His words — and now, his actions — have made America less safe and peace more elusive.

The myth of Trump the consummate dealmaker dies hard. Cable TV pundits still speculate about his grand strategies. What’s his game? Will he settle for cashiering Iran’s nuclear program, insist on its de facto demilitarization, demand "regime change?" Is he turning away from "America First" toward global engagement? What does he want?

Trump brags that no one knows what he’s thinking and he never makes decisions till “the last second,” especially when there’s a war on. It’s scary to contemplate such derangement, but to understand his policies, we must view them in the context of the mental illness from which they emanate.

In matters of policy, Trump has no future tense, only an ever-aching present need. His "strategy" is to do whatever he thinks will secure him instant adulation. His disease is progressive, in that he is ever more detached from reality.

On Thursday, Fox News reported “the White House said” the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Iran was “on the table.” Any use of nuclear weapons would be illegal, immoral and utterly insane. Trump later said he might take “up to two weeks” to decide what to do, which usually means he doesn’t know what he’s doing or when, though rumors abounded that he has already chosen the path of insanity.

Those rumors were proven true with last night's airstrikes. With the Middle East on a razor's edge, no one knows where all this is headed, if it will turn into a wider conflict. After the attacks, Iran pledged to continue its nuclear program and promised swift retaliation against the U.S. Targets could include military bases in the Middle East and the troops — around 40,000 of them — based there, embassies, diplomatic compounds and other American interests in the region. In his address, Trump warned "there are many targets left" and "future attacks would be far greater, and a lot easier."

What does Trump want? He wants attention so badly he’ll do insane things to get it. If you are looking for the method in his madness, start there.