Is Trump really stark staring mad? WhatsApp forwards and columnists converge
Why the conflict between the United States and Iran is an insane war without a discernible plan under the leadership of Donald Trump.
What you need to know
🔹 Columnist Ian Dunt argues the world is run by a madman.
🔹 The ongoing war against Iran lacks any clear strategy or logic.
🔹 Casualties and displacement are rising rapidly across the Middle East region.
🔹 Trump’s unpredictable nature has stifled typical global market and political reactions.
O n March 12, a popular “WhatsApp forward” went as follows:
A man calls the White House and says, “I want to be the next President of the USA.” Operator: “Are you mad?” Man: “Is it mandatory?”
So to the incisive and insightful Ian Dunt on Substack. His column this week is headlined “The world is run by a madman and it’s driving us all nuts”.
Mr Dunt analyses the political and media response to the war in Iran, as well as the market reaction. He writes: “In both cases, we are witnessing the same process: the refusal of people to accept that the world is run by a madman.”
He accepts that people will fight the realisation because it is too darn scary to acknowledge. He says, “it makes your personal safety and the overall stability of society feel flimsy and fragile, something that can crumble in a harsh wind.” Even so, says, Mr Dunt, using choice words that I will omit, “the truth is, there is no strategy to what the White House does. There is no calculation. There is no sense of logic or application. It is a f*** madhouse.”
On Day 13 of this senseless and violent war on Iran, the numbers are bloody and gruesome:
- At least 1,348 Iranian civilians dead, according to Iran’s UN representative Amir Saeid Iravani
- Up to 3.2 million people are displaced in Iran
- 687, including 98 children and 52 women, have been killed in Israeli attacks since March 2, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health has said
- At least 816,000, or 14 per cent of Lebanon’s population (that’s one in every seven people) has been displaced in Lebanon, says the Norwegian Refugee Council
- The Times of Israel reports that Iranian strikes have killed 28 Israeli civilians and one off-duty soldier and caused 3,238 hospitalized injuries
- At least 11 US service members have been killed
- Kuwait’s military and health ministry have reported six deaths, two Kuwaiti soldiers, two border guards and two civilians, one of them an 11-year-old girl
- The UAE’s defence ministry and Dubai’s media office have reported six deaths, of whom four were civilians
- Saudi Arabia’s civil defence agency has reported two civilian deaths
- Bahrain’s interior ministry has reported two deaths
- Oman’s maritime security centre reported the death of a mariner at sea
- Qatar’s ministry of interior has reported 16 injuries and no fatalities
- In Iraq, pro-Iran fighters said 16 of their members had been killed in air strikes that they blamed on Israel and the US
- In Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, the authorities said one airport guard was killed in a drone attack on Erbil airport, while at least two Iranian Kurdish fighters were killed in Iranian strikes
- Jordan’s military spokesman Brigadier General Mustafa Hayari said 14 people had been injured
That’s the human toll of Donald Trump’s insane war without a purpose or a plan.
We’re not even talking about the huge hit to energy and shipping infrastructure, which will take billions in money and years to restore, with all the consequent hardships to millions of people.
We aren’t talking about the massive destruction of built-up urban necessities such as highways, hospitals, houses, offices, shops and city streets.
Why would someone launch a war that kills, maims and destroys, but which has no discernible purpose or plan and actually rewards Russia, who is helping Iran?
UK defence secretary John Healey discerns Vladimir Putin’s “hidden hand” behind Iran’s military methods. Surely then it’s bananas, absolute madness for the Trump administration to lift sanctions on the sale of Russian oils already at sea? That’s because Moscow may be helping Iran, the very country on which the US is waging war?
Bananas. Madness.
Why would someone launch such a war? Is it because they are insane?
Back to columnist Ian Dunt and his assertion that Mr Trump is mad. He concludes with a thought-provoking what if.
“The frequency of his (Trump’s) mad outbursts should make us all more frightened, but in fact it has the opposite effect. If Barack Obama had come out during his time as president and said that he was going to invade Greenland, the markets would have lost their shit in a biblical way. It would have been considered so shocking that the reaction would have been historic. The collapse of everything.
“But when Trump does it, the results are rocky — sure — but not apocalyptic. They are far more subtle than they should be, because people just eventually get used to it. We become frogs in boiling water. Trump’s madness, the regularity of his outbursts, actually serves to stifle the market reaction. He enjoys a discretion other world leaders do not, specifically on the basis that he is so obviously insane.”
GOING FURTHER
Tracking the Escalation in the Middle East | REUTERS
Ian Dunt on Substack | SUBSTACK
Sources:
▪ This piece was first published in Medium and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 23 March 2026 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
▪ Cover: Flickr/The White House. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)
