Author: Aelia Capitolina; Source: X, @Areskapitalon

From tariffs to Greenland to Venezuela, every Trump adventure ends in retreat, and every retreat is packaged as a victory. The market learned this rhythm and even invented a trading strategy to bet on it. Then he hit Iran. This time, the price of retreat is the end of the American order.

To understand the predicament of March 2026, we need to go back ten years.

In 2016, Trump was elected President of the United States. The force driving his victory came from a class marginalized by the financialized order for three decades: manufacturing workers in the Rust Belt, middle-class people whose jobs were outsourced, families who lost their homes in the 2008 crisis, small-town residents who have become increasingly silent in the boom of coastal cities.

Their anger is not an abstract political dissatisfaction, but a concrete, day-by-day despair accumulated when they look at the price of oil at the gas station, the price of food in the supermarket, and the bank statement at the end of the month. Establishments in both parties have ignored them for decades because they are not on the agenda in Davos, not on the radar of Silicon Valley, and not on the research agenda of Washington think tanks.

What Trump himself shares with these people is not interests, but anger towards the same "center".

He is a marginalized member of the upper class. He is rich but is despised by this class as a joke. His voters are people on the margins of the economic system, people who have votes but are treated as non-existent by the system. Two resentments of rejection resonated. "America First" literally means: spend resources on us, not on overseas military adventures and games played by the Washington elite.

Then he walked into the White House and ran into the resistance of the system itself.

The four years of the first term are a history of being bound by the system.

Trump clashed with the establishment from week one. The Muslim travel ban of January 27, 2017 has been blocked multiple times by the courts. Since then, the FBI's investigation into the "Russia Gate" has continued for more than two years. FBI Director Comey was fired and special prosecutor Mueller was appointed.

In 2019, he was impeached by the House of Representatives (abuse of power and obstruction of Congress) over the Ukraine phone scandal, and was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020 in a vote that was almost entirely along party lines. Two days after impeachment ended, he fired two officials who had testified in the impeachment inquiry. In April 2020, he fired Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general who forwarded the whistleblower complaint to Congress.

In Trump's view, the lessons of the past four years are clear: his failures were all caused by the "deep state." He didn't believe the CIA's intelligence briefings because the CIA was the territory of "that group of people". Experts at the State Department advised him not to listen because the State Department was a "swamp." Generals told him the Iran issue was complex and required patience, which he interpreted as "they don't want me to win."

Mattis resigned, Bolton was ousted, and Tillerson was scolded as "dumb as a rock." One by one, knowledgeable people left or were eliminated, but the inertia and elasticity of the system itself blocked him time and time again. The wall he wanted was not fully built, the trade war with China ended in a watered-down "Phase One Agreement" (China ended up completing less than 58% of the $200 billion in additional purchases it promised), the "fire and fury" against North Korea turned into a photo opportunity with Kim Jong-un, and the withdrawal agreement in Afghanistan gave the Taliban almost everything it wanted without getting meaningful concessions.

He lost re-election in 2020. In his narrative, this was the ultimate betrayal of him by the establishment.

Then on July 13, 2024, at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a bullet grazed his right ear. A few millimeters of deviation is the difference between life and death. With his face covered in blood, he was pushed to the ground by the Secret Service, then stood up, raised his fists, and shouted "Fight! Fight! Fight!" to the crowd.

This photo became the most powerful image of the 2024 election. He wrote on Truth Social: "It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening." His supporters interpreted this incident as divine destiny: God left him behind so that he could save the United States. His son Eric said it was "divine intervention." Tucker Carlson openly discusses "divine providence" at the Republican National Convention. In the final months of the 2024 campaign, people close to Trump said he truly believed he had been chosen by God to fulfill a mission.

In January 2025, he returned to the White House with this sense of destiny. This time, he won't make the mistakes of his first term. This time, he wants to drain the "swamp" completely.

The personnel layout for the second term reflects this determination. Hegseth, a weekend host on Fox News, became defense secretary. As Secretary of State, Rubio's diplomatic vision centered on the Western Hemisphere and Israel. Career diplomats and intelligence analysts who understand the Middle East are systematically marginalized.

The entire decision-making hierarchy was reorganized around loyalty rather than expertise. In Trump's first term, he blamed all his failures on the obstruction of establishment experts, so the logic for his second term is simple: replace them all and replace them with "our own people."

Then he began to deliver on his promise. Or rather, trying to cash in.

Tariffs are his core economic policy tool. The "Liberation Day Tariffs" in April 2025 announced the imposition of high tariffs on almost all countries in the world, with the intention of returning manufacturing to the United States and protecting domestic employment. Markets plummeted. A week later he suspended most tariffs. Tariffs on China were reduced from 145% to 30% and suspended for 90 days. The 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico is largely exempted. Threatened to fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, then walked back. The 50% tariff on the EU has been repeatedly postponed.

On May 2, 2025, Financial Times reporter Robert Armstrong invented an abbreviation: TACO. Trump Always Chickens Out. Trump always backs off.

Traders have discovered a repeatable pattern: Trump announces extreme policies, the market panics and falls, then he backs off and the market rebounds. If you buy when you panic and sell when you get cold feet, you can make money every round. Finance Minister Bessant became a key player in this rhythm: whenever panic rose, he would appear on CNBC and use a professional and soothing tone to hint that "negotiations were making constructive progress."

By the end of 2025, TACO became a trading strategy and a precise summary of how the president behaves. The S&P 500 rose all the way to a record high in this rhythm.

But every cycle of TACO is exposing, and only exposing the same fact: the fringe people represented by Trump who are dissatisfied with the establishment cannot shake the system.

Every time he struck, the elasticity of the system bounced him back. The tariffs hurt American consumers and he had to back off. Threatening his allies, the allies united to counterattack, and he had to retreat. After threatening to fire Powell, legal and market pressure forced him to back off. He has obtained the greatest power in the world, but this power has been proven to be limited time and time again when faced with the collective resistance of participants within the system.

Greenland is the most absurd example. In January 2026, he demanded "complete and complete control" of Greenland, threatened to impose tariffs on Denmark and seven European allies, refused to rule out the use of force, and even said in a letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister that because he had not won the Nobel Peace Prize, he no longer felt he was obligated "purely for the sake of peace."

Markets plunge as EU suspends trade deal. Then he flew to Davos, announced a "framework agreement" and withdrew everything. NATO Secretary General Rutte said afterwards that Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland was not even discussed during the talks. The market rebounded, with the Dow soaring nearly 600 points. Davos executives texted each other: "Taco!"

None of the economic benefits he promised voters have materially materialized. Tax cuts benefit businesses and the wealthy. Tariffs did not bring manufacturing back, but instead pushed up the price of imported goods. Real wage growth has been limited. Life for his constituency—Rust Belt workers, truck drivers, small business owners—isn’t getting any better.

A leader who has been given a mandate by voters to break the system will bounce back from the system every time he throws a punch. He needs a new way to prove that he is not a TACO, to provide voters with something alternative to economic benefits. If it doesn't make them richer, it at least makes them proud. If you can't deliver on your promise, you can at least demonstrate strength.

In January 2026, Venezuela gave him a chance.

In the early morning of January 3, U.S. special forces raided Caracas and arrested President Maduro and his wife. The operation, codenamed "Operation Absolute Resolve," involved more than 150 aircraft. The CIA infiltrated months in advance, and Delta Force practiced repeatedly on replicas of Maduro's hideouts. Trump posted a photo on the Truth social media of Maduro sitting on a warship while blindfolded and wearing sound-isolating headphones.

Venezuela is too weak. Maduro's army had little resistance against the US military, and the entire operation was completed overnight. There were no U.S. military casualties, and international condemnation remained verbal. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump declared that the United States would "run this country" and that oil companies would invest billions and "it won't cost us a penny." Hegseth declared from the side that this was "America First, maintaining peace with strength." Republican lawmakers announced that day that Cuba and Nicaragua were the next targets.

Venezuela taught Trump a dangerous lesson: Military adventures can be as efficient, controllable and profitable as business transactions. More importantly, it gave him a new path around the system's resistance. The tariff and diplomatic games within the system bounce back from the system every time. But military force acts directly on weak opponents outside the system, without the filter of congressional debate, court review, alliance coordination, or market feedback. Maduro’s photo became evidence that he is no longer a TACO.

This confidence leads directly to Iran.

Before Venezuela, Trump’s policy toward Iran followed the standard TACO model. After large-scale protests broke out in Iran in January 2026, he threatened military intervention, but did not act. He conducted nuclear negotiations with Iran through Oman channels, and the negotiations even came close to a breakthrough in late February.

Then, in the early morning of February 28, the U.S.-Israeli joint air strikes began.

Israel has been pushing for an attack on Iran. Venezuela's success gives Trump confidence. The decision-making team around him did not have the professional background to understand the complexities of Iran. Those who know Iran, including CIA analysts, State Department Middle East experts, and retired generals, were either purged during the first term, or were marginalized during the second term to the point where no one listened to their words.

Jeremy Shapiro, a researcher at a European foreign policy think tank, once calculated that of Trump’s 22 foreign military threats as of the beginning of 2025, only two were actually acted upon. The statistical pattern of TACO was so overwhelming that in the days before the air strikes, when the U.S. military was massing in the Middle East, many analysts were still saying that "he is just applying pressure and will eventually return to the negotiating table."

What they don’t know is that the opponent Trump faces this time is fundamentally different from all previous opponents.

The direction of every previous impact has been inward: putting pressure on participants within the system. Tariffs impact China, but China is within the system and has interests in keeping the system functioning, and both sides can find a middle ground. Greenland attacks Denmark and NATO, but they are also within the system, and the conflict remains at a verbal level. Venezuela is too weak and will be solved overnight. The premise of every TACO is: the opponent is within the system, or is too weak, and the cost of retreat is controllable.

This time, Trump brought the full military power of the system into something outside the system.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been ostracized by the U.S.-led international order for four decades. It has no SWIFT access, no assets in any Western countries, and no interest in relying on any compliant trade lanes.

Its smuggling network, shadow fleet, and underground financial system grew out of an environment of exclusion. Every increase in sanctions inadvertently strengthens the relative power of the IRGC, because sanctions block the channels of the compliance economy, while the IRGC controls informal channels. By 2026, the IRGC controls about 50% of Iran's oil exports, operates nearly 500 shadow fleet ships, and has a complete parallel economic system from banks to ports to construction to smuggling.

This organization benefits from the collapse of the global order. Its interest function is completely opposite to that of the United States. There is no middle ground that is acceptable to both sides.

And Khamenei is the only person who can act as a translator between the IRGC and the international order. He spent thirty-six years building a network of personal loyalty within the IRGC, able to switch between revolutionary fervor and national rationality. He did not block Hormuz during the Iran-Iraq war, and he ratified the nuclear deal in 2015. Each time, he suppressed the more radical voices within the IRGC.

An airstrike on February 28 killed him.

Trump thought he was doing a bigger version of Venezuela: decapitations, elimination of leadership, collapse of the regime, declaration of victory. What he did not understand was that killing Khamenei did not destroy the enemy's head, but released the only chain on the enemy.

The person who succeeded Khamenei to command the IRGC is Ahmad Vahidi, formerly known as Ahmad Shah Cheraghi, who was born in Shiraz in 1958. He has no prominent clergy family background and no overseas education experience. He was 21 when the revolution broke out in 1979 and immediately joined the IRGC. Two years later, at the age of 23, he became the second-in-command in the IRGC intelligence system.

In 1988, 30-year-old Vahidi became the first commander of the Quds Force and led all IRGC overseas operations for nine years. The infrastructure of the proxy empire that Soleimani later established in the Middle East was laid by Vahidi.

In 1994, the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires was bombed, killing 85 people and injuring more than 330 people. It was the deadliest terrorist attack against Jewish targets outside Israel since World War II. Argentine prosecutors concluded that the attack was "approved by consensus at the highest levels of the Iranian government." Vahidi was the commander of the Quds Force at the time and was issued a red notice by Interpol. U.S. intelligence officials also revealed that he met several times with al-Qaeda's second-ranking figure al-Zawahiri in Sudan in the 1990s.

After that, not only was he not punished, but he was promoted all the way. Minister of Defense and Minister of the Interior (who was deemed by the U.S. Treasury Department to have "ordered or controlled serious human rights violations against Iranian citizens" while in charge of domestic security) until taking over as Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC on March 1, 2026. His entire adult life has been within the IRGC from day one. When he was appointed deputy commander-in-chief of the IRGC, he said: "Defending the Islamic revolution is the greatest virtue in the world, and opposing the Islamic system is the greatest sin."

For Vahidi, the interests of the revolution are above all else. The country of Iran is only a tool to achieve the goals of the revolution. Economic collapse? Revolution does not need GDP. The city was bombed? From the ruins a purer revolutionary society can be rebuilt. People suffer? Suffering is the fertilizer of revolution. He will not stop, not because the price of stopping is too high, but because in his value system, stopping itself is the ultimate sin.

Projecting the expectation that "the opponent will rationally calculate and then stop" onto this person is as absurd as projecting the same expectation onto bin Laden.

Ten days after the air strike, Iran’s power structure completed a historic shift.

The three-person interim committee stipulated in the constitution nominally inherited the powers of the supreme leader. Ali Larijani addressed the nation on television in his capacity as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and some Western media dubbed him the "shadow emperor."

But a few hours after Pezeshchiyan "apologized" on March 7 and said he would stop attacking Gulf countries, the IRGC's official Telegram channel publicly denied him, with a tone like a teacher correcting a student who said something wrong: "The president said a wrong thing, and the armed forces proved that sentence wrong in action. Our mission is to fight and defeat the enemy." Then it showed off the effects of the attack: shops in Dubai and Abu Dhabi were sold out, and even mineral water could not be bought.

The Interim Committee and Larijani can speak the language of the international system and can communicate secretly through Omani channels. But they have no military command authority.

Those who can speak have no power, and those who have power don’t care what they say.

At the same time, an expert committee composed of 88 clerics conducted the election of the supreme leader under tremendous pressure from the IRGC. In the first round of online voting, opponents were "limited in speaking time" and voted directly after the discussion was interrupted. Eight members announced a boycott due to "repeated contacts and psychopolitical pressure from the IRGC."

On March 8, several committee members announced that they had reached a "majority consensus" but did not announce their names. One of them said the candidates were chosen based on Khamenei's legacy: that the supreme leader should be "hated by his enemies." "Even the Big Satan mentioned his name." Trump has publicly said that Mujtaba is "unacceptable." According to this logic, "being opposed by the enemy" happens to be the best election qualification.

By evening, Mujtaba was confirmed as the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.

Mujtaba has never held a government position and has no independent political base. The entire source of power is that the IRGC chose him. He is the brand, Vahidi is the real power. "The supreme leader's name will still be Khamenei" declares the transition from clerical rule to military dictatorship.

The wreckage of Iran is to serve the Islamic revolution. And the Islamic revolution now controls the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz is 33 kilometers wide, through which 20% of the world’s oil trade passes. The insurance market collapsed within 72 hours. Traffic volume plummeted from 138 ships per day to nearly zero.

This is the first time Trump has encountered an opponent who cannot TACO.

The IRGC does not need anything from the United States. The more the United States fights, the higher the oil price will be, and the greater the IRGC’s profit will be on each barrel of oil exported through the shadow fleet. The more desperate countries will bypass sanctions and come to it to buy oil, and the more its status will be normalized. When the United States and Israel bombed Iran's energy facilities, they destroyed the formal infrastructure that served ordinary people. The IRGC's exports were through another shadow system scattered along the 2,500-kilometer coastline.

Each round of bombing simultaneously pushes up global oil prices, strengthens the IRGC’s domestic monopoly, and destroys the formal economy that competes with the IRGC. Every action taken by the United States and Israel will attack certain capabilities of the IRGC in the short term, while strengthening its strategic position in the medium term.

If Trump backs down, the consequences will be completely different from every previous TACO.

The IRGC is the centerpiece of the entire anti-American "resistance axis." Hezbollah gets its funding and weapons from it, the Houthis get their drone technology from it, and Iraqi Shiite militias are coordinated by it. To retreat from the IRGC is to face the entire anti-American axis. Vahidi will become a presence admired by anti-American forces around the world.

A man wanted by Interpol, a man who shook hands with al-Qaeda's al-Zawahiri, made the world's most powerful military machine retreat. This narrative reaches the ears of every organization that has mastered the asymmetric lever, and the meaning is: you don’t need nuclear weapons, you don’t need a regular army, you just need to control a key physical choke point, and then be less afraid of pain than your opponent. America will back down.

The underlying code of the global security order since 1945 is: US military power ensures the continued provision of global public goods. In exchange, global trade is denominated in US dollars, and US security commitments are regarded as credible.

If the IRGC proves that this underlying code is wrong, the Panama Canal, the Strait of Malacca, the Suez Canal, submarine optical cables, critical mineral supply chains, and every choke point in the world that can be choked by asymmetric forces will be re-evaluated. Every U.S. security commitment to Taiwan, the Baltics, and the South China Sea will be called into question.

The price of retreat is the collapse of the deterrence foundation of the postwar global order. In a sense it is not an exaggeration to call it World War III, if you define a world war by structure rather than scale. The defining feature of the first two world wars was not the death toll, but the fact that the foundations of the global order were shattered and then rebuilt. What we are experiencing in 2026 is that the core assumptions of the order since 1945 are being falsified in real time.

So Trump is locked in.

Continue to fight, oil prices continue to rise, and his voters are crushed at gas stations (the average price of gasoline across the United States has risen from less than $3 to $3.41 in one week, and is still rising rapidly), the economy is slipping into stagflation, and his boast in the State of the Union address that "gasoline in some places only costs $1.85" has become a joke of history.

Stop, Vahidi has become a totem of global anti-American forces, the IRGC has turned Hormuz into a permanent toll station, the sanctions system has collapsed, and the global security order has been falsified. Both roads lead to disaster, the difference is only in the form of disaster.

Bessent plays an unlikely role in this dilemma. In the first week of the war, he announced a series of fire-fighting measures: DFC provided insurance for tankers (faced with an insurance gap of 352 billion), and gave India a 30-day exemption from buying Russian oil, suggesting that it may "unsanction" more Russian oil.

Every measure exposes the contradiction of the policy: while bombing Iran to change the regime, at the same time lifting sanctions on Russia to fill the supply gap created by itself. But he could not recommend an armistice because its consequences were beyond the responsibilities of the finance minister. He cannot be held responsible for the security crisis in Israel that may result from a U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East. He cannot resign because resignation would be interpreted as a signal.

He can only repeat what he doesn't believe on TV, using his professional credibility as fuel. It was not his suggestion to start the war, and he cannot be held responsible for the truce.

The U.S. National Intelligence Council report says a large-scale strike is "unlikely" to topple the Iranian regime. This report was almost certainly presented to policymakers before the war. It was ignored. Because it comes from "deep state". In his first term, Trump blamed establishment experts for all his failures. He cleared them all out in his second term.

Then he encountered a crisis that really required professional judgment, and there was no one around him who could tell him: If you kill Khamenei, the IRGC will lose its restraints, Hormuz will be blocked, the insurance market will collapse, oil prices will skyrocket, and your voters will be crushed by gasoline prices. The expertise required to understand these causal chains lay within the institutions he considered his enemies.

From the anger of Rust Belt workers to the ruins of Tehran to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, there is a complete chain of cause and effect.

Marginalized voters elect a leader. The leader was hamstrung by the system during his first term and accumulated deep resentments. After surviving the assassination, he became convinced that he had a destiny. In his second term, he purged the professionals in the system and tried to fulfill his promises to voters with anti-establishment policies. Each time, he was bounced back by the elasticity of the system. After failing to deliver on his economic promises, he turned to great-power chauvinism to maintain his approval ratings. Venezuela's easy victory gave him fatal confidence. Driven by Israel, he brought all the military power of the system to the most fragile point of the Middle East order.

The crashing action released the IRGC that had been silently accumulating outside the system for forty years. The steering wheel of the IRGC has been transferred from the hands of the clergy to a revolutionary soldier who has shaken Zawahiri's hand, a man who regards the destruction of the US-led order as his lifelong mission. He seizes the system's energy throat, and he draws strength from its destruction.

Trump can only continue to fight on behalf of the system. But the harder the blow, the higher oil prices, the stronger the IRGC, the more miserable his constituents, and the deeper the cracks in the global order. The most withdrawn leader in the world is trapped in a position where he cannot back down. A person who regards "flexibility" as his core advantage is nailed to the rigid reality. The irreversibility he created himself destroyed his own core abilities.

The era of TACO is over.