The Guardian view on the Iran war escalation: as Trump breaks things, who will pick up the pieces? | Editorial

The US president wanted an easy win, but the conflict is spiralling following Israel’s attack on a gas field and Iranian retaliation across the region Shortly after the US and Israel began their illegal assault on Iran , with the US president still preening himself over the kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro the previous month, a state department official joked that Donald Trump had a new foreign policy credo: “Decapitate and delegate”. It was a reversal of Colin Powell’s invocation of the “Pottery Barn rule” ahead of the invasion of Iraq: you break it, you own it. Gen Powell, then secretary of state, was warning that wars can escalate beyond expectation and are harder to exit than enter.