Analysis: Trump did not listen to the King on Iran because he does not want to hear. The bauble from a wartime British naval boat does not appear to have had any mitigating effect on Trump's public antics - or his international diplomacy, writes world affairs editor Sam Kiley.
Presenting the US president with a shiny bell bearing the word Trump engraved upon it could have been a master stroke of soft power diplomacy by the King. Indeed, the artefact from the late submarine HMS Trump may yet keep Donald Trump's sentimental affection for some things British. However, the bauble from a wartime boat, decommissioned and chopped up for scrap in 1971, does not appear to have had any mitigating effect on Trump's public antics - or his international diplomacy. Within hours, he had ignored King Charles III's speech to both houses of Congress which celebrated US democracy, ties to the UK and respect for law and allies in favour of issuing another threat against Iran.
In recent weeks he has warned he would wipe out its entire civilisation. Now that the two nations - and the US's ally Israel - are observing a ceasefire, he is merely making unspecified threats of unlimited machismo. Dressed like a gangster in black shades, a black tie, black suit and sporting an American M4 automatic rifle, the US president posted on his social media an AI mockup showing him in front of a landscape devastated by incoming explosions. "NO MORE MR NICE GUY", the caption reads.
But, as with so many military matters, what Trump imagines is very far from what he projects or what he can achieve. The background of the AI picture shows fortresses made of Hesco Bastion walls, of the kind used by US forces all over the Middle East and Afghanistan, exploding under attacks from what we are supposed to assume are American bombs and missiles. Much like the motivation for attacking Iran in the first place, Trump seems to like the feeling of power but has no idea of its consequences or what the successful use of it will look like.
Alongside Israel, the US has blown up a lot of people and places in Iran. They have attacked the nuclear facilities there, destroyed much of the navy and air force, driven the security forces literally underground. And yet the regime is still there, it refuses to give up its ambitions to build a nuke, there has been no popular uprising against the ayatollahs - and the world's economy is being throttled by Iran's closure of the Straits of Hormuz.
All of this was predictable and predicted. But Trump ignored advice not to attack alongside his friend, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing indictments from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, because like a toddler reaching for a cake that will make him sick, he wanted the instant thrill of the moment. The guidance from the friendly uncle, Charles III, carefully laid out during his speech to Congress, were ignored by Trump because he is impervious to hearing what he does not want to hear.
Now that he has his shiny bell from HMS Trump he may, indeed, want to install it aboard another of his expensive fantasy projects - the $17 billion per vessel Trump Class battleships he has ordered the US Navy to oversee. He wants to see them in service by 2028. They do not exist except in US Navy AI illustrations, based on the president's own demands that they be "100 times more powerful" than previous ships armed with a rail gun, lasers, and hypersonic missiles. The problem is that these weapons mostly exist at the concept stage only. What Trump likes to call his Golden Fleet is an exciting idea and like his expansion of the White House ballroom, plans for a Trumpian Triumphal arch in Washington and other monuments to himself, they are signs - not of madness but the assumption of absolute power. Why else would his own White House post a photograph of him alongside Charles III with the caption "TWO KINGS"?
