The self-proclaimed world’s greatest dealmaker just can’t seem to close the deal with Iran after weeks of saying an agreement was imminent. It could come any day, not for weeks, or maybe never.
But when it does, it will be a kick-the-can-down-the-road memorandum of understanding to keep talking, with none of the outstanding issues settled.
US President Donald Trump will, of course, declare it a historic achievement like the shaky Gaza ceasefire that he took credit for, saying he was “bringing peace [to the Middle East] for the first time in 3,000 years.”
Once again, it will be all hype, no substance.
Peace, in fact, thanks to Trump and his junior partner, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is more remote than before they started this unnecessary war.
Trump began shooting without consulting Congress, the American public, or Israel’s allies, yet he fails to understand why none has leaped to give the unquestioning support he demands.
With the war going into its fourth month, he still hasn’t been able to articulate a clear set of goals. He prematurely announced, “We won. In the first hour.” The United States had won, he thundered, “total and complete victory. 100%. No question about it.”Won what?
This is just one more example of a war shaped by bluster, not intelligent strategy.
A year ago this month, the US and Israel “completely obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, he boasted, and buried its enriched uranium stockpile beneath tons of rubble, where it remains untouched.
His own intelligence experts have told him there has been no effort to retrieve the radioactive material or revive the program, and Iran never was “two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon,” as Trump falsely claimed on March 17.
More like 10 years, US and Israeli experts contend.The war has been a strategic and political blunder for Trump and Netanyahu, and the costs – economic, diplomatic, and political – continue to explode.
For some unfathomable reason, the president and his ace planners did not anticipate Iran simply closing off the Strait of Hormuz and putting global economies in a choke hold.
They also seemed surprised when Tehran retaliated against Washington’s allies within the range of Iranian missiles and drones, inflicting billions of dollars in damage.
With congressional midterm elections looming, resuming the flow of oil has become a top political necessity for Trump, and Tehran knows it as it watches Americans complaining about prices soaring at the gas pump and grocery stores.
Anger is steadily rising among Trump’s America Firsters, who bought his MAGA promises to lower living costs, end foreign wars, and not start new ones.
The war has also been a great setback for Netanyahu. He went from Trump’s equal partner – instigator, if you believe The New York Times and other reporting about Bibi’s powers of persuasion – to scorned subordinate.
When war objectives of the two allies seemed to diverge, Trump let it be known that Netanyahu “will do whatever I want him to do.”
Just this weekend, Iran demanded Trump rein in Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the president phoned Netanyahu, ordering him to call off his assault on Beirut. And Bibi did as told.
According to White House sources quoted by Axios, the president called the prime minister “fucking crazy” and told him, “You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”
Who would have thought there was a great risk in casting Israel’s lot with an unstable, volatile, and woefully uninformed president in Washington? Not Bibi, obviously.
Robert Kagan, a Brookings Institution foreign policy expert, has said that Israel is also a loser because, on top of the Israel-Hamas War, it has also lost influence across the region.
Arab states that had once looked to Washington and Jerusalem as counters to an aggressive Iran are now unsure, he said, and are forced to look elsewhere for stability.
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller suggests Israel may be “the biggest loser” because it “turned itself from a dominant power in the region to a losing power.” He expects the administration to “turn against” Israel to deflect blame for its own failures – a consistent Trump trait.
TRUMP’S GOALS in this war seem to be shifting like the desert sands, blowing in many directions and often blinding. Here are a few:
A war with shifting and undefined Goals
REGIME CHANGE – The Supreme Leader may be dead, but he’s been replaced by his more extreme son. There was no “moderate” force prepared to step in. If anything, the old hardliners are in charge and tightening their grip. Whatever happened to Trump’s demand for a voice in picking the new leaders?
“HELP IS ON ITS WAY” – Trump told anti-regime protesters to “keep protesting” and to “take over your institutions” because “help is on its way” to free them.
They’re still waiting and still dying while he tells Fox News he “left [Iran’s] military alone” because it is “somewhat moderate.”
UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER – By whom?PEACE DEAL – Peace isn’t even on the table. They’re really just talking about talking and can’t even agree on an agenda.
NO NUKES – That’s been Iran’s stated policy for more than 20 years since supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared a fatwa (religious degree) forbidding the production or use of nuclear weapons.
It was also written into the 2015 Obama administration nuclear agreement that Trump tore up. There is no evidence Iran was building a bomb, though it was likely accumulating the technology and enriching enough uranium to do that.
Trump has wavered on allowing Iran to keep a nuclear program, from “absolutely not” to some civilian use being ok.
IRAN’S TERRORIST PROXIES – Israel’s goal was to break the network. It has done much to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah, but both have survived, weaker but rebuilding. Iran shows no signs of abandoning them.
BALLISTIC MISSILES – Removal was a top Israeli goal. Iran’s missiles have been very effective – particularly and unexpectedly against America’s regional allies as well as the Zionist enemy. Intelligence agencies estimate up to 70% of Iran’s pre-war stockpile remains intact, and replacement production continues.
ABRAHAM ACCORDS – Does anyone take seriously Trump’s demand that Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia “mandatorily” join the accords as part of any Iran deal?
THIS WAR will not end but fizzle out for a while as all sides find some way to declare victory against a backdrop of sporadic shooting and bombing, threatening rhetoric, revived terrorist groups, and rearming for the next war.
Losers include the Iranian people whom Trump had vowed to “rescue” but quickly forgot; an Israeli electorate that is no safer than before the war and a lot more internationally isolated; and an American Jewish community facing an unprecedented surge of antisemitism fueled, in part, by outrage over Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and the West Bank, and his extremist government.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Source:
www.jpost.com
