Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran has been a strategic failure. Assassinating the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and elevating his son Mojtaba did not produce regime change but, as described in a recent New York Times report, a “military junta dominated by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,” with “a younger, more brazen generation in power.” That brazenness paid off for Iran when it seized the Strait of Hormuz, slashing Washington’s negotiating leverage by exposing America’s sensitivity to high gas prices. Iran returned to the negotiating table after Operation Epic Fury, but it was already at the table the day the operation began, making similar offers. The president’s art-of-the-deal reputation, already frayed after his tariff madness, is now in tatters. He tore up Barack Obama’s comprehensive deal with Iran, brokered with the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany and the European Union. It wasn’t perfect, but it subjected Iran’s nuclear program to strict limits and intrusive inspections. Exactly what Trump and Iran’s negotiators have agreed on to reopen the Strait is unknown, as no text has been released and both sides are giving differing accounts. But Trump’s unwillingness to give a direct answer posed by the Times—regarding whether his agreement matches Obama’s terms on uranium enrichment levels—strongly suggests his hastily cobbled together deal has not improved upon the meticulously crafted containment program forged by his predecessor. But Trump’s humiliation pales in comparison to Benjamin Netanyahu’s. Prime Minister for most of the last 17 years, “Bibi” bet his legacy on three intertwined gambits. The Israeli government should break with its historically bipartisan approach to U.S. relations and tilt toward the Republicans, abandon the Palestinian peace process and its goal of a two-state solution, and scuttle arms control and diplomacy with Iran in favor of vanquishing it militarily. In Trump, Netanyahu saw a Republican who could fulfill his ambitions of war against Iran and was susceptible to arguments that presidents from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Joe Biden chose to ignore. But almost everyone who hitches their wagon to Trump eventually learns that the now-octogenarian president cares only about himself. He does not share your goals and will cut you loose once you’re no longer helpful to him. That the two didn’t perfectly align was evident after Trump’s first term. While Trump proposed a peace deal on terms heavily favorable to Israel,… [TheTopNews] Read More.
5 days ago
