One day President Trump wants to dial down hostilities with Iran. ‘We’re low-keying’ the conflict, he said on Sunday. A day later, though, he was keyed up. After Tehran demanded reparations from Washington as part of its attempt to resurrect June’s Memorandum of Understanding, Trump said on Truth Social that it was the Iranians who should:
Compensate America for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous, as led initially by General Soleimani, including the families of those killed on the USS Cole, and thousands of others killed in combat.
Now it is Trump who has become a hostage of Tehran
The problem is simple. For all his bluster about staring down the mad mullahs, Trump is on the run. It isn’t simply that the American military has almost exhausted its store of offensive munitions or that Iran is installing a fresh bunch of hardliners in its leadership. It is that, as an exposé in the Washington Post revealed last night, Trump, for fear of being targeted by Iran, felt compelled to adopt deceptive manoeuvres as he departed from Ankara at the conclusion of the Nato summit in early July. He hid in a Turkish catering container and secretly boarded a conventional military aircraft rather than fly on his shiny new Qatari jet – which is masquerading as the new Air Force One – or on the original Air Force One. So much for Trump’s claim that the world would no longer mock America during his presidency. If anything, he has inadvertently provided a sustained laugh track.
The most potent charge being hurled at Trump is that he is becoming the new Jimmy Carter. Carter’s presidency foundered during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, when student militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and a military rescue attempt in April the following year called ‘Operation Eagle Claw’ failed in the Iranian desert, killing eight American servicemen. Trump, who dwells mentally in the 1970s – when he was on the make, has consistently bashed Carter:
If you look back to Afghanistan or if you look back to the Jimmy Carter days, they were different days. We’re a respected country again.
Oops. Now it is Trump who has become a hostage of Tehran. Inflation is rising. His poll numbers are plummeting. Faced with the possible loss of Congress in the midterm elections, his only response is that he won’t bestir himself to campaign on behalf of his Republican brethren: ‘I have a busy schedule.’ Small wonder that former New Jersey governor Chris Christie observed on ABC’s This Week that ‘Donald Trump is about to become what he never, ever wanted to be: Jimmy Carter.’
But there is a difference between Carter and Trump. One area where Carter did score a big foreign policy victory was with the 1978 Camp David Accords, which established peace between Egypt and Israel. Carter devoted considerable effort to the endeavour, and his patience paid off. Trump, by contrast, issued a half-baked peace plan for Gaza that was concocted by his Board of Peace, claiming that it was of ‘historic’ importance. It should hardly come as a surprise that on Sunday Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed it: ‘I want to be clear here: Israel is ruling out the 15-point document.’
Compounding Trump’s difficulties is a fresh round of ructions in Yemen. The Iranian-backed Houthis are not only vowing to block Saudi oil shipments through the Red Sea, but also claiming credit for a drone attack on an oil facility in Jazan, Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Trump is boasting that ‘we control the strait 100 per cent’. We do? As oil prices steadily increase and his popularity drops, Trump seems to be inhabiting his own dream palace.
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