Washington’s war hawks are molting down over President Trump’s outreach to Iran. Senator Ted Cruz says that he is “concerned.” Senator Roger Wicker fears a “disaster.” Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo deemed a preliminary agreement with Iran “not remotely America First.”
Trump and his advisors are having none of it. Responding to Pompeo, White House communications director Steve Cheung observed that “he should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals.” Trump, who angered Senate Republicans earlier this week by proposing a $1.8 billion slush fund for January 6 victims and by endorsing Ken Paxton for the Senate, appears to be largely indifferent to demands for a new assault. Even the report in the New York Post that daughter Ivanka was the target of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operative who plotted a revenge killing seems to have left Trump unruffled.
The problem isn’t that Trump is terminating the conflict too soon. It’s that he began it in the first place
Instead, he is touting a sweeping deal to terminate the 84-day-old conflict. It can’t come too soon. The problem isn’t that Trump is terminating the conflict too soon. It’s that he began it in the first place. The war is destroying not only Trump’s presidency but also the combat capability of the American military.
Trump delicately referred to the “Islamic Republic of Iran” Saturday and announced that a deal with the mullahs has almost been sealed. “An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization between the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the various other Countries, as listed,” Trump wrote in the post. “Separately, I had a call with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, of Israel, which, likewise, went very well.”
Did it? Bibi has apparently been relegated, not to the coach section of the airplane, but the baggage department. His political fortunes have been predicated on continued hostilities with Iran rather than a cessation of hostilities. But Trump’s true alliance all along has been with the Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which have wearied of the conflict and are indisposed to absorbing a fresh fusillade of drones and missiles from Iran. If you follow the money, as Deep Throat once advised, then it leads directly to the Gulf states, where Trump and his family have major business investments.
Any opposition to Trump in Republican ranks is bound to be muted. House Speaker Mike Johnson is already on board, claiming that “President Trump is the ONLY one who could have gotten Iran – the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism – to the negotiating table.” The peace deal, he concluded, will leave America “stronger, more respect on the global stage, and safer than ever before.” That seems unlikely.
The hawks are right that the deal, at least as its being floated, looks like Obama 2.0 or, indeed, something much worse. Iran has surrendered its enriched uranium before but this time it appears that it has not to committed to an actual timetable. Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton once stated that “surrender is not an option” but that is precisely what Trump is endorsing.
In doing so, Trump is bowing to the inevitable. The blunt fact is that, for all his bluff and bombast, he does not hold the cards. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has applied a tourniquet to the world economy that Trump and the GOP can ill afford as they head into the November midterm elections. Gangrene was about to set in with rigor mortis to follow. The notion that a new round of bombing would prompt Tehran to capitulate defies credulity.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page is complaining that Trump “has lost the governing plot.” But there’s scant indication that he’s really interested in rediscovering it. Quite the contrary.
Already Trump is eyeing a fresh field of battle. He has dispatched the aircraft carrier Nimitz to the Caribbean to try and up the pressure on Cuba. So far, it isn’t working. As the recalcitrant regime resists his blandishments and threats, Trump may discover the limits of American omnipotence, much as he did in Iran and, come to think of it, Greenland.
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