A series of failed policy decisions from Trump have led us to the Mexican standoff with Iran.
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A series of failed policy decisions from Trump have led us to the Mexican standoff with Iran. What is more worrying than miscalculation now is a decision which is made for him.
There is nothing that Donald Trump likes more than to create a fever pitch drama which focuses all attention on himself as the key player and the only one who has the solution. Yet the crisis which he has created in the Middle East with his armada intent on creating a new nuclear deal with Iran is one which he must already be regretting as the pundits line up to point out how he has ’boxed himself in’ and can’t now see any obvious off-ramp to reduce the tensions which can lead to miscalculation and a protracted war.
What got him into this mess? Firstly, it can hardly be ignored that the Venezuela operation which kidnapped its elected leader has certainly played a role. Without any doubt, it is becoming increasingly clear that Trump could hardly believe how easy the victory came and how he managed to use military force to reach his objectives without actually committing the U.S. to boots on the ground. And yet the consequences of the Maduro capture come with a very high price. Russia and China were both so shocked by the whole affair that it kick-started a whole new geopolitical survival mechanism and drew them both closer — and closer still to the new battleground in the Middle East where Trump has his sights fixed: Iran. Trump’s second term in office is going to be marked by a failed tariff policy which made most goods for Americans less affordable while making Russia, China and Iran united, with a footnote that China’s economy is doing better than ever as it drops America as a favoured market.
Analysts always point to the risk of miscalculation when skirting close to protracted wars with Middle Eastern adversaries. And for good reason. American blunders in the region usually have massive consequences and we should never forget how the follow-up strategy to regime change in Iraq led to America becoming the enemy very quickly in that country and ISIS emerging as a consequence. For Israel of course this was an unforeseen bonus to the George W. Bush administration blundering their way through the whole Iraq war program, making mistake after mistake as it created a Sunni-based extremist group who could be directed to create confusion while targeting the West’s main enemy in the region, Iran and its proxies. And in the fog of war, U.S. presidents were even allowed to create a phony war against the group which allowed them to protect themselves from blame, when that same terror group’s supporters slaughtered their victims in the UK and France. Obama started the so-called war on terror in his last days in office and Trump was delighted to keep it going while telling the world he was killing terrorists. In reality, he was paying many of them and allowing them to regroup in other areas of Syria to fight another day against Assad.
Even though the smoke and mirrors policy is still as fallacious as it was, the dynamics of the West’s strategy in the region have become more lucid. Topple the regime in Iran. This is though entirely about serving Israel’s hegemonic goals and makes little sense for European governments who don’t stand with Trump on this. They see Iran not as a distinct and threatening enemy but more as a country which simply wants to remain non-aligned to the West’s control and unlike Gaddafi, can’t even be a convenient scapegoat for the consequences of America’s dirty games around the world.
Recently we have seen Iran in its best light and so it is perhaps understandable why the West prefers this ’enemy’ to remain with its current regime rather than be replaced with one which would accelerate Israel’s absolute control of the region. If this were to happen, EU leaders fear massive flows of refugees and more terror attacks on their own doorsteps. Israel out of control, punch drunk on its new power, isn’t a particularly edifying new world order which anyone wants.
Yet with Trump it’s not about what he wants, but what he is obliged to do. He is the world leader facing the barrel of Netanyahu’s Mossad-preferred assassination 7.65mm pistol with the silencer attached. He is not really one with options. Or rather, all the options he has spell doom for himself one way or the other. If he gives in to Israel’s demands for a war with Iran, it will mean certain suicide for himself as both his support base and the political infrastructure in the U.S. will turn against him and probably move to have him removed from office when the first body bags touch U.S. soil. The U.S. aircraft carriers, Iran figures, would be an excellent single-shot rapid way of ending the war in a matter of minutes, if they could sink one. Trump would not be able to continue, blocked by Congress, the Supreme Court and his own party, not to mention the international pressure which would compound itself on every level against America. It’s worth pointing out that Israel is completely isolated in its desire to have a war with Iran as literally no one else wants it and in particular the Gulf states are vehemently opposed to it. No one sees any positive outcome, not for America or the West certainly, as it is hardly conceivable that America and Israel can secure any kind of victory without considerable losses. At best, America has ammunition to last two weeks, although some experts now are saying in reality only about a week. Iran will not be overthrown or defeated by any stretch of the imagination in that time frame and has already prepared itself for a long and protracted war.
It’s also worth pointing out that twice now Israel and the U.S. have backed down and walked away from a longer war. Recently on January 14th, when Trump was ready to bomb Iran, it was Israel who told him to hold fire as they felt they were not ready to deal with the consequences on their own turf. But even last year in June, it is little reported the reason why Trump stopped the 12-day war. He learned that Iran was moving quickly to block the straits of Hormuz which would have been devastating for oil prices and the world economy.
So the appetite or stomach for real war is not there, which leads us to the most axiomatic question: what the hell is the armada there for, then? Just recently, according to the WSJ, we have heard that U.S. generals have told Trump there is no scenario which works for him, in terms of a quick strike, which is what he has been favouring for some time, given that he got away with it in June of last year. This time round he can’t do that as Iran has already prepared for a massive response and now with the armada in the Arabian Sea it is spoiled for choice for options. The Iranians are pretty confident and remaining cool about this latest hand of poker as they have the royal flush and Trump only has two pairs. Trump has literally boxed himself in and the only question now which remains is how he does a Houdini-like stunt to get himself out of it and keep face. There are no real answers though, only bad options. The least bad one is that he convinces the Iranians to let him do a strike while they sign a barely rejigged version of the JCPOA deal which Trump himself tore up in 2018. The alternative to that is that he loses his cool and goes ahead with a limited strike which he can sell to the gullible American public as a necessary measure to putting them in line. The risk here is that the Iranians have also boxed themselves in politically by promising their own people that any attack whatsoever will be met with a fierce response to U.S. troops and their allies in the region. A third option would be to convince the Iranians to sign a sexed-up deal which promises to wind down all uranium processing altogether and let Trump go big on feeding the U.S. media a beefed-up story about making the world a safer place. You know the sort of thing.
None of these options are really very good. They appear that Trump is jumping out of a frying pan into a fire with the only choice being a timeframe of when the leap is likely to take place. Israel has set its hopes on regime change and an end to Iran’s ballistic missile program which of course is never going to happen, given that it is Iran’s main ace which it holds close to its chest. What is remarkable about this quagmire though is that the American press is still selling the oldest lie in the Middle East to its own readers: that Iran is weeks away from making a nuclear bomb, a narrative you might have thought was looking a little stale given that it was originally offered in 1995.
Given that the American public is so stupid and that U.S. journalists are so poor, the likelihood of a false flag attack manufactured by Israel is extremely high which then automates decisions that Trump needs to make. Like the blocked toilets on board the USS Ford, it’s all a shit show and no one walks away from it in an impeccable white linen suit. But a non-decision (an automated one which he doesn’t even take) might be preferable to the Donald than an actual one he takes.
