By Tom Fowdy
Just weeks after Donald Trump proclaimed he had a "peace deal" to end his catastrophic war in Iran, it feels like everything is back to square one again.
The US is bombing the country, while Iran bombs both shipping, neighbouring states, and targets American military infrastructure across the Middle East in retaliation. Meanwhile, the President himself has claimed he will "take control of the Strait of Hormuz" and proposed a 25% "shipping toll fee" for it yesterday before he U-turned after it went down like a lead balloon.
Is it surprising that we got here? Not in the slightest. As I warned in numerous previous pieces, any talk of a true US-Iran "peace deal" was doomed from the start on the premise that it was superfluous, self-congratulatory nonsense par the course of what we usually see from the current White House. It is one of Donald Trump's core rhetorical strategies to "always claim victory" even when he has, for that matter, not won. The President, however, has been exposed here for his inability to control the situation and for his obvious lack of leverage in attempting to bring Iran to what he hoped would be total subjugation and failing in the process.
As I warned, the US foreign policy establishment does not truly engage in "compromise" with states it deems as adversaries. The US believes that because it should be a hegemonic power and has superior force ability, it should not give strategic concessions to hostile countries purely for the sake of peace, because this comes at the price of empowering them at America's expense. Thus, even if Washington does not have the will to fight or wage a war, it tends to never ever relent on sanctions or any formalised peace measures which change the status quo in that country's benefit. Even if a US President wants it, the bureaucracy of "the blob" will resist it.
Because of this, despite Trump's hasty and opportunistic declaration of "peace", there was, as I pointed out, no substance to it, precisely because its aim was to relieve markets as opposed to actually building a framework for moving forward. The US views Iran as an adversarial state, and there are many hardline Iran hawks, lobbied by Israel, within the Republican Party. Does it make any sense that Washington D.C would shrug its shoulders say "alright, Iran, you're not our enemy anymore!" remove all sanctions and cut their losses? Not least when the President launched an existential war to try and terminate their regime? Or, for that matter, derided previous attempts to make a deal with them as appeasement?
It goes without saying that these brazen, if not shameless, contradictions in Trump's rhetoric and policies constitute the core of the problem itself, as opposed to just being a symptom of it, and we can comfortably predict he will come out with a million more contradictory things, posturing both threats and peace simultaneously, as time goes on. Why? Such political schizophrenia indicates that the President knows fine well that he has landed itself into a quagmire, one he appears to have no way of getting out of, precisely because Iran has enough strategic leverage of its own to cause serious harm to the global economy and place domestic pressure on him. High oil prices mean surging fuel costs and inflation, which means falling political support. For Trump to likewise cut his losses and back off is also a foreign-policy humiliation, which as noted, is unacceptable to the US defence and foreign affairs establishment.
This has all served to create a "merry-go-round" with the two countries alternating between superficial hopes for peace and then a return to conflict. Due to both seeing each other as full-scale enemies, and in Iran's case, an existential one, the room for actual compromise is non-existent, which is precisely why Trump cannot resist the temptation to keep pulling the trigger and trying (in vain) to cripple the regime.
On the other hand, Iran's geography, size, and population make this essentially an impossible task. Tehran also knows how it can cause maximum damage to the global economy in retaliation, and continues unabated with the perception that time is on their side. Thus, what the President gambled on as a quick and swift capitulation of the regime has instead become a drawn-out, "forever war", ironically the kind he hoped to avoid. It will undoubtedly become the defining foreign policy mistake of his presidency, regardless of how it actually ends.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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