Trump’s Staggering Humiliation in Iran |
Trump’s Staggering Humiliation in Iran
Desperate for an off-ramp, the president is setting up the U.S. to lose another war in the Middle East—even if the ceasefire doesn’t hold.
There were two ways to read Donald Trump’s unprecedented threat on Tuesday that Iran’s “whole civilization will die” if the Strait of Hormuz was not opened by 8 p.m. Eastern time. The first was that the president was threatening to drop a nuclear weapon on a nation that he had started a war with, as punishment for that nation’s fighting back. The second was that Trump wasn’t just bullshitting, and instead was desperate for a deal—so desperate he would utter perhaps the most horrific, murderous words an American president has ever spoken.
That second reading now looks to be the right one. Shortly before the Tuesday evening deadline, Trump announced that the United States and Iran had reached a two-week ceasefire and would be working on a potential peace deal. True to form, Trump boasted that he had won a massive victory and that the U.S. had “already met and exceeded all Military objectives.” Subsequent reporting—and the fact that Trump called Iran’s 10-point proposal “a workable basis on which to negotiate”—suggests something rather different.
Even if the U.S. agreed to just a few of Iran’s 10 demands, or even if the demands were significantly watered down, a peace deal based on that framework would lead to an unmistakable conclusion: The U.S. has lost yet another war in the Middle East. The reality may in fact be much worse. The........