Is Trump fleeing Armageddon? |
Is Trump fleeing Armageddon?
President Trump is struggling to understand modern asymmetrical warfare. He keeps trying to define victory in Iran as the defeat of the country’s conventional navy, air force, and army, as if they were the only source of the regime’s power.
They are not, yet Trump keeps trying to prematurely declare victory on those terms. He did it again on Tuesday, with a word-for-word reposting of his May 18 rant on Truth Social slamming the media and his opponents for claiming Iran is winning its war against the U.S. and Israel.
Conventionally speaking, Iran is not winning. Nonetheless, Iran –– as it has for decades –– defines winning differently.
For 47 years, Iran has predicated its regional and global military defense by aggressively expanding its proxy armies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other Shia militias across the Middle East. These are designed to push the front lines of any future war with Israel or the U.S. away from Iran itself.
However, their primary purpose was always to protect the development of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, including its production of intermediate-range ballistic missiles –– and its pursuit of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Now, under immense economic and political pressure at home, Trump is in danger of fleeing without resolving Iran’s nuclear Armageddon-in-the-making. Yes, he keeps denying that is the case, as when he said on Memorial Day that Iran “will never have a nuclear weapon.” But his negotiating tactics are beginning to suggest otherwise.
Initially, Trump said that all of his negotiating redlines stem from destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons........