Only two questions remain regarding the US war with Iran. One, how big a plate of crow will President Donald Trump have to eat to end this conflict with at least some achievements? And two, will he tell us the crow he’s eating is lobster or filet mignon?
Personally, I am fine if Trump has to eat a pile of crow — for instance, the “unconditional surrender” of Iran that he promised will not be coming his way — if it results in Iran relinquishing its roughly 1,000 pounds of near weapons-grade uranium. It would take the immediate threat of an Iranian bomb off the table, and that would be a very good thing.
But please spare me the nonsense that Trump has secured a perfect and delicious deal.
For starters, Trump, Vice-President JD Vance, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will all be remembered as the team that gave the republic a second lease on life just when it was more on the ropes than ever with its own people.
That’s because the only way Iran will relinquish that near-bomb-grade uranium will be as part of a deal that over time lifts the US blockade on Iran’s oil exports and the whole web of US economic sanctions on Tehran.
“Trump launched this war of choice with the transformational goal of regime change,” Robert Litwak, an arms control expert and the author of “Rogue States and US Foreign Policy,” told me. “He is on the verge of ending it through a transactional deal that will be a variant of the agreement Obama negotiated in 2015, and Trump recklessly jettisoned in 2018, that constrained Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”
Because Trump and his national security team did no apparent scenario planning before the war — relying only on promises by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that the Iranian rule would fall like a house of cards after a few weeks of heavy bombing — they failed to anticipate what Iran might do with its back against the wall.
The first was to close the Strait of Hormuz, the vital oil shipping lane through which roughly 20 per cent of the world’s crude oil has to pass, a move that sent the price you pay at the pump soaring. With just some drones, cruise missiles, and Revolutionary Guard in speedboats firing machine guns, Iran discovered it could put the US economy and many others in a chokehold.
To put it another way, Trump and Netanyahu assumed their multibillion-dollar giant weapons systems could be used to bomb Iran into relinquishing its ingredients for a weapon of mass destruction. Accidentally, though, they enabled Iran to discover it had a weapon of 'mass disruption' — cheap drones that could close the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, and forever, Iranians will know that we know that Tehran can shut off the world’s most important oil tap anytime it wants. This new source of leverage for the Iranians is priceless.
Trump’s failure to anticipate this is no accident. It is because he thinks he knows everything — when he doesn’t at all.
Remember when Trump and Vance lectured Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office last year, telling him that he had no “cards” and essentially had to submit to the will of Trump’s man-crush, Vladimir Putin? Imagine if Trump and Vance had instead been curious and humble and asked Zelensky: “Volodymyr, your ability to resist the Russian superpower has been amazing. What cards have you been able to play to do that?”
Maybe then Trump might have asked Hegseth before he started this war with huge strikes, “Hey, Pete, but what if Iran pulls a Ukraine and just tosses a few $30,000 drones into the Strait of Hormuz and shuts it down? Then what do we do?”
Because Trump apparently never asked that question, and Hegseth was too ignorant or afraid to, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard regime “has achieved the functional equivalent of a nuclear weapon through its ability to strangle the global economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz and to hold hostage the oil and civil infrastructure of the Gulf States,” Litwak said.
Among other things, with drone and cruise missile attacks in March, Reuters reported, Iran “knocked out 17 per cent of Qatar’s LNG export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and Asia.” It added, “The repairs will sideline 12.8 million tonnes per year of LNG for three to five years.”
Here’s what else both Iran and our allies can also see. Trump is not a mentally stable person, and therefore he — and his America — cannot be counted on.
Trump said in a Truth Social post that, in light of “all the work done by the US to try and pull this very complex puzzle together,” he was “mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords.”
Trump even claimed that several allies told him they “would be honoured” if Iran itself were to join the accords. If Iran signs, “it will be the most important Deal that any of these Great, but always in Conflict Countries, will ever sign,” he wrote. “Nothing in the past, or in the future, will surpass it.”
- The New York Times
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