Trump Gives an Indefinite Cease-Fire to Iran. What Is This War?
Trump has two options: (1) end the war without achieving its stated aims and without victory, or (2) continue to fight this destructive and costly Middle East war.
Last Friday, President Trump posted a series of announcements on Truth Social, claiming that Iran had given him everything he wanted in exchange for nothing. The President asserted that Iran had agreed to hand over what he called their “nuclear dust” (the enriched uranium buried under ground from last June’s American air attack); to stop funding Hezbollah and Hamas; and to open the Strait of Hormuz and never close it again. Many of Trump’s pro-war supporters declared victory, reveling in their triumphalism.
While that was a feel-good story, there were many obvious problems with it, starting with the fact that Iran never confirmed any of it and would never realistically surrender, given its perception of the massive leverage it continues to possess. Sure enough, Iran later that day denied having agreed to anything beyond opening the Strait during the cease-fire negotiations. But after Israel continued to bomb Lebanon, despite Trump’s announcement that he had “PROHIBITED” Israel from doing so, which he followed by announcing a full military blockade of the Strait to prevent Iran from selling oil, it was clear that a deal to end the war was very far away.
During his flurry of victory claims, Trump set Wednesday — tomorrow — as the deadline for Iran to agree to a comprehensive deal, after which he said he would begin obliterating the country. He announced that he was sending Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff (with J.D. Vance being added later) to Islamabad to meet with the Iranians. In response, Iran announced that it would refuse to attend any negotiations while the U.S. was blockading the Strait. As a result, Trump’s deadline will come and go tomorrow, presumably without a deal.
As he has done before, Trump’s response to the lapse of his deadline is not to follow through on his threats (thankfully), but instead to announce an extension of the deadline. Today, he did exactly that, though notably, his extension came without any new deadline: it is just an indefinite suspension of hostilities pending an agreement. All of this raises a question that has lurked since the start of this: what is the purpose of this war, and how can it end? We examine those questions in the above 30-minute video.
Give ut a bit. Netanyahu will yank the leash.
Good piece, bad peace. Half way through, you don’t mention morality, you do mention gas prices. The latter is important, but kind of sick of that being the lede in many reports. Iran is a “pretenemy”. If as you’ve reported, Iran posed no threat to the US. I’d also argue little threat to Israel. We’ve had 50 years of propaganda on Iran. I forgive any normal American for feeling seemingly justified prejudice. Iran should be an ally. Please do an expose on The Foundation for Defense of Democracy. They’re all over. MSM. CSIS same. Look at funding. Putting handsome Iranians with Shah connections on many news shows. Trista Parsi from Quincy Institute is an excellent voice, way more moderate than I, but really knowledgable on Iran. All the videos I’ve seen from Iran seem to indicate few head coverings and social cohesion. I’m not a short form guy, these are hour long pieces. Iran’s problems were self correcting and we blew up the guy who was against nukes. His predecessor didn’t counter with chemical weapons in the Iran Iraq war when the US and France provided those weapons to Iraq. The USG is really good at the stories, but, I’m hopeful the “Hate Week” takes a break. The good news, the sad, immoral US strategy seems revealed at this point. We’ll see. Thank you for the good report and good luck w your new format. You’re an important voice.