FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Another day, another unexpected twist in the world of Donald Trump's foreign policy. The weekend was all about war and Trump's insistence that Iran had not yet "paid a big enough price."
Tuesday was Project Freedom, styled as a “grand humanitarian gesture” to allow blocked ships and their crews to leave the Gulf, but also aimed at weakening Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.
In the early hours of Wednesday we were at peace again. The President announced that great progress had been made towards a full and final agreement, so Project Freedom would be suspended to give negotiations a chance.
All three approaches, at least for three consecutive days, have something in common. They are all attempts to confront the same hard facts: the regime in Iran is unlikely to collapse or give up its right to enrich uranium, no matter how many bombs are dropped on it. Tehran has demonstrated its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, and a total blockade would hurt the American economy while clearly paralyzing Iran.
Together, these hard facts form the sides of a steel box in which the Trump administration, largely through its own actions, finds itself trapped. The repeated policy shifts in recent days represent it teetering within this trap, crashing against the walls and seeking an exit other than humiliation or eternal war.
It is too early to say whether Trump has now found the way out he has been looking for. His accompanying threat of bombing “at a much higher level and intensity” if Iran does not accept the initial terms reveals his nervousness that it will not work.
Before the war, Iran offered a five-year moratorium on uranium enrichment, and the US wanted 20. The new reported proposal suggests a compromise of 12 or 15 years. Any deal must ultimately be assessed against the benchmark of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal that Trump scrapped in 2018. Under its terms, Iran was to have no highly enriched uranium but would have maintained a closely monitored and strictly limited nuclear program.
If he wants to declare victory, Trump can point to the fact that even the 2015 agreement did not have the long moratorium on enrichment that his diplomacy will provide.
But any such gains will have come at a terrible price. There are over 5,000 dead, including 120 primary school children killed on the first day in Minab, and counting the victims in Lebanon.
Then there are all the indirect global costs, economic and environmental, that will take years to assess. More difficult to calculate is whether the relentless bombing has shortened or extended the life of the Iranian regime. For now, it seems to have entrenched the military and hardliners in the first place.
As things stand, there are more unknowns than knowns about this potential breakthrough, and any progress will remain extremely fragile. But even if the war ends and Trump adopts the peace plan outlined in today’s reports, this war seems certain to rank at the top of the list of history’s most pointless conflicts./ Adapted from “Pamphlet” by “The Guardian”
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