“The United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack,” President Donald Trump announced Tuesday of Iran’s shootdown of a US Apache attack chopper over the Strait of Hormuz.Central Command soon launched “proportional strikes,” which don’t sound like enough: The prez needs to show he’s serious, or Tehran will keep trying to play him for a sucker as it has every president going back to Jimmy Carter.
Consider: Trump told the press just hours before that attack, “We’re very close to having a very, very good, strong, powerful deal.”
A country that’s “very close” to sealing a deal in good faith doesn’t escalate against its negotiating partner.
This leaves us wondering which presidential advisers are leading him down this garden path to likely humiliation.
By one count, he’s said “nearly there” 38 times since he announced that “almost all” of the points of contention “have been agreed to” and that a “two-week period” should allow the deal to be “consummated.”
We’re now 10 weeks into that “two-week period,” and everything’s going backward.
Back then, those final issues were: 1) setting verifiable procedures for the end of Iran’s nuke program, and 2) securing permanent free passage through the Strait of Hormuz — with any benefits to Iran (beyond the end of US-Israeli bombing) to come later.
Now, suddenly, getting to the deal somehow has Washington telling Jerusalem it can’t respond to Hezbollah’s missile attacks out of Lebanon.
Bare minimum, Trump’s public bragging about ordering Israel around sure makes it look like he’s appeasing Iran’s outrageous demands.
It’s what the Iranians do: Claim they could give us what we want, stall on actually delivering it (in this case, on any way to hold them to a no-nukes promise) by never giving an inch unless they take it back a day or three later — meanwhile ginning up side issues and manipulating the other side into delivering in advance on those demands in the foolish belief that a final deal will then be possible.
Trump’s negotiators are falling into the same old trap as Carter and Barack Obama.
Are they telling him the blockade will force the regime to bend? Sorry: Iran’s leaders are perfectly willing to let the people suffer. (Heck, they proved in January that they’ll slaughter civilians in the street!) The elites can keep on living the high life, just as they do in impoverished North Korea.
A sign Trump’s getting terrible advice is his assertion Monday night that if “we spend another two or three weeks bombing, they’ll have nothing left whatsoever,” but then “you won’t have the Strait open for months.”
How’s that?
And why is just reopening the Strait not a legitimate military aim to take away the regime’s leverage?
Why is it The Stone Ages or bust?
We, the American people, deserve an explanation.
We’ve flattened Tehran’s air force and sunk its Navy; our forces have since then repeatedly shown they can take out any Iranian site that launches missiles or drones.
The enemy is playing diplomatic rope-a-dope with you, Mr. President: Quit these farcical talks, open the Strait and leave them to rot.
