As negotiations are scheduled to begin in Pakistan with the goal of ending the war in Iran, the stakes could not be higher.
It must be hard to end a war that had no clear goals from the beginning and no clear strategy to achieve those unclear goals — and with both sides now claiming victory? Didn’t Trump say he’d know when Iran was ready to give up “when I feel it … in my bones”?
And yet, whatever Trump’s bones are telling him, the schism between the U.S. and Iran could hardly be wider. Iran still has a stranglehold on 20% of the world’s oil supply and is threatening to monetize the Strait of Hormuz by collecting million-dollar tolls. And Donald Trump is saying that if the negotiations fail, the “shootin’’’ — yeah, he said shootin’ — will just start again.
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Meanwhile, Israel, whose prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, apparently sold Trump on the plan to attack Iran, is still bombing Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, a matter that could scuttle the whole thing.
If you’re not confused, you should be.
In the world according to Trump, the “crazy bastards” in Iran were “begging” for a ceasefire, even though, as far as I can tell, the Iranian leadership is willing to lose as many of its people as necessary to stay in power.
In the world according to everyone else, Trump either had to follow through on his psychotic, war-criminal threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” or find an immediate off-ramp.
In the world according to Trump, Iran’s 10-point plan that led to the ceasefire was not the same as the 10-point plan that Iran made public.
In the world according to everyone else, the new reasonable Iran leadership, as Trump was calling it just days ago, called Trump’s bluff, and Trump, counting on Pakistan to deliver a quasi-acceptable 11th-hour deal, backed down even as the Doomsday Clock was ticking away.
And as of Friday, as I wrote this column, the Strait of Hormuz was still closed — despite the fact that Trump had demanded it be opened NOW!! before there could be a ceasefire — and Iran was demanding that Trump unfreeze Iran’s frozen assets before negotiations could begin.
Meanwhile, no one really knows whether Trump actually promised that Israel would stop its bombing of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group. Israel says it was never informed of the deal. And as Israel bombs Hezbollah, Iran fires off missiles and drones at the Arab petro-states.
So, I wish I could say I was confident that an agreement could be wrapped up neatly, but I can’t. And that’s before taking into consideration that our team’s lead negotiator is JD Vance, whose last bit of diplomacy I can recall was his Oval Office ambush of U.S. ally Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
OK, so what if negotiations do fail, which is clearly possible? I dread to think.
In the worst-case scenario, Trump could revert to the moment before the ceasefire when he was saying “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
I don’t know whether Trump was, in fact, counting on his “madman” theory of war to scare Iran to the negotiating table or if he was actually ready to do the unthinkable — destroy an entire nation, with its 93 million inhabitants and its 2,500-year civilization — because he was ticked off that people were saying he was losing a war?
That would not simply be a war crime. It would be a forever stain on the United States — like, as Trump would put it, no one has ever seen before. If I’ve learned my U.S. history correctly, no president other than Trump would have ever threatened to bring the U.S. down to the level of the Death-to-America, Death-to-Israel Iranian regime.
But Trump thinks we won not just because of his bones but because, along with Israel, we dropped the most bombs, wiped out the Iranian Navy and Air Force, greatly diminished its stock of missiles and drones, killed the ayatollah and made a gruesome spectacle. Hadn’t we brought Iran — a third-rate military power, at best — to its knees?
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Well, there is a counter argument to be made.
— Iran has blocked the strait, cutting off the oil, causing inflation to rise in the U.S. nearly as fast as gas prices, leaving the world economy in crisis. Iran is definitely winning the economic war. It’s such a crisis that we actually waived some sanctions on Iranian and Russian oil.
— And as for American strategy, was there anyone other than Trump, and his henchpeople, who didn’t think that Iran would choke off Hormuz? Maybe if Trump — or was it Elon? —hadn’t fired all those Middle East experts in the State Department, we might have known better.
— Trump is near wrecking NATO, and even some European leaders are now standing up to his bullying tactics. China and Russia, meanwhile, look on gleefully.
— Trump didn’t believe his advisers that his strategy was “farcical” — that’s what the CIA director said, although I’m sure he said “sir” first — or that Iran posed any real danger to Arab petro-states in the region.
— Maybe most tellingly, Trump celebrated the ceasefire by sending out a typically vicious Truth Social post, but this time aimed at MAGA stalwarts like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones, who have all called the war a disaster. Trump went so far, if you can believe it, as to call his close pals “losers.”
— Or how about this? The situation had become so tenuous that Melania called a news conference Thursday to say that she was in no way linked to Jeffrey Epstein — leading some to wonder if things were going so badly now that Trump needs the Epstein files to divert us from talking about his war.
Look, you remember why we went to war.
Iran was somehow an imminent threat to the U.S., even though it wasn’t. We had just “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear threat a few months earlier. We wanted to effect regime change in Iran. And, yes, we did kill Ayatollah Khamenei, but now we have the possibly more radical son of the ayatollah in his place. And Trump said it was to help the Iranian people in their hopes of, uh, freedom.
One pundit called that last bit — the promise of freedom — diplomatic malpractice. I’d agree, and there is a lot of malpractice going around. When Iran threatened to charge tolls for crossing the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said maybe Iran and the U.S. could do the tolling together? It’s always about the money, isn’t it? Trump had also said that instead of a ceasefire, he would have just preferred to take Iran’s oil. Of course, he wants Iran’s oil, just as he wanted Venezuela’s.
Meanwhile, Trump, now with a taste for war, announced his latest strategy, saying that if a full agreement can’t be reached, “then the ‘Shootin’ Starts,’ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before.”
He didn’t stop there. Without mentioning the billions of dollars this war has already cost or the enriched uranium that still sits underground in Iran, he promised more of the same.
“In the meantime,” he added, “our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!”
So, this is now Trump’s America, the one that’s BACK. It’s no longer America First, as the MAGA folks were told. It’s now America First in Conquest. Trump has already said that Cuba is next on the conquest list. Don’t forget Greenland. Shoot, there’s a whole wide world out there, and Trump still has more than half a term to go.
Without more conquesting, how is Trump going to justify wanting to build that 250-foot knockoff of the Arc de Triomphe near Arlington Cemetery? He needs more triomphes.
And I guess, in his words, he’s just enough of a crazy bastard to try and get them.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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