After failing to assemble coalition to secure critical oil shipping route, president has resorted to a threat to hit Iran’s power plants that critics warn is illegal, may backfire
At war with Iran, US President Donald Trump is cycling through an increasingly desperate list of options as he searches for a solution to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. He has jumped from calls to secure the waterway through diplomatic means to lifting sanctions and now escalating to a direct threat against civilian infrastructure in the Islamic Republic.
Trump and his allies insist they were always prepared for Iran to block the strait, yet the Republican president’s erratic strategy has fueled criticism that he is grasping for answers after going to war without a clear exit plan. On Saturday came his latest attempt, via an ultimatum to Iran: Open the strait within 48 hours or the United States will “obliterate” the country’s power plants.
Trump’s aides defended the threat as a hard-edged tactic to press Iran into submission. American opponents framed it as the failure of a president who miscalculated what it would take to get out of a geopolitical mire.
“Trump has no plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, so he is threatening to attack Iran’s civil power plants,” said Democratic Senator Ed Markey, adding: “This would be a war crime.”
Donald Trump made billions of dollars in the private sector.
ReplyDeleteHe also won two (some say three) Presidential elections.
A post-anslysis of his real estate deals and Presidential campaigns, I'm guessing, would reveal that Mr. Trump used the same tactics he's using now to enact a hostile takeover of Iran.
And were there those who before Mr. Trump succeeded in the past who would have accused him of flailing? Yet, despite -- or because of -- his course changes and back and forths etc he pulls things off.
President Trump will be recognized by history of facing down a rising threat to world peace. It should be front and center of all discussions about Iran that Iran was and is developing nuclear weapons and if and when it gets such a weapon would seem to be ok to use it aggressively against the United States and the State of Israel (and Arabs states and European countries) even if it meant being on the receiving end itself of an atomic bomb or two.
So, the oil crisis is real. But it cannot be allowed to be used by Iran to get America to back down. Iran must be defeated.
Trump is playing 4 dimensional chess that is why he looks incompetent to lesser intellects?!
DeleteI think maybe it is somewhat vice versa.
DeleteThere is knowledge available to people about wars throughout history and in particular conflicts with Iran over recent decades.
This accumulated knowledge: much of is available to President Trump through his his military advisors, political advisors, etc. and his own knowledge and experience he's acquired.
But it doesn't seem that Mr. Trump analyzes this collective knowledge in any systematic way. So he is not operating with a set of tools unavailable to others.
Rather, he is experimenting with different approaches in real time as opposed to exploring possibilitied in some artificial environment and then drawing conclusions and applying them to reality.
President Trump's approach is highly risky and I think it throws his opponents off and forces them to make errors that he then exploits.
For decades there have been certain expectations in the Middle East. One is that while the US and Russia might arm local countries and fight proxy wars over them or might intervene on a limited basis within a country, like the Russians in Syria, they would not directly attack one of the local countries. Russia would use the Arabs to attack Israel. It wouldn't attack Israel directly. The US was and still is expected to live by that rule.
DeleteThis is why everyone is so confused. Last year's mini-war made sense. It was Israel vs Iran with the US backing Israel and only showing up for one strike and then leaving. Okay, that's the rule.
Now it's the US directly attacking and the rest of the world doesn't know what to do next. So they call it irrational.