Crunch time
If Trump doesn't take out Iran's nuclear programme, he'll be seen as a busted flush
After the talks in Oman on Sunday between the United States and Iran over America’s demand that Tehran dismantle its nuclear programme, both the US and Iran described these discussions as “positive and constructive”.
It is not possible for talks with the Iranian regime over dismantling its nuclear programme to be positive and constructive for anyone but the Iranian regime. If Tehran is hailing the talks as “positive and constructive”, it means it believes it has the US over a barrel. Again.
The regime has always lied reflexively over its nuclear programme. It also plays a sophisticated game of multi-dimensional chess that knocks the socks off the gullible and credulous west. For years, western governments professed to believe Iran’s previous and worthless commitments. Did they ever really believe Tehran's lies? Maybe they did; but if they didn’t, they pretended they did because they didn’t want to face up to the alternative.
Has anything changed under President Donald Trump?
A fresh round of talks between the two sides is now reportedly planned for next week. The Trump administration wants this round to be held in Rome. Tehran won’t confirm or deny that it is to be held in Rome. This coyness is a tactic to humiliate America. The Islamic regime is up to its old game, its tried and trusted tactic of stringing along the US with America’s tongue hanging out. The regime has been here before, many times. We’ve all been here before. Has Trump finally learned what this game actually is?
The signs are not exactly auspicious. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, continues to astonish and perplex by his stupendous geopolitical naivety. He previously hailed the Islamists of Hamas as “not ideologically intractable” and the Qataris — the sponsors, founders and protectors of Hamas — as “good, decent people”. This witless envoy who distinguishes between reasonable and unreasonable genocidal fanatics told the Wall Street Journal prior to the Oman talks that while the US won’t tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, there was “room for compromise”. He noted that the US position starts with dismantling the nuclear program, but added, “That doesn’t mean we aren’t open to negotiations.”
Over what does Witkoff think there can be negotiation with Tehran? What, precisely, does he intend America to offer it? America should be offering the genocidists of Iran precisely nothing.
Yet Witkoff seems to be implying that America could live with an Iranian nuclear programme provided it isn’t weaponised. This is truly, madly, deeply stupid. If Tehran has, as reported, enriched uranium to 60 per cent, that level is solely intended for the construction of nuclear weapons. And any idea that there would ever be any effective inspection mechanism to keep Iran’s dirty hands off this material is for the birds.
Alarmingly, YNet reports:
An Iranian official disclosed that the draft proposal brought by Witkoff to the first round did not include a demand for dismantling Iran’s nuclear infrastructure or any explicit military threat — conditions that had led to the collapse of previous talks. The softer tone helped foster a more constructive environment but raised concerns in Israel about the seriousness of US intentions and the absence of clear red lines.
Yet Trump has been making highly belligerent noises towards Tehran. “If talks with Iran aren't successful, I think Iran will be in great danger," he said, insisting that the regime must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.
It’s possible that Trump means what he says. It’s also possible that these ramped-up threats are Trump’s own negotiating tactic to frighten Tehran into making the deal that Trump wants.
But there is no deal that could ever lead to the only acceptable outcome — the verifiable dismantling of Iran’s nuclear programme in its entirety. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Tehran will agree to that. The only way to dismantle Iran’s nuclear programme is for Israel and America to take it out.
And there’s now absolutely no more time to waste. Tehran is reportedly close to possessing the material for six nuclear bombs. This is crunch time.
Before he became president, Trump said that once in the White House he would end the war in Ukraine in a day. Nearly three months on, all he’s done is prompt Russia’s President Putin to stick a finger in America’s eye by inflicting yet more atrocities on Ukraine while Trump even now seeks to excuse or sanitise Putin’s aggression — an aggression that Trump refuses to see threatens the peace of the world by facilitating Putin’s declared aim of recreating the old Soviet empire with himself as czar.
Trump also said that, if Hamas didn’t release the remaining Israeli hostages by the time he took office, he would open up the gates of hell. Three months on, only a few hostages have been released and the gates of hell remain firmly closed.
Moreover Hamas, which was strengthened by the lousy deal that the witless Witkoff inflicted upon Israel at the start of Trump’s presidency, is still playing its infernal manipulative game of dangling the hostages’ unthinkable fate in front of a stricken Israel — which is being forced to go along with the continuous demands for a deal by a White House that refuses to turn the screw on Qatar, the one player in this terrible story that could effect the hostages’ release.
Last week, Trump declared the US would hold high-level "direct" talks with Iran at a "very big meeting”. The talks in Oman turned out to be only indirect. Today, Trump complained that Iran was “tapping us along”. Is anyone confident that he will properly follow through on this insight?
Trump is now perilously close to losing all credibility on the global stage by being portrayed as a bloviator, a busted flush who threatens but never carries through.
Militarily, Iran is on the back foot, reeling from the immense damage done by Israel to its proxy “ring of fire” upon which it relied. That doesn’t mean, though, that it’s been weakened as a strategic grandmaster. It has studied Trump’s weaknesses and worked out how to weaponise them against America and the world.
Because Iran is militarily weak, this is the one opportunity to destroy its nuclear programme before it’s too late. Yet the master manipulators in Tehran — doubtless aided by the institutionalised appeasers who remain in the Beltway — may yet cause the US to pluck defeat out of the jaws of victory.
Like his commitment to Israel, Trump’s wish to end the threat of a nuclear Iran isn’t in doubt. It was Trump, after all, in his first incarnation who saw through the terrible Iran deal brokered by President Obama, pulled the US out of it and restored sanctions.
Trump doesn’t seem to be a man who takes kindly to being made to look weak or taken for a ride. Let’s hope he listens to wiser counsel, and now neutralises the diabolical Iranian nuclear programme that has been allowed by his reckless predecessors to escalate to a crisis threatening the free world.
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