Just a week has passed since Donald Trump’s deal with Iran fell apart and already the President is back to doing what he does best: making extraordinary threats – then chickening out.
If only there had been some way to foresee that a peace treaty signed at the Palace of Versailles might not stand the test of time. It was just last month that Trump chose this grandiose but inauspicious location to sign his ceasefire agreement with Iran – and yet it is already in tatters.
Trump’s deal left almost every major question between the US and Iran unresolved. It did not handle the matter of Iran’s nuclear programme, which had supposedly been Trump’s main motivation for starting his war.
It did not agree the long-term future of the Strait of Hormuz. In practice, it was a 60-day deal to allow further talks to take place – but less than 30 days in, Trump appears to have lost patience with it entirely, and has ripped up his own deal. The “ceasefire”, he declared, was already over, so far as he was concerned.
The consequences of Trump’s impatience have already been deadly. The US has resumed airstrikes against Iran, and – despite repeated claims that the US had wiped out Iran’s offensive capabilities entirely – Iran has launched attacks of its own, against US military bases in the region. Iran has also attacked ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz without its permission, killing at least one person onboard.
What appears to be a missile launched from an undisclosed location towards US targets in Bahrain and Kuwait on Wednesday, according to footage from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Sepah News website (Photo: Sepah News /AFP via Getty Images)Trump, meanwhile, seems increasingly chaotic and unable to stick with a plan. Before Trump launched his offensive in February, the Strait of Hormuz was recognised as an international waterway, and was free for all ships to transit.
Having managed to blockade the vital strait – through which around 20 per cent of the world’s traded oil and gas transits – Iran has tried to claim de facto control of it, and wishes to levy tolls of between $1 and $2 million per ship in the long term. This represents a threat to the principle of free-flowing maritime traffic across the world – a principle that has helped global free trade, which in turn propelled the USA towards becoming the richest country in the world.
Trump, though, understands none of that. Instead, he saw Iran taking a cut of proceeds and decided that the correct response was to demand a bigger cut himself. The US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz was back, he announced – inevitably, via the social network his company owns – but this time with a twist: the US would escort ships through the strait, in exchange for a fee equal to 20 per cent of its cargo.
This plan amounted to outright extortion from the world’s only superpower. A fully laden oil tanker is carrying a cargo worth around $150 to $200 million, meaning Trump was demanding around $30 to $40 million per ship – 20-30 times as much as Iran was demanding. It takes a particular kind of political skill to make the Iranian regime look like the more reasonable party in a negotiation.
There was a major flaw in Trump’s scheme, though: US ships cannot escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz if Iran is hostile to them. Insurance companies won’t cover the transit, the US cannot guarantee ships will avoid mines, or missile fire, and doesn’t have smaller ships designed for such escort missions.
A billboard depicting US President Donald Trump in a coffin at Enghelab (Revolution) Square in Tehran with slogans written on the coffin walls, referring to the chalk-written barriers used at the ceremony for the late Iranian leader Ali Khamenei last week (Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/ Anadolu via Getty Images)Trump had announced a plan his military couldn’t deliver, and so inevitably he was forced into another U-turn, better known these days as a TACO, or “Trump always chickens out.” Just 24 hours after announcing his plan, Trump abandoned it, saying he would instead raise the revenue thanks to new investment in the US from its Gulf state allies – who had almost certainly just re-promised existing spending plans, knowing Trump would never check.
The US President is looking increasingly desperate when it comes to Iran. His new ideas fall apart on first contact. Iran’s regime has seen for itself that his threats are not to be taken seriously. Time and again, when the stakes are high, Trump is the first to back down. He has now resorted to threatening to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure including bridges and power plants – a war crime, but one he’s threatened so many times before that by this stage, it’s old news.
Officials within the Trump administration are reportedly referring to the reignited Iran conflict as Operation Bitch Slap. They may mean that to impress, but to many across the world it will only smack of desperation. Trump seems to have propelled the US back into a conflict that it has no idea how to end.
The US midterms are less than four months away, and the Iran war is deeply unpopular. High petrol prices are even less popular still, and the cost of oil and gas has predictably risen since Trump reignited his Middle Eastern conflict. Everyone except Trump seems to know that he needs this war to be over – and yet he seems unable to tear himself away from it.
Trump seems to be left with just one tactic: desperately lobbing bombs at a Middle Eastern nation and hoping something comes up. He should ask any of his recent predecessors as president how doing that worked out for them.
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