Trump hopes testosterone-fuelled glitz will distract from his failure ...Middle East

The octogenarian birthday boy in the White House is juggling a glitzy cage fight on his South Lawn with resolving the aftermath of a conflict he and the Israelis rashly started. He will be hoping that the testosterone show will distract working-class American voters from the rising cost of food and fuel.

For weeks, patient Pakistani and Qatari intermediaries have shuttled back and forth between Iran and the US, a tortuous process that may imminently result in the digital signing of a Memorandum of Understanding that pauses Trump’s war in the Gulf. There will be no splashy public signing event, though if anyone deserves a Nobel Prize, it is Pakistan’s lead negotiators rather than Donald Trump.

Negotiations are complicated by the fact that Iran’s surviving leaders are dispersed and in hiding, so the proposals they were scrutinising were often redundant by the time human couriers delivered their opinions. The Iranians are also notorious for slow-walking any negotiations involving the Americans, whom they have every reason not to trust.

More importantly, both the US and Iran have been trying to insert into the agreement items that actually belong within the ensuing 60 days of detailed talks, and both sides have been trying to present any deal as a clear win for their team.

Trump’s main goal is to get the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping before any further damage is done to the American and global economies. The US Navy will lift the secondary blockade it has established in the Arabian Sea while Iran will remove any mines it has laid and refrain from attacking passing ships. This is ironic, since had Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not attacked Iran in February during nuclear negotiations, the channel would not have been closed. Having discovered that they possess a more potent weapon in Hormuz than any nuclear bomb, the Iranians will be angling to cement enhanced control of the Strait, probably by levying soft service charges for pilotage and the like in conjunction with Oman and other Gulf neighbours.

The Iranians insist any ceasefire must also apply to the parallel Israeli invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon. If both the US and Iran can spin this deal as a “win”, there is one clear loser. Netanyahu has been sidelined from these talks, and periodically told by Trump – allegedly in very vulgar terms – what the Israel Defence Forces can target in Lebanon, where Israel has so far killed 3,700 people in a morally insane attempt to turn the south into Gaza 2.0. Israel says it is acting against the threat posed by the Hezbollah terror group there.

The deal does not satisfy any of Israel’s strategic demands, and worse, effectively restores Iran to its existing position of regional influence, as Netanyahu’s critics are angrily pointing out.

It would be politically suicidal for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to indulge Israel when his subjects hate what the Israelis are doing to Gaza and Lebanon. Iran’s Gulf Arab neighbours, Oman and Qatar, have also maintained relations with Iran despite being attacked. They may all be less inclined in future to depend on the US for security and more on each other or partners like Pakistan and China (who Iran will insist guarantees any ultimate deal). Throughout the Middle East, there is real fear of Israel as a dangerous regional hegemon, even openly lining up our ally Turkey as its next target, with wild talk of a Sunni axis replacing a Shia one.

Much will depend on how far Netanyahu succeeds in subverting Trump’s deal – perhaps through covert attacks on Iran as well as the ongoing assault on Lebanon – without openly breaking with the US President, which would be a fatal mistake for the Israeli Prime Minister when vultures Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who served as Israeli prime ministers, are circling at home.

Two months are not long to resolve highly technical nuclear issues, even if Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner and US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff spent half a day being brought up to speed at the Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee by the expert engineers and physicists who should be handling these talks, rather than property speculators. Iran knows 60 days means the talks will wrap up in August, and that Trump won’t want to resume an unpopular war two months from the mid-term elections.

Since Trump wants to distinguish his deal from that engineered by former US president Barack Obama in 2015, it is likely that regional allies of the US will quietly transfer around $20bn (£15bn) to Tehran, as the UAE has already begun to do with an initial $3bn (£2.2bn). That absolves Trump of criticism (from Republican Iran hawks) that he, too, is handing over large wads of greenbacks to the Iranian regime.

But it is unclear what Trump plans to do with any highly enriched uranium removed from Iran, even if he can find it, and it seems unlikely Iranian hardliners will relinquish the country’s enrichment programme – there have already been demonstrations against the negotiators in Tehran. What’s more, there has been no mention of limiting the range of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, something of great concern to the Israelis and Iran’s Gulf neighbours.

While tankers will glide through Hormuz once again, and Iran will get some much-needed cash, it is hard to see any long-term resolution of the underlying problems, which means that on-off desultory war is likely to be the outcome. By any measure, winning on the battlefield in a conflict that has cost the US $100bn (£75bn) has not brought Trump anything like victory.

If anything, it has revealed the limits even of America’s lethal military power. Iran may be down but it is still kicking.

Hence then, the article about trump hopes testosterone fuelled glitz will distract from his failure was published today ( Sunday 14/06/2026 - 06:01 PM ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.

Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Trump hopes testosterone-fuelled glitz will distract from his failure )

Also on site :

• What Happened to Jen Hamilton? Influencer Hints at Divorce in Crying Video
• The World Cup cicada: India’s rare insect on a four-year clock
• Hungary sets condition for Ukraine’s EU accession bid