Trump-the-Gullible with his representatives – the amateur and greedy Witkoff and Kushner on either side of the sycophant Rubio

“Is that it?” wrote the Wall St. Journal editorial board about the Trump-Iran truce which masquerades as a “peace deal”. They entitled their editorial “Will Trump Bail Out Iran’s Regime?” 

Summary of deal
Basically, the emerging terms seem to be a mutual ending of the blockade of the Straits of Hormuz plus the US ending its embargo on Iranian ships in general. As for Iran’s nuclear fuel, that will be “discussed” over the next 60 days (or longer). Some claims are that Iran will surrender its 60% pure nuclear fuel or, alternately, that they will degrade it to 30%. What does that mean? To whom will they surrender that fuel, if at all and over what time span? And if the fuel is degraded to 30%, why can’t it be enriched back again?

So, basically as far as Iran is concerned, the US and Israel are back where they started from all the way back in 2016, before Trump ended the nuclear deal known as the “Joing Comprehensive Plan of Action” or JCPOA. Even that deal settled nothing. That’s because the underlying issue was – and remains – this: As with any powerful and self-respecting capitalist nation, the Iran regime was determined to become a regional power. Given the role of the only real current regional power – nuclear armed Israel – there was and remains no way for Iran to become a rival power without its getting “the bomb”. Israel and its backer – the United States – were and are determined to prevent Iran from becoming such a power, which among other things means preventing it from getting “the bomb”.

Iran’s advantage
Iran has a tremendous advantage over the US in this struggle: They have a competent (although brutal) leadership, whereas the US is led by a shortsighted and easily manipulated megalomaniac whose one and only concern is his own personal advantage. That can be seen in how Netanyahu manipulated Trump into going to war in the first place.

Time and again, Netanyahu urged US presidents to attack Iran. He tried it on with Presidents Bush, Clinton and Obama but none of them were stupid enough to fall for it. Then Netanyahu met his true soul mate, a president whose megalomania even exceeded his own, and Trump fell for it like a hungry animal falling into a well baited trap. He expected a quick victory from which he would emerge as the conquering hero, thereby boosting the chances of his cult followers in November’s coming elections. Iran responded with a weapon Trump never considered, one which maybe a weapon Iran didn’t even know it had. It is a weapon even more effective than a nuclear bomb because it is more easily used – the closing of the Straits of Hormuz, thereby disrupting not only the world economy but even more important from Trump’s point of view: severely damaging his cult’s election chances in November. So Trump had to back down.

Right wing criticism

Lindsay Graham sucking up to Trump.

Old time cold warrior neo-cons like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo as well as the WSJ editors criticized the deal as expected. But even by faithful allies like Senators Ted Cruz and Lowell Wicker, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee criticized it. Even Trump’s favorite lap dog, Senator Lindsay Graham, was critical. The next day Trump gave lap-dog Graham (and maybe some others) cover by proposing that Saudi Arabia and Qatar sign on to the Abraham Accord, thereby normalizing relations with Israel. He even suggested that Iran might do likewise. Reverting to his more usual position with his nose firmly embedded in Trump’s ample posterior, Graham said that proposal was “simply brilliant”. A more realistic assessment was offered by David Miller, former advisor to both the Trump and Obama administrations and currently with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. He said the idea that those countries might sign on to the Abraham Accords was “a hope tethered to a galaxy far, far away instead of the new realities in the gulf.”

The most interesting assessment of the deal was offered by the WSJ editor at large, Gerard Baker, in an opinion piece entitled “History Repeats in Iran”. We quote it here at length:

“There were no good options. If we’re lucky, the deal in the works may restore the status quo ante in the region…

“The worst outcome, in other words, except for all the others. 

“That’s what you get when you launch a strategic expedition on a tide of hubris and ignorance, a “little excursion” you insist will end in ‘four to five weeks’ in ‘the unconditional surrender’ of your enemy – and enemy so obdurate that it values its own existence far above the lives of its own poeple…. 

“What were the alternatives? Maintain the state of blockade and siege? That would have done greater harm to the U.S. and world economy, with limited chance of success. Return to the bombing campaign? More costly depletion of munitions, jeopardizing our other military commitments, in exchange for reparable damage to Iran’s military infrastructure.

“Escalation? That might have promised a more conclusive outcome. But how likely was it and at what cost? Blithe exhortations to “finish the job” again underestimate the level of commitment necessary to achieve the stated objectives: opening the sea lanes, depriving Iran of its nuclear capability; degrading its infrastructure so it poses no future threat. All this would have required extended naval warfare against an enemy entrenched in defensive and offensive posture along a 1,000-mile long Gulf littoral, sustained amphibious operations in hostile waters, the deployment of enough ground forces to retrieve remote and well-protected nuclear material, and more forces to ensure the elimination of defensive capabilities.”

Here is the most interesting part:
“It isn’t unpatriotic  to express skepticism about our ability to fight and win this kind of war….”

Baker continues, explaining what he means. What he’s doing is explaining the advantages of the capitalist class ruling through bourgeois democracy rather than authoritarianism/bonapartism:

“It is this, after all, that makes America great: that we can debate the wisdom of policy without calling each other traitors; we can call on the wisdom of a wide range of people to develop the right strategy. Above all, we learn our lessons when we make misjudgments rather than claim we have been stabbed in the back. We know where that leads.

“This last point is the biggest irony of all this. Since George H.W. Bush’s resounding success in expelling Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, we have been stuck in a repeat pattern of wild oscillations between overconfidence and hypercaution; successive presidencies have ridden a swinging pendulum between hubris and timidity.

“Bill Clinton’s pusillanimous response to al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on the American embassies in Africa and the USS Cole emboldened our enemies and led more or less directly to the criminal tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. George W. Bush pushed the pendulum the other way and assumed an easy victory over Iraq in 2003. Barack Obama’s diffidence gave us his red-line disaster in Syria in 2013. Joe Biden’s shortsighted aversion to even limited military engagement resulted in the calamity of the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021.

“Between those last two, Donald Trump seemed finally to have achieved equilibrium with prudent intervention where necessary while avoiding unnecessary wars.

“George Santayana’s famous observation about history has been absorbed into the bloodstream of popular thought: Those who don’t learn from it are doomed to repeat it. But what are we to make of those who seemed to have learned the lessons and then went and repeated the mistakes anyway?” In other words, as much as we love him for boosting our profits, Trump had better learn from his mistakes.”

Perspectives for deal
What are the perspectives for this deal?

Iran will drag out negotiations over its nuclear fuel and nuclear enrichment for months on end. At least leading up to November, Trump will posture and brag about how great the negotiations are going and how he is reaching a deal that no US president ever could have reached. Even following the elections, having burned his fingers once, he’s unlikely to put his hand into that flame again.

It’s possible that the deal could break down at any time, but both Iran nor Trump have an interest in making it work. Iran does so because the economic pressure will be eased while it can continue its nuclear program. Trump has an interest in the price of gas dropping, which he thinks will help him and his cult followers get elected this November. 

Israel
The one fly in the ointment is Israel. Netanyahu will do his level best to draw the US into another war, probably by stepping up his attacks in Lebanon, including invading even further. He will be hoping that Iran will get directly involved, and how can it not? If it just ignores what Israel is doing, that will be a message to every allie and proxy in the region that their sponsor – Iran – will not support them when they need it most. So, maybe there will be an exchange of rockets between Israel and Iran, with Israel hoping the US will step in.
Even somebody as stupid as Trump learns from his experience, however. In an article entitled “Once a co-pilot Against Iran, Netanyahu is Now a Mere Passenger” the NY Times explained that Trump has now sidelined Netanyahu. He’s not consulting him or his advisors anymore. Neither Netanyahu nor the supposedly all mighty AIPAC will draw Trump into another war with Iran. Once again, we see the falsity of the claim that Israel controls the United States.

So, after demanding that Iran “cry uncle” it was Trump who did so.

Situation inside Iran and world working class
Within Iran itself, the US-Israeli attack has strengthened the regime, just exactly as we said it would. (See our joint statement at the start of the war.) But the heroic freedom movement in Iran has arisen from the ashes time and again. It will do so again. Hopefully, there will be working class support around the world. Anyone who expects broad support from the “socialist” movement is “tethered to a galaxy far, far away.” That will only come after a renewed and independent working class movement starts to breathe some life into a socialist movement based on international working class solidarity.

Update: According to recent (May 28) reports, the US and Iranian negotiators agreed to a deal, but Trump then said he needed a few days to think about it. This is unprecedented. A head of state empowers his or her representatives to reach an agreement, and in the course of negotiations the representatives will be regularly communicating with their boss. That is certainly what was happening here, but now Trump is reconsidering after having given the okay. Trump is famous for two things: One is being unable to make up his mind, with the last person to have his ear being the decisive one. In this case, Trump can’t decide which would harm him more – continue with high gas prices or a deal that will be seen as a sign of weakness. Trump was also famous for reneging on contracts, and that’s what he’s considering doing here in effect. If he can find a way to open the Straits of Hormuz, then he will renege on whatever agreement he reaches with Iran. He claims his navy successfully escorted a ship through the Straits, so if he feels that he can expand upon that then he has no incentive to reach a deal.

Trump-the-Gullible with his representatives – the amateur and greedy Witkoff and Kushner on either side of the sycophant Rubio