Just imagine if Joe Biden or, indeed, any past president had released $20 billion in frozen Iranian funds, alienated our oldest allies, handed Tehran control over the Strait of Hormuz, and dropped U.S. oil sanctions against the regime.
All while fighting a war that some experts believe may cost American taxpayers more than $1 trillion.
Donald Trump would be the first to call it a catastrophe.
But as the president rushes to make a deal to end a war that never should have begun, we are fast coming to understand the consequences of this disastrously thought-out venture to bolster one man’s ego.
Trump has not rid us of a threat—he has created a global superpower from the one enemy that is most fundamentally opposed to the United States.
And the world is in much greater jeopardy as a result.
Tehran did not bow down and surrender at the first carnage caused by a Tomahawk, no matter how many of its leaders were killed. Nor did it give up the Strait of Hormuz. Probably because it had been planning for this kind of attack for decades.
And now the U.S. is backed into a corner, desperate to make concessions and move on. Probably because it hadn’t planned for this kind of attack.
This president keeps telling us that past presidents are secretly envious of his attack on Iran, and they wish they’d done it. Nonsense. They steered away from it because they understood how disastrous it could turn out.
Iran, much to its surprise, is suddenly holding all the cards.
How else can you explain that Trump’s former golfing partner and son-in-law negotiating team is considering unfreezing $20 billion in frozen Iranian assets to make the war go away?
The cash would be in return for Iran turning over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
Didn’t Trump “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear ambitions back in June last year? Wasn’t that what he told us over and over again? Now, stopping Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon is the only explanation Trump can offer for the entire debacle.
The rank hypocrisy of considering handing the regime a $20 million windfall after haranguing Barack Obama relentlessly over the 2016 Iran Deal that involved sending $400 million to Iran is mind-boggling.
As recently as his April 1 address to the nation on Iran, Trump complained about Obama sending “green, green cash” on a plane to Tehran.
“Very importantly, I terminated Barack Hussein Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, a disaster,” Trump said. “Obama gave them $1.7 billion in cash. Green, green cash. Took it out of banks from Virginia, D.C., and Maryland. All the cash they had, flew it by airplanes in an attempt to buy their respect and loyalty. But it didn’t work. They laughed at our president and went on with their mission to have a nuclear bomb,” he added.
“Look what happened,” he said on another occasion, during a press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, “where they’re bringing planeloads of cash, planeloads, big planes, 757s, Boeing 757s coming in loaded up with cash. What kind of a deal is that?”
The truth is that the U.S. was settling a $400 million debt for military equipment that was paid for in the 1970s but never delivered because of the revolution that deposed the Shah and ruptured diplomatic relations between the two countries. Obama’s nuclear deal—limiting Iran’s nuclear enrichment and putting it under strict inspection protocols—also involved paying about $1.3 billion in interest due on the principal.
Trump must have only looked through the lens of the U.S. when he decided to greenlight his military. Because the repercussions have changed the global balance of power.
And not for the better.
Trump’s war has underlined just how much of a hold Iran has on the Strait of Hormuz. It is such a narrow stretch of water that tankers carrying immense loads simply cannot risk passing without some guarantees.
It has also shown Iran how much it can hurt the world by attacking its Middle Eastern neighbors.
There was a reason it was kept at bay by Western leaders for so long. Oil still fuels their economies.
It is so tough to keep calling out the hypocrisy of the leader of the country you love. But Trump’s grasp on reality has been perilously exposed since he began this war without consulting his own Congress or any of his allies save Israel, which has its own, very personal axe to grind in the region.
Now the president can claim to have solved as many wars as he wants to make up.
But he has created a monster.
