Trump's Iran mirage
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Donald Trump has lost a war with Iran.
That sentence will infuriate his followers. It will provoke denunciations from the propagandists, the courtiers and the flatterers. It will trigger a thousand social media posts declaring victory, triumph and genius.
History won’t care.
History will ask a simple question: what was achieved?
The answer is devastating.
Donald Trump entered this conflict promising strength, dominance and resolution. He leaves it with a ceasefire, an unsigned framework, unanswered questions about Iran’s nuclear program, and an Iranian regime that remains standing, defiant, more radicalized, wealthier and powerful than before. The most important question of all remains unresolved: where is the uranium?
For almost a year now, Donald Trump and his administration have assured the American people that Iran’s nuclear infrastructure had been destroyed. He claimed the facilities had been “completely and fully obliterated.” The White House declared that “obliteration is an accurate term.”
Yet today, the central issue that justified confrontation remains unsettled.
The uranium stockpile wasn’t paraded before the cameras. It wasn’t seized. It wasn’t verified as destroyed.
It remains the subject of uncertainty, intelligence assessments, negotiations and speculation. News coverage continues to note unresolved questions about the fate of highly enriched uranium, and whether Iran retained material that could someday be used in a weapons program.
What, then, was won?
The answer is nothing that can withstand scrutiny.
The regime remains in power. The ayatollahs remain in power. The Revolutionary Guard remains in power. The nuclear question remains unresolved. The missile question remains unresolved. The proxy-war question remains unresolved. The terrorism question remains unresolved.
The only thing that has been conclusively demonstrated is that the United States spent enormous amounts of money, depleted critical stockpiles, exposed vulnerabilities and arrived back where it started — except weaker. Much weaker.
One of the most alarming lessons of this conflict concerns the future of warfare itself. Cheap, mass-produced and disposable drones.
The war revealed something that military planners around the world already understood, but that many Americans preferred not to contemplate. Billion-dollar weapons systems can be challenged by technology that costs a tiny fraction of their price. The monopoly on advanced warfare has ended.
The age of the inexpensive killer has arrived.
Every adversary of the United States was watching. Every dictator. Every terrorist organization. Every hostile intelligence service. Every military planner in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran. They were watching and learning.
Wars are laboratories. The lessons learned in one become the foundation of the next.
That’s why failed wars are so dangerous. They plant the seeds of larger wars to come. They become seed corn. The future grows from them.
The most dangerous illusion in politics is the illusion that failure can be rebranded as success if enough people shout loudly enough.
Donald Trump has attempted this trick his entire life. A bankruptcy becomes a victory. A fraud becomes a deal. A scandal becomes a witch hunt. A humiliation becomes a triumph. Now, a failed war becomes peace.
The latest peace deal is being marketed with the same confidence and certainty that accompanied every previous declaration that peace was at hand.
Americans have heard these announcements before. The promises are always grand. The results are always fleeting. The headlines change. Reality doesn’t.
The latest agreement announced leaves the most important disputes unresolved, and launches yet another negotiation process whose outcome remains uncertain.
This isn’t peace. This is an intermission.
This isn’t resolution. This is postponement.
The spectacle surrounding it makes the whole affair even more absurd.
America has reached a moment where diplomacy resembles reality television, and foreign policy competes for attention with mixed martial arts promotions and White House spectacles. The line between governing and performing has nearly vanished.
Everything is branding. Everything is content. Everything is a show.
Nothing is serious until the consequences arrive. Then suddenly everything becomes serious.
The dead are serious. The wounded are serious. The depleted arsenals are serious. The shattered alliances are serious. The strengthened adversaries are serious. The future wars are serious.
Donald Trump promised strength. He delivered uncertainty. He promised victory. He delivered ambiguity. He promised peace. He delivered another temporary pause in a conflict whose underlying causes remain unresolved.
This isn’t the end of a crisis. It’s the opening chapter of the next one.
The tragedy is that Americans were promised history would end. Instead, it has merely been delayed.
Peace deal number 41 will be celebrated.
Peace deal number 42 will be announced.
Peace deal number 43 will surely follow.
The show must go on. Reality, however, remains undefeated.
I also noted that Senator John Fetterman spent the weekend trashing the Democratic Senate nominee for Maine.
As with everything else these days, it is quite rich to hear this from a clown who has criticized all of us for being critical of Donald Trump.
Trump's 7th bankruptcy.