By exaggerating the threat Iran's nuclear program poses and maligning the deal Barack Obama struck a decade ago to contain it, Donald Trump has boxed himself in with few options to end the war in a way that will deliver him a victory and end the global economic chaos he triggered.
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Donald Trump on Sunday called Iran’s response to the latest US peace proposal “totally unacceptable,” as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the war is not over.
Both statements highlight that, as much as the president would like to be done with the conflict, it will continue to pose a major headache for his administration and his party.
The conundrum Trump faces is that, while the US and Israel have dominated the war militarily since they started it 10 weeks ago, they can’t end it. On the one hand, that’s because even a diminished Iran can hold the global economy hostage by blocking the Strait of Hormuz. On the other hand, it’s because the president and his allies maintain that Tehran’s nuclear weapons program poses an imminent threat — an assertion that neither the intelligence community nor Trump’s own statements (or even common sense) support.
Therefore, the US can hardly be seen as accepting an outcome that falls short of dealing with both of these issues.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright made this clear on Sunday.
“The top priority is ending Iran’s nuclear program. The world simply cannot have a nuclear-armed Iran,” he said on Meet the Press.
On CBS’s Face the Nation, Wright added that this goal would likely, but not necessarily, be achieved through negotiation.
That, of course, poses additional problems because the US had already prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon through an agreement that Trump tore up during his first term.
And it is this deal that the president maligned in a social media post on Sunday.
“Iran has been playing games with the United States, and the rest of the World, for 47 years (DELAY, DELAY, DELAY!), and then finally hit ‘pay dirt’ when Barack Hussein Obama became President,” wrote Trump. “He was not only good to them, he was great, actually going to their side, jettisoning Israel, and all other Allies, and giving Iran a major and very powerful new lease on life.”
Therefore, any agreement his administration reaches would have to be “better” than Obama’s. That, however, will be a real challenge because, in return for ending its nuclear program and handing over the enriched uranium in its possession, Iran wants the US to lift sanctions and release its frozen assets. In addition, Tehran wants to retain control over the Strait of Hormuz.
All of those things are concessions that are worse than those Obama agreed to.
And then there is Israel, which doesn’t want to end the conflict at all.
In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, which will air Sunday night, Netanyahu said that the war isn’t over.
“There are still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There are still proxies that Iran supports. There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce,” he said. “Now, we’ve degraded a lot of it. But all that is still there, and there’s work to be done.”
When asked how the enriched uranium could be removed, Netanyahu stated that “you go in, and you take it out.”
However, the prime minister’s answer should not be understood to mean that this would necessarily be done by the military. Instead, it could also be the result of some sort of agreement.
Still, it is very clear that the administration does not have a plan for how to get out of this conflict in a way that allows it to save face and get the economy back on track before the midterms.
Instead, members of Trump’s inner circle are trying to assuage the worries of Americans, whose confidence in the economy has reached an all-time low, by making wild promises.
Wright, for example, said there is a “very good chance” that the price of gas will be below $3 by the busy summer travel season, which begins in two weeks. Currently, the average cost for a gallon of gasoline is $4.52, and there is no chance that it would fall that quickly even if the Strait of Hormuz were to open today.
And Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, predicted that the growth of the gross domestic product could explode to 6 percent later this year.
The problem for Americans struggling with paying their bills is that promises of the imminent golden age won’t put food on their tables and gasoline in their tanks.
In addition, if these rosy predictions don’t come to pass, then you’ll be seeing these statements again in campaign commercials ahead of the midterms, when Democrats will make the case that this administration has done nothing to address the affordability crisis — apart from making it worse with the war and Trump’s tariffs.
