The free world should be alarmed

Iran is continuing to wage war against America, Israel and their allies. Throughout it all, however, Trump continues to insist that the United States will only act in self-defense; that the ceasefire is holding; and that Iran is begging for a deal. The pattern has set in of Trump making bellicose statements, Iran dangling concessions, Trump backing off, Iran repackaging those concessions as further threats and demands, Iran renewing its attacks and America declaring that negotiations are resuming. The answer is that Trump is in a trap of his own making through two fundamental and related mistakes.

First, Trump thinks he can negotiate the end of the war. But by holding Israel back from delivering the decisive blow against Iran’s proxy army, Trump has enabled Iran to use Hezbollah as leverage against Israel. He has thus weakened his negotiating position.

Second, Trump thinks that when his blockade of Iranian shipping really starts to bite and Iran runs out of money and food, the regime will start to negotiate seriously to avoid the country being totally destroyed. However, the Tehran regime is run by fanatics who will sacrifice the people, the economy and the country in accordance with their belief that the Shia messiah will be brought to earth through an apocalypse. Trump thinks every problem can be solved by a deal that only he has the skill to pull off. He doesn’t seem to grasp that some agendas are so uncompromising they are simply non-negotiable. He doesn’t seem to grasp that any deal with Iran would be worthless. The Iranian regime is a world-class cheater that has never kept to the terms of any deal it’s ever made, never observed any ceasefire, telling lies reflexively in accordance with the Islamic principle of taqqiya, which makes it mandatory to lie in the cause of Islam.

Behind Trump’s strategic errors, however, lies a more profound—and profoundly worrying—issue. But mostly it’s because American humiliation in Iraq and before that Vietnam, along with decades of anti-West propaganda in American schools and universities, has now made Americans viscerally averse to “boots on the ground” anywhere and any U.S. troops being placed in danger. A culture that no longer accepts the need for sacrifice in the cause of a just war is a culture that has no future. That’s the desperate situation now of Britain and Western Europe. America is in danger of going the same way.

Trump’s insistence on a deal has given Tehran the scent of victory in its nostrils. For the regime, a deal represents the surrender of America. Every negotiation is viewed as a sign of American weakness and a spur to redouble its attacks. For the regime, the purpose of these negotiations is not to get the best deal possible for Iran. It’s to force America to surrender. U.S. President Donald Trump, who is now actually dancing to the tune of Tehran, is, therefore, at serious risk of turning into a second Obama. If the United States were to lose that war and the Iranian regime remained as a threat, Russia, China and North Korea would be galvanized by the perception that mighty America was in fact a paper tiger, and the whole free world would be placed in even greater danger. Not just Israel, but also the entire free world, should be alarmed.