US-Israel/ Iran War : Mad, Sad, And Dangerous To Know
By Lim Tean
So said Lady Caroline of the poet Lord Byron in 1812.
The same can be said of the various pronouncements from Trump on the Iran war this week.
First, he said that America would be ending the war soon even if there was no reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
He said America would leave it to the Europeans and others who need the Strait for their oil to deal with the Iranians. At that time, when I heard this statement, I had written in my various posts that to me, it meant the end of the American empire. America had lost the respect of the world.
A superpower does not cut and run. It does not enter a war, hand over control of the most important waterway in the world for oil and energy to its enemy, and then abandon the entire enterprise, expecting others to clean up the mess it had created.
Today, you have Trump threatening the Iranians that he would rain hell on them if there is no peace deal and the reopening of the Strait within 48 hours! How inconsistent is that from his position earlier in the week?
So America wants to bomb and/ or reopen Hormuz when 40 nations are already in talks with Iran to allow their vessels to pass the Strait? Iran had already struck a deal with France and yesterday we saw the first French and Japanese vessels pass. Wasn’t this what Trump and Rubio had asked other nations to do- deal with Iran themselves?
Trump and his incompetent Secretary of State Marco Rubio are all over the place in this war. It is a result of not having a strategy and not knowing clearly what they hope to achieve. They find themselves in this position today, because in this war, they are mere proxies for the Israelis. They are fighting Israel’s war. America has no business in this war.
Let me also proffer a reason for Trump’s latest bizarre volte-face. It is because he now realises that by leaving the Strait of Hormuz problem to other nations to solve, America’s days as a superpower are finished. America is now treated as a pariah and dirt by the rest of the world. See the disrespect shown to her in recent days by Spain, Italy, France, Austria, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. MBS has vowed never to buy American weapons again and Qatar now wants American troops to leave its territory. Qatar now embraces Iran as a Brotherly Nation and the Iranians have similarly embraced the Saudis.
Trump now wants to bomb and/ or invade Iran to regain American respect and superpower status and to save the petrodollar. But all he will get will be thousands of returning American bodies in body bags and the total “obliteration” of his legacy.
He will not be memorialised on Mount Rushmore but be remembered as the worst President in American history.