Trump Celebrates While America Capitulates In Defeat

Many predicted that the Felon would surrender to Iran in all but outward admission to end his ill-conceived war with Iran and then try to somehow dress up the defeat as a victory.  While many details remain undisclosed - and Iran has yet to actually sign anything - what is known is anything but a victory.  None of the Felon's announced objectives of the war have been achieved and while battered, Iran is being left in a stronger position that before the war commenced.  Indeed, Iran now knows that control of the Strait of Hormuz gives it blackmail power against the global economy and gasoline prices in the USA. Moreover, as a piece in the New York Times notes, the misguided war has likely changed energy markets permanently and handed a huge win to China, particularly since the Felon has set the USA back on green and renewable energy sources:

As a result, the energy market is changing, the energy mix is changing and the energy players are changing.

The profound vulnerability of countries throughout Asia, Europe and elsewhere that depend on imported energy is supercharging the hunt for alternatives. In some places, like South Korea and Japan, that has led to an increased use of dirtier fuels like coal.  But over the longer term, this energy shock — the second in just four years — is likely to accelerate a transition to renewables like solar and wind as well as nuclear power.

The push to build out and diversify energy networks is going to continue long after the war ends. And China is poised to benefit most from the expected boon in renewables. It is leagues ahead of the rest of the world in producing wind turbines, high-voltage cables, transformers, solar panels, batteries, software to manage energy flows and more. . . . “China looks to be an out-and-out winner,” analysts from Wood Mackenzie, a global energy consulting firm, concluded.

Much of this was predictable and combined with a de facto military defeat leaves America weaker than when the war was foolishly started by the Felon against all warnings of what could happen. True, the Felon will try to claim "victory" but many will see this as just another of his endless lies.  Adding to the mix is the prediction by some that gasoline prices will remain higher helping to drive up other consumer prices.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the Felon's defeat and Iran's victory.  Here are article highlights:

President Trump has announced that the United States and Iran have reached a deal to end their war. “Congratulations to all!” he said in a posting on his Truth Social site this evening. He then headed off to oversee the garish public spectacle he’d arranged for his birthday on the South Lawn of the White House. The United States, however, has little to celebrate: Trump and his team, in record time, just lost a war to a militarily mediocre—but nonetheless extremely dangerous—adversary.

The details of the agreement remain unconfirmed, but the president, of course, is eager to spin the outcome as a victory. (Trump was in a hurry to sign the deal on his birthday; the Iranians, who now seem to be in charge of this whole business, instead said they will send someone to a meeting in Switzerland on Friday.) But even before we have the details, it is clear that Trump has failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to sign, seal, and deliver America’s capitulation as quickly as possible.

If defeat seems a strong word, consider what we do know about how this war will end. Iran has suffered significant damage from U.S. and Israeli military action. But as I and others warned at the outset, killing people and bombing things do not by themselves produce victory. The reality is that the war will close with the regime in Tehran intact and in the grip of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; the Strait of Hormuz will remain under the threat of Iranian attacks; Iran will continue to possess significant drone and missile stocks; the regime will maintain the capability to be a state sponsor of terror; and many sanctions will be lifted and billions of dollars in unfrozen assets will flow to Iran. In other words, the Iranians have achieved their key strategic aims—regime survival above all—while the Americans have achieved none of their own.

Indeed, the United States has perhaps done worse than gaining nothing. Iran, while temporarily weakened, is now an even more powerful political actor: The regime in Tehran stood up to a massive U.S. onslaught, survived, and then inflicted pain on various states in the Gulf as punishment for going along with Trump’s war.

The Israelis, for their part, have been left out in the cold. It is difficult to shed any tears for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who unwisely encouraged Trump to attack Iran, but he, too, is feeling the sting of humiliation. The Iranians cagily linked Netanyahu’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon to Trump’s war in the Gulf, and Trump is now angry at Netanyahu for making it harder for the United States to get out of the conflict.

Reportedly, the upcoming agreement requires a cessation of hostilities in the region, including in Lebanon—and Trump is negotiating as if he can deliver on that demand while leaving Jerusalem out of it. Today, the Israelis said that Hezbollah had launched weapons into Israel. Rather than calling on the Iranians to restrain their proxy, Trump took to social media to tell the Israelis to calm down, noting that the attack “was very small and meaningless, nobody was hurt, injured, or killed, and should not disrupt this important process.”

The Trump administration will claim that it achieved a victory because it got an Iran without nuclear weapons. But this claim is both silly and redundant. Tehran had already pledged 10 years ago in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action not to seek nuclear weapons. No one should trust the Iranians, but before Trump unilaterally canceled the agreement in his first term, the JCPOA seemed to be working. More to the point, at the time Trump chose to go to war, Iran was nowhere near getting a bomb, and certainly not within weeks of a weapon, as Trump asserted. The effort to claim that this war has defeated Iran’s nuclear ambitions is merely an effort to distract from the administration’s failure to achieve regime change, which was always its main goal.

The agreement—if it actually gets signed on Friday—will then initiate a two-month period of further negotiations, and Trump could argue that he’ll get more in that process. But how?

Trump has for weeks talked about getting rid of Iran’s “Nuclear Dust”—his odd term for the uranium now lying under the rubble produced by U.S. bombings—and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed this morning that the United States has multiple plans for removing this material. The Iranians, however, are busily planting booby traps around the uranium to ensure that it stays where it is, and despite Hegseth’s blustering, America is not going to march into Iran and dig it out without Tehran’s consent. If anything, the Iranians now have every incentive to sprint to a bomb, and can do so with far less transparency than they had to endure under the JCPOA.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz will “open,” but it was already open, at least to those the Iranians allowed to pass. In his celebratory message, Trump said: “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz.” That’s terrific, but such a statement has about as much effect as I or my wife or my cat declaring the strait open; only Iran can make that decision. Trump also declared that the U.S. Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports is over, something that is indeed within his power, but that only means America will withdraw while Iran remains.

Meanwhile—and again, these are the terms that so far have been leaked to the press, mostly from the Iranians—Iran claims that it will not only get some $12 billion up front, but get another $12 billion within 60 days. Down the line, the Iranians are claiming that they will get a $300 billion fund for reconstruction.  . . . . The war leaves Iran battered, but more powerful and with more cash at its disposal, while it leaves America weaker, with important stocks of weapons depleted, and with its consumers paying the price for the war at the gas pump.

Trump today also claimed that he is perfectly willing to restart hostilities if the Iranians don’t cooperate. Tehran, however, can be forgiven for smirking at the idea that Trump is going to tie down U.S. forces and then ignite a second conflict just weeks from the midterm elections, especially because the American people—and, perhaps more important from Trump’s perspective, the international markets—have soured on the conflict.

Trump began this war by promising the Iranian people that they would be able to seize their government from the theocratic tyrants who oppress them, and he repeatedly said he would settle for nothing less than “unconditional surrender.” Had Trump toppled the regime in Tehran, he would have had the thanks of most of the world—and congratulations from even his most dedicated critics. Instead, the United States has been defeated, and this evening found Trump out on the lawn waiting for the rain to clear so he could begin his party.