“Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation.”
So said US President Donald Trump in January of 2020. That would be the same “Art of the Deal” Donald Trump who has by now managed to fall into the same trap every US president has faced since since 1979 when Jimmy Carter was busy displaying his particular brand of incompetence.
What US Presidents fail to grasp is that the post Shah Iranian regime is revolutionary. It has no interest in being bought off by promises of wealth and better lives for its citizens. Instead it seeks to destroy Israel (the Little Satan); America (the Great Satan); install its Shiite revolution on its neighbors and then turn its attention to fomenting its revolution around the world. In that respect the Iranian regime resembles the regime of the former Soviet Union, complete with the same set of naïve supporters who insisted that the Soviets were merely interested in defending their borders, not world domination.
There is another eerie parallel. Not only did the Soviets encourage so-called wars of “national liberation”all over the world, they actively supported anti-Western terrorism. They were champions of the Bader Meinhof gang, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the (Italian) Red Brigades, the PLO, the (Peruvian) Shining Path and so on. The result was a spate of terrorist incidents ranging from airplane hijackings to attacks on synagogues primarily in South America. See this site on left wing terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s.
Now it looks like the word of the United States has been seriously degraded. It isn’t merely the constant bluster of Donald Trump–“Help is on the way”. It is the result of a series of threats, never carried out, that leaves other leaders to doubt that the US has the will to follow through on its declarations. In short the US is either no longer feared, or the fear has been attenuated.
For its part, the Iranian regime will inevitably claim victory, proceed with rebuilding its nuclear arms infrastructure, try (again) to establish itself as a regional hegemon and surround Israel with its “ring of fire”.
By kicking the can down the road (not to mention its ill-fated attempt to impose tariffs) the Trump Administration has seriously weakened American power in the world. Not only that, its actions are being evaluated by Europe, NATO, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and a host of minor players. We can also expect that the world’s most malevolent dictators to start eying commercial choke points, previously off limits, that are within reach.
This is no way for the leader of what we used to call the free world to act. In the face of immense challenges, especially from autocrats, the world needs leadership. It does not a series of tactics designed to solve a nominal leader’s electoral problems. Instead we need to implement a strategy based on the principles of classical Liberalism, meaning free markets, the rule of law and inherent rights.
What we don’t need is a repeat of prior errors. That path, which is what we seem to be headed towards, leads to nothing but more trouble.
JFB
