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I’m telling anyone who will listen – yes. I can be quite tiresome – that President Donald Trump would not bomb Iran in the Stone Age.
Even when he said he would destroy Iran’s civilization and it would never recover, I knew he would never do that. That was the last thing he wanted to do.
So I was confident that he would find some kind of off-ramp at the last minute.
And, of course, he did not want to be seen as backing down from his increasingly serious threats.
Why Trump’s war speech failed: Declaring victory but still bombing Iran back to the ‘Stone Age’
It seemed quite clear that President Donald Trump was not going to follow through on his most recent threat to continue bombing Iran. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
I received the White House email at 6:32 pm on Tuesday night. After a series of earlier delays, this was yet another delay. He will give the Iranians two more weeks.
I started posting like crazy, beating the television by a few minutes and the newspapers by a few minutes. But that was only because my phone was right there. If I went to the fridge even for a moment, I would come back to my laptop and find that the world had changed.
After covering Trump for 35 years, I knew in my heart that he didn’t want to go down in history as the man who wiped out an ancient civilization. His heart was never in it. As a negotiating strategy it was foolish.
Trump is waging fierce wars at home and abroad: Why he carelessly dismissed the results
Still, he had boxed himself into a corner. Former colleagues in the conservative media were condemning him. Piers Morgan declared, “This is a brazen pre-approval of genocide against the Iranian people, which would clearly be a war crime. Insanity.”
Some Republican lawmakers said he went too far. Even the American Catholic bishops said, “Threats to destroy an entire civilization and the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified.”
No American President had ever said such words.
Trump had earlier issued a defiant warning to Tehran, urging it to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. (Benoit Tessier/Reuters)
So I thought the only card Trump had to play was delay. And that’s exactly what he did. At the request of Pakistan, which has been the mediator in the so-called talks, the President agreed to cease hostilities.
Namely, according to the statement I received, “Subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the full, immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a two-way ceasefire! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all military objectives…”
It is certainly a shaky truce, with Iran firing missiles at Israel just minutes after it was announced, and Israel saying its ground attack on Lebanon is not covered following a rocket attack by Iranian proxy Hezbollah.
Why do Trump and Iran seem far from each other on any possible agreement to end the war?
As of yesterday, in fact, as the AP confirmed, Iran’s state media said it had closed the Strait of Hormuz again, citing the Israeli attacks.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a posting that the Trump administration “must choose between a ceasefire or continuing the war through Israel, and it cannot do both.”
We learned from New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan that Bibi Netanyahu had talked Trump into engaging in war by saying it would be quick and would overthrow the regime. Gen. Dan Kane, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, called it “ridiculous.” Marco Rubio said it was BS. JD Vance was against the war.
And it’s an attractive sidebar. Trump is, for no apparent reason, insulting Haberman, who published his biography in 2022. Yet he gave an hour-long Oval Office interview for his forthcoming book, “Regime Change,” from which the Times excerpt was excerpted.
As far as the President’s current stance is concerned, he is not being held back by dubious details. He told Sky News that it was a “complete victory” not only in military terms but also “in every other sense”.
Trump spoke by phone with Fox Opinion host Laura Ingraham shortly before the broadcast, and described Trump as “cautiously optimistic”, adding: “It certainly sounds like Iran has blinked.”
Peeking through the fog of war, what did Trump really accomplish other than sending markets soaring by about 3 percent?
On yesterday’s “Fox & Friends,” a typically Trump-friendly show, co-host Lawrence Jones said, “We have not reached any of these objectives.”
dismantling nuclear facilities (“that hasn’t happened”), ending uranium enrichment (“they’re still enriching”), transferring uranium reserves out of Iran (“that hasn’t happened”), accepting international inspections (“they’re still not willing to do that”), and suspending the ballistic missile program (“they’re still firing them”). Jones also criticized Iran for making proposals that the US side would never accept.
If Trump can’t get a deal, why is he facing the painful decision of cutting off Iran’s oil supplies?
Fox anchor Harris Faulkner said yesterday, “I think this is the least armistice-like truce that anyone could have expected.” “The Iranians don’t seem to be very serious about this ceasefire agreement,” said Trey Yingst, Fox’s chief foreign correspondent.
And therein lies the rub. Both countries live far away. This business merely documents a strategic framework in a devil-may-care sense. Regardless of any presidential proclamation or Mission Accomplished banner, Iran will never agree to give up its nuclear program.
The Iranian pitch, apparently not seen by Trump, says the US should leave the area, give Iran sole control of the strait, and recognize its right to nuclear enrichment.
White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt called Iran’s 10-point plan “fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely rejected.” (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Don’t take my word for it. Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt told reporters yesterday that Iran’s 10-point plan is “fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely rejected.”
Look, if this all somehow works out, most people will remember that Trump made harsh threats, which led to a deal in which the Iranian blockade – “Open the f—in’ strait, you crazy f—–s” – was lifted. In other words, his madman routine worked against the world’s leading terrorist state, which has been killing Americans, Arabs, and its own people for 47 years.
But things can always break faster than a speedy drone. This is the Middle East.
It doesn’t matter what you think about Trump, his choice of war, his apocalyptic rhetoric or his entire presidency, he is not crazy. He took a similar approach in his tariff campaign and threatened harsher levies before reaching an 11th-hour agreement. As he himself says, he is a businessman. That’s what he does.
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Most media accounts are portraying Trump as caving in or backing down. This is a fair comment.
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But what really happened is that Trump found a way to avoid doing what he was never really going to do in the first place.
