President Donald Trump is not starting another “forever war” in Iran. He’s finishing one.
Many commenting on the missile attacks by US and Israeli forces have seized on the idea that by attacking Iran Trump is dragging the US into yet another entanglement in the Middle East. On the most recent episode of drill downHost Peter Schweizer and co-host Eric Eggers explore that allegation and pick winners and losers.
Schweizer says, “In many ways a shocking turn of events, Trump did exactly what many presidents have threatened to do over the decades.” “It’s a nice change from the present tense to the past when discussing the ayatollahs,” says Eggers.
But how is military action in Iran “ending” anything? The answer is that Iran’s threats have long been a huge cost and irritant to the US in various ways – and a real threat.
Washington Post columnist Mark Thiessen recently wrote“The Iranian threat is a primary reason the United States has to spend billions on major deployments in the Middle East. If that threat goes away, and a new government – whose mantra is no longer ‘Death to America’ – takes power in Tehran, then the United States can finally remove those forces, fulfill a long-held promise in the Indo-Pacific and focus on protecting American interests in our own hemisphere.”
The Trump administration had been negotiating with the Iranian regime, trying to find an agreement in which Iran would give up its ambitions to possess nuclear weapons. But Schweizer believes Iranian negotiators made a fatal mistake. “Part of what was going on from the Iranian perspective is that they were assuming Trump was going to handle it the same way every previous president had handled it — which was to talk tough and not actually act.” Clearly, Trump’s attack gave the lie to that notion, which was echoed in a clip of an Iranian general referring to the US as a “paper tiger” just before the bombs fell.
“What we used to have [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell called it the ‘Pottery Barn Rule’. If you break it, you own it. If you go into a country and attack it, you have to rebuild it,” Schweizer says. “Well, guess what? Donald Trump walked into Pottery Barn, broke several things and said, ‘I’m not paying for anything.’
The “Trump doctrine” means, “It is not our responsibility to try to rebuild that country. We are eliminating the threat. We are going to encourage the right people in Iran to win, but whether they come forward and do that is their own internal matter,” Schweizer says.
The big loser in all this? Iranian negotiation strategy.
Schweizer believes a big winner is Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. Schweizer says it was primarily Iranian threats against Saudi Arabia that prevented the Saudis from signing the Abraham Accords, and that the elimination of the Ayatollahs and the collapse of their leadership of Iran’s proxies in Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen neutralizes that threat.
Schweizer says, “The way we traditionally think about the Middle East is the Arab and Israeli conflict. It’s not that simple anymore.” “You had the Saudis who were clearly supportive of attacking Iran. You had the United Arab Emirates who were supportive. You had Israel who was supportive. When was the last time you got those three powers on the same side for aggressive action? So, this is further evidence that the Middle East is realigning itself.”
However, Eggers laments the growing conflicts of interest in the sector. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly owns a private equity fund called Affinity Partners, whose largest investor is the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, worth $2 billion. Kushner would earn more than $100 million from that relationship. Donald Trump Jr. also has massive financial interests in cryptocurrencies in the Middle East.
“It’s a big problem. It’s not good,” Schweizer agrees. “What they’re going to say is ‘We’re different from Hunter Biden because we actually have a business,’ right? … But the problem is you’re still combining political power and influence with your business interests. It doesn’t matter if you had a legitimate business before.”
Another lost cause, the hosts say, are Iran’s failed assassination attempts against Trump and others, including Mike Pompeo, who was Trump’s secretary of state during his first term. “Yes. That’s one of the reasons we got to this place. The Iranian regime has attempted numerous terrorist attacks and assassination attempts on American soil,” Schweizer says. He tried to go after Mike Pompeo and was allegedly involved in a conspiracy to go after Donald Trump.
They were unsuccessful but became part of the administration’s rationale for going after the Iranian regime.
Eggers quipped, “The old saying was, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ Iran’s position has been ‘shout louder and carry a branch’.”
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