Trump may be facing resistance from within his inner circle, his Republican party base and the American community in general
It is not often that US President Donald Trump sits for too long on the horns of any dilemma. It is being reported that he had approved a plan to attack Iran and then hung back only to give Iran time to ponder on whether to end its nuclear programme, or probably he is just timing an American offensive on military advice. But there will be no U-turns once he decides to go into another of the “forever wars” that he promised to avoid while campaigning for the President’s job in 2024.
A third US aircraft carrier group is on its way to the Middle East, but it is far from certain Trump will take the United States back to 2003 when his predecessor George W. Bush ordered a full-scale invasion of Iraq. But then, as Trump said, no one knows what he will do, not even Trump. “I mean, you don’t know that I’m going to even do it. You don’t know. I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump said. And that explains everything — or nothing.
Trump may be facing resistance from within his inner circle, his Republican party base and the American community in general. His stints in the Situation Room and his comments about the Ayatollahs of Iran have made everyone uneasy about where this is heading. The word is that while he may be reluctant to be drawn into a full-scale war, he might still be considering taking out the nuclear facility in Fordow.
The potential consequences of a direct US strike on Iran, with heavy bunker-buster bombing that only America can carry out and which will obviously be done only through stealth bombers piloted by Americans, are too grave to contemplate. The repercussions could go far beyond Iran retaliating on US bases in the Middle East. There is a chance that the world itself would be destabilised if the Iran regime is brought down.
Far from not being the era of wars, it would appear this is the era of no-holds-barred bombing, which began with Vladimir Putin dropping bombs on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, while sending in troops on the ground and Israel taking retaliation against the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror strike to disproportionately high levels in carpet bombing of the Gaza Strip, taking on the Hezbollah in Lebanon and now attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
There is no leader in today’s multipolar world whose word may be sufficient to bring adversaries to the negotiating table. Apart from angling for the Nobel Peace Prize, which might be worthless in this conflicted world of raging wars, there seems to be no place in Trump’s mind about off-ramps for creating negotiating space. And yet he makes egotistic claims that everyone, including the Iranians, wants to come to the White House to meet him.
Iran has been clear enough in its stand that so long as the aggression continues — along with its retaliation measures that even struck hospitals and schools in Israel — there is no space for engaging with adversaries across the table. At a time when peace is at a premium, there appears to be no room for dialogue and diplomacy. We must fear for the world if the “anything can happen” position continues to define the present.
