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| (BloomPakistan.com) |
Donald Trump is threatening to blow up bridges and power plants in Iran if the country does not reach a deal to end the war Trump started. A few hours after making the threat, Trump said U.S. negotiators will be in Islamabad this evening to begin a new, and perhaps final, round of peace talks. If that sounds like mixed messaging . . . well, it is. And if Trump thinks such an ultimatum will result in a rapid-fire end to the war, an Iranian official suggests that likely will not happen.
Perhaps the question of the moment is this: Do Trump's words appear to constitute a sign that he intends to conduct good-faith negotiations? It doesn't sound like it to my ears; it sounds more like the typical bombast and bullying we have come to expect from Trump, the type of "trash talk" that has caused U.S. standing in the world to plummet. Whenever Trump enters a fray, chaos will likely ensue, so many observers probably do not know what to make of the yin and yang that is present in efforts to resolve a conflict of Trump's making. One of the most illuminating reports we've seen comes from Yahoo! News, where Jack Brewster writes:
President Trump threatened Sunday to wipe out "every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran" if Tehran walks away from a U.S. nuclear deal, days before a two-week cease-fire expires.
"NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!" Trump wrote.
"They'll come down fast, they'll come down easy and, if they don't take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years,” he added.
He closed the post with one more line: "IT'S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!"
Let's see if we have this straight: Trump wants to tamp down Iran's "killing machine" as he ramps up a killing machine of his own. That sounds like the work of a well-ordered mind doesn't it? For irony of a different sort, we have this, as Brewster reports:
Hours after the post, the White House said special envoy Steve Witkoff and senior adviser Jared Kushner would land in Islamabad on Monday evening for the next round of talks. Whether Vice President JD Vance will join them is unclear. Axios reported Vance will again lead the U.S. delegation, citing two U.S. officials, while Fox News reported Vance will not make the trip and that Witkoff and Kushner will lead on their own. The White House has not publicly confirmed the roster. It's the second face-to-face round in as many weeks. The first, held April 11-12, ended without a breakthrough.
This apparently has not occurred to Trump, but negotiations might stand a better chance of a breakthrough if he sent representatives who had legit diplomatic credentials and were not riddled with conflicts of interest. That is not Kushner and Witkoff, per a report from Heather Digby Parton at Salon. She labels Trump's tag team "partners in duplicity":
The way money and power converge in our political system, some amount of corruption is probably inevitable. In fact, the system is built for it. But Donald Trump and his cronies have made all the previous cases look like child’s play. As the president himself would say, “We’ve never seen anything like it.”
And if you want to really see why these prohibitions once existed, you have only to look at Trump’s special envoys for peace: Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, whose lack of experience and conflicts of interest have turned the Middle East into a raging fire and even helped lead to the Iran war.
As this week begins, Kushner and Witkoff face a tight timeline, which might expose their lack of diplomatic cred. We learn more from Jack Brewster at Yahoo!:
A two-week ceasefire between the U.S., Israel and Iran is set to expire Wednesday, giving negotiators a narrow window.
Trump also accused Iran of blowing up the truce a day early. On Saturday, Iranian Revolutionary Guard gunboats opened fire on a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, and a container ship was hit by an "unknown projectile," according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations. Trump claimed the gunfire was "aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom."
A two-week ceasefire between the U.S., Israel and Iran is set to expire Wednesday, giving negotiators a narrow window.
Trump also accused Iran of blowing up the truce a day early. On Saturday, Iranian Revolutionary Guard gunboats opened fire on a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, and a container ship was hit by an "unknown projectile," according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations. Trump claimed the gunfire was "aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom."
India's foreign ministry said both vessels were Indian-flagged and summoned Iran's ambassador in New Delhi over the attacks. One of the ships was operated by French shipping giant CMA CGM.
"That wasn't nice, was it?" Trump wrote.
So Trump thinks being a smart aleck will help bring an end to his war? The answer apparently is yes because he doubled down on being a wise ass:
The president also mocked Iran's weekend announcement that it was closing the strait, saying the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports had already shut the waterway down.
"They're helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day!" he wrote. "The United States loses nothing." The $500 million figure appears to have come from a Foundation for Defense of Democracies estimate, cited by Fox News on Saturday, that put Iran's daily cost from the U.S. naval blockade at roughly $435 million.
Are Iranian officials taking the Fox News figures as gospel? It doesn't sound like it, per Jack Brewster:
Iran sees it differently. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the lead Iranian negotiator and speaker of Iran's Parliament, said Saturday that any deal would need to move "step-by-step" with reciprocal actions, and that the U.S. had "failed to pressure Iran through ultimatums." He said talks were "far from a final agreement."
Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei went further, calling the continued U.S. naval blockade in the Gulf a “war crime” and saying Washington, not Tehran, was the party pushing the ceasefire toward collapse.
In a post at X, Baqaei wrote:
The United States’ so-called “blockade” of Iran’s ports or coastline is not only a violation of Pakistani-mediated ceasefire but also both unlawful and criminal. It violates Article 2(4) of the UN Charter; it constitutes an act of aggression under Article 3(c) of the UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (1974), which explicitly includes the blockade of a state’s ports or coasts among such acts. Moreover, by deliberately inflicting collective punishment on the Iranian population, it amounts to war crime and crime against humanity.
Isn't it interesting that Iranian officials sound more measured, knowledgeable, and diplomatic than Trump and his sycophants? For many Americans, it probably is also depressing. Meanwhile, at gas stations across the U.S., Americans are feeling "pain at the pump." Per Yahoo! News, that isn't likely to end soon:
Roughly 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude settled around $90 a barrel Friday, down sharply on hopes the waterway was reopening, but the war has knocked out an estimated 10% of global oil supply and damaged more than 80 energy facilities across the region, according to the International Energy Agency
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