In an age of rogue lawlessness dominating international affairs since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office and then staggered about the globe like a toddler with a chainsaw, it is inevitable that other outlaw nations, Russia and Iran, would see opportunity in the mayhem.
The 47th US president is too infantile and misled by a messianic government in Israel to comprehend that the citizens of Iran will not rise against their oppressors in Tehran under the Stars and Stripes and that Moscow will never be America’s friend.
But Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei (along with his Guardian Council), the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin are locking America into another forever war.
Their long-term intent is to expose the limits of current US power and to further weaken its influence across the Middle East, where the close alliance between Washington and Israel is a liability.
In the latest escalation of the conflict between the US and Iran, Tehran’s murderous theocracy, which has supported anti-Western terror groups since the early 1980s, is dominated by end-times religious fanaticism, and murders its own people in industrial quantities, somehow looks mature compared to America’s leadership.
The US, which started the war along with Israel on February 28 this year, provoked Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, which caused oil prices to spike and yoyo and global shortages of oil deprived essentials like fertilizer.
At the end of August, after a month of relative quiet, US missiles rained down on Larak Island to attack, the Pentagon said, mine-laying vessels Iran was using to choke the Straits.
Iran struck back with missiles targeting US bases in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq. Iran then accused the US of killing at least five people at a wedding party and wounding 68 others in Kuhestak, and striking two Iranian oil tankers.
Trump was right to promise an end to America’s other “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. The failure of the US and its allies to impose democracy by force while simultaneously relieving themselves of the legal and moral obligations that governed them at home in pursuit of targeting “Islamic Terror” resulted in profligate civilian deaths.
His next move, made against the advice of the more sensible intelligence and military officials, which his “secretary of war” had not fired, was to embark on a juvenile “short war” only a child could believe could be won from the air.
His immaturity was signaled to Tehran and Moscow by Trump himself, who boastfully posted an AI mockup of the attack on Larak Island but called it Kharg Island. His allies shudder when he does this kind of thing, or threatens genocide against Iran in wiping out an entire civilization. His enemies snigger. His idiocy is their opportunity, and no one is holding him back.
Iran, which sees the US as The Great Satan, and Russia, which sees America as a perpetual threat to everything including the “Russian soul”, have made sure that Trump is now locked into a long war.
And that US allies see the folly of being close to America. The frontline states are now in the Arabian (or Persian) Gulf where the US Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain, vast air assets are stationed in the UAE and Qatar while Jordan hosts air defence systems and long-term special forces deployments.
Meanwhile, Israel, accused of genocide in Gaza, is continuing to drive Palestinians from their homes on the occupied West Bank.
All this makes any move forward with the US-Israeli-driven Abraham Accords to normalise relations between Israel and majority Muslim countries in the Middle East and beyond impossible.
To make sure that war keeps going, Russia has been supplying Iran with intelligence used to target American forces in the Gulf. It has also been involved in bilateral developments of Shahed guided missiles (used by Russia in Ukraine) and, according to reports in the FT, is also involved in helping Tehran develop ramjet technology to fit fast and low-flying cruise missiles which can get through US air defence systems.
And, by the way, Russia is Iran’s main partner in its "civilian" nuclear energy programme.
Still enthralled by Putin’s power and the strut of a man who manages to bestride the globe with an economy smaller than Italy’s, Trump has put no pressure on Russia to get out of Ukraine and stop helping to kill Americans in Arabia.
He has, rather, given America’s enemies the means to bleed America dry.
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