Martin Jay
But it might not even hold, as there are too many possibilities which could scupper it.
But it might not even hold, as there are too many possibilities which could scupper it in the 60 days where the U.S. is forced to negotiate with Tehran over its nuclear capabilities.
President Donald Trump has possibly signed off on the worst deal for him and the U.S. in the short history of his country with Iran, underlining how desperate he was to open the Straits of Hormuz and begin to reinstate world shipping, in the hope of lowering oil prices. According to reports on Sunday evening of June 14th, it would seem that he and Iran have agreed provisionally to a deal which many are already calling a "60-day memorandum," given its window of opportunity to seize the greater prize of getting Tehran to agree to scrapping its nuclear program.
But even if both sides agree and sign, the moment of relief may be ephemeral, as there are many obstacles ahead which can derail it at any time. The question of who is really running America's foreign policy - certainly in the Middle East - might be answered in the coming months, as Trump's relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu will be pivotal to any progress, with legions of analysts already pointing out that Bibi will break the ceasefire shortly after it has been signed. Even more likely would be a false flag attack designed to fool Trump that the Iranians are the ones who reneged on the deal and that he is duty-bound to join Israel in returning to war.
For the deal to hold, Israel has to stop fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is a very tall order given that this battle is the only pretext Bibi has to both stay in office and avoid corruption charges that could possibly put him in prison.
Yet the real problem with the deal is the lack of trust the Iranians have with Trump - and rightly so. They don't believe the deal can last, even if a second stage of it can be signed and they give up their rights to refine uranium. They have always believed that everything Trump does and says is a ruse, and that any peace deal signed off within the 60 days would only hold until the primaries, before Trump is seduced once again into going back to war. In the shorter term, though, it would appear that Iran has secured an extraordinary deal which could, if honoured, see them getting $300 billion USD in compensation for reconstruction and $24 billion USD being returned to them from seized money which the U.S. held. It's hard to imagine how Trump is going to spin this to the American public as a victory, as all the U.S. gets is lower fuel prices and the possibility of paying even more money to Iran to give up its nuclear program. Clearly, with the lack of trust which Iran has, it will ensure that the $324 billion USD is paid first before they really take the second part of the deal seriously. But with the Straits of Hormuz open, it will still be a relief to Trump that the global oil trade can begin to get back to normal, although experts have said this could take months. Convincing the international insurance brokers in London that all three parties - the U.S., Israel, and Iran - are going to keep the straits open will be hard, and it is expected that Trump's key associates will be using all of their might to lean on the London-based industry.
But the deal is terrible for America over the longer term, as it backs up Professor Bob Pope's analogy that Trump has made Iran the fourth world power. With the straits open and part of U.S. oil sanctions lifted, this is already axiomatic and clear to see.
And no one will see the significance of this more than the GCC elites, who will now look at Iran as a regional power to which they will have to show reverence, as being the winner of this latest so-called 'Iran war' with the U.S. and Israel. Before February 28th, Iran did not control the Straits of Hormuz and was seen as an equal rival militarily with the Gulf states, who had U.S. bases on their turf. Now Iran will take the money and look forward to its economy growing, while all along its own missile program will not only grow but advance. Iran more than ever will beef up its military even more, knowing that at any moment the West, once again, can indulge itself with 'regime change' fantasies or U.S. troops parachuting into Kharg Island. You know the sort of thing. Trump has literally done everything he can to boost Iran's economy, its regional military stranglehold, and its own regime's political strength domestically. The deal he is offering to sign with the money that he has put up is a seismic defeat on a scale which we have never seen before, although it could be compared to pulling out of Vietnam - which was both a military failure but also an economic one, as it drained the U.S. coffers and forced Nixon to decouple the dollar from gold. Trump hasn't simply stood down, but fallen to his knees, such is the scale of the failure to be duped by Israel in the first place and going ahead with the failed campaign which blew up in his face almost from day one. What we are now witnessing is a new low in modern U.S. history, as America turns a new corner in its journey away from its hegemonic leadership of the post-war years, and Trump will go down in the history books for being the bumbling buffoon whose ego was a catalyst to that inevitable process which some are simply calling 'the end of empire'.