Donald Trump's perfidy and Israel's veto delay Iran peace deal

Donald Trump put the Abraham Accords on the negotiating table, but conveniently forgot to add two other related critical templates of regional security: A nuclear-free West Asia, and Israel, for its genocide and apartheid against the Palestinians

The backtracking by United States President Donald Trump from his Truth Social post on Saturday — that Washington and Tehran had “largely negotiated” a peace deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz — to a second post a few hours later not to rush into a deal, and that the US’ blockade of the strait would “remain in force and effect until an agreement is reached, certified and signed” raises eyebrows, given his flip-flops under pressure from Israel.

Subsequent leaks disclosed that in a conference call on Saturday with the Arab leaders of West Asia and Pakistan, Trump had insisted that their normalisation with Israel (Abraham Accords) should be tied to any broader Iran settlement.

Trump’s bad faith and duplicity at once surges into view, if only because he should have as well put on the negotiating table two other related critical templates of regional security — namely, West Asia as a nuclear-free zone and secondly, Israel as a nation practising genocide and apartheid against the Palestinians, which is the root cause of the West Asian crisis.

Would Trump or his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, dare to make an appeal to Israel? After all, security is indivisible. All other regional states are living under the shadow of a nuclear Israel; and, they all share the humiliation and suffering of the Palestinian people. No, Trump and Rubio dare not, because of their dependence on the ‘goodwill’ of the Jewish lobby to advance their political career.

Curiously, a highly-placed Israeli source who spoke with Reuters over the weekend disclosed that “In last night’s [Saturday] conversation with President Trump, the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] still emphasised that Israel will maintain freedom of action against threats in all areas, including Lebanon, and President Trump reiterated and supported this principle.”

Israel acts the John Wayne way most of the time, and a troubling thought arises that Israel is already attaching caveats to any deal with Iran. Clearly, it considers itself to be unaccountable to any deal. Can a deal survive under such circumstances? There should be no doubt that Lebanon will remain Israel’s hunting ground, no matter what the deal may stipulate.

What is happening around the negotiating table currently can only be compared to the cauterisation of a 47-year-old wound that was neglected and got infected with gangrene, which threatens to go into sepsis, a life-threatening condition. It is not going to be a permanent cure. Its shelf-life is going to be decided by Israel. Trump’s perfidy — two steps forward on Saturday, one step backwards four hours later — could be charitably interpreted only as an act of prevarication to ensure that the Iran deal gets a soft landing while knowing fully well that it will be dead on arrival.

Evidently, the powerful Israel Lobby is up in arms that Trump is closing the door to the military option to complete Iran’s destruction. Trump was in such a tearing hurry hardly a week ago to frogmarch Iran, but he wrote in the second post: “The negotiations are proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner, and I have informed my representatives not to rush into a deal in that time is on our side. The [Hormuz] Blockade will remain in full force and effect until an agreement is reached, certified and signed. Both sides [US and Iran] must take their time and get it right. There can be no mistakes!” The only new thing is that with a view to appeasing Tehran, Trump has now begun calling that country somewhat respectfully by its real name: ‘Islamic Republic of Iran’.

Alarm bells must be ringing in Tehran about Trump’s flip-flops. What is the certainty he won’t seek to re-negotiate the deal? There are several difficult issues where Netanyahu is unlikely to green-light what the negotiators are discussing. The main deal breaker is going to be Tehran’s core demand regarding the lifting of sanctions, which Israel regards as a strategic defeat, inevitably leading to Iran’s integration into the world market and enabling it to optimally tap into its vast mineral resources to boost its income and economic growth, and take its due place as the region’s most powerful nation.

According to Reuters, the proposed framework is expected to unfold in three stages: one, formally ending the war; two, resolving the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz; and, three, launching a 30-day window for negotiations on a broader agreement, which can be extended. Now, this is a string of sequential events known in trade diplomacy as the ‘single undertaking’ — namely, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Israel gets ample opportunity here to torpedo the deal and / or put spokes in the wheel of nuclear negotiations, which are sure to be spread over an extended period of several weeks (or even month.).

Meanwhile, if the Republicans lose their current wafer-thin majority of a single vote in the Senate in the midterm elections in November, which cannot be ruled out, all hell breaks loose. In 2015, faced with the prospect of a rejection of the JCPOA by the Congress, Barack Obama chose not to follow through on the agreement’s commitment to lift Iran sanctions. Trump faces the same predicament.

But Iran won’t be taken for a ride a second time — especially, after Israel’s two wars ended up strengthening Iran’s deterrence posture, exposing Netanyahu’s bravado to confront Iran, and severely damaging the US’ global standing and aura of invincibility in the West Asian region.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei on Tuesday said in a statement on the occasion of the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage that the nations and lands in the region will no longer shield US bases.

Khamenei noted, “The depth and scope of disavowal from America and the Zionist regime will go beyond the ritual of disavowal during the Hajj season and Miqat, and in different parts of Iran and the world, and after this blessed day, ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’ will be the common slogan of the Islamic nation and the oppressed of the world, especially the youth.”

Trump’s theory of power — “We live in a world that is government by strength, that is governed by force, that is government by power,” as Stephen Miller, the ideologue of Trump presidency, framed it in a famous CNN interview in January — has met with an eloquent rebuttal in the Iran war. The US is yet to realise that violence is not a form of power but its opposite. For Iran, power is collective, consensual, and relational.

M K Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.