Conrad Black: Is There Any Point In Trump Negotiating With Iran ?

 Any apparent agreement will be respected by America as an honorable and

 civilized country and ignored by the regime at Tehran.

The Middle East is in an unsustainable state of suspension as Iran and Oman prepare to announce an agreement governing the Hormuz Strait that is completely unacceptable to the international community and purports to convert a vital international waterway into a toll gate for themselves. It is now obvious that there’s no point negotiating with Iran and any apparent agreement will be respected by America as an honorable and civilized country and ignored by the regime at Tehran, whoever is leading it, as they are a squabbling riffraff of depraved gangsters who regard breaking agreements as one of their better tactics in their nearly half-century campaign of violent aggression.

The best available solution, as has been written in this space before, appears to be to maintain an absolute airtight blockade of Iran while escorting vessels through the middle part of the Hormuz Strait and responding to each act of Iranian aggression against international shipping in the Strait with ten times as great an application of force against important Iranian targets, as President Trump has already suggested. Iran must be disabused of the idea that it has any chance of winning a war with America and that there is any escape from the strangulation being exerted against them other it until it concedes the permanent abandonment of their nuclear military aspirations, the unconditionally open passage between the Persian Gulf and the oceans of the world, and the end of Iran’s terror campaigns, particularly Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

Short of that, America should keep its boots off the ground but on the windpipe of this ghastly regime until it surrenders. It is a howling mystery why matters have been allowed to drift as they have. The president, as he pursues a campaign against Iran that will not cost American lives or significant quantities of American ordnance, while throttling the insolent barbarians at Tehran to their knees, should impose reasonable rebates by the oil companies and on the sales taxes that make up most of the cost of gasoline in the United States, to ensure a thoroughly affordable price of gasoline and other petroleum products for as long as the impertinences in the Middle East continue.   

  It is impossible to imagine what motivated the president to choose a course in which he has neither made the full case for American actions in the Middle East nor enunciated a consistent policy and enacted it. He has denounced the Iranian leaders as “scum” with whom there is no point in making an agreement. Yet he has allowed this now very tedious farce to continue through the summer as if he wishes to pull the victorious rabbit from the hat close to the midterm election, a little like President Kennedy was able to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

The alliance formalized this week between Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, may have been an arrangement worth waiting for, as the president is correct not to try to take responsibility for reconstructing the government of Iran as President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to do in Iraq, and since this is a defensive alliance in which three parties are obliged to come to the aid of each other when they are attacked, this presumably means the end of Iran’s efforts to intimidate Saudi Arabia by attacking its oil refinement and shipping facilities. It is also the beginning of a postwar balance of power as the rich Saudis, the nuclear power Pakistan, and the always formidable Turks are more than a match for Iran, an ancient rival and frequent enemy of the Arabs, Turks, and Pakistanis. 

The third force in the region is Israel in alliance with the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain and heavily backed by America. It remains to be seen where Egypt would take its place in this equation. Yet it implies balance in strength against a chastened Iran.

It is conceivable, and would dumbfound the president’s critics, (not for the first time), that Mr. Trump has been treading water waiting for the emergence of this firewall against Iran before ending negotiations with Iran, and announcing that the Strait is open and that the blockade of Iran will continue until the three announced goals, (the abandonment of the Iranian nuclear program, the meddling in Strait of Hormuz, and the promotion of international terrorism) are unconditionally achieved. 

Whether this was the president’s plan or not, he should allege something like this and bring this annoying and disconcerting time of vacillation to a close.

https://www.newenglishreview.org/is-there-any-point-in-trump-negotiating-with-iran/