Once upon a time during the heyday of the Vietnam War, Johnny Carson had William F. Buckley on the Tonight Show as a guest. For his opening question, Johnny asked Buckley something to this effect. United States Ambassador to Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge says that the war may not come to a defintive conclusion, but that it may just fade away. What do you think?
In his slowest British drawl, Buckley replied: “I’m afraid Ambassador Lodge confuses the Vietnam war with his own political career.”
Will the Iran conflict just fade away? President Trump has tired of it. He has harassed Israel into giving up its offensive against Hezbollah in exchange for another deal with the mythical government of Lebanon. Trump’s object at this point seems to be to come away with a memorandum of understanding that would allow him to declare victory, and yet the Iranians won’t accommodate his wish for a paper he can wave around.
What is not going on here? Trump has tired of the whole thing. He knows that he risks being mocked for the terms Iran requires to give him his piece of paper. He must draw the line at opening the cash spigots to get the IRGC back on its feet. He doesn’t want to look like Obama.
In the summer of 2007 I met Khaled Abu Toameh in Jerusalem. He is a knowledgeable observer and easily the bravest journalist I have ever met. In his Gatestone column today, he writes (links in original):
Iran has been dictating to Washington when and with whom it will negotiate. Washington apparently never insisted upon face-to-face negotiations with Iran. Why not? By discontinuing talks with the US, Iran also succeeded in maneuvering the Trump Administration into two huge victories for the current regime. First, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out in “Iran Gets Trump to Rescue Hezbollah,” US President Donald J. Trump demanded that Israel stop defending itself against attacks from another proxy of Iran: Hezbollah in Lebanon. Second, Iran — as a result of a much-publicized shouting — match between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — masterfully created “daylight” between its two main adversaries: Israel and the United States.
Even though Iran’s weapons have been decimated, the current regime, run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has reportedly been using its leisurely, ever-extending ceasefire to rebuild them. The IRGC has been calling the shots and has stood up to the “Great Satan,” the US. No wonder the regime thinks it is winning.
To put it another way, what is going on here? There’s no harm in asking. Victor Davis Hanson is also trying to figure it. Among other things, he observes:
The United States is now weighing two choices. One is to end the war and get some sort of deal, assured that it has already done close to a decade’s worth of damage to Iran, and perhaps more if sanctions persist.
The United States would seek to negotiate an exit that lowers oil prices and staves off political catastrophe in the November midterms. America’s anxious Gulf allies might support—or even now insist upon—such a negotiated settlement, assuming that Iran has been sufficiently defanged in the short term, that their vulnerable oil infrastructure remains secure for the time being, that anti-Iran sentiment in the Arab world remains strong, and that the Iranian people will grow increasingly restive if the regime continues to ignore their poverty and instead chooses to rebuild its shattered arsenals and revive its bankrupt Arab terrorist proxies abroad.
Yet the long-term limitations of such a limited and transitory victory are twofold. First, Iran’s regime would likely consolidate its hold on power, claiming that its reputation abroad has grown, and that its mere survival should be seen as an incredible victory.
Secondly, Iran would likely rebuild and wait to go nuclear until the arrival of a president akin to Obama or Biden, convinced then that there would be no danger of another American intervention and that the new American Left sympathizes with Iran’s anti-Israel agenda and therefore its nuclear aspirations. The regime has good reason, given the current new Socialist-Islamist Democrat Party, that a future Democrat president would revive Obama’s bankrupt visions of empowering a Shia crescent from Tehran to Yemen to “balance” Israel and the Gulf monarchies.
In any event, however, Iran does not seem inclined to give Trump a deal that would allow him to put a happy face on the resolution. That brings us back to Khaled Abu Toameh’s proposition that the regime thinks it is winning.
