The End of Trump’s War in Iran: Between Farce and Strategic Disaster

Tuesday, April 7, Donald Trump finally found the way out he had been desperately seeking for several weeks.

That Tuesday, at 8:06 a.m., Trump issued this apocalyptic message: if Iran did not reopen the strait before the expiration of his ultimatum at 8 p.m. that same day, then “an entire civilization would die that very night and no one would be able to bring it back.”

Miracle: 10 hours and 26 minutes later, the President of the United States announced that, thanks to the mediation of the Pakistani president, a fifteen-day truce had been concluded on the basis of a 10-point plan presented by the leaders in Tehran—a plan considered by Washington as a “working basis on which one can negotiate,” the essential point being that the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened.

The problem is that what Trump will strive to “sell” first to his domestic public, then to the rest of the world, as the triumph of American military power under his leadership—“a total and complete victory. 100 percent. There is no doubt about it!”—barely conceals a strategic disaster of historic proportions for America and for the West as a whole.

First, a disaster for the unfortunate Iranian people, for whom this war was supposed to provide the opportunity to overthrow the dictatorial regime of the mullahs. Five weeks ago, Trump was calling on the Iranian population to rise up against the bloody dictatorship that had held it hostage for 47 years. But miracle: for Trump, the new Iranian leaders are “different, smarter, less radical than their predecessors.” In short, regime change has already taken place. For Iranians, unfortunately, reality will be quite different. The regime, now in the hands of the Revolutionary Guards—more radical still than the clerics—has shown that it is capable of absorbing 13,000 strikes from the world’s leading military power and surviving. It emerges from this ordeal strengthened and more vengeful than ever, determined to eliminate any form of dissent.

Also a disaster on the other key issues at the origin of the conflict. First, the nuclear question: the Iranian plan retained by Trump as a “basis for negotiation” includes all of Iran’s demands over the past 20 years—the right to enrich uranium, the refusal of inspections by the Vienna agency and of sanctions, not to mention the 450 kilograms of military-grade uranium still in Iran.

Likewise, the plan excludes any limitation on Iran’s impressive missile program, as well as on the military support provided by Iran to its various “proxies.” On the contrary, the Iranians are demanding an end to the Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

More than that, the Iranian plan calls for the withdrawal of all American forces from the region, the closure of their bases, and the payment of war reparations…

As for Hormuz, the other weapon of mass disruption now in Iran’s hands thanks to the war (!), according to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the strait will remain under the control of the “Iranian armed forces,” who will decide who may pass and at what price…

On all these points, it is more than doubtful that the negotiations to be held in Islamabad in the coming days will make it possible to return to the American demands at the outset of the conflict: abandonment of any military nuclear program under international control, limitation of the missile program, an end to support for proxies, and, of course, full freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz…

Beyond that, however, the consequences of the conflict will be even worse: first, because Trump’s excesses, his constant reversals, and his threats to eradicate an entire civilization have deeply damaged—indeed, ruined—the image of the United States as the guarantor and protector of an international order based on a minimum of law. Trump’s world is nothing more than a jungle ruled by the law of the strongest and by the whims of its leader. For many countries around the world, including among European allies, America is no longer the solution: it is part of the problem; it is the problem.

Second disastrous consequence, in the longer term: the end of the security system in the Middle East. The Arab monarchies in particular, which since 1945 had based their security on the United States in exchange for oil, have abruptly discovered that they are completely vulnerable to strikes from their Iranian neighbor and that, in fact, Iran now dominates the entire region. America was unable to defeat Iran, whose strategy of asymmetric warfare has, in effect, prevailed. And the skyscrapers of Dubai are nothing more than mirages set upon the sand… As for the Europeans, they were entirely absent, and the Arabs will remember it.

Third disastrous consequence, in the long term: the implosion of the Atlantic bond. For the first time, all Europeans refused to associate themselves with Trump’s war, asserting the right not only to be neutral—thus spectators of a history that nonetheless concerns them above all—but also “the privilege of the non-combatant,” in the words of Peter Sloterdijk. A privilege that ultimately condemns Europe to submission.

All in all, if, at the end of the negotiations, the Iran war were to conclude with the maintenance of a vengeful and nuclear regime in Tehran, controlling the jugular of the global economy, along with the breakdown of the security pact in the region and the implosion of the Atlantic alliance, then the consequences of this war will be extremely grave and potentially historic.