The Iran ceasefire is a stunning defeat for militarism |
Despite having lasted only six weeks, Donald Trump’s war with Iran was somehow shaping up to be the worst foreign policy decision of a short twenty-first century full of them, a ballooning disaster on almost every level, for almost everyone involved, that we should all be thankful now has a chance to end. Whether it actually does, unfortunately, is up to a lot more than the fickle and easily distracted president. Trump’s announcement of a two-week ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday and coming negotiations for a permanent settlement of hostilities was a rare acknowledgment of reality by the president: that the unappealing option of cutting and running while failing to achieve any of the goals he originally set — in fact, making several of the problems the war was meant to solve much worse — is still by far the best option on a menu of garbage. This utterly pointless war has been so strategically and politically disastrous for both Trump’s presidency and the country that it effectively leaves him with no other reasonable choice. The fact that the president seemingly agreed to use Iran’s ten-point proposal and not his own fifteen-point set of maximalist demands as the basis for talks is a quiet acknowledgment of the war’s failure as a policy choice. As hard as this course of action might be for Trump to swallow, the alternatives are much worse. Extracting Iran’s uranium is a dangerous fantasy. If you need proof, look at what a debacle rescuing just one man from deep in the country became for US forces. As his hurricane of contradictory public statements about the Strait of Hormuz’s closure suggests, Trump can’t militarily reopen the strait, where ships can easily be threatened and harassed by the thousands of cheap drones Iran can make each month. Holding this card, Iran’s leaders refuse to capitulate in spite of the immense punishment Trump is inflicting on the country, and his options for escalating that punishment are all unpalatable. | 
