How Trump used the Iran ceasefire to avoid a war he never planned

I tell anyone who will listen – yes. It can be a little tiresome that President Donald Trump didn’t bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.

I knew he would never succeed, even after he said he would destroy Iranian civilization and never recover. This was the last thing he wanted to do.

That’s why I was sure he would find a way out at the last moment.

And of course, he didn’t want to be seen as backing down from his increasingly dire threats.

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I received the White House email at 6:32 Tuesday night. Another delay followed after a series of previous delays. He would give the Iranians two more weeks.

I started posting like crazy, leaving TV and newspapers behind for a few minutes. But that was because my phone was right there. If I went to the fridge for a moment, I would come back to my laptop and discover that the world had changed.

Having followed Trump for 35 years, I knew in my gut that he did not want to go down in history as the man who destroyed an ancient civilization. His heart was never in it. It was bluster as a negotiation tactic.

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Still, he had painted himself into a corner. His former allies in the conservative media were blaming him. “This is a brazen presumption of genocide against the Iranian people, which would clearly be a war crime. Insanity,” Piers Morgan said.

Some Republican lawmakers said he went too far. Even the US Catholic Bishops have said that “the threat of destroying an entire civilization and the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified.”

No American president has ever said such words.

Trump had previously issued a blasphemous warning to Tehran, urging it to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. (Benoit Tessier/Reuters)

So I thought the only card Trump had left was delay. And that’s exactly what he did. At the request of Pakistan, which mediated the so-called talks, the president agreed to a pause in hostilities.

So, according to the statement I received, “I agree to the suspension of Iranian bombings and attacks for two weeks, subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s acceptance of the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz. This will be a bilateral ceasefire! The reason we are doing this is because we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives…”

It’s a shaky ceasefire, of course, as Iran fired a missile at Israel minutes after it was announced, and Israel said its ground attack on Lebanon by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah after the rocket launch was not covered.

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In fact, yesterday, as AP confirmed, Iranian state media announced that they had closed the Hormuz crossing again, citing Israeli attacks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a post that the Trump administration “must choose between a ceasefire or a continuing war over Israel, and it cannot have both.”

We learned from New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan that Bibi Netanyahu persuaded Trump to go to war by saying it would be quick and would topple the regime. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called it “absurd.” Marco Rubio said this was bullshit. JD Vance was against the war.

And this is a fascinating sidebar. Trump insults Haberman, who published his biography in 2022, for no apparent reason. Still, he gave an hour-long interview in the Oval Office for their upcoming book, “Regime Change,” from which a Times article was excerpted.

When it comes to the president’s current stance, he’s not held back by murky details. He told Sky News it was a “complete victory”, not just militarily but “in another sense as well”.

Trump was speaking to Fox opinion host Laura Ingraham on the phone shortly before her appearance, and Ingraham described her as a “cautious optimist” and said: “Iran certainly seems to have blinked.”

Looking through the fog of war, what did Trump actually accomplish, other than pushing the markets up by about 3 percent?

“We didn’t achieve any of those goals,” said Lawrence Jones, co-host of yesterday’s “Fox & Friends,” a generally Trump-friendly program.

dismantling the nuclear facilities (“that hasn’t happened”), ending uranium enrichment (“they’re still enriching”), transferring uranium stockpiles out of Iran (“that hasn’t happened”), accepting international inspections (“they’re still not willing to do that”), and suspending the ballistic missile program (“they’re still firing them”). Jones also criticized Iran for offers that the US side would never accept.

WHY IS TRUMP FACED WITH THE ANGRY DECISION TO REMOVE IRAN’S OIL SUPPLY IF HE CANNOT GET A DEAL?

Fox host Harris Faulkner said yesterday: “This is the least armistice-like truce anyone could have expected.” “The Iranians don’t seem very serious about this ceasefire agreement,” said Trey Yingst, Fox’s chief foreign correspondent.

And therein lies the problem. The two countries are very far from each other. This work, which is about a strategic framework, documents this in terms of detail. Iran will never agree to give up its nuclear program, regardless of any presidential declarations or Mission Accomplished banners.

The Iranian rhetoric, apparently unseen by Trump, says that the United States should leave the region, give Iran sole control of the strait and grant it the right to nuclear enrichment.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Iran’s 10-point plan was “fundamentally frivolous, unacceptable and completely rejected.” (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Don’t take my word for it on this one. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters yesterday that Iran’s 10-point plan was “fundamentally frivolous, unacceptable and completely rejected.”

Look, if all goes well, most people will remember Trump making the harsh threats that led to the lifting of the Iran blockade: “Open the throat, you crazy bitches.” So his Madman routine worked against the world’s leading terrorist state, which has been slaughtering Americans, Arabs and its own people for 47 years.

But things can always go wrong faster than a speeding drone. It is the Middle East.

Whatever you think of Trump, his choice of war, his apocalyptic rhetoric, or his entire presidency, he is not crazy. He followed a similar tack in the tariff fight, threatening to impose steep taxes before reaching a compromise at the 11th hour. As he says, he is a deal maker. That’s what he does.

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Most media accounts portray Trump as subservient or backing down. That’s a fair comment.

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But what actually happened is that Trump found a way to avoid doing what he would never actually do.