Trump threatened to strike Iran last night and seize its oil industry for himself, then called everything off five hours later, citing a peace agreement nobody has signed. The stock market celebrates, the war remains without an end.
Once again, Donald Trump has called off a planned strike on Iran at the last possible moment, barely five hours after threatening to hit the country very hard that same night and eventually take full control of its oil and gas industry. It is the latest case of whiplash caused by the president himself, and by now it already has a name, because people have begun mocking that this man always backs down at the last second. On Thursday afternoon, he announced the cancellation, citing progress toward an agreement.
Trump: “We will hit Iran hard today - unless you do not turn on your television.”
Because talks with the Islamic Republic of Iran had been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved there, he wrote on his platform Truth Social, he, as President of the United States of America, had canceled the strikes and bombings scheduled for that evening. The naval blockade, however, would remain in full force until this transaction was completed, and the time and place of signing would be announced shortly. This is how a man announces peace that no one has yet signed, offering the when and where of the signature as a promise, as though he were announcing the opening of a business.
The markets did not hesitate. The S&P 500 surged immediately after the post appeared, as if a social media entry itself had become peace.
Five hours earlier, the same man had written something entirely different, in all capital letters, that he would hit Iran very hard that night and eventually take complete control of its oil and gas. That would mean seizing Kharg Island and other energy facilities, and that in turn could place American soldiers on Iranian soil, with everything that would mean ahead of the midterm elections in November. He explained that he had spared the oil facilities so far out of decency, while at the same time pressuring Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Decency, coming from someone who had just considered taking another country’s oil industry, is a word worth letting sit on the tongue.
Many remained skeptical about what would come next in a war that still has no end. These were the most dysfunctional negotiations he had ever seen when it came to ending a war, said Leon Panetta, former defense secretary and intelligence chief under Obama, speaking to CNN. One could trust neither what the president says nor what the regime says. The whole thing had become a Kabuki dance, a staged performance with fixed movements, and no one really knew who was up and who was down.
Trump’s earlier threats followed a series of exchanges between both countries after the downing of an American helicopter and his openly stated frustration with the peace talks. The speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, an important figure in the negotiations, warned against such threats. False strategies and reckless decisions push the entire board backward, he wrote. They cause energy systems and markets to explode and create an endless swamp in which everyone becomes trapped for years. You will encounter a different Iran, he added.
Whether Iran will ultimately sign any agreement, nobody knows. Trump, however, claims that the talks and the final points have been approved in principle and in every detail by all parties involved, by the United States and Israel, by Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and many others. Half the world is said to have agreed to peace, only no one has signed it.
It is the return of the same pattern. A threat in capital letters in the afternoon, a cancellation in the evening, and in between no event except the talking itself. The president announces peace before it exists, just as he loves inflation he cannot defeat. And he moves oil through a strait he says is closed. The word always stands where action should be, and the world adjusts accordingly, markets rise, headlines turn, until by evening nothing has happened and by morning everything begins again. Perhaps that is the actual strategy of these times, which is no strategy at all, that a war stays alive because nothing said about it has to be true, and that a man who wanted to strike very hard tonight ends up reliably hitting only one thing: the next headline.
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