Two cheers for President Trump’s peace deal with Iran – Orange County Register
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We’ll have to see how it all works out. And the whole thing could fall apart with new attacks from either side.
But the Memorandum of Understanding President Donald Trump signed with Iran on Wednesday looks to be a major step toward peace throughout the Middle East. From the beginning on Feb. 28, I strongly criticized him for attacking Iran. But I have to commend him for ending the war as quickly as he did. Best not to get involved in a bad war. Second best is to get out before it becomes a debacle.
Typically, he claimed it was a “major victory.” But he also warned he wanted to prevent a “world depression.”
We’re all feeling that part of it at the gas pump. Fertilizer prices also soared, from $400 a ton to $700 at the beginning of the war, raising food prices at your grocery store. Helium prices doubled, affecting everything from microchips to MRI machines.
Even as Trump was signing the MOU, Apple CEO Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal of his products, “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable.”
The economic crisis is still unfolding and will hit Trump and Republicans hard on Nov. 3, Election Day. A major 2008-style recession was possible had the war continued.
But let’s look at the big picture. Like it or not, Iran has emerged as a major nation able to defend itself against the combined forces of the United States and Israel. Even without an atomic bomb, it developed the rough equivalent as a deterrent: First, missiles and drones that cannot be stopped, and can hit any target in the region, including U.S. bases and ships, the Gulf States and Israel. Second, the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and, with it, the global economy.
All this was achieved because of recent developments in military technology that produced highly accurate drones and ballistic missiles. The National reported Chinese and Russian guidance systems gave Iran’s Shahed drones and ballistic missiles “pinpoint” accuracy.
Ynet Global, an Israeli news site, reported even after a month of bombing, Iran still possessed a large stockpile of weapons, because its missiles and military assets are hidden in extensive underground “missile cities.” The Yazd base in central Iran was built about 1,640 feet beneath a mountain, “carved into one of the hardest types of rock on Earth, Shirkuh granite.” Even America’s GBU-57 bunker-buster bomb would have trouble blasting through.
America’s military constraints also became evident. Even such war hawks as Mark Levin, in attacking the MOU, conceded there couldn’t be a ground war, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We just don’t have enough troops.
And we don’t have the ammo. A May 27 analysis by the hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies found, “The 39-day bombing and air defense campaign against Iran depleted inventories of key U.S. munitions stockpiles.” For example, Patriot and other air-defense missiles will need three years to be replenished.
The study warned the depletion “created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict.”
Then there’s the American people. We didn’t like this war from the beginning. We didn’t like the higher prices it brought, either. The price tag could be at least $113 billion, according to the Iran War Cost Tracker. In addition to the economic cost, it damaged our military, including the deaths of 13 troops.
But it also distracted us from dealing with serious domestic problems. That’s what Trump’s 2024 America First campaign was about. Whether or not you agree with his positions on immigration, taxes, regulations and so on, his second administration, with a Republican Congress, was supposed to work through those challenges.
Now we have another election. Democrats likely will take charge of the House of Representatives, possibly the Senate, and advance their domestic program. It’s too bad we didn’t get to see what a peacetime Republican program looked like.
It seems every post-World War II generation has to learn the limits of American power. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran. All disasters.
As Peter, Paul and Mary sang in the 1960s, “When will they ever learn?”
John Seiler is on the Southern California News Group’s Editorial Board
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