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I’ve been telling anyone who would listen… yeah. I may be quite boring: that President Donald Trump would not bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.
Even after he said he would destroy Iran’s civilization and it would never recover, I knew he would never carry it out. That was the last thing I wanted to do.
So I was confident that I would find some kind of last-minute exit.
And of course, he didn’t want to be seen to back down from his increasingly dire threats.
WHY TRUMP’S WAR SPEECH FAILED: DECLARING VICTORY BUT STILL BOMBING IRAN BACK TO THE ‘STONE AGE’
It seemed pretty evident that President Donald Trump was not going to follow through on his most recent threats to relentlessly bomb Iran. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
I received the email from the White House at 6:32 Tuesday night. There it was, another delay, after a series of previous delays. It would give the Iranians two more weeks.
I started posting like crazy, beating television by a couple of minutes and newspapers by more. But that’s only because my phone was there. If I had gone to the refrigerator for a moment, I would have returned to my laptop and discovered that the world had changed.
I knew deep down, having covered Trump for 35 years, that he didn’t want to go down in history as the man who wiped out an ancient civilization. His heart was never in it. It was bragging as a negotiating tactic.
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Still, he had painted himself into a corner. Former allies in the conservative media denounced him. “This is a blatant pre-admission of genocide against the Iranian people, which would obviously be a war crime. Crazy,” said Piers Morgan.
Some Republican lawmakers said he had gone too far. Even the Catholic bishops of the United States said that “the threat to destroy an entire civilization and intentional attacks on civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified.”
No American president had ever uttered such words.
Trump previously issued an expletive-filled warning to Tehran, urging them to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. (Benoît Tessier/Reuters)
So I thought the only card Trump had left to play was delay. And that’s exactly what he did. At the request of Pakistan, which has been an intermediary in the so-called talks, the president agreed to a pause in the hosts.
That is, according to the statement I received, “Subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the FULL, IMMEDIATE and SECURE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack by Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double-sided CEASE FIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and surpassed all military objectives…”
It’s a shaky ceasefire, to be sure, with Iran launching missiles at Israel minutes after its announcement, and Israel saying that its ground invasion of Lebanon, following rocket fire by Iranian proxy Hezbollah, is not covered.
WHY TRUMP AND IRAN LOOK LIGHT YEARS AWAY ON ANY POSSIBLE DEAL TO END THE WAR
In fact, yesterday, as confirmed by the AP, Iranian state media said they had closed Hormuz again, citing the Israeli attacks.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a message that the Trump administration “must choose between a ceasefire or a continued war through Israel, and “it cannot have both.”
We learned from New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan that Bibi Netanyahu convinced Trump to enter the war by saying it would be quick and would topple the regime. Gene. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called this a “farce.” Marco Rubio said it was nonsense. JD Vance was against the war.
And that’s a fascinating sidebar. Trump has been insulting Haberman, who published a biography of him in 2022, for no apparent reason. However, he gave an hour-long interview in the Oval Office for his upcoming book, “Regime Change,” from which the Times article was taken.
As for the president’s current stance, well, the murky details don’t stop him. He told Sky News that this was a “complete victory”, not just in military terms but “in every other sense too”.
Trump was on the phone with Fox Opinion host Laura Ingraham shortly before she went on the air, and she quoted him as “cautiously optimistic,” saying, “It sure looks like Iran blinked.”
What did Trump really accomplish, looking through the fog of war, other than sending markets soaring nearly 3 percent?
On yesterday’s “Fox & Friends” show, normally a pro-Trump show, co-host Lawrence Jones said, “We haven’t met any of these goals.”
Dismantle nuclear facilities (“that hasn’t happened”), end uranium enrichment (“they’re still getting enriched”), transfer uranium stockpiles out of Iran (“that hasn’t happened”), agree to international inspections (“they’re still not willing to do that”), and suspend the ballistic missile program (“they’re still firing them”). Jones also criticized Iran for proposals that would never be accepted by the US side.
WHY IS TRUMP FACEING AN AGONING DECISION ABOUT ELIMINATION OF IRAN’S OIL SUPPLY IF HE CAN’T GET A DEAL?
Fox host Harris Faulkner said yesterday: “I think this is the least ceasefire-like ceasefire anyone could have anticipated.” Fox’s chief foreign correspondent, Trey Yingst, said: “The Iranians don’t seem very serious about this ceasefire agreement.”
And therein lies the problem. The two countries remain far apart. This strategic framework issue simply disguises it in a sense of delving into the details. Iran will never agree to abandon its nuclear program, regardless of any presidential pronouncements or Mission Accomplished banners.
The Iranian speech, which was apparently not the one seen by Trump, says the United States should leave the region, give Iran exclusive control of the strait and recognize its right to nuclear enrichment.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Iran’s 10-point plan “fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely out of the question.” (Saúl Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Don’t take my word for it. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters yesterday that Iran’s 10-point plan was “fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely ruled out.”
Look, if somehow this all works out, what most people will remember is that Trump made harsh threats that led to a deal in which the Iranian blockade was lifted (“Open the damn strait, you crazy shits”). In other words, his Madman routine worked against the world’s leading terrorist state, which has been killing Americans, Arabs and its own people for 47 years.
But things can always fall apart faster than a speeding drone. It’s the Middle East.
No matter what you think of Trump, his election war, his apocalyptic rhetoric or his entire presidency, he is not crazy. He followed a similar path in his tariff crusade, threatening draconian taxes before reaching last-minute compromises. As he himself says, he is a negotiator. That’s what it does.
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Most media outlets portray Trump as either conceding or backing down. That’s a fair comment.
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But what really happened is that Trump found a way to avoid doing what he was never really going to do.