David Vance SubstackRead More
Let me start by making it abundantly clear that I am a Trump supporter and have been since 2015. I believe him to be a truly remarkable and consequential President. However he is not perfect and when he gets something wrong it seems right to call it out.
His handling of the Iran war started well but is finishing badly. Very badly.
You will recall when the Iranian people rose up against the regime in January he said all the right things on social media and encouraged their revolt. They were then killed by the murderous regime by the tens of thousands. (Remember, they were unarmed and thus vulnerable)
So what did he do?
Well, alongside Israel, he launched full scale war against the Iran regime on 28th February. Initially successful, it killed the head of the regime on Day One. It proceeded with great success, degrading the Iranian armed forces and it seemed that the regime would indeed topple.
However two things happened that seemed to cause Trump to wobble;
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The Iranian regime attacked oil-rich Gulf States, causing great alarm and economic damage.
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Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, spiking global energy prices.
I would have thought both these outcomes were entirely predictable and yet they seem to have blind sided the Trump regime.
Trump has originally claimed the war would last 4-6 weeks. However six weeks into the war, on April 7th with the regime still in place, a truce was announced for 14 days. That has continued since, with the occasional flare up, and as we prepare to enter June, all the talk is of a new 60 day ceasefire. And that’s a problem.
You see the wicked Tehran regime is playing for time. It understands it cannot militarily defeat the might of the USA, but it can place real pressure on oil prices and fear in the Gulf Nations that they could be attacked again. So we have a stale mate.
Trump keeps issuing bellicose social media posts, followed by talking up a possible deal, then NOTHING. It feels to me that time has run out, Trump wants to end this as best he can, the Iran Regime stays in place and it will rebuild in the time ahead, confident that it outsmarted the US administration. Again. Don’t forget that Obama also caved to it in 2015.
90 million Iranians feel betrayed by Trump. They believed his Truth Social posts. They thought that he would take down the regime that has held them hostage since 1979. He won’t. This one looks like it will just fade away into insignificance and Trump will have burned through a lot of political capital for no real result.
