Trump unilaterally pauses the war that he alone started
The U.S. decision to halt the bombing of Iran is a reminder that America alone had the power to start it
After threatening the total destruction of "a whole civilization" — an action, alone, that would prompt any civilized nation to remove him from power — Donald Trump ended his war with Iran, at least for now, not with a mushroom cloud but a timid little whimper.
An "historic and crushing defeat" of the U.S. and Israel is how Iran's Supreme National Security Council spun a two-week ceasefire that ends more than a month of bombing in exchange, reportedly, for nothing at all. "Iran has achieved a great victory and has forced criminal America to accept its own 10-point proposal."
Trump, following weeks of shifting rationales for the 40-day assault, from outright ending the Islamic Republic to destroying its nuclear enrichment program, appeared to acknowledge his total capitulation in a post on Truth Social.
"A big day for World Peace!" he wrote. "There will be lots of positive action! Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process."
The problem with having a mercurial and demented leader of the free world is that it is never clear what will happen tomorrow. In 14 days, Trump could well pivot back to promises of genocide. Right now, though, with Iran continuing to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, and with it control over the global economy, few can claim it looks like victory for the United States — or Israel, which appears bound by a ceasefire that it had no role in negotiating.
"There has never been such a diplomatic disaster in all our history," Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said on social media following news of the deal. "Israel wasn't even at the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security," he wrote, adding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had "failed diplomatically, failed strategically and did not meet any of the goals he himself set."
Charles R. Davis
Put another way: Israel does not control American foreign policy, as much as it may wish that to be true. That's an important fact to remember as, even just hours before the ceasefire was announced, there appeared to be efforts underway to blame America's strategic defeat on its far less powerful ally in the region. A report in The New York Times detailed how Netanyahu had presented Trump with a case for war that pointed "to near-certain victory," with Iran's ballistic missile program destroyed and the country so weakened it couldn't dare threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
"Sounds good to me," the Times paraphrased Trump as saying, the report identifying Vice President JD Vance as the "stark exception" when it came to support for the war, most others having "deferred to the president's instincts" (a clue, perhaps, as to who leaked this version of events and why).
The effort to attribute the war to Israel started before the war even began. A Feb. 25 report in Politico, citing two people familiar with White House discussions, revealed that Trump's top advisers believed "the politics are a lot better" if Israel were seen as acting first against Iran and compelling an American response. When the war began, that is indeed how Secretary of State Marco Rubio spun U.S. intervention: as Trump responding to Iranian retaliation brought about by Israeli attacks.
Critics of the administration, some good faith and some just antisemitic, have swallowed this explanation in furtherance of their own critiques of Israel and U.S. support for a rogue nation that did not just threaten a genocide but carried one out.
But even accepting the Times report at face value, the lesson is not that Washington's wars are dictated by Tel Aviv but that only Donald Trump was stupid and arrogant enough to buy what they were selling. Israel has agitated for U.S. action against Iran for decades — after 9/11, it wanted George W. Bush to attack Tehran, not Baghdad — but it never found a willing partner until a plurality of U.S. voters decided to return the worst person in America to the White House.
The Israeli government has earned its fair share of criticism. But in the weeks ahead, let us all be mindful: it was the U.S. government, controlled by Trump and with nary a word of criticism from anyone in his cabinet, that made the decision to commit American forces to an attack Iran — to bomb schools, kill children and threaten the all-out destruction of a civilization. Don't help anyone in this administration blame someone else.
