Trump’s Iran War Is a Pivotal ‘FAFO’ Failure on the World Stage

Trump’s Iran War Is a Pivotal ‘FAFO’ Failure on the World Stage

President Trump says the war in Iran was won in the first hour, but we haven’t won enough, and we don’t want to leave early as the country’s regime shows no sign of falling. (Furthermore, Iran now has every incentive to continue to wreak havoc across the region.) He’s in way over his head and can only make things worse by putting the world’s access to oil in greater peril.

This is an unnecessary fight from which we gain nothing. And if Plan B is getting allies to send ships into the Strait of Hormuz and risk getting blown up, or for China to join a coalition of the willing to protect the oil lanes, it will take more than Trump issuing mafia-like threats to make it happen.

It’s a moment for diplomacy, but the president is fundamentally unqualified in this vein.

This is not our war. We didn’t start it,” Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius has said, rejecting Trump’s request for backup. Argentina, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan have all followed in short order. “(Does) Donald Trump expect a handful or two handfuls of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz what the powerful U.S. Navy cannot do?” Pistorius questioned.

Every major conflict the U.S. was involved in over the past 25 years, the president made an attempt to build a coalition and build international legitimacy,” Damian Murphy, head of the national security and international policy team at the Center for American Progress (CAP), told the Daily Beast. “The fact that Trump did none of that is a strong signal of weakness.”

It was just a month ago that Trump enraged many of these allies with his absurd threats of seizing Greenland. “To expect them to step up and support war in Iran is the height of arrogance,” Murphy continued. .........Read More