Trump must own the Gulf crisis

As tensions in the Persian Gulf continue to simmer and the international community awaits the next move by either Iran or the United States with mounting trepidation, it should never be forgotten that this is a totally manufactured crisis.

It is a confrontation that has resulted from the vanity of a United States President who has a total disregard for the norms of international diplomacy or indeed for the safety and wellbeing of any region or nation outside the boundaries of his country.

Even those who have sought to stand with the US during President Donald Trump’s, Administration, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, will be the first to bear the brunt should his mistaken and destructive foreign designs plunge the Middle East into conflict.

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, was working well in the view of all its other partners — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the European Union and of course Iran itself .

Yet in May 2018 Trump condemned the agreement as the “worst the US had ever entered into”, a “disaster”, and “terrible”. How is it that there could be such a disconnect between his view and that of all the other partners?

Sadly, the answer has nothing to do with the deal itself, but with Trump’s hatred of his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Trump came into office with the intention of erasing Obama’s legacy. He began with the Affordable Healthcare Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, only for him to be thwarted by members of his own party, who declined to participate in its dismembering.

With good reason: History has many examples of advances in healthcare quickly becoming so popular with the public that elected members dare not tamper with it for fear of retribution at the polls.

Like it or not Obamacare is here to stay — the only possible changes would involve its extension.

Trump then moved on to Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, the Iran Nuclear Deal. This was an easier path as there would be no significant opposition among his supporter base.

In fact, withdrawing from the deal and reimposing sanctions worked well with older Trump voters who remembered the 1979 hostage crisis and the chants of “bomb, bomb Iran” and “turn it into a parking lot”.

Those who are younger will have heard that Iranians call the US “the Great Satan” and want to “drive Israel into the sea”.

The era of that explosive language out of Teheran was beginning to fade and Iranians were hoping for better things in the wake of the nuclear deal — until Trump virtually shut it down with his renewed sanctions.

The US’s economic might, which Trump has threatened to use ruthlessly against any organisation, wherever it is based, that tries to break his sanctions, has meant Iran is effectively cut off from the other deal partners, even as they continue to try and keep the agreement alive.

As a result Tehran says there is little point in keeping its end of the bargain, and will start to enrich uranium over the limits imposed and agreed by all parties four years ago.

Warnings out of Europe against doing this ring hollow when little is being done to defy Washington’s unilateral embargos and bring some relief to the suffering and isolated country.

The 2015 deal was far from perfect — diplomatic initiatives like these seldom are — but it was working within its framework, always with the possibility that further progress could be made at a later date.

Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach, urged on by key figures in the Administration who seem to believe the answer to any problem is a military one, is bringing the Middle East to the point of all-out war.  

A situation created not from any international imperative, but from a relentless determination to tear down another’s achievements.

The US people deserve better; the world deserves better.