Trump chickens out again

The questionable invincibility of the United States and Israel has become obvious as the Middle East conflict enters its first month.

TACO – that humiliating term is back to portray United States President Donald Trump again following his latest flip-flop.

He backed off from his threat to strike Iran’s power plants on Monday after issuing a 48-hour ultimatum to the republic on Saturday to open the Strait of Hormuz.

TACO, the acronym for “Trump always chickens out”, appears to be a fitting description.

Many top Iranian leaders were tweeting it to describe the US leader after he pulled back from his March 21 demand.

Trump said he was deferring the strikes for five days because of “good and productive conversations” with Iran to resolve the raging conflict in the Middle East.

But Iran has categorically denied that any negotiations took place. Instead, it painted the announcement as a shameful back down in the wake of its relentless attacks on Israeli and US assets since Feb 28.

Economist Dr Mamdouh G. Salameh, one of the world’s leading oil experts, said Trump’s move to delay the 48-hour ultimatum for Iran to reopen the strait was a “strategic defeat” for the US.

In an interview with Russian media Sputnik, he said it smacked of an attempt to disengage from the conflict and declare victory to save face.

He said it could also be a ruse to dupe Iran until US Marines were in place to try to reopen the narrow waterway by force, although such a venture would be doomed, as experts have warned.

Dr Salameh said another probability could be that the US was trying to save Israel’s heavily shelled Dimona nuclear centre from total destruction.

Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined the term “TACO trade” in May last year to depict how some investors anticipate market rebounds, based on Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff policies, many of which were ruled as illegal by the US Supreme Court on Feb 20.

Armstrong described TACO trade as a tactic by some investors to buy into the market when it dips following Trump’s announcements on steep tariffs, on the premise that he would back off and the market would rebound.

It happened again on Monday when the price of Brent crude plunged nearly 14% to US$96 a barrel after claims of the supposed US-Iran talks. But the price soared to above US$100 again when Iran’s Foreign Ministry flatly dismissed such negotiations.

“The global oil market knows when a lie is being told and Iran won’t fall for it. The US risks becoming the biggest loser of rising oil prices as it still imports an estimated eight million barrels a day,” Dr Salameh was quoted as saying.

Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesperson for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said: “The devastating strikes by the armed forces and the rise in oil prices have rendered the devil powerless and there is no logic to negotiating under these circumstances. The enemy understands nothing but the language of force and missiles.”

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who was cited by US media as the leader negotiating with Trump, was described as “the last person who would be willing to talk to the US”.

The former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Air Force pilot flew to Lebanon two years ago and stood amid the rubble of Beirut to motivate Hezbollah to keep fighting Israel.

Ghalibaf said the people of the country demanded the “complete and humiliating punishment” of the aggressors.

“All officials stand firmly behind their leader and people until this goal is achieved. No negotiations with the US have taken place. This fake news is intended to manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire that the US and Israel are trapped in.”

Iranian officials suspect that claims about the US’ negotiations through Ghalibaf were blatant attempts by US and Israeli intelligence to geo-locate his position and have him assassinated.

As the war enters its first month, what has become obvious is the questionable invincibility of the US and its closest ally, Israel. As highlighted by the Independent’s analysis, Iran has finally exposed the limits of Trump’s power.

It noted that the five-day “pause” allowed Gulf nations to find dwindling air defences, buys Iran’s de-centralised military system respite and gives Trump the chance to reflect on how to get out of a quagmire Teheran had prepared for him.

Lebanese political analyst Marwa Osman noted that Iran destroyed an entire district in Arad, in occupied Palestine, with just one supersonic missile on Monday.

According to him, even Israeli sources admit that about 20 buildings were destroyed and hundreds of people were killed and injured.

“An hour earlier, there was a strike on Dimona. Many buildings were destroyed, dozens of people were injured and this was the message – Dimona is just 9km from the Israeli nuclear reactor. Iran is no longer acting covertly. It was loudly declaring that next time, it won’t miss the real target.”

Marwa noted that Iran also officially declared it now controlled Israeli airspace.

He said this meant the next powerful missiles would arrive unimpeded without any warnings nor interceptions, a direct consequence of the systematic disabling of the radar shield that once protected Israel.

So, in essence, Iran will act exactly as Israel did over Iran, Lebanon and Yemen.

“This changes the rules of the game. Remember when on the 15th day, Israel and the US declared that Iran was ‘neutralised’? The 23rd day showed how dangerous and false that lie was.”

Media consultant M. Veera Pandiyan likes this observation by Sun Tzu in his Art of War: “The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.” The views expressed here are the writer’s own.