Liberals like Chuck Schumer tried to promote the line that “Trump always chickens out.” After the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites and the apprehension of Nicolas Maduro, they have given up on that theme. But did Trump chicken out on Iran?
The Telegraph says that Trump was “talked out of Iran strike at last minute.”
Donald Trump was persuaded not to strike Iran on Wednesday night by the last-minute diplomatic efforts of Persian Gulf states and Israel.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman made urgent calls to Washington to persuade the US president to delay military action and allow Tehran to demonstrate “good intentions”.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, also urged him to postpone air strikes.
The idea that the mullahs are capable of “good intentions” is absurd. Either they are in power, or they are not. Their intentions are well known.
A senior Saudi official said Arab states had mounted a “long, frantic, last-minute diplomatic effort” to convince Mr Trump to give Iran a chance, warning of “grave blowback in the region”.
“It was a sleepless night to defuse more bombs in the region,” the official said, adding that talks were continuing “to consolidate the gained trust and the current good spirit”.
Other countries, including Turkey and Egypt, also urged Mr Trump to show restraint, warning of the potential impact on Iran’s neighbours and on global oil and gas prices, according to the Financial Times.
Mr Netanyahu urged the US president on Wednesday to postpone any attack on Iran out of fear that his country could be targeted in revenge strikes, The New York Times reported, citing a senior US official.
All of this strikes me as absurdly short-term thinking. Iran has been the villain of the Middle East for decades. Its government is ossified, corrupt, ineffective, unpopular, and ready to fall. It is hard to think of anything in world affairs, apart from a democratic, free enterprise revolution in China, that would do more good than overthrowing the medieval reign of Iran’s Muslim autocracy.
Let’s hope that President Trump hasn’t been derailed by short-term considerations from what should be one of his top three or four foreign policy goals–overthrowing the mullahs, and bringing Iran back into the modern world.
