OPINION:
President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance spent most of last week trying to convince Americans that the memorandum of understanding with Iran is a good deal for the United States and world peace.
That is not what Iran believes.
Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has hailed the memorandum of understanding as a major “victory” for Tehran. The “greater jihad” would now begin, he promised, according to a speech aired by Iranian state media last week.
You read that correctly. The greater jihad.
To some, this might sound like the same propaganda we have heard from Iran since the start of the president’s bombing campaign.
“War is peace” is a slogan in George Orwell’s novel “1984.” Orwell described “doublethink” as the act of holding two completely contradictory beliefs in one’s mind at the same time and accepting both as true. In this case, the Iranians appear more believable than the administration.
On Friday, a delegation headed by Mr. Vance, which was supposed to travel to Switzerland to sign the memorandum of understanding, delayed the trip after reports that Iran had closed the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran blamed Israel’s refusal to leave Lebanon and the ongoing presence of U.S. forces in the region.
Conflicting statements about the status of the strait compounded the confusion. The formula that has worked for Iran in the past is this: Tehran demands everything, and the U.S. thinks it can appease those who want to destroy Israel and us by giving more than we get.
Here is how Iran thinks, as expressed in a statement read over maritime radio channels by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and now, apparently, put on hold, at least temporarily: “Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the complete lifting of the naval blockade, and the withdrawal of American terrorist forces from the Persian Gulf and the region are among the main conditions of the agreement between Iran and the United States, the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until these conditions are met. All ships are requested, for the sake of their security and safety, not to approach the Strait of Hormuz. Any vessel that defies this directive will be targeted.”
Messrs. Trump and Vance have said that Iran will get nothing from the memorandum of understanding or any subsequent agreement until it meets our conditions. If the strait is closed again, gas prices will go back up and stocks will go back down.
The midterm elections would again look problematic for Republicans (not that the Democrats could do any better).
Writing last week on Truth Social before the latest developments, the president again displayed his gift of overstatement and name-calling: “These fools, who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are ’tumbling’ down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid.”
Without the deal, Mr. Trump wrote, “the alternative would be a world-wide depression.”
At a news conference Wednesday, the president noted a Wall Street Journal editorial and seemed to acknowledge that the Iranians had him over a barrel — of oil.
If he had fought on, he said, the market “would go down at levels that nobody ever saw before, maybe except for 1929. … So rather than possibly going into a depression, rather than having your favorite president be Herbert Hoover, he was always the one I didn’t want to be.”
Once again, it is all about him, not the greater good.
What to do now? The president has said repeatedly that if Iran refuses to live up to the memorandum of understanding, he could start bombing again. If the previous bombing did not work, what will more bombing achieve?
What a mess.
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (Humanix Books).
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