Umpteenth Iran Peace Deal Trump Announced May Be the Charm

Because we hate to look like Charlie Brown whiffing on the football Lucy pulls away at the last moment, we usually don’t cover the president’s proclamations for the simple reason that he is a compulsive liar who lives in an alternate reality.

On this Sunday, we are making an exception because Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also said that a peace deal between the US and Iran had been reached, and he is a much more reliable source of information than Trump or Tehran.

According to Sharif, both “sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” and they will sign the agreement in Switzerland on Friday.

Of course, that overlooks the minor issue that neither of the two countries is fighting in Lebanon. That would be Israel, which isn’t mentioned in any of the statements, isn’t excited about the prospect of peace with Iran, and was chastised earlier by the US president for launching an attack on Beirut that “should not have happened.”

In what would turn out to be his most normal statement of the day on the issue, Trump warned Tel Aviv and the terrorist group Hezbollah, which also doesn’t seem to be a party to the agreement and also doesn’t want to stop fighting, to cut it out.

“There should be no more attacks by Israel anywhere in Lebanon, but there should also be no more attacks by any other party, including Hezbollah, against Israel,” he wrote. “This could be the beginning of a long and beautiful peace — Let’s not blow it!”

We’ll see about that. After all, nobody knows what is in the agreement (which Israel doesn’t want), and the devil is in the details. In addition, both sides are desperate to portray the deal as a win, so until we see actual language, neither of them can be believed.

That being said, Trump seemed to indicate in a later post that Iran got what it wanted out of the talks: an end to the US’s blockade that choked off Tehran’s oil revenue.

“I hereby fully authorize the toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” Trump proclaimed. “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”

We sincerely hope that the ships of the world did not listen to the president.

That’s because the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump and other senior administration officials falsely claimed has been under US control, is not yet open.

Fortunately, the president clarified this a bit later in yet another post, in which he said that the waterway would be open by Friday so that the mines Iran had placed in it could be removed.

In that message, Trump gave credit where he believes credit is due: to himself.

“Many presidents have tried to make Peace with Iran, and all have failed before me,” he wrote.

That is true in the sense that no other president went to war with Iran, so it would have been impossible to reach a peace deal. Of course, the US, along with the European Union, China, and Russia had previously reached an agreement with Tehran that prevented it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Trump is the one who ripped it up in 2018, which only opened the door for Iran to step up its uranium enrichment efforts.

Therefore, what Trump wrote is technically true in the same way that he is also the first president to open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran had previously never closed.

Where does that leave us? Absent the text of an agreement that will supposedly and hopefully be signed on Friday, we honestly don’t know.

What we do know, however, is that peace is better than war, especially one that was so pointless and resulted in so much pain far beyond the borders of Iran.

Trump’s and Israel’s decision to attack had a ripple effect on the global economy that will reverberate for many months to come and not only cause higher prices in the US but also needless suffering in the countries that weren’t involved at all – especially Asian nations who relied on the oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz.