TACO King Declares Ceasefire with NOTHING Won!
Trump lost EVERY possible objective he boasted about during his Iran War. I will lay that out plainly for all to see.
Fortunately, Trump caved in and did not commit an act of extreme genocide by exterminating Persian civilization as he cussed and sweared and bloviated and bellowed and raged that he would do in the name of Allah and to the Glory of God! His war hit the brakes hard and shut down in a whimper … for now.
No one is surprised that the TACO King retreated again. He talks big then falls back. I said it was a strong possibility when I wrote about his war:
“Of course, Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO Trump), so I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds some last-minute argument for why he’s not going to follow through with his newly amplified threats, but for now he has intensified them even above his expletive-laden rants of Easter weekend.”
“Think this is just a bluff by Trump? Maybe. He does the TACO dance a lot….”
Unfortunately, for all the suffering, death, destruction, and cost, the war accomplished nothing for the US. It weakened the US substantially in terms of drawing down its already diminished weapon stockpiles. It seriously damaged the entire global economy, and it diminished the United States’ reputation in regard to how its allies view it as a reliable friend and how its enemies view it as a blustery nation that cannot even overthrow the Iranian regime.
Trump did not win a single one of the various desired accomplishments he flashed on and off over the past five weeks as possible objectives. Let’s take a look:
Dire straits
Trump’s main claim right now, having said only a few days ago he couldn’t care less, is that he won the opening of the Strait of Hormuz! What an empty windbag that boast is! Does he actually think we have already forgotten that the strait was open before the war ever started. Or did he just forget that in a moment of Old-Timers Disease? In fact, the Strait of Hormuz was a LOT more open than it is now under the ceasefire. That’s quite an accomplishment—to win the end of the trouble you caused by starting the war!
Here’s what Trump’s War won in the strait: Iran forced him to promise that Iran will have full official control of the strait. All ships going through the strait will be governed by Iran’s decision to let them pass, including US ships, and all ships (except maybe Iran’s friends and certainly its own ships) will pay a $2-million toll for passage. Whew! What a win!
Not only does the toll help cover Iran’s costs of rebuilding and rearming for years to come, but it assures that Iranian oil will sell at a premium of $2,000,000 per tanker because Iranian shippers don’t have to pay the toll. They can just raise their prices to match up to all the competition that will have to include the toll in the price of the oil they are shipping. So, the ceasefire, if it holds, is a major win for Iran financially in terms of oil.
If the deal closes as it currently stands, Iran also wins the end of all sanctions on the nation. So it will be free to trade unlimited oil (albeit to whatever extent its facilities can still function). Tromp-all-over-them, on the other hand, did not manage to get them to give anything they didn’t want to give. (They are delighted to open the strait if it nets them a work-free $2-million in tribute with each passing ship! That’s an easy $200-million dollars per day! Or more! That is a bonanza of a win for Iran … at every other nation’s expense!)
The disarming nuclear agreement
Trump won the right to talk for two weeks about getting Iran to hand over all of its 60%-enriched uranium. For now, they retain all that they had, which is enough to make several bombs. It is likely mostly buried inside collapsed bunkers, so it will take time and significant precautions to dig it out. There is some talk of the US already helping them dig it up. If that’s true, I’m sure the US will seize it, but that remains to be seen. It’s not a victory yet.
It is not clear whether all of Iran’s nuclear-enrichment facilities have been destroyed either. In fact, the ceasefire agreement as it stands, says Iran will be promised the right to continue to enrich uranium! Iran won a pause to rearm and reposition for two weeks before the war resumes, which the war most likely will do if Iran continues to insist it is not giving up its uranium. Unless Trump has completely given up on his biggest objective of all.
Iran attacks
Iran has won a guarantee, should the ceasefire terms pass on to an eventual truce, that the US and Israel will never attack it again! The US has promised to retreat entirely by removing all of its combat troops out the region! The deal, as it stands, represents a total retreat for the US! Does that mean, since it will have no combat troops to man bases that it will also terminate all of its bases? This is a total sucker deal for a president who was obviously desperate to find a way to back out of his enormous bluffs.
Iran, on the other hand, has not had to guarantee it will not attack either the US or Israel. However, it stands to reason that if either side attacks, the other side will fight back. Guarantees not to initiate attacks are only as good as those making them, and those parties would appear to be void of any substance, at best, with all three parties—Netanyahu, Trump and whoever is in charge in Iran not the least bit trustworthy.
It seems Trump has never made a deal he wasn’t willing to break. He broke all of the original Trump1.0 tariff deals he original boasted about. He also broke most of his 2.0 deals when he decided he wanted to hit countries hard with more tariffs to punish them for something else that came up like not helping in one of his new wars. I have never seen a man whose word means less.
The ceasefire terms promise a permanent end to war between the parties now involved. Trump wins nothing there because Iran was not threatening the US with war, though it often threatened Israel. It did threaten the US with actual terrorist attacks; so, if the deal holds, presumably any future terrorist attacks planned by Iran will be terminated. However, we do not know that Iran had any specific attacks planned; so, it is impossible to declare a win there. Iran may only be agreeing not to do something it had no further intention of doing unless the US attacked it.
The US and Israel agree to end all future attacks on Iran’s allies as well. It’s impossible to believe Israel will honor that as it continues to attack Lebanon today.
Regime change changed day by day
At first, Trump clearly spoke about regime change, creating the impression that that was what this war was fundamentally about. As it became clear that he and Netanyahu decapitated the regime, only to have its younger head sprout up in place of the withered old head, Trump began to lie and claim he never said he wanted regime change. It wouldn’t be hard to stack up plenty of videos where he talked about it like it was a major goal; and we all know that, if true regime change had happened, we’d hear endless boasting about it from Trump as one of the primary objectives he was seeking.
Now the Iranian leaders he has ended up with are said by many to be more hardline than the iteration of this same regime that existed before the war. Son is harder than his father. And by surviving such intense attacks from its two worse enemies simultaneously, the regime is hugely strengthened in the eyes of Iran’s people and of many in the Middle East.
They have shown they are a force to be reckoned with. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has demonstrated he can make a lot of noise and smoke and rain down enormous destruction, but he cannot accomplish much positive change in the world by doing all of that—maybe not any positive change since the new iteration of the same old regime is more enraged at him (and the WHOLE US) than the old one was and has reason to believe it can survive by fighting hard. Most likely, they are now hardened into wanting a nuclear bomb more than ever.
Trumpian-sized losses outside the deal
The war has resulted in sanctions on Russian oil being removed for the time being. It has taken US attention off of Ukraine and seriously damaged US ability to endlessly supply Ukraine with weapons. Putin’s ability to end his Ukraine war with a better deal for Russia is somewhat strengthened.
Putin is delighted over Trump’s destruction of NATO as the best sugar plum he could have ever hoped for. It is practically a fantasy for him, many years incoming. He sees the US as weaker than he did before because it failed to gain any clear objective. It revealed Trump is not the bargain-master he said because this deal looks like Trump actually retreated and won nothing, other than a lot of chaotic destruction in Iran. US allies are likely to strengthen alliances elsewhere with no trust left at all in Donald Trump.
The people of Iran did not unite to overthrow their government. They united around their government. Hundreds of thousands or Iranian citizens even risked their lives to ring their electrical plants with lines of human shields. The citizens likely see their brave ayatollahs as having stood up to Trump victoriously and their proud nation as having survived, although badly beaten up. The survived the worst that Trump could throw at them (apparently) with conventional weapons.
Trump’s war leaves the US weakened in the eyes of its enemies (and friends).
The ceasefire in Iran has reinforced views among both adversaries and the NATO alliance that President Donald Trump’s campaign against the Tehran regime marks a strategic setback, bolstering China and Russia while squandering American strengths, according to people familiar with the thinking across capitals in Europe and the Middle East….
“Although Iran has suffered huge physical damage and much loss of life, it emerges strategically stronger,” former UK National Security Adviser Peter Ricketts said. “The regime has survived. It has shown the massive leverage control of Hormuz gives them….”
“It’s certainly not a victory in that the United States has nowhere achieved any of its military objectives,” Long Island University Director of International Relations Dalia Fahmy told Bloomberg TV. “Actually, the war has cost the United States much more than anticipated.”
Everyone has seen that Trump DID NOT force Iran to capitulate to any of his demands. (Yes, he got them to reopen the strait, but it was more open before the war, so the war did not accomplish that.) While Team Trump is doing all they can to claim this was a great victory for Trump most of the world will easily see that there is no victory to be seen at all. There is not one single way in which the US has benefited from the war—a way in which it is greater now than it was before; but there are many ways in which it loses. Team Trump looks like a gaggle of fools for even trying to make that argument, but I suppose it will work for the last remaining die-hard Trumpettes.
Trump has managed to convince many of his own strongest MAGA supporters to drop their support. He has even managed to convince them that Trump Derangement Syndrome is something happening to the Trump, though Carlson, Fuentes, Jones, MTG, and Kelly are far from admitting they were deranged for so adamantly and fully supporting such a fraud and a clown in the first place. (Especially Carlson who told Fox execs that Trump was the devil but they needed to play nice with him, anyway, or they would lose huge audience share—total pandering to the audience.)
Calls for Trump’s impeachment are likely to gain traction as well as calls for his removal under the 25th amendment. Even Alex Jones, Tuckered Carlson, and MTG are now openly demanding he be 25ed! The likelihood of Republicans losing even more ground in the elections is greater because none of those in congress seriously stood up to take him down, which increases the likelihood that Dems will gain control and will impeach him (again).
After this unconstitutional war, he may find less support among Republicans in the Senate, though that is unlikely because they have proven—just as the Dems always do—that it is party over country every time, even when a deranged president threatens in a totally unconstitutional war to wipe out millions of civilians in a nation by shutting off all their electrical power and their escape routes for emigration as refugees in a desert where large-scale modern cities are utterly dependent on electricity for survival.
I’m sure most of the world is convinced Trump is a truly dangerous lunatic after his cussing statements in the name of Allah that he would destroy Persian civilization if they didn’t open the strait and after the way he bashed former US allies around for not helping him with a war that he started against their wishes. I’m sure they will not be too favorably impressed with the entire United States any more for having thrown the enormous financial destruction upon them that the aftermath of this war will certainly bring in the months ahead, let alone the risks of WWIII.
The worst part is that Trump actually looked more and more deranged as the war went on, adding credence to the arguments in the press that he is now on the steep downgrade of frontal-lobe dementia, a form of mental deterioration that makes people highly erratic and ill-tempered.
No one is likely to trust dealing with this lunatic anymore. Trump is turning the US into a true pariah state in international opinion. All other nations see is an aged, ranting, hobbling, baby man in diapers, more desperate than ever to prove his power over them.
The US certainly will not be able to paint itself anymore as a benign hegemon that they are willing to put up with because it guarantees some of them some security. It now guarantees them endless insecurity and economic chaos. The East will strengthen ties with each other. The West was glued together by US resolve to stand by the West, its military, and its financial support, but the glue has failed entirely.
The Iran campaign has been a “serious setback” for Trump, said Wu Xinbo, director at Fudan University’s Center for American Studies in Shanghai who previously advised the Chinese Foreign Ministry. “When he comes to Beijing now, he’ll be frustrated and will realize that China will have to play an even larger role,” said Wu, who spoke before the ceasefire was announced.
Officials cited mockery of Trump in Russian and Chinese state media as evidence of how his handling of the war will likely be perceived by the regimes in those countries. The TACO meme — that “Trump Always Chickens Out” — is not just an amusing political attack by his domestic opponents but now a geopolitical conclusion of America’s enemies, one said.
Trump’s endless lies on parade were destroyed endlessly. Every time he said Iran’s navy or its airforce or anything else was “decimated, destroyed” or “obliterated,” never able to harm our military again, their navy sank another ship or their air defenses downed more US planes.
Now Iran can easily move equipment in from their Eastern allies without need to worry about being fired upon in order to replenish for the next battle. Iran flipped from having its nuclear program, according to Trump, “obliterated for years to come” last summer to being able to have a bomb within two weeks at the start of this war, and finally back to claims they have been obliterated again.
I don’t know how you obliterate something twice in less than a year; but Trump clearly says anything he wants to and believes his base will lap it up. That undue power to deceive and influence has now become badly damaged among his supporters. It was already weakened by all his Epstein delays, illegal redactions, and revelations that he was accused of sexually using young girls. Now his reputation among supporters is worse.
Trump has learned the hard lesson that not all regime-change wars are as easy as knocking out Venezuela’s Maduro. He thought Iran would be a 3-4 week pushover to help assure him next years’ Nobel Peace Prize, which he only pretends not to covet, but would place on his desk if he ever actually won it. After five weeks, he got nothing!
Israel has been damaged worse than by any war in its history. We haven’t seen all of the destruction inside Israel yet, as it entirely censored press coverage, though some leaked through; but early indications are that the destruction was severe, and some in the Israeli government are livid over it. They certainly were not able to declare another 6-day war with a miraculous victory, which calls into question their vain belief that God will enable them to take the Promised Land by whatever means they deploy. The image of endless miraculous victories assured by God, no matter how they act or whether they are even faithful to God, is now a badly dented helmet.
(I know God loves them as he loves all people, but I certainly don’t think he loves everything they do. Half of the Bible seems to be about how badly they appear in God’s eyes and about his willingness to let them suffer judgment when they run too far off the rails and from the behavior he demands of them.)
Regardless of the ceasefire, massive damage to oil facilities will take many months or even a few years to repair, so the shortages and high prices will return after the oil that is already backed up in the gulf is shipped and the ability to load any more oil is reduced by all the damage—assuming reports of damage are true, as both sides have reason to overstate the damage they have done and understate the damage done to them or their allies.
It will take a few weeks, maybe even until summer, for the dust of war to settle enough to know what kind of a lasting oil crisis we are really going to have; but I am certain all of us will be paying higher prices for everything for the next few years. You’ll get to pay for the war every day because oil is in everything, directly or indirectly! While speculators cause huge spikes up and down in their greed and their fear, supply and demand will determine a strong upward trend in the price of oil, as you iron out the spikes caused by daily jolts of euphoria over the ceasefire followed by fear over whether it will hold with each new event that happens.
(The continuation of today’s editorial, covering the significant caveats that could easily cause the fragile ceasefire to fail before its two-week deadline is reached and all the articles the editorial is based on plus other articles continue below for paying subscribers. On top of that, I’ll point out with a few headlines how it is already BADLY FAILING.)
