Iran Targets Gulf States

By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Trump

Day in and day out, one can observe how Trump is enriching himself and his family at the cost of the American people.

The prolific New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has written: “With each passing month of his presidency, Donald Trump behaves more like America’s commander in thief than its commander in chief” (June 4).

As commander in chief it is Trump’s top domestic priority to keep the country united. He is ignoring his prime duty.

The United States is ripping itself apart at home.

Trump is acting as if his narrow ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) base is all that counts.

He has done nothing to bring Democrats behind his Iran agenda.

Consequently, there is nothing that encourages an enemy to hold out for better terms for ending a war with America than seeing a war with America at war with itself, writes Friedman.

And this is exactly the behaviour of Iran’s wartime leaders in the current impasse in the Persian Gulf.

Trump is brazenly prioritising acting like a commander in thief.

At the same moment Trump is demanding America’s men and women in uniform to make the ultimate sacrifice, he was in an attempted heist of the US Treasury to benefit himself, his family and his political allies, which could include those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

It was so outrageous that even some of his most reliable Republican Party sycophants couldn’t accept this daylight robbery.

Trump conspired with his own Justice Department, headed by his former personal lawyer, to use taxpayer money to create a US $ Dollar 1.776 billion political slush fund, supposedly to compensate those Trump supporters who “suffered weaponization and lawfare” at the hands of his predecessor Joe Biden.

In fact, as the NYT-editorial board noted, it would “reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.”

Fortunately, a federal judge put a temporary halt on the shameless corrupt scheme.

The Republican former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said it succinctly: “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong – take your pick.”

After Trump’s impeachment, if McConnell had allowed the US Senate to remove Trump from office, the country would have been spared all of Trump’s later machinations.

After his presidential victory, Trump had the impression that he was above the law and possessed all the trappings of an absolute monarch.

Trump has another ethical challenge.

Recent presidents have stayed away from trading stocks in companies whose fortunes they could lift or scuttle with the stroke of a pen, but Trump has smashed that precedent.

Trump has become the trader in chief with more than 3,600 buy and sell orders in the first quarter of this year.

It is without doubt a fundamental breach of trust.

Trump has gone against fundamental US national security interests by taking Russia’s position in the Ukraine war – highlighting his strange ‘romance’ with neo-imperialist Vladimir Putin.

Trump has choked off all U.S. financial aid to Ukraine. European allies have to buy military gear from the U.S. and then donate to Ukraine.

Strangely, he is also reducing U.S. troops on the ground in NATO countries right when Putin sensing he is losing the war, is increasingly threatening them.

American have started to realize that Trump is becoming a predator in their own political system.

At the same time, U.S. allies are also concluding that Trump’s America is becoming a dangerous predator on them too.

As the domestic and international predator par excellence, he has also elevated himself to predator in chief.

With no dependable, principled, ethical and sensible point of view, Trump has become an extremely unreliable and untrustworthy dialogue partner.

America and its allies together embraced the doctrine of ‘deterrence’ against the Soviet Union, and later Russia, to prevent any attempt by the Kremlin to forcibly expand its influence and power into the free world or put neighbours under its thumb.

This is no longer the case.

U.S. allies have watched Trump threaten to make Canada the 51^st state and to seize Greenland from Denmark.

They have watched him start a war with Iran without consulting NATO and then rescue the U.S. from what has turned out to be a terrible mess.

They have also watched him slash U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine, put the Russian aggressor on the same moral footing as Ukraine and then top it all off with reckless, ill-conceived tariffs on all U.S. allies.

As a result, something unprecedented is happening: “Deterring Trump’s America is now becoming a strategic priority of our allies as much as deterring Russia was,” notes Nader Mousavizadeh, a former senior adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

He also added that Trump will “weaponize any country’s dependence on America and use it to extract whatever he can in the narrowest and most tactical and transactional definition of American power.”

Friedman defines the real Trump Doctrine: ‘Oppose America and I will tariff you; depend on America, and I will extort you.’

Seldom has the world seen such an exploitative head of state run completely out of control.

Mousavizadeh concludes that the only rational response for America’s allies is to try to “deter and diversify”.

And if Trump keeps this up for his full four years, he added, “no NATO leader can ever again responsibly agree to the degree of dependence on U.S. technology, U.S. defence systems or financial systems” that NATO countries long took for granted.

There is little to distinguish the U.S. from a rogue state!

Friedman concludes that having a president who behaves like a commander in thief – is costing Americans dearly at home and abroad.

This outright perversion of the American president is undermining the very alliance structure that won two world wars and the Cold War and generated one of history’s longest era of peace and prosperity.

It is no exaggeration to state that Trump is an immanent and constant threat to the future of the world at large.

Iran Targets Bahrain & Kuwait

Weeks of indirect talks marked by tit-for-tat threats and sporadic exchanges of fire have failed to secure a deal to end the Middle East war or reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for Persian Gulf oil and gas shipments (AFP/Agence France Presse, June 7).

Iran launched a salvo of missiles at US allies Bahrain and Kuwait after fresh American strikes, drawing a furious response from the Gulf monarchies and further straining a fragile truce.

The Trump administration proved helpless to protect the U.S.’s Gulf allies.

Bahrain, which hosts the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet, denounced the latest attacks as “blatant aggression.”

Kuwait said the Iranian attacks “represent a dangerous escalation.”

Mohsen Rezaei, military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader has called for the release of some US $ Dollar 24 billion in frozen Iranian assets, revealing the country’s dire economic straits.

However, the US Treasury will utilize all tools available to allow Iranian assets to be made available to US Gulf allies to support rebuilding and repairs for any future damage caused by Iran (AFP).

There are thus limits to Iran’s ‘triangular tactics’ in the Gulf.

The writer can be reached at: shashimalla125@gmail.com