The Israeli veto power means the US remains in a perpetual war with Iran. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed and oil shortage first impacts Asia then rolls onto American gasoline consumers. US refineries also will be somewhat impacted as raw oil becomes more scarce. Inflation raises its ugly head in the USA. Interest rate increases follow. Import costs to the USA raise as shipping must go by longer routes.
And America has got itself a big problem: Israeli pushback on President Donald Trump’s efforts to build a better Middle East shows how our most entangling of alliances undermines U.S. sovereignty.
The Gaza example is the most recent. Washington has enabled Israel’s assault on Gaza, and Trump would now like to use his Board of Peace, which he oversees, to bring peace to the Palestinian enclave. That’s quite the task, and Israel, an ostensible client state of the U.S., isn’t making it any easier.
Last Thursday, Trump announced on social media that the Board had reached “a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.” Trump added, “As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw.”
Sorry, Mr. President, but you’ve been reading fake news.
“Contrary to inaccurate reports,” the Board of Peace said in a statement this Monday, the Israeli military would withdraw forces only after Hamas handed over all its weapons.
That’s not what Trump had said, and it’s not what Hamas had understood the phased agreement to require. So, what happened? The Times of Israel reports:
> > The US-backed Board of Peace appeared to change its conditions for the IDF to withdraw from Gaza after its top officials held a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday, shortly before a fresh Israeli airstrike was reported in the enclave.
*It’s déjà vu all over again. In late July, the Trump administration announced an agreement to develop a Saudi civilian nuclear program. But there was a catch. The very next day, Trump clarified on Truth Social that the deal “is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.” *
By “Trump clarified,” I mean that he retroactively decreed a new stipulation apparently designed to kill a deal opposed by Israel.
Comments by Joe Kent, who resigned this March from a top counterterrorism position in the administration, shed light on what happened: Israel pressured the White House to move the goal posts. In an interview with The American Conservative, Kent recounted that Israel and its American supporters promoted the zero-enrichment demand to “break up the agreement” and set Trump on the path to a regime-change war.
In July, Trump said that he’ll consider selling America’s F-35 fighter jet to Turkey.
“Israel reportedly has pressed Trump not to provide Turkey with the aircraft, amid fears that a sale could weaken Israel’s qualitative military edge,” Fox News reports.
The above embarrassments do lay at the feet of the current US administration not running agreement by Israel. BUT Israel ain’t ever gonna agree to any compromises.
The deal maker chief has been snookered.
So the USA is stuck. Unless it modifies its relationship with Israel.
That seems unlikely though.