Funny how these things work. The president of the United States stands up and announces a “historic” peace plan for Gaza. His handpicked “Board of Peace” supposedly got Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups to agree to disarm. Fifteen points. Historic. Done deal.
And then the guy we send billions of dollars to every year says no.
Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t even wait a decent interval. He told his Cabinet that “Israel rejects the 15-point document” and the IDF “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed.” So the president’s big diplomatic triumph lasted about as long as a cheap umbrella in a hurricane. The White House had no comment. Of course they didn’t. What do you say when your closest ally in the region treats your signature foreign policy initiative like junk mail?
Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsAsk yourself who benefits here. Trump gets to look like the peacemaker for a news cycle. Netanyahu gets to keep the war going and look tough ahead of his Oct. 27 elections. Hamas gets to say it agreed to a deal and blame Israel for scuttling it. Everybody wins except the 2 million people living in the rubble of Gaza and the American taxpayers writing the checks.
Meanwhile, Trump called up Axios and said he’s “low-keying it” with Iran. “We are only semi-negotiating with them,” he said. “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.” He called the whole war “a chess game” and said “it always works out.”
Chess game. Tell that to the Pentagon, which is burning through weapons stockpiles so fast it just sent the defense industry a three-week deadline to figure out how to build missiles quicker. The US started the Iran war five months ago with over 2,300 Patriot missiles. By the end of July, that was down to fewer than 830. THAAD interceptors went from 452 to as few as 278. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress the war has cost $37.5 billion so far, and now he wants a $1.5 trillion defense budget, with nearly $70 billion earmarked for the Iran conflict alone.
Avi Ohayon (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia CommonsThe Department of Defense has been renamed the Department of War. You can’t make this up. They literally changed the name to something more honest and nobody flinched.
And what are we getting for that money? Iran’s Supreme National Security Council says the Strait of Hormuz stays closed until the US “corrects its behavior.” Their conditions: never threaten Iran again, end the war permanently, lift the naval blockade, pull US forces out of the area, pay compensation for war damage, lift sanctions, and release frozen assets. Every single one of those is a demand for surrender dressed up in diplomatic language. Iran’s foreign minister says negotiations “cannot resume” until the US fixes what it violated. Oman is supposedly brokering a deal to reopen the strait with ships entering near Iran and exiting near Oman, fee-free. But the Revolutionary Guard says the reopening doesn’t depend on Oman at all. So who’s telling the truth? Probably nobody.
Here’s the part nobody in the press wants to dwell on. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen in public since he was appointed in March. Senior Iranian sources say he suffered facial disfigurement and other injuries in the February 28 strike that killed his father. A Basij official now promises footage of Khamenei “among the people” will be released “at a later time.” A regime that controls every camera in the country can’t produce one current photo of its supreme leader, and we’re supposed to believe they’re negotiating in good faith.
NASA (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsThe Houthis, Iran’s proxies in Yemen, struck the Red Sea port of Mocha twice in 24 hours. Seven dead, 20 injured. They also hit a Saudi Aramco refinery in Jazan with a drone. The Saudi Energy Ministry confirmed a fire at the facility. These are the same Houthis who were supposed to be contained by a 2022 truce. That truce is now a memory.
So let me get this straight. The president announces a Gaza deal that Israel rejects on arrival. He says he’s barely negotiating with Iran while the Pentagon scrambles to restock missiles it already fired. Iran’s leader is a ghost. Their proxies are bombing Saudi oil infrastructure. And the strait that carries a fifth of the world’s oil stays shut because Tehran says we need to “correct our behavior.”
It always works out, he said. Like a chess game. Funny how the pawns never seem to be the ones who win.