Roving Periscope: Dreaming of a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump delays his Iran attack!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Donald Trump, who has long lamented that his predecessor Barack Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize immediately after he became the US President in 2009— “And he had no idea why he got it!”—can now wait for 15 days to convince Iran to scrap its nuclear program and to persuade Norway that he (Trump) really deserves the Prize as “I got us out of wars. I made deals that nobody thought were possible.”
Ergo: A dreaming Trump wants to wage war and also win a Nobel Peace Prize! He has, by now, been nominated for a fourth time for this Prize.
The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Japan’s Nihon Hidankyo “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”
That gave Trump some hope—and he got the first endorsement from Pakistan, the world’s terror nursery-cum-incubator, and its de facto ruler, Asim Munir, bypassing the democratically elected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif!
The Trump dilemma is that he presides over a superpower blamed for decades as the worst warmonger, one which toppled democracies and imposed dictators, one whose economy is heavily dependent on export of massacring machines, and one which defends mass killings in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. in the guise of democracy and human rights.
But Trump is hopeful, even after his attempts and claims of ‘ceasefires’ between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Gaza Strip, and India and Pakistan bore no fruits at all.
Having supped on Wednesday with the Pahalgam mastermind and “Butcher of Pakistan”, the Army chief General a.k.a. “Field Marshal” Asim Munir right in the White House to thank him for recommending Trump for a Nobel Peace, the US President decided to open a two-week negotiating window before deciding on directly striking Iran. Even after green-signalling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “keep going” against Iran, Trump is hoping for a Nobel Peace Prize!
It set off an urgent effort to restart talks that had been deadlocked when Israel began its bombing campaign last week, the media reported on Friday.
The hope among Trump and his dwindling number of advisers and well-wishers is that Iran — under relentless Israeli attack and having suffered losses to its missile arsenal — will relent on its hardline position and agree to terms it had previously rejected, including abandoning its enrichment of uranium.
Ironically, Trump and Netanyahu are threatening to eliminate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, believing this gambit might split Tehran’s power structure, and cobble together a ragtag ‘peace’ the way America eliminated Saddam Hussain to ‘rescue’ Iraq. And spectacularly failed.
Trump’s deferred decision, which came after days of increasingly martial messages from the President suggesting he was preparing to order a strike, also gave him more time to weigh the potential consequences — including the chance it could drag the US into the type of foreign conflict he promised to avoid and condemned his preceding Democratic Presidents for dragging America into wars.
But negotiating a diplomatic solution in Trump’s condensed timeline appeared to face significant early hurdles, CNN reported.
Earlier this week, discussions were underway inside the White House to dispatch Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Vice President J.D. Vance to the volatile region for talks with Iran. But as Trump grew wary that diplomatic efforts might succeed, the idea never resulted in scheduled talks, and both Vance and Witkoff remained in Washington as of Thursday.
He may have developed cold feet: If America became a peacenik, how could it become Great Again! And what about the MAGA tribe which is already split on this very issue. Even the Republican Party is divided…
Europe has its own dilemmas.
Worried over the potential fallout of the US’ direct involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict on Europe, given Moscow siding with Tehran, foreign ministers from Britain, Germany and France decided to hold talks with Iranian representatives in Geneva on Friday, and were briefed on the last deal Witkoff offered to Iran, which Tehran ultimately rejected before the Israeli strikes began last Friday.
“This is a meeting between European leaders and Iran. The US President supports diplomatic efforts from our allies that could bring Iran closer to taking his deal,” a White House official said.
Iran’s consistent message to the US was it will not engage in further talks with the US until the ongoing Israeli operation ends. The US has so far not pressured Israel to halt its strikes, despite vetoing its bid to kill Khamenei. And Trump said this week that his message to Netanyahu has been to “keep going.”
So far, Iran is unwilling to move off its positions on nuclear enrichment, which it views as a red line. And no official talks between the US and Iran were scheduled. In putting off a decision, Trump appears to be placing more stock in a diplomatic solution that only a day earlier he appeared to suggest was out of reach.
“I think the US President has made it clear he always wants to pursue diplomacy. But believe me, he is unafraid to use strength, if necessary,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday after relaying Trump’s new two-week timeline.
“And Iran and the entire world should know that the US military is the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world, and we have capabilities that no other country on this planet possesses
Using Israel as a proxy, he wants to win against Iran, the only Shia-dominated country among the 57 Muslim nations, in an all-out Sunni-friendly war and also graduate from a deal-maker to peacemaker– enough to win a Nobel!
That is why he has insisted repeatedly he wants to avoid taking action that could devolve into a multi-year conflict, something many of his own loyalists — including his onetime top strategist Steve Bannon, with whom the President had lunch on Thursday — argue would be unavoidable should he make the decision to go ahead. For freshers, Bannon is a great admirer of Lord ShriKrishna and the ShrimadBhagwadGita.
And while Trump has seen the military options, he remains worried about a longer-term war. Any assessments on whether a strike would cause prolonged US engagement are predictive and, by their nature, not entirely satisfactory.
His new, two-week-time frame for talks was not universally welcomed. An Israeli intelligence official expressed dismay that Trump would not make a decision – one way or the other. “This is not helping,” the official said.
Pakistan is helping Trump win a Nobel; Israel is not!
