Once the midterms are over, Trump will be free to pursue vendetta politics. But with will and diplomacy, he can be reined in<\/p>\n
As another Iran catastrophe looms, one question matters more than any other: how to stop it before it\u2019s too late? Whatever the eventual outcome of Israel\u2019s election and next week\u2019s US midterm polls, Donald Trump, playing the Lone Ranger, and Benjamin Netanyahu, his badass Tonto, appear hell-bent on resuming the illegal war of choice<\/a> they began in June last year and expanded in February. Like a Shakespearean tragedy moving inexorably to a bloody denouement, the worst is yet to come. And yet three things seem certain: the US and Israel will again fail to totally destroy Iran\u2019s largely hypothetical nuclear capabilities; its regime will survive; and millions of ordinary people, there and around the world, will pay the price for this unjustified, reckless aggression.<\/p>\n Ducking and weaving, Trump is desperate to dodge the blame for the Republicans\u2019 anticipated midterm meltdown, largely triggered by war-related fuel and consumer price inflation. He claimed Ukraine\u2019s attacks on Russian refineries<\/a> were responsible, but that didn\u2019t wash. He cut a treacherous diesel deal with Vladimir Putin<\/a> but, as usual, Russia\u2019s smirking mafioso conned him. He urged US allies to tap their strategic reserves but, unsurprisingly, vilified and sidelined European leaders, who view his war as an unmitigated disaster and declined to bail him out. Trump also reportedly rebuffed<\/a> last-gasp, electorally driven pressure from Netanyahu to hit Iran this month, fearful it would unleash a Democratic tsunami.<\/p>\n Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once the midterms are over, Trump will be free to pursue vendetta politics. But with will and diplomacy, he can be reined in As another Iran catastrophe looms, one question matters more than any other: how to stop it before it\u2019s too late? Whatever the eventual outcome of Israel\u2019s election and next week\u2019s US midterm … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}