Iran War One Of Trump’s ‘Worst Foreign Policy Blunders’, Expert Says

Donald Trump’s war in Iran will go down as one of the US president’s “worst foreign policy blunders so far”, according to a BBC expert.

The US and Iran agreed to a framework deal to end the conflict on Sunday night, set to be signed later this week.

The 60-day ceasefire come almost four months after he and the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu first bombed Tehran.

Since then, Iran has rocked the global economy by closing the major oil shipping lane, the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has already celebrated the “great deal”, claiming on social media: “Let the oil flow!”

But the BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen poured cold water on the idea that the conflict had been in any way a success.

Speaking to Radio 4′s Today programme, he said: “It’s not simply a question of switching on [the Strait] and shipping out. The waterway will have to be checked, there are mines in it.

“It’s going to be a slow process and there’s the whole business of the longer term impact of the way oil is going to be produced as well as things like fertiliser.”

He also warned: “There are loads of long-term consequences of this war, it’s going to go down, I think, as one of Donald Trump’s worst foreign policy blunders so far.”

Bowen said Trump and Netanyahu expected the Iranian regime to fall quite quickly after the brutal public protests and the subsequent oppression in January.

“The regime was under a lot of pressure,” he recalled. ”[But] essentially they got it really wrong. Far from crumbling, the regime if anything has come out of this stronger because they’ve discovered the potency of the Strait of Hormuz weapon which was always suspected but now they’ve tested it and it really works.

“The regime is still there because it was engineered for survival and that engineering worked.

“On the other hand, the Americans have had their limits of their power very clearly demonstrated.

“They burned through hard to replace weapons, their global rivals the Chinese will have been looking with great interest at what has been going on there.”

Bowen predicted that when historians write up this entire war and “look at the long-term decline of the United States, there will be a substantial amount written about this episode”.

Trump is “going to do everything he can to claim victory, of course, I think that other people will be looking at it way more sceptically”.

He also pointed out the 14-point agreement is yet to be released.

“It’s clear that the big issue, the nuclear issue, has been deferred. That will go into negotiations that may go on for an awfully long time,” the expert noted.

“The assumption that the regime would fall in Tehran has gone, the business model of Gulf countries that rely on making the area a zone of stability in the region, that’s gone.

“Their faith in their alliance with the United States as their protectors has been badly damaged, and I think they will try and have – over the coming years – some rapprochement with the Iranians.”

Bowen added that the Israeli press has been “quite apocalyptic” about the damage to their strategic relationship with the US, and fears that Trump will blame Netanyahu for “dragging him” into the war.

The journalist also noted that the violence is still not over.

He pointed out that the Israelis have also confirmed they are determined to continue their offensive against Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, and determined to hold onto the territory it has gained in southern Lebanon.

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