Mick Hartley

Melanie Phillips in the Times – Team Trump risks fatally misunderstanding Iran:

His Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said last week: “If Trump can unite Iran with the Arab nations, the Middle East’s economy could surpass the EU.” What Witkoff described as “dysfunctional” Europe can apparently be junked. So much for the West, that community of shared historic values that’s been the crucible of civilisation itself. So much for Iran’s multi-front war to destroy Israel and the West. All that matters, apparently, is money.

Witkoff seems to be astoundingly ignorant and naive about the tyrants with whom he is negotiating. For decades the Iranian regime, whose agenda is non-negotiable, has lied about its nuclear weapons programme and played the Americans for suckers. Trump has declared that if the regime doesn’t destroy its entire nuclear programme, he’ll do it himself. Yet Israel, designated by Iran for genocide, is now wondering whether Trump will abandon the Jewish state. For he’s been purring over the Tehran regime as “very intelligent” and said negotiations are going “very well”.

The irony is that this places Trump in the same position as his political foes. The left insist that universal self-interest means every conflict is amenable to negotiated compromise. Trump believes universal self-interest means every conflict is a potential deal. Neither can therefore get their heads round the fanatical religious war being waged against America and western civilisation. It’s not so much isolationism as the suicidal fantasy of universal reason and greed that threatens the eclipse of the West.

For those who viewed Trump as, despite his obvious faults, at least a welcome change from the naivety of Obama and Biden when it comes to Iran and the Middle East, this is all a bit alarming. He and his team of incompetents appear to be following the Democrats' delusional belief that Iran is amenable to reason and compromise, when it could hardly be more obvious that in reality it's a theocratic state beyond argument, whose main foreign policy goal is the destruction of Israel. 

The same, it seems to me, applies to the whole gender issue. Trump, or more likely his advisors, pushed the gender thing in the election, as it could hardly be more obvious that this was a subject – the subject – where Americans in general were opposed to the whole uber-woke men-in-women's-sport, pronouns in the bio, cult nonsense. It may have played a major part in the Trump victory. But he doesn't actually care about any of that. He doesn't do principles – only deals and money. Plus he's getting more rambling and delusional by the day. I get the feeling the whole gender debate in America is going to be forgotten or pushed to the side now, and it'll continue same as before – men winning in women's sport, kids getting "gender-affirmative" care, the whole deal. Because, as I say, Trump and co. don't really care. It was useful for getting into power…but not any more.