Against Iran, Trump has not won. Trump, certainly, has not lost either. The same could be said of the ayatollahs' regime, which has seen its leadership decapitated, but has responded by extending the conflict throughout the Middle East, especially to the crucial energy enclave of the Strait of Hormuz. The fairest verdict would be a draw, a tie, but a tie from which almost everyone for now – with the sole direct exception of Israel and indirect exception of Russia – has emerged worse off: the United States has not achieved the much-proclaimed change of regime in Tehran, Asia has suffered a very serious energy shortage, a hesitant Europe this time has remained on the sidelines of the calls to action from its American friend while seeing Ukraine's position weakened against Moscow, the Arab monarchies of the Gulf have lost their tourist-financial glamour and, of course, Iran has suffered a very severe attack on its political system and infrastructure.
Tantrums's disruptive diplomacy, marked by his verbal incontinence, often insulting (as if he only knew how to relate through superlative threats), as well as his war with a declared expiration date, have yielded an uncertain result. We are facing a precarious ceasefire to which his most loyal and dangerous travel companion has not joined, an Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the one who pushed the American president into conflict; a Netanyahu, moreover, who has not heeded the announcement of the cessation of hostilities: Lebanon continues to be devastated.
In the political and media jargon of the United States, we are facing a new TACO scenario, the tendency to back down at the last moment: Trump always chickens out, which could be translated as "he always ends up being a chicken (or he always backs down)". Always? In reality, never. Precisely this boastful frivolity is part of the problem and the strategy of unpredictability. The consequence is that nobody believes Trump anymore: neither when he threatens nor when he proclaims peace. His rhetoric, which goes from one extreme to another, is as exaggerated as it is empty. One day he threatens total destruction of civilization in Iran and the next day he proclaims a historic peace that will bring peace and prosperity back to the world. His histrionic ways as a tele-preacher of the apocalypse or paradise generate secondhand embarrassment and have placed current politics in an impossible mode to predict.
In fact, we are at a crossroads that is difficult to diagnose. The world has become unpredictable, including the economy. Right now, both sides, the United States and Iran, proclaim themselves winners. But the truth is that both sides are losing. And, as is being proven, the ceasefire is extremely weak, subjected on the ground to crossfire which this Wednesday, in addition to the brutal attacks by the Israeli army in Beirut, where many civilians are dying, has continued in both the Gulf countries and in Israel and Iran. We are very far from peace, but also from an effective ceasefire itself. And yet, this supposed halt, however uncertain and propagandistic it may be, is much better than a military drift completely out of control.
