ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — French President Emmanuel Macron managed to find a way to prevent U.S. President Donald Trump from bolting out of boredom from the latest G7 summit in France. If he stuck around to the very end, then Macron would let him sign his latest “peace deal” (that really isn’t one) at the Chateau de Versailles: the former home of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, renowned for its opulent gold decor. The European version of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Except instead of throwing in the towel after a day on the golf course, you do it after losing a war. Like Germany in the First World War. And now Trump with the Iran war.

But do these announcements even matter anymore when they struggle from birth to survive events that they clearly don’t control and that continue to shift underneath the politically flashy surface?

Much like the Germans were forced to do vis-à-vis Allied powers under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Trump signed off on giving Iran back at least $300 billion of its own sanctioned cash held by the U.S. — all under the pretext of undoing the damage caused by the U.S.-Israeli tag team bombing of the country. Which is a much better deal for Iran than the meager $1.7 billion of Iran’s own money that former President Barack Obama had agreed to return to them and which, ironically, was Trump’s justification for ripping up that deal for being too generous. Trump would also now allow for Iranian oil to be freely exported, citing the need to improve the world economy — after he singlehandedly plunged it straight into the loo.

For its part, Iran promises that, in exchange for the West dropping all sanctions, it won’t try to get nuclear weapons. Although they’d be insane not to at least want them now, since Trump has just definitely proven that having nukes is really the only fail-safe means to avoid getting militarily bullied by a superpower and its regional proxies. Iran would also have to open the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump’s war prompted them to close — but there’s no mention of whether they’d be prohibited from ever again imposing tolls on ships passing through after the first 60 days post-deal.

All this puts Iran in a much better position compared to pre-2018, when Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from what he qualified as a “terrible” multilateral agreement with Iran meant to lift sanctions and normalize its existence and access to global markets.

This entire costly charade and military farce could have been avoided if Trump had simply ignored Israel’s constant goading to do its dirty work — something that they’ve tried to drag every American president into doing, and unsuccessfully so — until Trump came along and was easily seduced by the considerable shekels tossed in his direction and that of his family and friends. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said that when she was in office, she would get calls from Israel suggesting that they had planes on the tarmac ready to bomb Iran, and that the U.S. needed to ride shotgun. Her response: “Good luck!”

But the ink wasn’t even dry on Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran when Israel yet again bombed their mutual ally, Lebanon — into which Israel has long planned an expansion of its territory. As far as Tel Aviv is concerned, the U.S.-Iranian deal doesn’t involve them, despite their weapons being American-made and funded, as Vice President JD Vance has pointed out, adding that the U.S. is the only country on the planet that isn’t fed up with them right now. “Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” Vance told the White House press.

Israel cited the need to take revenge on Lebanon for the four IDF soldiers who were killed…while in the process of trying to invade and illegally occupy Lebanon, as the Jerusalem Post acknowledged.

What exactly did you expect — a welcome parade?

Israel’s national security minister wrote on social media: “For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn! … I told the Prime Minister, even in our private meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. … Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don’t win with measured responses and restraint — you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror,” wrote Itamar Ben-Gvir, inadvertently proving how terrorism can be deployed as a convenient label in an attempt to anesthetize the masses against any risk of critical thought in ginning up support for whatever or whomever you want to destroy.

Despite such declarations, Trump’s longstanding deference to Israel has now gotten to the point where it has shrunk the space in which any U.S. deal can remain stable long enough to exist.

Trump’s “peace deal” with Iran is being tested against an ongoing set of facts on the ground that he clearly no longer controls. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has even bragged about the ongoing use of American social media influencers to ear-bend the President, and CNN has evoked his plans to use sympathetic media in order to steer American policy under Trump in Israel’s favor — even when it’s clearly against America’s own interests of peace and prosperity. Because, apparently, aggressive lobbying and cash-flashing efforts now require more of a boost to effectively hijack American policy.

What does it say about the reality of American presidential power under Trump when the gap between declared U.S. policy and operational reality is no longer within his control but instead shaped by forces to which he’s overwhelmingly considered susceptible?

Who even cares about these “peace deals” that Trump keeps bragging about achieving when he clearly lacks the ability to determine whether peace can still exist once the ink is dry?