President Donald Trump's war in Iran has turned into such a disaster that many in Europe are encouraging other countries to side-step the U.S. altogether.
Defense expert and war correspondent Robert Fox is urging the rest of the world to make a deal with Iran rather than allowing the U.S. to run the show. In a Monday column for "The iPaper," he said that a single image has made it clear that Trump doesn't know what he's doing: The attack on the MV Touska on Sunday.
"When the destroyer USS Spruance blew a hole in the Iranian freighter MV Touska in the Arabian Sea on Sunday, it blew a great big hole in the magical thinking about war, peace and the manifest political destiny of Donald J. Trump in his second presidential term, said Fox. "This was the first time U.S. forces had fired on a civilian [cargo] ship in the region since America and Israel went to war against Iran there on 28 February."
Not only has the war backfired, Fox argued, but it has also delivered a "huge psychological and political advantage to the Islamic Republic of Iran." He explained that before the war, ships were easily going in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. Now, not only is Iran making more money from its oil, it is regulating the entire Strait altogether, despite Iran only owning one side of it.
"They now hold the initiative in any negotiations about the waterway," said Fox.
Meanwhile, the U.S. faces a dramatic increase in food and fuel prices, and inflation is forecast to go beyond 4.5 percent, Fox said. Trump is also running up against a War Powers Resolution deadline that requires him to get approval from Congress after 40 days of war.
For Europe, NATO members can't "afford for the Strait and Gulf to be closed this summer — and they could and should act."
Fox urged Europe to make a deal over the Strait and the Gulf of Oman with all of the leaders, "with or without Washington."
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates is quietly telling the Trump administration that they are looking for a "financial backstop," the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Fox cited the "Pottery Barn" rule from former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who infamously told former President George W. Bush that were he go into Iraq, "you break it, you own it."
"That rule looks a big piece of broken pottery now," wrote Fox about the furniture store. "Trump may have smashed things in Iran and the Gulf, big time. But the seizing of the Touska is yet another episode in an increasingly messy crisis, suggesting it is drifting well beyond his understanding, let alone control."
