Trump Is Flailing While Iran Calls The Shots
William Hague in The Times is generally a good read and today’s piece on the US and Iran negotiations, is no exception.
After this sub-heading.
US negotiations displayed hopeless naivety and for all the tough talk now, the president keeps showing he’ll back down
He then starts the article with these two paragraphs.
A month ago, when I read the memorandum agreed by the US and Iran to end the war between them, I literally gasped with surprise. To anyone who has ever been in negotiations with the Iranians, as I was over nuclear issues a decade ago, the concessions made to them seemed extraordinary.
Most striking was that the US is to develop a plan “with at least $300 billion” for the economic development of Iran — a huge incentive to keep the peace but also a colossal subsidy for a regime that President Trump had only weeks earlier set out to destroy.
Is this $300 billion money from the US Treasury, the oil sheikhs’ underwear drawers or from tariffs on uninvolved countries like the UK, Germany, China and Canada?
How many citizens of the UK would sign up for the deal?
About three I would think and two of them would be Nigel and Farage.
The rest of the article is very much a worthwhile read and it finishes with this concluding paragraph.
There have been obvious costs to the war — increased inflation, severe disruption to the Gulf states and of course loss of life. But what we are seeing this week is the cost of the concessions made to get out of it, with much more to come.
We will all be paying more to live our lives, because Donald Trump wanted the Nobel Peace Prize. All he deserves is a pointed hat with a D on it.
The Anonymous Widower 