'Truly unstable' Trump's new 'unhinged' proposal gave Iran the upper hand: expert
Donald Trump has handed Iran a stunning victory while simultaneously raising questions about his stability to American allies with a proposal so "divorced from reality" that it exposes the administration's complete lack of strategic planning.So wrote New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, a Middle East expert, who said on Tuesday that Trump's misguided Iran war strategy has already inadvertently given Tehran a far more potent weapon than any nuclear capability: the realization that it can hold the global economy hostage at will with no end in sight.Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gambled that multibillion-dollar weapons systems could bomb Iran into surrendering its nuclear program. They relied entirely on Netanyahu's promise that the Iranian regime would collapse like "a house of cards after a few weeks of heavy bombing," Friedman wrote.Instead, they enabled Iran to discover what Friedman calls a weapon of "mass disruption" — cheap drones capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most critical oil chokepoint."Now, and forever, Iranians will know that we know that Tehran can shut off the world's most important oil tap anytime it wants. This new source of leverage for the Iranian regime is priceless," the columnist explained.Trump's latest proposal in a Truth Social Memorial Day post exposed the catastrophic consequences of waging war without scenario planning or expert input with the president writing that he is "mandatorily requesting that all Countries [in the region] immediately sign the Abraham Accords." The columnist pointed out that Trump even claimed allies told him they "would be honored" if Iran itself joined the accords. "If Iran signs 'it will be the most important Deal that any of these Great, but always in Conflict Countries, will ever sign,'" he wrote. "Nothing in the past, or in the future, will surpass it."Friedman posed the question: "On what planet of the Milky Way Galaxy would this regime in Tehran, which is practically founded on hatred of Israel, just up and make peace with it after this war?"The proposal was so unexpected and so divorced from Middle Eastern political reality that Friedman labeled it as "unhinged" and a cause for concern."The whole thing was so ridiculous, juvenile and unvetted by any experts that it had to have left our Israeli and Arab allies deeply worried that their American protector is led by a truly unstable man," Friedman concluded.
