Analysis: Trump claims a ‘forever' peace in the land of forever wars — but is it all one big illusion?

CNN

4 hours ago

So much for the quagmire.
Donald Trump seems to have emerged from the worst crisis in America's estrangement with Iran's Islamic Republic with a win.
The president leaped on Tehran's modest missile response Monday to the US pounding of its nuclear sites as a sign it wants to end escalations. 'CONGRATULATIONS WORLD, ITS TIME FOR PEACE!' he posted on Truth Social.
Trump's exuberance was a sign that he sees the US involvement in the conflict as over, at least for now.
And he followed up by announcing a ceasefire between Iran and Israel due to come into force later Tuesday. Ceasefires in the Middle East are often fragile and fleeting, as was underscored by attacks by both Israel and Iran in the hours before the truce was due to be established.
But the president was already trumpeting his chosen image as a peacemaker and consummate deal maker, only 48 hours after US stealth bombers slammed Iran.
'I think the ceasefire is unlimited. It's going to go forever,' Trump told NBC News on Monday night, predicting that Israel and Iran will never 'be shooting at each other again.'
That's a bold claim given the Middle East's reputation as a graveyard of American presidencies. And for all Trump's marketing skills, events will decide whether his breakthrough is for real or just another illusion.
Has the United States, as Trump claimed, really ensured the 'obliteration' of Iran's nuclear program, an existential threat to Israel? Or is it all a classic Trump mirage, and does the glaring unfinished business of this conflict — an apparently missing stockpile of highly enriched uranium that can be quickly made into a bomb — mean a deeper crisis looms?
A quick end to the fighting would shape Trump's presidency and legacy and boost a foreign policy previously marked by failures like the stalled peace effort in Ukraine. But will the world change its mind about the master of chaos if he really does help ease tensions in a blood-soaked region?
What is next for Israel? Does Trump trust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt his attacks on Iran? And will Israel finally take steps to relieve the agony of Palestinian civilians, starving and dying by the thousands in the onslaught in Gaza?
And in Tehran, will the humiliation of Iran's clerical regime and the splintering of its Middle East network of fear promote a political spring that many of its citizens crave?
The president can claim the most significant foreign policy and military success of his time in the Oval Office. Trump made a bet that many skeptics saw as irresponsible — that he could hammer Iran's nuclear plants without plunging the US into a new Middle East quagmire to mirror Iraq.
So far, he's been proved right. While Trump might have initially been uneasy about Israel's assault on Iran, which seemed calculated to draw him in, he asserted control and exploited an opening to severely degrade Iran's nuclear program with little cost to the US. After days of public teases, his approach looked like a risky hunch. For sure he got lucky. But he also demonstrated strategic acumen and decisiveness and will always bask in the daring mission by B-2 bombers carrying bunker-buster bombs on a marathon flight from Missouri.
If the conflict cools now, Trump may get a domestic political boost, at least in the GOP, and be able to heal rifts in his MAGA base, where some supporters felt he has broken his promise to start no new wars.
The crisis also gave important insights into Trump's second presidency. It revealed that he's neither a tool of the remnant Republican hawks nor the 'America First' populists. And a core circle of trust emerged around Trump, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, according to CNN reporting. The futures of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seem less assured, however.
The president is also determined to try again to get a deal with Iran to end its nuclear program through negotiations. But he's also shown he's willing to wield overwhelming military force, putting a dent in the caricature of his TACO ('Trump always chickens out') diplomacy.
Still, the crisis also highlighted more troubling sides of Trump's leadership.
He committed the US to military action without preparing the nation ahead of time and politicized the mission by keeping top Democrats out of the loop. This was only the latest occasion when Trump has shown contempt for Congress's constitutional role and any sense he's the president of all Americans.
And he's still not shown Americans intelligence that he used to justify the attacks on the grounds that Iran was weeks away from a weapon. He ignored US spy agencies that found Tehran had taken no such decision to build a bomb.
Trump also snubbed US allies and mocked their peace efforts. This was the clearest sign yet of a volatile new global age when the US has decoupled from its alliances and will ruthlessly pursue its own national interests.
The president is already writing his preferred version of history of what he calls the '12-Day War.' His claims to have eradicated the Iranian nuclear program already look like a feint to neuter any contrary evidence that emerges. It will be a brave US official who contradicts the president's great victory.
The critical question arising from the conflict is unanswered.
But in his late-night national address on Saturday, Trump said the objective of the mission was 'the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed to the world's number one state sponsor of terror.'
Early estimates suggest that the Iranian facilities at Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow were severely damaged. But it's far too early for Trump's bravado.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, for instance, told CNN's Fareed Zakaria Sunday that Iran had 'protected' a stock of 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60% — just short of the 90% grade needed to make a nuclear bomb.
Trump, meanwhile, is convinced that his strategy will bomb Iran back to the negotiating table to talk about a replacement for President Barack Obama's nuclear deal, which Trump trashed in his first term. But Iran's military leaders might take an opposite lesson from the conflict — that the only way for the revolution to survive is to acquire a nuclear bomb that will deter future attacks. There's no sign yet that Trump's condition for a deal — a verifiable end to Iranian uranium enrichment — will be acceptable to Tehran.
'From a nonproliferation perspective, Trump's decision to strike Iran was a reckless, irresponsible escalation that is likely to push Iran closer to nuclear weapons in the long term,' said Kelsey Davenport of the Arms Control Association. 'The strikes did damage key Iranian nuclear facilities, like the underground Fordow enrichment site. But Tehran had ample time prior to the strikes to remove its stockpile of near-weapons-grade uranium to a covert location, and it's likely that they did so.'
Nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione told CNN's Phil Mattingly on 'The Lead' that it was impossible to bomb away Iran's knowledge or enriched uranium and that it could build back its facilities. He warned that the missing uranium could be inserted by Iran into any new centrifuges it has to create the core of a bomb within five days and 10 bombs within three weeks.
'That is my greatest concern. Are they racing to develop that weapon before the US or Israel can find the gas or destroy it?'
If those fears are realized, Trump's victory lap and Republican adulation will be remembered as pure political negligence and the catalyst for an even worse global crisis in future.
Iran's lobbing of missiles toward a vast US base in Qatar, easily thwarted by US and Qatari counter-measures, revealed weakness after it ceded control of its own airspace to Israeli jets. Tehran's grip has also weakened outside its borders.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' regional network — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen — was once seen as Iran's insurance policy against Israeli attacks on its nuclear program. But 20 months of Israeli attacks devastated its proxies and left their sponsor exposed. Israel is now a dominant regional power. And US allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are ascendent in a transformed Middle East.
Uncertainty meanwhile clouds Iran's domestic politics.
An already difficult transition as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's rule enters its twilight is now even more fraught. Outsiders will watch to see whether the regime's grip is loosened when the next of Iran's periodic uprisings erupts. But despite calls for regime change in Washington and Israel, more repression seems likely.
Politics are also turbulent in Israel. Netanyahu's unwillingness to reach a ceasefire with Hamas and this zeal to take the fight to Iranian soil are widely seen as a ruse to stay in power amid personal scandals and to forestall an accounting of the October 7, 2023, attacks on his watch. Still, if relative peace returns, Netanyahu may get a political bounce for taking on Iran's nuclear program — a personal calling after decades in power.
The Trump-Netanyahu dynamic will also be intriguing. The US president never stops looking for leverage. If he has the inclination, he could exploit the huge debt Israel now owes him to push for a peace agreement in Gaza.
This latest scary episode of the Trump show may be about to wrap up.
But tune in next week for something equally extreme.