When it comes to Iran, Trump is all mouth and no trousers

Telegraph

a day ago

Remember Donald Trump's vow that there would be 'all hell to pay' if Hamas hadn't released all the hostages by the time he took office? What happened to that? Four months later and for all his tough talk, the president is slumping into a Biden crouch.
His envoy, Steve Witkoff, is poised to unveil a revised Israel-Hamas ceasefire proposal amid optimistic leaks, mainly from sources in the United States, that a larger deal may be in the offing.
This will likely entail the phased release of ten hostages out of the 20 presumed still living, as well as the remains of a further 18. This will leave the jihadis in control of ten living hostages and 20 bodies, which in their depraved eyes amounts to a pretty significant hand of playing cards to keep.
In return, Israel may release 125 notorious murderers with much innocent blood on their hands, not to mention military experience and an undimmed fanaticism in their souls, as well as 1,111 prisoners captured after October 7 and the remains of 180 terrorists killed in battle. The latter is an unusual demand to be emphasised by Hamas, which appears to be mimicking Jewish veneration of the dead. Aid will also be ramped up.
All this will be arranged around a 60-day pause in fighting. The White House seems confident that it has reassured Israel that either the campaign or further hostage negotiations, or both, may be recommenced if the deadline passes with no progress in talks for a final end to hostilities. Israel has reportedly indicated it will accept.
So far, so Joe Biden. For those Trump supporters who were looking forward to seeing Hamas blasted to kingdom come as soon as his feet hit the Oval carpet, it all looks rather flaccid. What happened to his cherished Riviera?
Just like during the Biden era, we have even witnessed an extraordinary propaganda campaign waged by Hamas, the United Nations, a range of NGOs and the international media to obstruct a joint Israeli-American attempt to create a means of delivering aid directly to the people of Gaza while bypassing their jihadi overlords.
As Israel has looked in danger of winning, the disinformation has hit fever pitch. Gaza, we have been told, is on the verge of famine, which quickly elides into claims of an actual famine, despite no evidence of deaths of starvation and plentiful videos on social media of reasonable conditions in the Strip.
This has been accompanied by a plethora of fabricated, exaggerated or just plain fishy claims made by Hamas and magnified by a venomously Israelophobic elite and their radical progressive allies.
The arts world swung into action. R&B musicians 'spoke out' and almost 400 novelists signed a letter pledging to brand Israel's campaign 'genocide'. Odd kind of genocide when the aggressor warns civilians before it attacks, fails for two-and-a-half years to complete the supposed crime despite having the firepower to do so in two-and-a-half hours, and goes out of its way to deliver aid.
If anybody had been paying attention, they would have observed that Israel had been accused of 'genocide' in earnest since October 8, and in general for many decades before that. The fact that the job of a novelist is literally to make up stories was apparently lost upon them.
The disinformation has been as transparent as it has been ubiquitous. Yet following in the footsteps of Joe Biden before him, Trump failed to condemn this wave of lies, instead dignifying it by adding the claim of his own that 'a lot of people are starving' while hanging out with a bunch of Arab leaders.
It doesn't stop there. We had high hopes that Iran would finally meet some serious opposition when the Donald returned to office. After all, this was the man who had authorised the killing of the totemic Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani, king of overseas meddling, in 2020.
Yet just as the time is ripe for denuclearising Iran by way of bunker busters – Tehran's air defences were taken out by Israel last year and Hezbollah has been decapitated and castrated – Trump seems to be bottling it.
The President publicly confirmed that he had asked Benjamin Netanyahu not to launch an attack while he was negotiating with the Ayatollah, amid days of speculation about a tense telephone call between the two men and American assessments that Israel may be preparing a strike of its own.
Jerusalem is deeply concerned that an impending Trump-Khamenei deal would take the threat of an assault by the United States off the table, while leaving Iran in a holding pattern that would allow the Ayatollah to advance his nuclear programme again when he's good and ready.
There are also serious worries about an interim deal that would offer Iran sanctions relief before a nuclear accord is reached, hosing billions of dollars into its coffers that may be used to rebuild Hezbollah and its other devastated assets. This would allow the Iranians breathing space to do what they do best: drag on the talks while pushing their agenda forward, quietly but steadily.
We have even seen growing reports of friction between Trump and Netanyahu, which is beginning to look rather like the 'daylight' famously placed by Biden between the United States and its beleaguered ally. It's all a far cry from the berserker rhetoric that Trump so loudly trumpeted before he took office. Has he been mugged by reality? Or is the 47 th president all mouth and no trousers?