Republicans won’t easily forgive a Trump surrender

WASHINGTON DC – Hell hath no fury like a Republican scorned, and this weekend, even before the ink is dry on Donald Trump’s partial peace deal with Iran, the anger and visceral was already piling up.

Many of Trump’s backers fear the US President is surrendering to Tehran’s interests.

Trump was already on the receiving end of Republican lawmakers’ fury over last week’s hastily proposed “weaponisation” fund that could see taxpayer money paid to convicted-then-pardoned rioters who ransacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021. His announcement that peace could soon be at hand with Iran sent many of them into overdrive.

“I am deeply concerned about what we are hearing about an Iran ‘deal’”, wrote Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. He urged Trump to “hold the line”.

“If the result of all this is to be an Iranian regime – still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’ – now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake,” Cruz added.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a prominent foreign policy voice in Trump’s ear, added that if a deal with Iran allows the regime to survive and become more powerful, “we will have poured gasoline on the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq”.

In a later X post, Graham said: “It makes one wonder why the war started to begin with if these perceptions are accurate.”

For Trump, who is facing growing public disapproval over his war, it is a case of being caught between his own urgent need to wrap the conflict up and those around him who fear that his very public quest for an exit will represent a massive shot-in-the-arm for the regime in Tehran.

Those fears were stoked by Fox News, which reported that the proposed ceasefire extension holds out the possibility of oil sanctions waivers and the release of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian funds if the regime agrees to the implementation of a full and final deal over the next 60 days.

For a White House that has repeatedly shamed the Barack Obama administration for unfreezing $400 million in Iranian funds in 2016, the new agreement looks set to go even further.

Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State during his first administration, furiously dismissed the proposed deal as “not remotely America First”. He branded Trump’s strategy as straight out of the playbook of former president Joe Biden.

“Open the damned strait. Deny Iran access to money. Take out enough Iranian capability so it cannot threaten our allies in the region. Overdue. Let’s go,” he instead urged.

The White House response came less than two hours later. “Mike Pompeo has no idea what the f**k he’s talking about,” wrote Steven Cheung, the White House director of communications. “He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals.”

In the process, he eviscerated whatever smoldering bridge may still have existed between Trump and his former top foreign policy official.

Robert Kagan, co-founder of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, wrote an instant analysis piece for The Atlantic titled ‘Trump’s Endgame Is Surrender’. Trump, he suggested, “is hoping to slip away without Americans noticing the magnitude of his defeat”.

Meanwhile, Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s White House Press Secretary, said that the proposed agreement was “a long way from unconditional surrender” that Trump was demanding of Iran as recently as last week.

On his Truth Social account on Sunday, Trump sought to damp down some of the criticism by insisting that he will not rush into any agreement with Iran. “Both sides must take their time and get it right. There can be no mistakes!” he wrote.

He also bristled over comparisons being drawn with Obama’s handling of Tehran, claiming falsely that the former president had created a “direct path to Iran developing a Nuclear Weapon. Not so with the transaction currently being negotiated”.

But the Trump administration can be under no delusions about the scale of Republican anger towards any agreement that strengthens rather than weakens the Iranian regime. Republican lawmakers like Graham will settle for nothing less than the toppling of the regime. By igniting his war without any evident plan for ending it, the President has increasingly boxed himself in.

Trump could, of course, go full scorched-earth against his internal critic, but may prefer to avoid more confrontations with his own party’s members just months before November’s crucial midterm elections.

Amid the tidal waves of criticism hurled at the White House, it was possible, at least, to find the rare supportive voice.

Trump “just delivered another historic win for America and the world!” wrote Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio. “This is peace through strength without endless wars or weak concessions”, he suggested.

This will be little consolation to a US President who must have imagined Triumphal arches and glorious headlines when he launched his war almost three months ago, rather than scorn and plunging poll numbers.

المصدر: iNews