The Israeli carnage in Lebanon and the contradictions of the United States

There are so many unknowns and mysteries in the ceasefire agreement announced yesterday between the United States and Iran that it can only be explained by Donald Trump’s desire to escape the trap of this war.

The first major rupture occurred yesterday in the form of a massacre in Lebanon. When the Pakistani prime minister, a mediator in this conflict, stated that the ceasefire applied to both theaters of war, Iran and Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promptly denied it: not Lebanon. And to prove it, Israel carried out its most violent bombardments yesterday, causing dozens of deaths, according to Lebanese authorities. Yesterday, Iran threatened to break the truce if the ceasefire did not extend to Lebanon.

American-Iranian negotiations are supposed to take place starting tomorrow in Islamabad. But the ten-point plan put forward by Iran, which Donald Trump said was a good basis for negotiation, is puzzling.

These ten points, of which several versions are circulating, constitute a list of maximalist demands by Iran: they would give Tehran a more favorable position than before the war, the opposite of what Washington wanted. This includes compensation for war damages, lifting of sanctions, a supervisory role for Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump added to the mystery yesterday by stating that the United States could create a joint venture with Iran to manage the passage of the Strait of Hormuz, where Tehran currently negotiates this transit in cryptocurrencies or yuan, the Chinese currency.

Another surprise came with another tweet from the American president announcing that the United States and Iran could work together to bring back the 430 kilos of enriched uranium buried during last year’s bombings. Unless there is a miracle, it is hard to imagine Iran accepting Americans on its soil for this task, especially since the uranium stockpile is not included in the 10 points on the table.

An agreement is far off, which is not surprising after a war of such intensity. But the basis of the discussion seems completely unbalanced and revealing of the lack of American strategy from the beginning.

Just read the detailed, quite surreal narrative of the American decision to go to war, published this week by the New York Times, to understand how we got here. It was Benjamin Netanyahu who came on February 11th to present a four-step plan to the Americans, in the strictest secrecy. Points 3 and 4 were a popular uprising and the downfall of the regime. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, described, according to the investigation, points 3 and 4 as “bullshit”, as “nonsense”; but Donald Trump was committed to this war.

The only one who was briefly opposed to it was Vice President JD Vance, more isolationist. It is now him who will negotiate with the Iranians, which speaks volumes about the stakes of American domestic politics. The Iranians know this and will play on it when they meet this adversary who no longer wants to make war. This war appears even more senseless today, by the way it is ending, or trying to end.