Version imprimableIn his typically grandiloquent and bombastic style, Trump said that he had reshaped the Middle East and “saved Israel from nuclear annihilation.” He declared, “Ships of the world, start your engines. Let the oil flow.” But, as I am writing on June 21, few ships have moved through the Strait of Hormuz and little oil has flowed.
Trump, even as he promoted his peace plan, intermittently threatened to begin bombing Iran again.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unhappy with Trump’s deal, has continued attacks on Lebanon, with more deaths and destruction. Furious, Trump told Netanyahu, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me.”
The Iranian government, believing a ceasefire in Lebanon was part of the deal, now refused to move forward after Israeli attack. Netanyahu argues there is no deal until Hezbollah is disarmed. Israeli fascist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir made the horrifying declaration that Israel should “burn all of Lebanon.” By and large, Israelis oppose Trump’s deal and now 60% of them oppose Netanyahu, largely because the peace deal doesn’t eliminate Hezbollah.
In the United States recent polls show that 60% of the American people are unhappy with Trump’s peace deal. Republican and Democratic politicians don’t like it either. Republican leaders believe that the deal gives too much to Iran: ending all sanctions and agreeing to pay $300 billion to Iran, while postponing the negotiation of an agreement to end Iran’s nuclear program. Republican Senators Bill Cassidy, Ted Cruz, Roger Wicker, Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham have all criticized the deal in those terms. Cassidy called the deal the "worst foreign policy blunder in decades."
Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “certain aspects of this deal are a step in the wrong direction.” Cotton criticized lifting U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, which he estimated would allow the country to bring in between $4.5 and $6 billion a month. “That’s a lot of money,’ he said. “And we know that this terrorist revolutionary regime is not going to spend that money on day care or on hospitals. They’re going to use it to rebuild their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to fund Hamas and fund Hezbollah.”
American politicians and the American public don’t understand that Hezbollah was created as a Shiite militia in reaction to a previous Israeli invasion in 1982, that led to an 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah became a political party and established large scale social services in southern Lebanon. Lebanese of all faiths and politics, except the Christo-fascists, have come to accept it an integral part of Lebanese society, even if many would like to see Hezbollah disarm. Short of Ben Gvir’s genocidal call, “burn all of Lebanon,” Hezbollah is not going away.
Trump’s deal, if it ever actually goes into effect and if there is also a nuclear deal, will probably be less effective in restraining Iran’s nuclear program that President Barack Obama’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, torn up by Trump in 2018.
At the moment supposedly there is no war, actually there is no peace, and almost nobody is happy with the deal, except maybe Iran’s leaders. In the United States, people want the war over, but there is no anti-war movement to end it either. The American left has been focused on the primary elections and the national elections coming in November that will determine who controls congress. And, if we’re in the streets, that could change U.S. foreign policy.
21 June 2026
