Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

Let’s start with the ex­pec­ta­tion that the de­ci­sion to try one more time for a diplo­mat­ic so­lu­tion to the US-Is­raeli war against Iran will even­tu­al­ly lead to a last­ing peace amongst the three na­tions. Such a ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment will need to be­gin with an agree­ment which can re­sult in the full re­open­ing of the Strait of Hor­muz.

If achieved, it will avoid the pend­ing eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter which has been pro­ject­ed if such a so­lu­tion is not found, agreed up­on and im­ple­ment­ed by all sides to the con­flict. If achieved, it can be a pos­i­tive start and es­tab­lish the ba­sis for good­will in the con­tin­u­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Crit­i­cal to this first point will be Is­rael’s ac­cep­tance of what­ev­er is ne­go­ti­at­ed, as its ob­jec­tives are far wider than the open­ing of the Strait. From all that has been said and done over the decades by Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu, he has al­ways in­di­cat­ed in deed and ac­tion that the com­plete sub­ju­ga­tion of Iran has been his ob­jec­tive and he will not be will­ing to set­tle for less. Has the Is­raeli PM sat­is­fied him­self suf­fi­cient­ly to face his coun­try with fresh elec­tions due and him hav­ing to face the courts on cor­rup­tion charges?

How­ev­er, one ma­jor in­con­sis­ten­cy is the leav­ing of Is­rael’s con­tin­u­ing bom­bard­ment of Lebanon out of the peace talks; that is il­log­i­cal and gives Is­rael free rein to con­tin­ue with the at­tacks. That has to be re­solved, or it will sink the talks.

From all that has been said, Pres­i­dent Trump says he is com­fort­able with his ob­jec­tives, the fact of his will­ing­ness to halt the in­ten­tion to bomb Iran in­to non-ex­is­tence, is in­di­ca­tion enough that he wants to set­tle this war, pre­vent a ground in­va­sion with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of body bags go­ing back home and come out of the war brag­ging of how great a war­rior and ne­go­tia­tor he be.

Giv­en all that po­ten­tial­ly hov­ers at home, not least of which will be hav­ing to an­swer for a war en­gaged in with­out con­gres­sion­al ap­proval and which has been re­port­ed to cost US$1 bil­lion for every day of the en­gage­ment, see­ing the bill mount with­out an end in clear sight, must al­so have led Pres­i­dent Trump to ac­cede to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of achiev­ing a peace­ful so­lu­tion now that he has suf­fi­cient­ly dam­aged Iran to claim vic­to­ry.

Avoid­ing what could have turned out to be a sec­ond Viet­nam, an im­me­di­ate and peace­ful set­tle­ment will as­sist with his do­mes­tic pol­i­tics. More­over, if the US Pres­i­dent still har­bours the hope of hav­ing the No­bel Peace com­mit­tee award him the prize, he must sure­ly bank on this cease­fire and peace talks end­ing an ill-con­ceived and il­le­gal war.

He has al­ready ac­knowl­edged the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the De­moc­rats tak­ing charge of both the Sen­ate and House, and if so, pro­ceed­ing to once again im­peach him.

All of that and more, equal to Pres­i­dent Trump hav­ing at stake the peace ne­go­ti­a­tions, chaired and man­aged by Pak­istan, work ef­fec­tive­ly and hon­est­ly to­ward reach­ing a set­tle­ment over the next cou­ple of weeks. The most im­me­di­ate­ly im­por­tant will be to halt Amer­i­can-made Is­raeli-fired bombs and mis­siles dur­ing the peace talks.

So too do Iran’s ne­go­tia­tors and in­evitably the Gov­ern­ment in Tehran have much to gain both in the im­me­di­ate and the long term to halt the war and achieve a last­ing peace.

I have carved the above in­to a pos­si­bil­i­ty for achiev­ing the per­ma­nent set­tle­ment which is need­ed in the present; it’s not that I am in­no­cent of the in­trigue, the deep down vi­o­lence, the gen­er­a­tional ha­tred in which all of the above and more have been sunk; but rather that a set­tle­ment that sat­is­fies and is fair to all sides in the war is des­per­ate­ly need­ed. If not, the present will sink fur­ther in­to gen­er­a­tional ha­tred on both sides, and with the US and Is­rael deep­en­ing the vi­o­lence.

Even so, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an im­me­di­ate set­tle­ment in the Mid­dle East is mere­ly to tamp down the decades-old deep di­vi­sions be­tween and amongst the coun­tries of the re­gion. The is­sue of Pales­tine, the ag­gra­vat­ed vi­o­lence com­mit­ted by Is­rael against it over 70 years and the fu­ture of the peo­ple of that so bad­ly treat­ed na­tion will not be re­solved by a peace agree­ment, but it can help to keep hope alive.

The Amer­i­can con­tin­u­ing con­trol of the re­sources of the area in the in­ter­est of its transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions; the jus­tice which is over­due to the said Pales­tin­ian peo­ple, their lands, rec­om­pense for the slaugh­ter of hun­dreds of thou­sands over sev­en decades, and the dis­place­ment of mil­lions of Pales­tini­ans from their homes for two thou­sand years, will re­main an out­stand­ing in­jus­tice.

The world or­der scram­bled to­geth­er af­ter WWII to favour the in­ter­ests of Eu­ro-Amer­i­ca, to al­low for the con­tin­u­ing plun­der of the non-Eu­ro-Amer­i­can world, has got to be dis­in­te­grat­ed and that will not hap­pen for the ask­ing, even if a peace agree­ment is struck in the present. Nonethe­less, in the cir­cum­stances of the day, a mean­ing­ful peace set­tle­ment is need­ed to pre­vent the con­tin­u­ing slaugh­ter of Ira­ni­ans and the de­struc­tion of their coun­try.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI,CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.