Orin Gor­don

Ira­ni­ans have a charm­ing so­cial cus­tom called “taarof.” One is re­peat­ed­ly of­fered some­thing be­yond mea­sure and is ex­pect­ed to refuse. The so­cial dance is in­sis­tence and even­tu­al, re­luc­tant ac­cep­tance. The cul­ture is al­so ev­i­dent when eat­ing out with Ira­ni­ans. One per­son would try to pay the whole bill and fend off (of­ten phys­i­cal­ly) oth­er din­ers who try to do the same.

Hav­ing al­ready watched this sev­er­al times and been the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of it, I once pre­tend­ed to go to the bath­room, went to the cashier and set­tled the bill for the par­ty of eight. I wouldn’t have been al­lowed to do it at the ta­ble, and fair­ness dic­tat­ed that I had to do it then. They loved my ma­noeu­vre. I be­came an hon­orary Per­sian that night.

When Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader and No­bel Peace Prize lau­re­ate Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do first spoke of giv­ing her medal to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, he should have leaned in to the spir­it of taarof (or ba­sic self-aware­ness) and shut down the idea. In­stead, Trump told one of his me­dia ad­vo­cates, Sean Han­ni­ty of Fox News, that the en­tire award should have been his, be­cause he set­tled eight wars.

Analy­sis last month by CNN’s Jake Tap­per showed the Pres­i­dent’s claim to be un­true in every in­stance – from DR Con­go and Rwan­da, to Koso­vo and Ser­bia. Trump de­serves con­sid­er­able cred­it for these peace ef­forts, but sum­mon­ing prin­ci­pals to the ta­ble un­der the force of his un­doubt­ed charis­ma and un­ri­valled pow­er is not enough to put an end to cen­turies-old eth­nic and sec­tar­i­an con­flicts. A brief pause in fight­ing does not a set­tle­ment make. It’s akin to the young bach­e­lor shov­ing the mess in his apart­ment un­der the bed, cab­i­nets and in­to the wardrobe when his at­trac­tive date came over. You didn’t re­al­ly clean house, James.

In Trump’s two elec­toral wins in 2016 and 2024, he played on the mes­sage that he favoured peace more than his two De­mo­c­ra­t­ic ri­vals, Hillary Clin­ton and Ka­mala Har­ris. In any event, he end­ed up bomb­ing 10 coun­tries – more than any oth­er pres­i­dent in his­to­ry, ac­cord­ing to left-wing colum­nist Ben Nor­ton.

The lat­est one in Venezuela to ex­tract Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro left be­tween 80 and 100 peo­ple dead. To be fair to Trump, he has ex­pressed re­gret for the loss of life among Venezue­lans, even as he cel­e­brat­ed no Amer­i­can ca­su­al­ties among the forces that took part in the op­er­a­tion. Be­sides cap­tur­ing Maduro and his wife, Cil­ia Flo­res, it in­clud­ed knock­ing out radar and pow­er fa­cil­i­ties and blow­ing up the head­quar­ters of the mil­i­tary.

Trump’s wars all look a cer­tain way. Brief strikes, usu­al­ly aer­i­al, at low to no cost in Amer­i­can lives, no boots on the ground if pos­si­ble and no last­ing pres­ence – noth­ing that hints at Iraq-style “na­tion build­ing” that he has spent an en­tire po­lit­i­cal ca­reer dis­dain­ing.

It’s why his ad­min­is­tra­tion made a strate­gic cal­cu­la­tion that work­ing with Del­cy Ro­driguez – Maduro’s deputy – was a bet­ter op­tion than ty­ing bun­dle with Macha­do. Ro­driguez and all of the peo­ple in Venezuela’s gov­ern­ing ap­pa­ra­tus were un­der US crim­i­nal sanc­tion along with Maduro, but as Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio blurt­ed out to CBS in­ter­view­er Mar­garet Bren­nan, tak­ing out the en­tire gov­ern­ment would have been too cost­ly and bloody.

Team Trump spent a lot of time siz­ing up Macha­do in the last year, ac­cord­ing to some ex­cel­lent New York Times re­port­ing, but was not con­vinced that she could keep things bolt­ed down when the US forcibly re­moved Maduro. The prob­lem for Macha­do is that every­one is talk­ing about new elec­tions as if it’s some­thing far in­to the fu­ture. Her present to Trump, in which she framed the medal and wrote beau­ti­ful ci­ta­tions, is not go­ing to change that cal­cu­lus.

Trump had met at the White House the week be­fore with the heads of ma­jor US oil com­pa­nies – a room of Amer­i­cans, most­ly men, talk­ing about what to do with Venezuela’s pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try. He’s run­ning Venezuela from Wash­ing­ton, open­ly giv­ing or­ders to the in­ter­im pres­i­dent, seiz­ing its oil ship­ments, and even rak­ing in US $500m in pay­ment for one con­sign­ment. Venezuela had no say in what hap­pened to that rev­enue, which the US de­posit­ed in a bank in Qatar.

The op­tics are un­help­ful. Trump won’t care.

The wider fall­out from the US ac­tion in Venezuela

Venezuela has pre­sent­ed Don­ald Trump with his­toric op­por­tu­ni­ties to help shape change in two coun­tries with long-set­tled po­lit­i­cal sys­tems – Iran and Cu­ba.

As of Fri­day, protests in Iran had left about 2,500 peo­ple dead, ac­cord­ing to the BBC. Things could change dras­ti­cal­ly by the time you read this. Some protest lead­ers spoke open­ly about seiz­ing the mo­ment af­ter the US cap­ture of Maduro. On the oth­er hand, many hate the cler­ics but don’t want Amer­i­can in­ter­ven­tion.

Last Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 16, marked 47 years since the Shah, Mo­ham­mad Reza Pahlavi, flew his own Boe­ing 727 in­to ex­ile. The Shah was pushed out of pow­er by bloody demon­stra­tions. In an iron­ic mir­ror­ing of cur­rent events, a sig­nif­i­cant sec­tion of the na­tion had large­ly grown tired of his cor­rup­tion, re­pres­sion and au­to­crat­ic rule. Thou­sands took to the streets in bloody protest against his reign.

In the chaot­ic and trau­mat­ic turn of events, Is­lam­ic cler­ic and re­li­gious leader Ay­a­tol­lah Ruhol­lah Khome­i­ni re­turned from ex­ile in France and ef­fec­tive­ly took pow­er. Are we wit­ness­ing a his­toric loop?

The dan­gers of break­ing Iran

I’ve writ­ten be­fore of how, on my vis­it to Iran in 2008, Sara told me what Tehran felt like dur­ing the 1979 rev­o­lu­tion.

“Sara, then a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent, had gone to a pub­lic protest against the king’s rule. She nev­er for­got a protest or­gan­is­er yelling at her to go to the women’s sec­tion in the crowd. That sep­a­ra­tion had nev­er hap­pened be­fore. And the dis­play of ag­gres­sive pow­er left her cold. The rev­o­lu­tion lost her at that mo­ment.”

The US and Is­rael have shown that they have the in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ty to mil­i­tar­i­ly hit Iran’s re­li­gious lead­er­ship, al­though Trump seemed, as of Fri­day, to be hes­i­tat­ing to make such a call.

Iran is much more topo­graph­i­cal­ly, ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly and eth­ni­cal­ly com­plex than Venezuela and al­most twice as big. The north around Azer­bai­jan and Caspi­an Sea coun­tries is dif­fer­ent to Arab-flavoured Hor­moz­gan in the south/Per­sian Gulf, and Sis­tan and Baluches­tan province, which abuts Pak­istan and Afghanistan. Iran’s got desert, wine coun­try (Shi­raz is a place there) and snow-cov­ered moun­tains with ski­ing.

Coun­tries with this much dif­fer­ence are of­ten com­pli­cat­ed con­structs. Break them, and you un­leash un­con­trol­lable sec­tar­i­an forces. Venezuela was it­self a lim­it­ed in­ter­ven­tion that left most of the gov­ern­ment in place. Trump prefers low-cost wars. The bet has to be against him break­ing Iran.

Cu­ba

We’ve ro­man­ti­cised Cu­ba, Fi­del Cas­tro and Che Gue­vara to death. We want pic­ture post­card hol­i­days amid 1950s cars that are there by ne­ces­si­ty rather than choice. The col­lec­tive fail­ure to ush­er Cu­ba to­wards a sys­tem of lo­cal and na­tion­al de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance in 67 years is a glar­ing one by Cu­ba’s friends, neigh­bours and al­lies in the hemi­sphere.

Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can groups have cor­rect­ly called out the long­stand­ing US em­bar­go and its dev­as­tat­ing ef­fect on Cu­ba, but they’ve al­lowed Cu­ba to use it as a shield against mak­ing nec­es­sary re­forms. The chief dri­ver of US pol­i­cy on Cu­ba is the son of con­ser­v­a­tive Cuban ex­iles, who have been ac­cused of be­ing more in­tent on re­claim­ing what they lost in 1959 than see­ing Cubans tru­ly equal.

Even Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, in the last year of his pres­i­den­cy, seemed to choose a pho­to op and sym­bol­ism over pres­sure on Ha­vana for re­al de­mo­c­ra­t­ic re­form. Trump now con­trols Cu­ba’s oil sup­ply. And in Ru­bio, he has a Sec­re­tary of State who start­ed cre­at­ing dis­tance be­tween Cu­ba and Cari­com coun­tries from Day One. In Cu­ba, Trump has the ca­pac­i­ty to de­liv­er one of the hemi­sphere’s most con­se­quen­tial po­lit­i­cal shifts in 60 years.

Orin Gor­don has vis­it­ed and/or re­port­ed from Iran, Cu­ba and Lit­tle Ha­vana in Mi­a­mi.