The Iran Cease-Fire Was Doomed to Fail
In many ways, the current moment resembles the lead-up to World War I, when ambiguous commitments, an aversion to consultation, a reliance on personal diplomacy, and shortsightedness produced a global catastrophe.
No, really? Who cooda node? 🙄
A long and very historical/academic analysis of the current approach to diplomacy being pursued by Trumpolini and his crew of syncophants, which was Doomed to fail not just because the approach is short sighted, but because the people negotiating it have no goal other than finding ways they can profit from the mayhem. Once you grasp that Trumpolini's goals are all directed by self-enrichment, everything becomes predictable.
His latest deal allowing the Saudis to develop their own Nukes is a case in point. These are the same folks who flew planes into the WTC. They are more trustworthy to have their own Nuke weapons than the Towel Heads in Tehran? The difference? The House of Saud will happily invest in Chump's Casinos, or whatever his latest scheme is for laundering money. The Saudi Princes are just as corrupt as His Royal Trumpness, and they all get along famously. The only substantive difference is the Saudi's can legally marry the 9 year old concubines in their harems if they so choose.
Far as the long term prospects for Peace in MENA, it's irrelevant who is POTUS on that score. One simple principle is all you need to know:
As long as their is econmically profitable Oil & NG to be extracted from beneath the desert sands of that neighborhood, there can never be Peace.
The battle for the Oil in MENA has been under contest either through overt military action or covert assasinations and regime changes continuously from before WWI began until the present. Capitalism always requires the use of force to take ownership of resources out of the Commons and into Private hands. For different ideological reasons, neither the Ruskies or the Iranians have been willing to play ball with the Rockefellers and their successors, and now as the last of the cheap oil is running thin, the battle has gone hot again. The math is simple. Raise the cost of the cheap oil left in Iran and Russia by creating wars and the expensive oil trapped in shale can be profitable.
Problem there of course is it's only profitable if Konsumers can afford to buy it, and ever increasing numbers can't.
That won't stop the wars though.
RE