Trump haunted by ghost of Obama’s deal
Like a caged tiger, Trump kept going back and forth between threats of naked aggression and persuasion. On more than 38 occasions, he announced a deal was reached only to see everything fall apart.
Opiyo Oloya.
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OPINION
By Opiyo Oloya
The agreement between the US and Iran was dubbed a birthday present for US President Donald Trump, who turned 80 on Sunday. Trump took to social media to declare it the greatest agreement in history that will open the Strait of Hormuz, provide lasting peace in the Middle East and allow oil to flow. And for good measure, he added that the agreement was a huge departure from the failures of previous American presidents. It was a veiled shot at President Barack Obama, who signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in July 2015.
But even as Trump ran the victory lap, questions remain whether the agreement is worth the piece of paper on which it is written. For one, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to ignore Washington’s instruction to halt attacks in Lebanon and, instead, bombed various locations, including Beirut’s southern suburbs. For another, Iran has declared there is no agreement on the nuclear stockpile it has accumulated over the last several years since Trump tore up the verifiable Obama agreement. And moreover, the Iranians are adamant they must have immediate access to frozen assets and to market their oil.
What it all means is that Trump’s superlatives in praising himself hide a very simple, inconvenient truth — which both Israel and Iran have learned to exploit very well — Trump is haunted and trapped by the ghost of Obama’s 2015 deal with Iran. At the time to get Iran to agree, Obama dangled both the carrots — returning some frozen Iranian assets and allowing the mullahs to rule without interference — and the sticks, which included the threat of use of force.
In his treatise titled The Art of War, the great ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Iran did not want to test Obama’s resolve by starting a war with the mighty and formidable USA. But Trump did the complete opposite. Minimising the successes of the first Black USA president, Trump tore up the 2015 deal, calling it a disaster, which, according to him, was because Obama was a very weak leader.
Instead, he, a white man, could get a better deal by supporting the war against Iran in June 2025 and then again in February 2026. And at first, it appeared Trump had the upper hand. Iran’s leadership was decapitated, including the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and much of Iran’s war assets were destroyed by thousands of targeted bombings.
But then the unexpected happened. Iran showed its capabilities and resilience, more crucially, absorbing the furious attacks from both the US and Israel and emerging more confident, stronger and focused on getting an even better deal than it had with Obama. In fact, so cocky was Iran that by early May, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) spokesperson put it bluntly on X that Trump must choose to “fight an impossible war or make a bad deal”.
Iran, in other words, was no longer the scared little kid being bullied in the school yard, being bombed by the mighty US. Rather, with the Strait of Hormuz as part of any deal, Iran had Trump against the ropes. Trump could use a thousand bombs to pummel Iran, but Iran only needed one missile to stop all traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. The shoe was now on the other foot, and Iranians knew how to squeeze harder.
The trap, of course, was Trump’s own making. If he had taken the time to work to improve on the Obama deal, he might have emerged looking better off. Now staring into the abyss, Trump was doing everything to avoid looking like an idiot, which he was in the first place when he tore up the JCPOA.
The best avenue now open for Trump is to punt into the far-away future date any deal on the substantive question of the Iranian nuclear enrichment program, leaving for his successor in two years, whoever that will be, to make a deal with Iran. That way, at least, he will avoid becoming the laughingstock of the international community, which he is now. Everyone is laughing at him, poking fun at how clueless he has become.
Trump, unfortunately, does not have the luxury of postponing the Iranian nuclear headache for his successor to deal with — the urgency and imperative of keeping the Strait of Hormuz open for global commerce and economies cannot wait for two years, until Trump is gone. As it is, the global economies are teetering on the brink and Trump must deal with the problem now.
So, as the wise mullahs have said before, Trump must choose between an impossible war and a bad deal. Going for more bombing and war is a losing proposition. The only option left for Trump is to choose a bad deal for the US — one that will see the mullahs in charge of nuclear enrichment and, of course, laughing all the way to the bank with the large loot Trump must pay for the ransom of freeing up the Strait of Hormuz. Sad.
Opiyo.oloya@gmail.com Twitter: @Opiyooloya
Dr Opiyo Oloya is the Inaugural Associate Vice-President, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) at Western University, London, Ontario, Canada