BREAKING: Talks with Iran spark a new war among Republicans: “Mike Pompeo should shut his stupid mouth” | International
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New war in the MAGA world. The three months since the US-Israeli attack on Iran have served to show the seams in the Make America Great Again movement. The most isolationist sector demanded that President Donald Trump deal with the problems of Americans and forget about the very costly wars in unknown places. The greatest exponent of that faction was Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who went from a staunch defender of Trump to one of his biggest critics and ended up leaving the seat. Now, the proximity of an agreement with Tehran, which the White House sees as within reach, opens a new front in the elephant’s party. Foreign policy hardliners see this pact, which if confirmed would include the unblocking of the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting sanctions and unfreezing Iranian funds, an unforgivable concession on the part of Washington. They consider that, if the details that are gradually becoming known are fulfilled, the United States would leave the war without having achieved any of the great objectives for which it embarked on this campaign. And that the Iranian regime would be even more strengthened than before. Trump and his spokespersons have already attacked these critical voices. One of the clearest has been Steven Cheung, White House communications director. “Mike Pompeo has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not aware of anything that’s going on,” Cheung responded to the former Secretary of State during Trump’s first term. Pompeo, who directed United States diplomacy between 2018 and 2021, had attacked the draft agreement in an X message, which he considers very similar to the nuclear pact closed in 2015 by Democrat Barack Obama. As soon as he won his first elections, Trump unilaterally abandoned that agreement. Since then he has not missed the opportunity to define it as a disaster for his country. Well, eight years after Trump took that step, the man who directed his foreign policy believes that what he is doing is very similar. And he sums it up like this: “Pay the Revolutionary Guard to develop a weapons of mass destruction program and terrorize the world.” That comparison gets on Trump’s nerves. “I don’t make pacts like those,” she responded on her social network, Truth. A woman walks next to a billboard on a street in Tehran (Iran) this Monday. ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH (EFE) Not only former officials of the Republican Administration criticize what is being negotiated. Senators as relevant – and in some cases very close to Trump – as Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Roger Wicker and Thom Tillis have also pointed out the negative consequences for the United States of what is being negotiated. The president, as usual, has reacted by disdaining any criticism: “I laugh at all the democrats and fools who know nothing about the possible deal I am making with Iran,” he wrote. The final result, says the president, “will be either a large and magnificent agreement or it will not be.” “These people should go home and rest, they are doing nothing but creating division. In other words, they are losers!” he wrote. But these arguments do not convince some Republicans. “If the result of all this is an Iranian regime still led by Islamists who shout ‘death to America’, which now receives billions of dollars, which can enrich uranium, which develops nuclear weapons and which has effective control of the Strait of Orzmuz, then the result is disastrous,” wrote Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina and very close to Trump, believes that what this agreement would prove is that Iran is capable of “terrorizing” whenever it wants. in the Strait of Hormuz, which represents “a major shift in the balance of power in the region and, over time, a nightmare for Israel.” “Furthermore, if these perceptions are correct, one wonders why the war started,” he adds. “Everything achieved by Operation Epic Fury would have been in vain!” says Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. These criticisms may be right. But what many analysts and politicians who believe that negotiation is the least bad option argue is that continuing a long, costly war with uncertain results would be much more damaging than a bad agreement. View from Musandam (Oman) of ships in the Strait of Hormuz in an image taken from a drone on May 25. Stringer (REUTERS) It is not foreseeable that this new MAGA war will end in an open confrontation against Trump. As he has demonstrated on other occasions, the president has iron control of the party. And this almost omnipotent power is not changed by the fact that there are some dissenting voices in some aspects. Furthermore, as these days of primaries such as those held in Louisiana and Kentucky are demonstrating, the party base responds faithfully to everything Trump wants. In those territories, the candidates who dared to oppose the boss have lost their positions, with the invaluable help of very aggressive campaigns by the president supporting rivals with recognized Trumpist obedience. 60-day extension Although there are still issues to be resolved and the Iranian negotiators do not seem to be in as much of a hurry as the Americans, Washington is confident of moving forward with the agreement. The biggest benefit would be the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran, in return, would achieve an end to sanctions and unlock assets that have been frozen. Furthermore, its nuclear program would not be automatically limited, but rather a 60-day extension of the current ceasefire would be established, a period in which a solution to the nuclear conflict would be negotiated. Trump, meanwhile, is trying to push Arab and Muslim countries to get involved in the agreement. And it takes the opportunity, in the process, to promote the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and its Arab and Muslim neighbors. This is an old project that his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, already diligently pursued. Trump now wants to get something clean for his ally Israel, which would be totally out of place in a hypothetical peace with Iran. In this context, the president of the United States has asked Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to join the so-called Abraham Accords to normalize their relations with Israel. According to reports, Pakistan has rejected the proposal. And none of the other countries have reacted publicly. But it seems that it is difficult for this rapprochement to occur after the impact that the massacres and famine in Gaza had on their populations after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. Trump said on Saturday that he had spoken with the leaders of these countries, in addition to those of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain: they are signatories of the Abraham Accords. “I imperatively request that all countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords and that, if Iran signs its agreement with me, as President of the United States, I will also be honored to have its participation in this unparalleled global coalition,” Trump wrote in Truth.
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Source: This article was originally published by Internacional en EL PAÍS and adapted for our international English-speaking audience.
Read the original article here.