The current global war, launched by the post-communist Axis of Evil – China, Russia, and Iran – against the Free World has a clear first objective: the exemplary destruction of three states that openly declare their allegiance to that world – Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The most vulnerable link in the Free World’s defenses has turned out to be the Oval Office of the White House, the residence of its presumed leader.
President Joe Biden, judging by his public statements, saw himself as the traditional “Leader of the Free World.” Yet his growing cognitive decline and the open sympathy for Vladimir Putin displayed by several senior members of his administration prevented the United States from mounting a decisive response to the aggression of an increasingly brazen trio of adversaries.
With Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the situation on at least one front of this global war, in Ukraine, has clearly deteriorated. The former New York developer does not see himself as the Leader of the Free World at all; the phrase itself seems alien to his political vocabulary. He has no coherent picture of a world at war. He experiences international politics as a series of local turf battles in which a strongman can strike temporary deals with other strongmen.
Equally obvious is his strange psychological dependence on Putin and the marked hostility toward Ukraine that seems to flow from it. And yet, even the darkest character in a serious political drama is usually given at least one redeeming trait. Trump has one, and by today’s standards, it is not a trivial one.
He has consistently presented himself as a friend of the Jewish people and as a staunch supporter of the State of Israel – one of the three embattled democracies the Axis of Evil would like to erase from the political map. In that sense, Trump has become a real military ally of Israel in its confrontation with Iran and its network of proxies. But in that same war, he now finds himself in a dangerous trap of his own making.
Intense US and Israeli airstrikes, including the systematic removal of key figures in Iran’s military and political leadership, have not yet forced the regime to capitulate. On the contrary, it has responded with a new wave of brutal repression at home to prevent mass protests. Any scenario in which the war ends with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still in control in Tehran would be a strategic catastrophe for the West – a catastrophe that would echo on the Ukrainian front as well. It would be perceived globally as a second American flight from Afghanistan.
For Trump personally, such an outcome would mark the inglorious end of his political career. Despite the criticism he has earned for his treatment of Ukraine, we are keen to suggest to him a way out of the Iranian dead end he has helped create.
If, within two or three days of the “hell” he has promised, nothing changes fundamentally in Tehran – or if he simply slides away from his own threat, as he has done before – Trump still has one last, bold option.
He could invite two prominent members of his recently created “Council of Peace” – President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan – to the White House. Behind closed doors, they could discuss in detail the postwar political map of the Middle East and of Eurasia as a whole and decide on a joint course of action.
[Azerbaijanis are Iran’s largest national minority, and they outnumber by far the Azerbaijanis living in Azerbaijan itself. Eds]
Back in Baku, Ilham Heydar oglu Aliyev would then address his nation in an emergency television statement along the lines that because Iran is descending into chaos and instability and in order to ensure the security of Azeris living on both sides of the Iran-Azerbaijan border, in coordination with Turkey’s leader, he is ordering his armed forces to ensure law and order in the region.
Such a move by Baku and Ankara would, in practice, open another front in the unraveling of the Iranian state, cutting into the rear of the Revolutionary Guards and the Tehran-Moscow axis. For the Kremlin, it would mean a security catastrophe in the Caucasus and would send a clear warning to its partners that the “axis of evil” is a dead end.
Trump still has a choice: preside over another retreat that will be read as a second Kabul, or initiate a move that turns Iran from an axis safe rear area into the place where this axis begins to break.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.