He’s finally lost me.

Two years ago, I wrote a column called “Confession: Hamas Made Me Vote for Trump,” explaining why I considered his support for Israel strong enough to warrant my backing. Its gist: that Trump’s staunch opposition to the Iranian-financed genocidal attacks on the Jewish State would probably thwart them.

My emersion from the closet on that issue extracted some heavy costs. Primary among them: the complete rejection, renunciation, and excommunication by my own brother, a doctrinaire leftist whose Trump Derangement Syndrome far outweighs his reason or affection.

I still believe Trump was a far better choice than his opponent. But I have to admit that the now-President’s latest wavering “peace” negotiations with Iran have left me cold. “Finally!” I began a column back in March after the latest war commenced. The US/Israeli attack on Iran, I declared, “marked the belated fulfillment of a wondrous promise...that the world might finally be liberated from a potentially lethal threat of historic proportion.”

Specifically, I believed then and now, the Iranian regime was the globe’s major exporter of terrorism, the primary purveyor of instability in the Middle East, an aspiring nuclear antagonist that has consistently promised to eradicate Western civilization, and a gang of radical authoritarians who’ve murdered tens of thousands of their own people as well as untold numbers of fo­reigner abroad.

“There is definitely new light at the end of this exceedingly long tunnel,” I concluded. “I’m praying that the oppressed people of Iran — as well as the rest of us — can get to it soon.”

Sadly, I must now admit, that light is quickly fading. The problem: after making boisterous promises, Trump seems to have lost his gumption for the fight, leaving Israel to go it alone.

I postponed proclaiming this publicly for a while, hoping I was wrong; that the seasoned dealmaker had something up his sleeve; that, as has happened before, the curtain would suddenly be pulled aside revealing a masterful leader at the top of his game. I still secretly harbor that hope. But the memorandum of understanding recently signed by the US and Iran, it now seems, leaves little room for doubt.

In essence, it roles the world back to where it was before the present conflict began. The immediate hostilities cease, as they had before. The Strait of Hormuz allegedly reopens, as it was at the beginning of this whole sordid affair. And Iran’s nuclear ambitions — which Trump has said are of paramount concern to America and the world — are back on the table to be resolved at a later date.

Exactly as they were before.

Oh yes, and Iran gets billions of dollars in previously frozen assets to rebuild infrastructure and, no doubt, renew its diminished military capacity. That, alas, is the only part of the agreement that’s new, though certainly not better. I’m sorry, but I see no way to view this other than a horrendous surrender by the US and postponement — not cessation — of the existential war that I’ve previously said, and still believe, is ultimately inevitable.

The stinging lesson: that economics is mightier than the sword. That, no matter what happens on the fields of battle, the final winner is he who holds the keys to the car. Or, more specifically, mans the gates to the world’s supply of fuel.

“This marks a dramatic shift in the Middle East’s strategic balance,” columnist Sagiv Steinberg wrote in Algemeiner. “Iran stood up to the world’s strongest power and emerged with an agreement enhancing its regional influence across the Persian Gulf. This sends a dangerous message to the region and the global order. Gulf states, clear American allies, now understand that Iranian bullying ultimately pays off.”

His conclusion offers the only potential for hope.

“They have also internalized another lesson,” Steinberg continues. “In the Middle East, there is only one country capable of effectively confronting Iran—Israel.”

I pray that it’s true.

***

David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist, author, and radio broadcaster with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book, Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise, was a finalist in this year’s Next Generation Indie Book Awards.