Minutes before his umpteenth ultimatum expired yesterday - the threat to annihilate Iran and its underlying Persian civilization - Donald Trump announced a cease fire, conditioned on Teheran opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was only closed in the first place because the U.S. and Israel had attacked the country without provocation. Trump characterized the ten conditions established by the Iranian government to end the conflict as "a viable basis for negotiation," a major concession on his part, given that they stipulated the recognition of Iran's control over the Strait, as well as the establishment of "a secure and negotiated transit protocol," both conditions flying in the face of Washington's longstanding presumption of unilateral authority over access to the Middle East's vast energy reserves.
Had Trump not found himself in an increasingly untenable situation both internationally and at home, he would not have caved as he did. Among the points he accepted as the basis for negotiation were the immediate cessation of military aggression by Washington and Tel Aviv against Iran's allies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen; the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from the Persian Gulf region; the lifting of international sanctions that have been imposed on the Islamic Republic; reparations for damages inflicted by Israeli-American bombardments; the unfreezing of Iranian funds and assets held abroad that have been confiscated by Western nations - particularly the United States; and the recognition of the legitimacy of the program for the peaceful development of nuclear energy undertaken by Teheran, which requires a certain degree of uranium enrichment. Of all of these points, only the last one can be portrayed by Trump as a concession on Iran's part, and frankly a superfluous one, since the Islamic Republic has consistently refused to manufacture nuclear weapons and therefore poses no threat of international proliferation. The remaining conditions represent a total Trump defeat across the board, no matter how strenuously he tries to present the ceasefire as the product of negotiating savvy, which he simply does not possess.
This outcome - temporary and uncertain - like everything that has to do with Trump - highlights the contrast between the defensive strategic intelligence carefully constructed for decades by Iran, and Trump's impulsive, idiotic, and improvised wargasm, lacking any visible purpose other than to help suicidal Israel try to impose Jewish supremacy throughout the Middle East. It also throws into relief the rapidly dwindling popular support of the Republican president juxtaposed to the admirable national cohesion of the Iranian people.
Indeed, the attacked country, in Trump's mind eager to applaud the attack in the name of national liberation, delivered to its tormenters and the world an admirable and quite moving lesson in integrity and courage: millions volunteered to defend their country and hundreds of thousands formed human chains to safeguard the power plants, bridges, electrical substations, desalination plants and critical civilian infrastructure marked as targets for the genocidal bombardments Trump had threatened to carry out.
The obvious agency and will to resist of the Iranian people demolishes the demonized caricature of them as crazed terrorists that the U.S. has repeatedly thrown in their faces since they chose to assert their national independence (1979) after twenty-five years of misery as a U.S. client state.
Source:
"Trump, Defeated by Iran," La Jornada, April 8, 2026 (Spanish)
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