Because of his title and the office he holds Western leaders must privately grumble about Donald Trump but have been timid about speaking back to him, until Emmanuel Macron let loose, writes Joe Lauria.
Macron. (President of Russia/Wikimedia Commons)
Thursday, April 2 to Friday, April 3
Donald Trump has been running his mouth about his war on Iran for more than a month now.
He’s been insulting Iran, U.S. allies and the intelligence of the American people.
He alternatively says he’s won, achieved regime change, never sought regime change, beat the shit out of Iran, destroyed their air defenses (then ignores his planes being downed); and then says there’s nothing left to bomb, except to bomb it back to the Stone Age.
He should know the era. With a caveman’s touch he launched an aggression that closed the Hormuz Strait, and plunged the world into economic chaos. Now he says it’s up to others who he didn’t tell about the war, to reopen it because America doesn’t need the oil from the Strait but they do.
Rather than ignoring such ignorance, U.S. allies reacted, trying to flatter him, placate him and avoid his wrath. They have in effect normalized Trump’s insanely dangerous behavior, as Prof. Jeffrey Sachs explained in this extraordinary video on Friday.
Iran has stood up to Trump with missiles and drones. They have retaliated in ways that should not have surprised Trump, but did. They damaged 13 U.S. bases in the region, causing the evacuations of troops, including 1,500 soldiers and sailors back to Virginia from Bahrain.
Iran has battered Trump’s Gulf state vassals and his partner in world-historical crime, Israel. It has now shot down two U.S. F-15 fighter jets with one American pilot still on the run on Iranian territory.
The Europeans say it’s not their war and won’t get involved, but still allow their U.S. bases to be used. Keir Starmer held a virtual meeting with 41 nations to talk about opening the Strait.
Any unhinged man spouting the inanities and threats that Trump spouts would be ignored. But with the greatest military might of any empire in history at his command, he inspires a fear that he feeds on.
Aside from the Spanish premier, no one on the Continent has had the guts to tell him to shut up. That is, until Emmanuel Macron on Thursday. The French president said:
“Some people defend the idea of freeing the Strait of Hormuz by force via a military operation, a position sometimes expressed by the United States, although it has varied. This was never the option we have supported because it is unrealistic. It would take forever, and would expose all those who go through the strait to risks from the guardians of the revolution but also ballistic missiles.”
Macron added: “They [the U.S.] cannot … complain about not being supported in an operation they decided on their own. It is not our operation.”
He backed up those words up with action. France joined Russia and China at the U.N. Security Council on Friday in vowing to veto a resolution from Bahrain that would have authorized military force to reopen the Strait.
France put forward its own draft that didn’t even mention Iran or U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement. It instead called on the parties to avoid escalation, cease hostilities, and go back to diplomacy. The draft encourages “strictly defensive measures,” such as escorting merchant vessels, instead of authorizing offensive action.
Bahrain has toned down its resolution as a consequence, removing references to Chapter 7 enforcement.
A day after Macron spoke up, news came that Iran allowed a French vessel to pass through the Strait, the first Western ship to do so since the start of the U.S.-Israeli attack.
Does it matter to talk back to Trump? Maybe not. But maybe he’s the paper tiger that he thinks NATO is.
At home, where he commands more authority, he demands loyalty. Three more top generals were axed on Friday by War Secretary Pete Hegseth in the middle of a war.
Trump’s desperation, a pilot on the run, 1,500 troops evacuated back to Virginia, direct hits on Israel, an unpopular war at home, a defiant French president and the firing of more generals doesn’t exactly project the image of a military on the verge of winning.
And Trump can’t find a way out.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
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