Dmitry Trenin, the respected international strategic analyst who was recently named president of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), considers Trump’s Iran truce to be “a defeat for American power,” but he eschews any form of triumphalism: “Make no mistake,” he wrote in an op ed in RT. “A truce doesn’t equal peace. Key issues are left for future talks, and there is no certainty that these will yield results, or that any agreements will hold.”
Trenin explains that “the Middle East is a theater in what amounts to a world war, alongside Eastern Europe, where the West is seeking to defeat Russia, and East Asia, where the US and its allies are trying to contain China. This fight will continue.” He notes that the Achilles heel of the whole MoU between the U.S. and Iran is Israel, which could continue its bombing campaign against Lebanon. However, “a significant part of American society and the political class are losing patience with Israel and cooling toward it. This comes against the backdrop of Israel’s growing international isolation… The Arab states of the Persian Gulf have not fared well either. Their reliance on US military bases as a security guarantee turned out to be a disastrous bargain.”
In short, Trenin concludes, “the US-Israel war on Iran is a landmark event in the global power transition.”
