Only Trump and Netanyahu can stop this devastating war

Any hopes that the US-Israeli war on Iran would end soon were dashed this Easter weekend when US President Donald Trump posted a vulgar message in which he promised to escalate the bombing of public bridges and power plants by today if Tehran doesn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Optimists say this is just usual bluster on the US president’s part and that he does not seriously plan to actually go through with the threat.

His aim, they say, is to intimidate the Iranian government into negotiating a new deal with Washington.

Because the US is one of the founding members of the UN and various other institutions set up to promote the rule of law internationally and the resolution of conflicts through peaceful means, these optimists do not believe that a US president would deliberately carry out what would clearly constitute war crimes by targeting civilian infrastructure.

But, if anything, Trump has proved himself to be an unpredictable political figure and so it is always better to expect the unexpected when it comes to him.

Therefore, while the vast majority of the world’s population may be hoping that the unnecessary and globally devastating war does not escalate further, we must face the reality that there is no international body or group of countries that can convince Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the war if they want it to continue.

Meanwhile, SA and the rest of the world will continue to suffer the consequences of a war they are not participating in as high oil prices cause the cost of living for citizens to rise.

Trump has made it his new condition that the Strait of Hormuz be reopened if the Iranians want to avoid attacks being escalated.

The strait, however, was opened to trade and the real reason for its closure is the war.

Therefore, the real solution is the end to a war whose objective even Trump himself seems unsure of.

In the beginning of the conflict, the US president claimed that the attacks were to pre-empt what they thought was an imminent Iranian attack.

Then Washington changed the story to claim it went into war after realising that Israel was about to attack Iran and that Tehran would respond by attacking US interests.

And then the story changed again, the objective being regime change.

More recently, it has been about the oil and the control over the strait.

How long is the US population going to let the rest of the world suffer before they confront their problem — a head of state who refuses to abide by the international rules that have kept the world relatively stable for most of the past 80 years?