As Trump fans the flames of a world on fire, can diplomacy take back control?

A senior adviser to Donald Trump has conceded that the war on Iran, launched by the president and Israel in late February, has set off consequences Washington did not foresee. Tom Barrack, Trump's envoy to Turkey and counselor on the Middle East, said in Doha that the conflict had turned "camp fires into forest fires," spreading from Iran to Hamas, Hezbollah, other militias and the Houthis, and now toward north Africa. He likened the region to a Rubik's Cube, where one adjustment shifts everything else, and said American efforts to swap out foreign regimes, 23 of them across the region by his count, have all failed. He did not list Iran among his examples, according to The Guardian.

The Guardian's diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, argues that interlinked crises now stall one another, and that the absence of American leadership deepens the paralysis. Political scientist Charles Kupchan, in a new book, describes Trump as a symptom of wider systemic upheaval, though Wintour contends the president's temperament magnifies the damage. Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed blamed Benjamin Netanyahu for pushing the war. Oman's foreign minister, who mediated the February talks, said a deal on Iran's nuclear program had been within reach before bombing began.

Summarized by PolitiKool from The Guardian’s reporting. Read the full story at The Guardian →