An ever-expanding catastrophe over Iran is not inevitable. Trump can and must be stopped

[dalton99a]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/23/ever-expanding-global-catastrophe-inevitable-donald-trump

An ever-expanding catastrophe over Iran is not inevitable. Trump can and must be stopped
Millions are being dragged into starvation, while people everywhere pay a Trump war tax. But there are plenty of powers who could bring him to heel
Simon Tisdall
Sat 23 May 2026 05.00 EDT

With the deadlocked war in Iran about to enter its fourth month, loose comparisons with previous US quagmires in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam are bandied about. When the conflict began, warnings of another “forever war” seemed exaggerated. No longer. As matters stand, the negative international humanitarian, economic and geopolitical fallout from this fiasco looks set to prove more permanently globally damaging than any of those past US-made disasters.

That being the case, an urgent question arises, not least today as reports suggest the US president and his secretary of war are planning to rain more bombs on Iran: who will stop Donald Trump?

Having started something he cannot finish, the US president, egged on by Israel’s warmonger-in-chief, Benjamin Netanyahu, has boxed himself into a corner. Either he resumes the illegal bombing of Iran on an even bigger scale, brazenly threatening war crimes in hopes of forcing surrender; or else he accepts a negotiated compromise that falls embarrassingly short of his initial aims, including eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme, and leaves an angry, more hardline, strategically strengthened regime in power.

Neither choice is attractive – or tenable – for Trump. He and his fanatical sidekick, Pete Hegseth, should know by now that bombing cannot blow away Iran’s defiance and resilience. It is not even militarily effective: 70% of Iran’s missile stockpile reportedly remains intact. In any case, Trump’s threats to break the ceasefire, like his aborted Project Freedom in the strait of Hormuz, are opposed by Gulf states fearful of more retaliatory attacks, by Washington’s allies, Israel excepted – and by most US voters.

...