DC Edit | On Iran, Trump Talks Peace, but Threatens War

The irreconcilable contradiction drips with irony as US President Donald Trump talks about Middle East peace on one hand and, on the other, is ready to wage war in the same region. Even as his brainchild Board of Peace was holding its first meeting in Washington and drumming up financial support for the rebuilding of Gaza, the American armada was building up to a point of readiness for conducting a war on Iran.

The rationale for the war — which could be triggered as early as this weekend according to the American media — may remain as indeterminate as Mr Trump’s capricious moods, but it has roiled the world’s markets sending oil prices soaring and stocks tumbling. Incomprehensible as it is since Mr Trump had declared that Iran’s nuclear fuel enrichment program had been put back for ages by the mid-2025 strike, war clouds are gathering ominously.

Mr Donald Trump may have been adorned with all possible nicknames, from “Wrecking Ball” to “Tangerine Tyrant” and “Agent Orange”, which is probably fair game since he has never been chary of inventing stinging nicknames for his predecessors. What may suit him best in the current scenario is that of the “War & Peace” prize winner as he keeps insisting that he stopped a war that could have killed millions in India and Pakistan.

India has never been thrilled by his assertions, nor can it make sense of the increasing number of war planes that he keeps bringing down in his imagination every time he speaks up about his failed Nobel Peace Prize initiative. And yet he must be given credit for getting a ceasefire in place in the Gaza Strip though Israel has often ignored it in launching missiles in the name of hitting Hamas to stop its militants from regrouping.

It is not Mr Trump’s mendacious campaigns for the peace Nobel that hurts so much as his ordering extraterritorial action in Venezuela and kidnapping Mr Nicolas Maduros last month before which he had hit Iran nuclear fuel facilities with stealth bomber runs from the US to claim the facilities had been obliterated. Just months later, the same enrichment is being touted as cause enough for aircraft carriers and battleships to be moved to waters near striking distance of Iran.

“Bad things will happen,” he says, that is if Iran does not respond in 10 days regarding conditions laid down about fuel enrichment, curbing the ballistic missiles and support for proxy groups of terror. At the same time, he banged a golden gavel down to conclude the meeting of the Board of Peace that is said to have already taken in $7 billion for the cause of rebuilding Gaza from the rubble of war that followed a Hamas strike on Israelis on October 7, 2024.

There may not be as many takers for peace as he may have imagined — at a price of $ 1 bn which is the fee for a place on the Board of Peace — but Mr Trump was said to be not hostile to those European allies of the US, including Norway, who have chosen to stay away even as India attended as an observer to see how the concept evolves. While none would begrudge Mr Trump his efforts to broker peace in any place of conflict, the world might seem a safer place if he stops threatening to wage war.