Trump played by Putin and Iran

Donald Trump is being disingenuous if he really believes his latest, 75-minute call with Vladimir Putin – on Wednesday AEST – was anything but confirmation that the arrogant Russian tyrant has no interest in ending his savage onslaught against Ukraine and its people. Instead, apparently without admonishing Putin, Mr Trump passed on to the world the “strong” message that the Russian ruler is poised to retaliate against Ukraine for this week’s spectacular drone strikes by Kyiv that destroyed dozens of the Kremlin’s most prized warplanes.

The response from Mr Trump to that warning, if he seriously wants to broker a peace deal in Ukraine, should have been to counsel Putin against any further escalation in the conflict, and advise him that the best way to ensure more of his warplanes do not end up on the scrap heap would be for him to agree to a ceasefire.

Mr Trump is prolonging the war by being so unjustifiably accommodating towards Putin’s unrelenting, murderous onslaught against Ukraine and refusal to agree to even a modest ceasefire, much less a deal that would end the war on terms that amount to anything other than total, abject surrender by Kyiv. Putin’s outrageous intransigence demands better from Mr Trump – more sanctions and more pressure on Moscow, and more support for Ukraine, which has repeatedly pledged its acceptance of an immediate ceasefire and an end to the killing.

Mr Trump’s “good conversations” are all very well, but they’re not getting anywhere. Putin’s pig-headed intransigence demands a serious reality check in the White House. So does the similar intransigence displayed by Iran’s terrorist-supporting ayatollahs as Mr Trump ambitiously seeks to reach what would likely be another Obama-style nuclear deal with them.

They, on Wednesday, also gave Mr Trump a “stiff arm”, as The Wall Street Journal put it, in reacting to his demand that they give up on uranium enrichment as a sign that they really are prepared to give up on getting a nuclear bomb for the sake of a deal. “The rude and arrogant leaders of America repeatedly demand that we should not have a nuclear program. Who are you to decide whether Iran should have enrichment?” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responded.

Mr Trump’s tactics in relation to both Putin and Iran’s ayatollahs are clearly going nowhere. Both are rotten, thoroughly evil regimes that deserve a far more forceful response from the Trump administration than they are currently getting.