Loquacious, cocky and domineering. These are some of the adjectives many critics have used to describe Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States of America.
But Trump, who was sworn in as president on January 20, 2025, says he is unperturbed and maintains that his second term in office, or Trump 2.0, will have a more significant impact on America’s global standing.
To his credit, Trump is thoroughly good at coercive diplomacy. His opponents say he relishes negotiating with other countries on his own terms and may even threaten to use America’s military might to drive his point home when it is not him who has the last say on an issue.
In the Middle East, Trump wants to beat the Islamic Republic of Iran into agreeing to and signing a new nuclear deal. But achieving this will not be easy and the region could be in danger of plunging into war if Iran refuses to kowtow to Trump.
A political affairs analyst, Collins Ugorji, told The Point, “The whole world is only talking about Trump now. The man can be a bit of a handful sometimes. But he is in the White House now and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
“Donald Trump doesn’t care about the opinion anyone has of him. It is only American interests that interest him.
“Trump 2.0 has begun in earnest and the world, including Iran, should expect the unexpected.”
In his first stint as President, Trump had in 2018 ripped to shreds a 2015 Barack Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran.
The deal limited Iran’s nuclear activities and ensured that America and its allies lifted economic sanctions on the Islamic republic.
Trump claimed that the deal would not stop Iran from weaponizing its nuclear programme. He then reinstated harsh economic sanctions on the Middle Eastern country.
The action of the US president prompted Iran to cast aside its commitments to the deal and today, the United Nation’s energy watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says that Iran’s nuclear programme is advancing rapidly, although there is no evidence that it is weaponizing its programme.
Now that Trump is back in office, he wants Iran to come back to the negotiation table for a new round of talks.
The US president says he does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons. According to him, indulging Iran will put American and Israeli security interests at risk.
Iran is Israel’s sworn enemy and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has insisted that the Jewish state, which is at war in Gaza against US-designated terrorist group Hamas, stop the war.
Israel, however, wants to annihilate Hamas because of the October 7, 2023, invasion of their homeland by the terrorist group.
That assault resulted in the killing of more than 1,200 men, women and children by Hamas. The group also took 254 people as hostages into Gaza.
Israel’s brutal war in Gaza has now seen over 50,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombs.
Before Trump was sworn in as president, the immediate past US president, Joe Biden, had stopped supplying the Israel Defence Forces with heavy ammunition, such as the 2,000lb bunker buster bombs. But after Trump came on board, he lifted the ban.
A little over a week ago, a fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was broken by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who said every Israeli hostage – whether living or dead –, must be returned to their families.
“I am really surprised that Donald Trump wants to fight in the Middle East. In fact, when I look at the US president, he doesn’t look like the same person that wants peace in the Russia-Ukraine war or the person who wants to win a Nobel peace prize”
Hamas had been insisting on the ceasefire, which had three phases, but only the first phase – which allowed 33 Israeli hostages to be sent home in return for the release of nearly 1,800 Palestinian prisoners – was observed.
The second phase that would see the complete withdrawal of the IDF and the release of the remaining hostages is a great doubt now.
After the IDF renewed hostilities and also launched a renewed ground invasion into Gaza, Iran’s proxy in Yemen, the Houthi rebels, threatened to restart attacks of their own on Israel and international shipping in the Red sea region but Trump will have none of it.
The US president ordered the US military to carry out preemptive airstrikes on Houthi rebel targets on March 16 and it led to the deaths of over 200 Yemini civilians.
Meanwhile, Trump said he wrote a letter to Khamenei, urging the supreme leader to sign a new nuclear deal that will ensure Iran does not come into possession of Nuclear weapons.
“I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate, because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing,’” Trump said. “You can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” he added.
Trump, who reportedly gave Iran a 2-month deadline for a new nuclear deal or face possible strike on its nuclear infrastructure, also said that Iran must cease supporting Israel’s enemies: the Houthis, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and other militant groups in Iraq and Syria.
Iran announced last week that it had responded to Trump’s letter.
A top foreign policy adviser to the supreme leader, Kamal Kharazi, said Trump was told in the letter that Iran has not closed all the doors (to negotiations) and is willing to begin “indirect negotiations” with the United States.
Khamenei, who once noted that Iran would not be bullied by the US, has also said he does not believe that Iran would gain from talks.
If the US makes no headway with their attempt at talks and diplomacy, it will, together with Israel, likely strike the two main underground nuclear facilities in Iran’s northern Natanz and Fordow regions.
Trump is now making preparations in anticipation of a possible military strike against Iran. The superpower is moving key military assets to the region.
The deployment of at least 5 USAF B-2 Spirit Stealth bombers – which can evade some of the most advanced radar systems in the world – and 7 C-17 Globemaster IIIs have arrived or are currently en route to Diego Garcia, a remote base in the Indian ocean often used as a joint base by the United Kingdom and the US for long range strike operations.
An additional Air Force carrier strike group, the USS Carl Vinson and its accompanying destroyers, will join the USS Harry Truman strike group that is already stationed near Yemen.
Coming to the party, too, are more terrifying F-35 fighter jets that the US has already used in October last year in bombing the Houthis.
Despite the massing of these weapons of war by the US, the Iranian regime, in its own show of military capabilities, released an 85-second video of a secret underground missile city in the country.
An undaunted Iran wanted to pass a message to the US and it was loud and clear: we are ready for escalation and will not be cowed by you.
On display in the secret underground infrastructure are rockets, missiles, armoured trucks, drones, artillery.
Two Iranian generals, Mohammed Hossein Bagheri and Amir Ali Haji-Zadeh, who are the Chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Aerospace chief respectively, were seen inspecting the facility.
One of the generals, Haji-Zadeh, also boasted that Iran could make a new missile city every week.
However, Trump, who ordered the air strike in 2020 that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, has said it will no longer be business as usual for Iran in the Middle East.
A current affairs analyst, Sylvester Enefele, said that he was surprised that Trump, who has been calling for peace between Russia and Ukraine, wants to start a new war in the Middle East.
He said one wrong move could drag the region into crisis.
“I am really surprised that Donald Trump wants to fight in the Middle East. In fact, when I look at the US president, he doesn’t look like the same person that wants peace in the Russia-Ukraine war or the person who wants to win a Nobel peace prize.
“War should always be the last option. Diplomacy should always come first.
“My fear is that one wrong move can drag the region into more chaos. The world does not need another new war now.”
Asked how war can be prevented in the region, Enefele said, “The Israel-Palestine conflict should be revisited.
“The Israelis want Hamas to stop being the governing authority in Gaza. They also want their hostages released.
“That conflict should be revisited. If the two conditions I mentioned earlier are met and the two state solutions effected, I think peace will return to the region.”