Trump uses his State of the Union address to increase pressure on Iran | International

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, took advantage of his long, very long, State of the Union speech before the Capitol this Tuesday to give a hagiographic review of his foreign policy, boast about what he considers one of his great achievements — “we are reestablishing the dominance and security of the United States in the Western Hemisphere” — and launch a new warning to Iran: the president accused the Asian country of wanting to develop intercontinental missiles to attack the Americans. The broadside comes at a time when rumors are rampant about an imminent military attack by the White House against the Islamic Republic.

In a bombastic speech, as full of praise for himself as it was of criticism and insults to his real and supposed enemies, and riddled with inaccuracies and exaggerations, Trump granted himself in the House of Representatives an honorary degree in foreign policy, with the “cum laude” of the military operation on January 3 that captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, in Caracas.

The speech, amid applause from Republicans and boos from Democrats, also had omissions: to the relief of European allies, Trump made no mention of Greenland – the Danish island he wants to annex – as he had done last year in his speech before both chambers of the US Congress.

All eyes were on what he might say about Iran. Throughout the day, speculation had multiplied in the corridors of power in Washington about the possibility of an imminent attack, despite the fact that the Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the American team, chaired by negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—Trump’s son-in-law—are scheduled for a new round of contacts on Thursday in Geneva.

In these talks, Iran is expected to present Omani mediators with an offer to the United States, which according to CNN would include Tehran’s right to enrich uranium but accepting limits on enrichment levels. In exchange, the Islamic Republic wants the withdrawal of sanctions.

According to the newspaper Washington Posta third of US warships mobilized around the world are currently concentrated in Middle Eastern waters, in the country’s largest military deployment since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Trump offered no clues about his plans. But he gave a new twist to his pressure on the Islamic Republic, a pressure that he increases almost daily with threatening comments. And for the first time he began to offer an argument to justify a hypothetical attack on Iran, ensuring that that country can now reach Europe with its long-range missiles and is trying to develop intercontinental missiles that can attack the United States.

It was one of his dubious statements, because its intelligence services consider that Tehran is still at least a decade away from obtaining those rockets. The president also stressed that, despite repeated warnings, Iran maintains its nuclear program.

“Sponsors of terrorism”

Although he stressed that he continues to prefer a diplomatic solution and greeted his negotiators Witkoff and Kushner—both present among the guests in the chamber—Trump insisted on the message that he has repeated over and over again in the last two months: “I will never allow the main State sponsor of terrorism in the world, which it is by far, to possess a nuclear weapon. It cannot be,” he said.

Hours before the Republican’s speech, and two days before the meeting in Geneva, the Iranian minister, Araghchi, explicitly wrote on the social network

Trump ignored his words. Iran, the president insisted, “continues to pursue its sinister ambitions” to develop a nuclear weapon. “They were warned not to try to rebuild their weapons program, particularly nuclear weapons. But they continue to relaunch it,” he said.

End of isolationism

The president, who returned to the White House last year with an isolationist message, the motto “America First” and the explicit promise not to involve the country in foreign wars, made clear in his 108-minute speech on Tuesday the extent to which international politics has played a role in his first 13 months in office, from his intervention in Venezuela to the fragile peace agreement in Gaza.

He stuck out his chest, a lot of chest. He boasted, as he likes to do, about the conflicts he boasts of having stopped, from the border differences between Cambodia and Thailand to the dispute between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But where he gloated most was in relation to his policy towards America – or the Western Hemisphere, as Washington refers to the continent –, declared a great priority of his foreign policy: “We are reestablishing the dominance and security of the United States” in the region, he maintained.

In an allusion to his country’s intervention in Venezuela, the US president added: “We act to guarantee our national interests and to defend our country from violence, drugs, terrorism and foreign interference.” He continued: “For years, large swaths of territory in our region, including large parts of Mexico, have been controlled by murderous drug cartels.”

His words came two days after Mexican security forces killed the country’s most powerful drug trafficker, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho. “We have also eliminated one of the most sinister leaders of the cartels, as everyone saw yesterday (sic),” Trump said, taking credit for that operation of the Mexican Government with which the United States collaborated.

Mentions of the situation in Venezuela—“our new friend and partner,” as Trump described it—generated one of the most emotional moments of the night: the surprise appearance of former political prisoner and leader of the Centrados party Enrique Márquez, hugging his niece.

“No one wants to go fishing anymore”

The president also alluded to the military bombing campaign in the Caribbean and the Pacific on alleged drug boats, which has already killed more than 150 people and which many experts consider illegal: “With our new military campaign we have stopped record amounts of drugs entering our country. And we have stopped it completely by water; you will have noticed that,” he said. And he joked: “No one wants to go fishing anymore,” to the laughter of the Republican congressmen.

Europe received less attention, to which Trump only alluded to give another medal: the commitment of NATO member countries to increase their military spending to 5% of their GDP by 2035.

And, on the day that marked the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trump almost tiptoed through that war, the conflict that he has not managed to end despite his campaign promises that he would end it in 24 hours. “We worked very hard to put an end to it,” he simply assured. But even the failure to put an end to it gave him the opportunity to take another credit: “Everything we send to Ukraine is through NATO, and they pay us the entire bill,” he boasted.