Trump sells peace like a dodgy dealer

Seriously, would you buy a second-hand car from the American president? Anybody in their right mind would scoff at the unnerving risk of being sold something liable to splutter into a heap or be repossessed.

Not only that, but dodgy-dealer Trump has surrounded himself with henchmen who have a knack for threatening prospective customers with grievous bodily harm if they don't cough up.

Farcically, the casino-merchant-turned-president is trying to entice North Korea into betting on giving up its nuclear weapons, with only the vaguest of American guarantees, and lots of sinister riders. These only weeks after Trump unilaterally tore up the American side of the bargain in the Iran nuclear accord.

You do have to wonder about the sanity in Washington. Can people be so unaware of their own incompetence and ineptitude?

Earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a snarling speech aimed at Iran, which can only be described as an ultimatum for surrender. Pompeo — supposedly America's top diplomat — warned of the "toughest sanctions ever" that would make Iran struggle for economic survival.

 He also said: "Iranian operatives would be crushed". Given that Pompeo previously said he wanted to make the CIA more vicious that's a sinister threat.

All this is because Washington, ironically, accuses Iran of "bad faith" over the landmark nuclear agreement.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would have to be clueless to do business with the Trump administration. There is absolutely no indication that the Trump White House has any scruples or awareness of legal obligations after it ditched the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) earlier this month — the UN-backed accord signed by Iran, Russia, China and the EU in 2015.

Virtually everyone, including the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has categorically vouched for the JCPOA as a successful working deal for nuclear arms control. It is only the US and its dubious client regimes in Israel and Arabia asserting that Iran has violated the JCPOA, citing tendentious claims of Iranian malign activity. Claims, it should be said, which are made by arguably the most malign clients in West Asia.

 Trump thinks he can trash the deal and come up with something like Iranian surrender to American diktat.

 The false claims made by Trump and Pompeo alleging Iranian non-compliance with the accord, as well as other alleged transgressions of sponsoring terrorism, are so out of touch with facts and indeed are such an arrogant inversion of reality — the US sponsoring terrorism in Syria, for example — it means that this administration is hopelessly bereft of any intelligence or trustworthiness.

Trump and his cabinet are woefully misinformed and ignorant about the world. Nothing they say can be taken with any credibility.

Last month, Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton brazenly referred to the "Libyan model" as a guideline for how the Trump administration was approaching negotiations with North Korea. That is, for complete capitulation on nuclear weapons with nothing in return from the American side. We all know what happened to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Only a few years later, his nation was destroyed by a seven-month US-NATO blitzkrieg and he ended up murdered with a bayonet.

That shows how criminal and arrogant the planners in Washington are. They have the gall to publicly cite the "Libyan model".

It also shows how conceited they are. Washington has totally misread Pyongyang — and not surprisingly given the former's delusional self-importance.

North Korea is not going to give up its nuclear weapons without the US side also rightly making some major concessions, primarily scaling back its military presence in the region and giving up its decades-old threats of regime change.

Used-car salesman Trump tried to do some damage limitation after his henchman John Bolton flexed the rhetorical knuckles. Trump claimed the US was "not following the Libyan model". And who has spewed a load of lies to justify ripping up the Iran deal?

Call it incompetence, stupidity or downright arrogance, but Trump then blew his "assurance" to North Korea by blurting out that if Kim doesn't play ball on denuclearization then his country would be "completely decimated".

No wonder the world is shuddering with contempt and derision for American politics. After decades of waging illegal wars and murdering millions of people, destroying once stable nations and spawning terrorism, the Americans have the audacity to lecture others about "destabilizing activities".

The Americans have even taken to threatening their supposed European "allies" with punitive sanctions if they dare to do business with Iran or Russia.

Washington is an out-of-control rogue regime that has not a scintilla of shame for the way it is ransacking international law and obligations. The only country to have ever used atomic weapons on civilians has the brazen, deluded temerity to demand that others surrender in the name of "peace".

Ripping up accords is a specialty of the US rulers from the time that Native Americans were driven off their lands into oblivion. Now we have The Donald supposedly proffering "deals of the century" in West Asia and to North Korea.

Washington's credibility or integrity has never been too reliable. But now under Trump's "dealership", the American vehicle has no wheels, no brakes, no warranty, faulty airbags, and is liable to run over a cliff edge.

RM/SS