July 25, 2025

By Alireza Salehi

The following commentary first appeared on the Iranian-based Press TV at tinyurl.com/53hdhskk.

Since entering politics, former real estate tycoon and reality TV star Donald Trump has made a conscious effort to cultivate the image of himself as a peacemaker. He often boasts of avoiding major wars, takes credit for de-escalating global tensions and has even audaciously claimed that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize!

His 2024 campaign mantra, “ending endless wars,” struck a chord with a U.S. public weary of entanglements in West Asia. Yet, this carefully crafted image proved to be a mirage.

Far from extinguishing flames, Trump poured gasoline on simmering conflicts. His presidency, like those of his predecessors, has revealed a brutal continuity: The United States is not interested in bringing peace to West Asia but to continue fanning the flames of conflicts to serve its imperial interests.

The U.S. posture as a stabilizing force in West Asia is a dangerous myth. For decades, Washington’s interventions have systematically produced the very instability it claims to resolve.

U.S. interventions in West Asia disastrous

The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, launched under false pretense of fighting terror, left a trail of civilian corpses, shattered infrastructure and deepened poverty in the South Asian country.

The 2003 Iraq war, sold on fabricated claims of weapons of mass destruction, killed over a million people, birthed Daesh and ignited sectarian violence.

In Libya, NATO’s 2011 “humanitarian” bombing reduced a functioning state to ruins, triggering a refugee crisis that destabilized Europe.

In Syria, U.S. arms shipments fueled a foreign-backed militancy that displaced half the population.

In Yemen, U.S. bombs and logistical support enabled Saudi Arabia’s killing campaign, creating the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis at the time.

In the Persian Gulf, U.S. naval patrols near the Strait of Hormuz and draconian sanctions against Iran escalated tensions to near-war levels. This is not incompetence; it is policy. Washington profits from war: its arms dealers supply despots; its sanctions strangle economies; and its military-industrial complex feasts on carnage.

The hypocrisy is staggering. While preaching democracy, the U.S. arms regional dictatorships, [which] crush dissent with U.S. weapons. While condemning sovereignty violations, it launches illegal drone strikes on Pakistan and Syria. While posing as a human rights champion, it imposes sanctions on Iran and Yemen that starve children and deny them medicine. This is not peacekeeping. It is arson.

Photo ops over peace

Trump’s supposed breakthroughs collapse under scrutiny. His summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un were political theater, grand gestures that yielded no denuclearization.

The 2020 Doha Agreement with the Taliban was a unilateral surrender that ensured the collapse of the former Afghan government and the Taliban’s return to power.

The Abraham Accords, touted as a historic peace achievement, were a forced normalization between Israel and Arab vassal states, deliberately excluding Palestinians and entrenching apartheid.

Trump’s “outreach” to Iran was equally cynical. Behind closed doors, he scrapped the landmark 2015 nuclear deal and unleashed a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions and assassinations, culminating in the 2020 drone assassination of top anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani.

His public rhetoric was even more incendiary. In 2019, he threatened Iran with “obliteration,” a genocidal provocation that drew no condemnation from the international community.

Trump escalated the situation by recognizing occupied al-Quds [Jerusalem] as Israel’s capital and the Golan Heights as occupied territory, greenlighting Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Yemen while fast-tracking arms sales and supporting Israel’s expansionism and Gaza massacres, policies [former U.S. President] Joe Biden later intensified.

Trump is not an anomaly but a symptom. The core issue is the U.S. Empire’s design: Its West Asian presence exists to control oil resources, protect client regimes and maintain illegal military bases.

Need for regional self-determination

Presidents change; imperial logic does not. [Former President Barack] Obama expanded drone wars while accepting a Nobel Peace Prize. Biden funded Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Trump merely operated this machine more crudely, abandoning multilateral diplomacy, embracing authoritarian strongmen and treating international relations as a reality TV showdown.

True stability will never come from Washington. The solution is regional self-determination.

West Asia needs no “policeman.” When liberated from foreign interference, its nations have proven capable of resolving conflicts without outside meddling. The Saudi-Iran reconciliation demonstrates that security emerges from dialogue, not U.S. bullying and hostility.

Trump’s Nobel Prize fantasies are grotesque delusions. His destructive policies, sanctions, arms deals and ethnic cleansing endorsements unmask him not as a peacemaker, but as a war profiteer.

Yet the problem transcends Trump. No U.S. president can be a peacemaker in West Asia, because the U.S.’s presence is the root of chaos and destabilization. Its bases are occupation outposts. Its arms sales fuel genocide. Its sanctions are weapons of mass suffering.

The writing is on the wall: The United States must be fired from its self-appointed role as peacekeeper. Lasting peace requires dismantling imperialism and restoring West Asian sovereignty.

To begin with, U.S. forces must withdraw from the region and end their occupation. They must vacate military bases – from Qatar and Bahrain to Saudi Arabia and Turkey – and allow the conditions for genuine peace to take root.

Alireza Salehi is a Tehran-based writer and political commentator.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV. This article has been lightly edited.