State of confusion

FROM the looks of it, America has no exit strategy to extricate itself from the disastrous war with Iran. US President Donald Trump has alternated between issuing bombastic threats to the Iranians, to claiming that peace was at hand, sometimes making a sharp U-turn within hours. This is not how responsible statecraft plays out. In the past, he had threatened to destroy Iranian civilisation, while more recently he said the US was ready to use “Military Terror … not seen since World War II” against the Islamic Republic. In his latest pronouncement, the US leader has given Iran a “last chance” to choose between a “deal [or] total surrender”. The five-month-old war has shown that the Iranians…