When US administrations want to boost their popularity, they always find a foreign war to rally the public around the flag and the President. Donald Trump has been searching for such a war almost since entering office.
First it was China - in “Trump talk” China was the great evil doing the US down in trade terms and being provocative in the South China Sea.
But senior Chinese officials were successful in speedily opening a back channel of dialogue with the US president through his son-in law Jared Kushner, to bring the temperature down and help Trump see how strong relations could be mutually beneficial. All of a sudden the anti-China tweets died down, and by April Trump was full of praise for China.
Just this week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been ramping up the rhetoric again, saying China is subverting the global order and pursuing predatory economic policies.
But when Trump realised he could not actually go to war with China, North Korea became the next bulls eye. Trump has spent much of the past few months railing against its leader’s intransigence and ongoing missile tests, threatening hell fire and the destruction of the entire country.
Trump has found few supporters for his threats to obliterate North Korea, or even to initiate selective strikes against its military. His top security advisers are well aware what devastation North Korea is capable of unleashing on South Korea and Japan in retaliation, if not the US mainland.
When Trump visits South Korea and Japan in early November, the leaders will pull out all the stops to convince him there is no military solution to the crisis on the Korean peninsula, and that only dialogue and harsher sanctions are the way forward. If Trump starts a war with North Korea he will be demonised by US allies, and will unlikely garner domestic support.
That explains why Trump’s antagonistic rhetoric has now turned on Iran - the next best option in his mind to provoking a foreign war that Americans may support.
All of a sudden, Trump’s public statements are all about how much of an imminent threat Iran is.
The game is on - Trump is starting a new slew of threats about how he will not certify the 2015 nuclear deal that took years to put together, he will impose sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and insist on Iran making restrictions on its enrichment of uranium permanent.
The same “great evil” characterisation is now being put on Iran’s leadership, and overnight the country has become America’s new public enemy number one. It is all so convenient.
It is now Iran’s capability of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile that is all of a sudden so threatening. Iran having such weaponry is actually not much of a threat when one considers that Iran has not attacked any country in 300 years, but has been the target of US aggression and subversion throughout its recent history.
It can surely not be acceptable that Israel has a vast arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles (not to mention nuclear weapons), and has used its conventional arsenal offensively in attacks against Lebanon and elsewhere, but Iran should not develop the means to defend itself.
The writing seems to be on the wall. Trump will ratchet up the threats and war talk against Iran, he will ignore the pleas of European allies to safeguard the hard won nuclear agreement, and as the US imposes new sanctions and asset freezes, Iran may walk away from the deal altogether.
The lesson will not be lost on North Korea’s leadership - dialogue with the west over the country's nuclear capability is pointless considering the fact that what one American administration agrees to, the next can just as easily unravel.
North Korea has noted the fact that the US has violated the nuclear agreement with Iran by failing to lift sanctions and preventing the normalising of trade and economic relations. This while the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly confirmed Iran’s full compliance with its commitments under the agreement.
Tomorrow, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif arrives in South Africa for an official visit, bringing with him a large business delegation. The visit comes at a time when Iran needs South Africa’s support more than ever before, and it will expect South Africa to defend its right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, and to respect its sovereignty as a responsible member of the UN, as South Africa has done in the past.
It is time to fight back against Trump’s warmongering.
* Ebrahim is Independent Media's Group Foreign Editor.