Once the midterms are over, Trump will be free to pursue vendetta politics. But with will and diplomacy, he can be reined in

As another Iran catastrophe looms, one question matters more than any other: how to stop it before it’s too late? Whatever the eventual outcome of Israel’s election and next week’s US midterm polls, Donald Trump, playing the Lone Ranger, and Benjamin Netanyahu, his badass Tonto, appear hell-bent on resuming the illegal war of choice they began in June last year and expanded in February. Like a Shakespearean tragedy moving inexorably to a bloody denouement, the worst is yet to come. And yet three things seem certain: the US and Israel will again fail to totally destroy Iran’s largely hypothetical nuclear capabilities; its regime will survive; and millions of ordinary people, there and around the world, will pay the price for this unjustified, reckless aggression.

Ducking and weaving, Trump is desperate to dodge the blame for the Republicans’ anticipated midterm meltdown, largely triggered by war-related fuel and consumer price inflation. He claimed Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries were responsible, but that didn’t wash. He cut a treacherous diesel deal with Vladimir Putin but, as usual, Russia’s smirking mafioso conned him. He urged US allies to tap their strategic reserves but, unsurprisingly, vilified and sidelined European leaders, who view his war as an unmitigated disaster and declined to bail him out. Trump also reportedly rebuffed last-gasp, electorally driven pressure from Netanyahu to hit Iran this month, fearful it would unleash a Democratic tsunami.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Europe’s leaders can no longer trust a word that comes out of Washington. No more slaps on the wrist – we need concrete steps to punish Trump

Historical comparisons are always inexact. No one conflict precisely mirrors another. Yet Donald Trump’s shameless appeasement of Vladimir Putin carries more than a noxious whiff of Neville Chamberlain’s failed attempt in Munich in 1938 to head off war with Nazi Germany. To be fair to the former UK prime minister – and history largely hasn’t been – his peacemaking efforts had the enthusiastic backing of most people in Britain and France who, like him, were desperate to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the first world war. Trump enjoys no equivalent public support for his treachery. Nor does he face the prospect of a US war with Russia. His betrayal of Ukraine is cynically self-interested, globally dangerous and utterly contemptible.

US-Russian talks on agreeing the shoddy terms of a precedent-setting American sell-out of Ukraine are at an advanced stage, after meetings in St Petersburg this week. Trump has zigzagged over the war ever since returning to office. Now, panicked by record-low poll ratings, he seems determined to scapegoat Ukraine and force its de facto capitulation. Recent steps – his shocking decision to fund Putin’s war machine by buying Russian diesel, his waiving of tougher sanctions, his mysterious, lethal interruptions in US satellite and intelligence sharing with Kyiv, and his renewed attempt to oust Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – mark Trump out as the skulking Judas, the craven Brutus of the modern age. He makes Chamberlain look like a man of iron principle. All that’s lacking is an umbrella.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator