The Unholy Trinity Behind The Iran War

Netanyahu, Trump and the Supreme Leader Are A Trio of Madness

June 20-21

By Marc Cooper

“Nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Donald Trump told the press when asked whether or not the U.S. will actively join the war against Iran. That, of course, includes Trump himself who has no clue and is surrounded by a gaggle of advisors who seemed to have all escaped from the same Psych Ward.

For the moment, he has once again TACOed saying, just like every other time he’s faced with a tough decision, that he will announce his stance in “two weeks” -- while using that statement also as an ultimatum to Iran to “surrender.”

I can’t think of any more perilous conflict in recent history where the three major actors are all so radically unstable, irrational, unworthy of trust and psychologically so off the wall. This should scare the snot out of anybody daring to pay attention.

Until this morning, Friday, I thought Trump was going to refrain from Israel’s plea to drop a 30,000 lb “block-buster” bomb to take out Iran’s underground nuclear development hub but now I am far from convinced. I just heard his latest press gaggle and he was as rock stupid and incoherent as ever, he once again threw his DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard under the bus (“She’s wrong”) and while bobbing and weaving and mumbling he seemed to be inclined to join the war. Maybe it’s a negotiating tactic. More likely the leaning to intervention might come from one of the myriad voices in his head.

Before I go any deeper, let me clarify something about Trump. He has only one interest and one alone: his own political survival. He could not give two farts about anybody in the Middle East, including Israel, and his “strategic calculations” will be solely based on what he thinks is best for him. Fuck the world. Trump’s progressively sinking poll numbers are no doubt his primary concern. And what he really has to decide is not whether he would be contributing to a regional if not global conflagration, but whether entering the war would make him more unpopular or would conversely generate a rally-around-the-flag effect. I think it would be the former but no question that Trump’s poll numbers this week are primary to what passes for his thinking. Here’s this week’s Yougov numbers.

Not that Bibi Netanyahu is any more reliable or stable or trustworthy. And he is as self-interested as much as Trump. He took it upon himself to go over Daddy Trump’s head and commence this war on his own, no doubt betting the U.S. would, of course and as usual, come to his aid. He’s the guy who claims he’s got the exclusive intel that Iran is minutes away from assembling its first nuke, something he’s been saying for more than 10 years. Remember that he came to the U.S. and was given a congressional platform to argue against the original containment deal that Obama put together with Iran. He lacks total credibility on this issue.

Meanwhile, neither Netanyahu nor Trump nor anybody else has even broached the issue of The Day After, whether or not Trump drops the Big One. What’s the end game here? Certainly regime change imposed from outside Iran will result in a protracted land war that will make Iraq look like a bar fight. Iran, while currently weakened, is a far more populous and sophisticated nation than pre-war Iraq and sits in a more strategic position. At any point in this conflict, with or without U.S. intervention it can easily block the Straits of Hormuz and cut off international shipping and choke the world economy. Further, as unpopular as the Mullahs might be, there are still millions of True Believers still in Iran to fuel a war for the next 25 years.

Already, Iran is proving to be a much tougher cookie than its usual surrogates. Its missiles have penetrated Israel’s Iron Dome and are causing severe damage including to civilian areas. Having learned something from Israel’s attack on Gaza, Iran’s first direct hit was on an Israeli hospital proving that Karma is a blind bitch.

And who is crazy enough to guess what sort of regime would replace the Mullahs? Probably the Iranian Armed Forces. Big change that would be. Let’s remember that after 20 years of fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan they are now running the government. The Jeffersonian Democracy that Bush-Cheney attempted in Iraq wound up creating ISIS and turned Sunni-led Iraq into a ravaged and dysfunctional Shia ally of Iran!

Then there’s the third leg of this insane triad, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Unlike the Supreme Leader I don’t hold any intimate conversations with God so who am I to guess what’s in his fuzzy little head. I do know he’s a religious fanatic and ruthless dictator who has sponsored such joyous groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis among others. Certainly, if he could snap his fingers and make Israel disappear he would do so. Just as Bibi would in the case of Iran. But let us not forget that of all the Mid-Eastern countries, it’s only Israel that has the nukes, and in the end, has a U.S. umbrella over it.

So can we please, once and for all, dispose with the pointless clichés that Israel has the right to exist and the right to defend itself? Of course these bromides are rarely paired with a statement that Palestinians have a right to sovereignty and also a right to self-defense.

This is self-obvious and I am tired of hearing it anytime anybody varies an inch from the Official Israeli propaganda.

I have no hesitation in stating that currently the biggest threat to Israel’s long term security is Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet packed with religious cranks, racists and fascists who, with their ruthless expansionist policies and devastation of Gaza have turned Israel on its head. Not that long ago, Israel was seen as an advanced humanitarian outpost of progressive ideals and held a special place in the hearts of many.

Thanks to Netanyahu and his extremist partners, Israel today is reviled and scorned even by many of its former friends who have realized it’s no longer your grandfather’s moral beacon and refuge for the persecuted. The IDF has long ago lost its false image as the most moral army in the world and shows its true colors as a ruthless racist force that puts no value on Arab lives, including civilians and their children.

But back to the craziest and most powerful of all, the very stupid and ignorant Donald Trump, surrounded by similar idiots, hustlers, ideologues and head cases. It’s an administration preparing for possible war while more or less exiling its own dumbass Defense Secretary (probably a good thing) and his DNI Chief Tulsi Gabbard (probably a good thing too but for the wrong reasons). Press reports say he is relying on advice from some four-star generals, which could be a good thing (the military is generally less hawkish than civilian warmongers) or it could be a terrible thing as some generals are as bonkers and blind as Trump himself.

Scholar and author Reza Aslan recently told a Zeteo panel:

“We went into the Iraq War not just under false pretenses, but with absolute ignorance about Iraq, its culture, its politics, its people. And it’s very clear that we’re falling into the same trap again.” And he adds, “There is a series of lies that are being told about the need to go to war with Iran that are just as urgent.”

Indeed, this whole mess is leveraged on Netanyahu’s clairvoyance that Iran is just about ready to finish building its first nuke. That might be true. It probably isn’t. Or somewhere in between. The reason that Tulsi Gabbard is in the doghouse is not because she is a whacko, but because she recently testified before Congress that Iran has no current program to build a bomb. True enough she does a good job of hiding her Russian accent while speaking in public, but as the overseer of more than 15 U.S. intel agencies, we have yet to hear from any one of them saying as Trump did, “she’s wrong.”

I distrust U.S. intelligence as much as I do the vaunted Israeli intelligence who missed October 7 and then wildly miscalculated what the consequences of the invasion of Gaza would bring. Remember, that almost two years into Israel’s campaign of mass destruction, displacement, killing and starvation, there’s still no plan for the aftermath while Bibi is starting up a potentially much bigger conflict.

There is a near consensus, however, among nonpartisan and scientific observers that Iran is, in fact, inching toward construction of nukes. Many think it has enough weapons-grade uranium already to manufacture a half dozen or so relatively small warheads rather immediately but is probably some years away from developing a long-range delivery system.

Iranian nukes would be limited to small warheads on short-range missiles with enough range to hit Israel and the pro-American mini petro gulf states, who very much do not want the war to expand. And not much more. These same experts agree that Iran is probably working in decentralized labs on mini-nukes, meaning that even a successful U.S. bombing of its main hub would not end Iran’s nuclear program.
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Nobody thinks that anytime soon Iran would have the nuclear capacity to wipe out Israel. But Israel most definitely has the capacity to obliterate Iran. Which means when all put together the best way forward is for Trump to not go forward, and for Israel and Iran to de-escalate. It seems impossible that this war could conclude without some sort of nuclear exchange and what happens after that is unknowable and unthinkable.

While Trump TACOs around, the Europeans and the U.N. are scrambling to restart diplomatic talks with Iran as only a regional agreement can defuse this ticking time bomb.

There’s a great and tragic irony in all this. Iran did accept a negotiated deal with Obama that the current Moron-In-Chief ripped up his first year in office creating a crisis that had already been solved. Nevertheless, Iran had once again entered talks with the Trump administration that were not going very well but at least they were going until Israel launched its first missile barrage 8 days ago.

Iran is now refusing to talk so long as they are under attack. And the Europeans are pushing hard now to re-open the negotiations during Trump’s two-week-long TACO.

Tommy Vietor, former Obama National Security Council spokesman and the co-host of ‘Pod Save America,’ hardly an Iranian apologist, sums it up this way: “This idea that now it’s on Iran to come back to the table… How are the Iranians supposed to trust anyone involved here?

We are here precisely because Trump tore up the negotiated deal in 2018 in the first place.

Vietor continues:

“There’s a direct line from that decision to today because Donald Trump could have stayed in the deal, renegotiated it, made it tougher… and then called it the Trump nuclear deal. And he would have had a huge victory, but instead, he was a petulant little baby and he pulled out.”

This is a perilous moment for the U.S. and for the world. There’s little to no opposition to Trump going to war coming from the Democrats. The ultra-MAGAs like Bannon and MTG are doing a much better job in ringing the warning bell than the shameful dynamic duo of Jeffries-Schumer and I would not count on a whole lot of elected Democrats not following Bibi down the road to Hell.

A sprinkling of progressive Democrats like AOC and Bernie Sanders have joined a couple of outrider MAGA isolationists in pushing legislation that would deny funding for any attack on Iran. A nice idea and about as likely as the Ayatollah having his son Bar Mitzvahed.

Once again, sorry to say, it’s up to us. Which, excuse my skepticism, makes me strongly wish that the EU succeeds in getting diplomatic talks underway NOW. +++

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