Were Operation Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury all for nothing?
American and Israeli allied forces decapitated Tehran’s leadership, reduced nuclear plants to rubble, entombed enriched uranium, dealt fatal blows to naval and air defences, broke the capacity to restock drones and missiles, and brought the economy to the point of collapse.
Yet some 84 percent of Israelis feel they lost the war.
If they did, it would not be the first time. Since Israel’s establishment, the “powers that be” have never allowed it to win a war.
Why would Tehran behave differently as regards: (a) developing nuclear capability and (b) global terrorism when religion draws the red line?
Israel won the 1948 War of Independence. Armistice lines and treaties were formalized on its behalf.
In 1956, Israel took the Suez Canal. Then the U.S., the Soviet Union, and the U.N. forced it to withdraw.
In 1967, Israel mangled all the Arab armies in six days. The territories that fell in its lap led to U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, requiring Israel to withdraw.
In 1978, the deployment of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) thereafter obstructed Israel from keeping Hezbollah away from the southern border.
In 1982, during the first Lebanon War, the IDF advanced all the way to Beirut. The Sabra and Shatila massacres perpetrated by Lebanese militias aligned with Israel caused both international and domestic outrage. Israel pulled out of Beirut.
And so on and so forth.
President Trump would break the mold. So Israelis thought. Not he. The consummate deal-maker gave Israel, after ignoring Israel in the MOU, a restriction order that promoted his agenda. In short, Trump ordered Israel to stand down in Lebanon and Iran.
Trump likes mocking the 2015 JCPOA nuclear pact that Barack Obama made with Iran. Yet Lee Smith illustrates that, “the messaging coming out of the White House sounds almost exactly like the kind of language the Obama administration used to sell what Trump called the worst deal ever negotiated.”
The U.S. president has treated Prime Minister Netanyahu with such audacity that second-guessing Trump’s intentions has become something of a pastime.
An article he shared on Truth Social is typical. Headlined, “Trump holds the cards in Netanyahu’s shaky re-election chances,” he used it to back a boast that “Israelis have a lot of respect for me, and they do as I say.”
Do they? The ruling Likud party shelved a planned election campaign highlighting the chumminess between Netanyahu and Trump. On reflection, it was decided that the MOU would do no favor to the former’s re-election bid.
A poll confirmed as much. A risible 13 percent of Israelis trusted Trump to look out for Israel’s interests, while a whopping 71 percent said they did not believe he would.
Truth is, chaos and confusion are Trump’s home. It’s where he is comfortable, where he comes at adversaries like a wounded buffalo.
Concern over Trump’s MOU may therefore be premature. The Iranians don’t believe one single word in it. As for Trump, he’s like-minded. The two parties have no respect for the written word on a piece of paper. Yet it hasn’t stopped them from negotiating a peace deal.
Iran’s leverage in the on-off peace negotiations does not rely on uranium enrichment. Leverage relies on Hormuz enrichment. Trump had to get the Straits opened, first and foremost. In the meantime, kicking out the nuclear issue to the 60-day process, it’s a fair bet the can will be kicked down the road.
By comparison with the 2015 JCPOA, Trump’s preposterous MOU is benign. Or it would be were it not for an all too real and present threat quietly festering therein. It stems from the complete ignorance of Trump, his advisors, and special envoys about the nature of those they’re wheeling and dealing.
To the Iranians, it’s about survival. Waiting for the return of an ancient Mahdi is all-determining. For that reason, no moderate or amenable core exists in the new regime. It has as much inclination to stop believing in the global triumph of Islam against unbelievers as Jews or Christians are inclined to stop believing in the Ten Commandments.
Hence, the Islamic Republic of Iran orders worshippers at every Friday service to chant “Death to America.”
On taking power in 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the global export of Islam. Having that vision has made the Islamic Republic an avowed enemy of America. In fact, while the whole world must come under Islamic law, along the way, if it suits the project, treaties may be made in order to break them.
They also chant “Death to Israel” at Friday mosque services in the Islamic Republic.
As they see it, Israel exists on land that belonged to Islam. A passage in the Koran (Ch 2 v 191) commands Muslims to “Drive them out where they drove you out.” Land ruled by Islamic law at any point is Muslim land forever.
When Trump said that Iran was behaving “very well” in peace negotiations, agreeing to the terms set by Washington, that’s when the mocking reached dynamite potential.
Trump told reporters that “Iran is being very nice. They’re agreeing to everything that I want.” At this point, ignorance turned lethal.
Of all murky lunacies, re-hashing Obama’s corrupt nuclear pact with Iran is the most devious, the most comic, the most perilous. Caliphate fanatics were chuckling.
For now, sham negotiations suit cheaters on both sides. Does Team Trump really not see itself as the beggar and Tehran the teaser and tantalizer?
A pet project is a common failing — and so is bending over backwards to get the thing signed off. The Obama-Kerry team coaxed and coddled and bribed the Jihadist regime. In Lausanne, it baited the hook not with palatable Swiss cheese but by taking a worldwide web of terror and proxy wars off the negotiation table. To leave a legacy, Obama supped with a devil hardly disguised at all.
The devilish diplomacy has nothing to do with Don Corleone’s “Keep your friends close but your enemies even closer.” Trump is not keeping Arab allies close. He’s making them distrustful of U.S. resolve.
Islamic Nazis see how much Trump’s MAGA career depends on a deal. They discern that one way or another, Trump or VP Vance will cut a deal no matter what. Factor in a Europe with no stomach and a Russia and China with no scruples, and you have thugs holding out for a certain payoff. Sanctions: lift them. Inspections to make sure Tehran complies: fake.
Why would Tehran behave differently as regards: (a) developing nuclear capability and (b) global terrorism when religion draws the red line?
If the MOU rejuvenates Iran into the regional power it was before the war, it potentially holds the seeds of the end of times.
Obama tagged detente with terrorists in suits as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It proved to be a once-in-a-lifetime threat. Former nuclear negotiators with the Soviets, Shultz and Kissinger, warned Obama that he had put Iran on steroids.
Some mischief-maker stalks the rooms and corridors of the White House. What else would leave a trail of freak realignments? The Middle East’s distrust of America the brave created a vacuum for the Abraham Accords to fill.
The spectacle of natural Western allies falling out of bed and habitual Muslim foes climbing into bed springs to mind the tale of the sorcerer’s apprentice.
Left in the workshop to his own devices, he enchants a broom and a pail to do the chores for him. In no time, the place is in chaos. The apprentice is clueless about how to stop the magic. He breaks the broom in half, hoping that will do the trick. Instead, the pieces turn into more brooms while the pail slops water at twice the rate. The old sorcerer returns and beholds the unholy mess. “Leave powerful spirits,” he says, “to a master wizard.”
Don’t get into bed with Islamic Nazis who will nuke Israel at the first opportunity. That should be reckoned with before making nuclear deals or peace agreements or whatever they may be called.
Like Christopher Marlow’s Mephistopheles and later Hitler, Iran will never strike a bad deal. But Trump’s MOU bid or bet is more reckless than the deal Dr Faustus made. The medic gambled his own soul. Trump gambles with the lives of hundreds of millions.
Iran signs pacts with blood, and that’s another thing he ought to bear in mind.
Iran likes to break its word before signatures have time to dry, another thing to bear in mind.
In short, pacts with crazies and the paper they’re written on are equivalent in value.
The fate of Faustus was eternal damnation. But the gambling medic was not the President of America.
Faustus, Mr President, sealed his own fate, not the fate of mankind.
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