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Trump Lost Badly in Iran

The distraction of the shooter at the White House Correspondent Dinner over the weekend will likely be short lived and soon the mainstream media's focus will return to the Felon's war of choice in Iran and, of course, the Epstein files.  The former is likely the Felon's biggest concern at the moment as he finds himself in a mess of his own creation that now seemingly has no likely good solution that can somehow be spun into a "win."   The leadership in Iran seems to realize that the Felon has put himself and America in an untenable position where the longer the conflict goes on the more damage that will be done to America economically and the Felon's party of self-prostituting Republicans.  A piece at Salon looks at how badly the Felon miscalculated his Iran adventure while ignoring warnings that Iran would do exactly what it has done: block the Straight of Hormuz and send oil prices soaring (oil is just shy of $97.00/barrel at the moment). Meanwhile, the Felon finds himself faced with a proposal by Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the USA lifting its blockade and ending the war - something that would provide no "victory" to the Felon.  Here are highlights from Salon:

There is no way to sugarcoat the epic scale of America’s humiliation in Donald Trump’s disastrous and irrational war with Iran, or the damaging global effects that will endure years or decades into the future. With the “stable genius” and “extraordinarily brilliant person” in the White House visibly decompensating into impotent rage and erratic burst of mania, there is no obvious exit strategy that will allow him to declare victory (as he must, for interwoven and deeply unfortunate psychological and political reasons).

This war has accomplished exactly none of its stated objectives — even with those constantly shifting and being defined downward — and has almost certainly strengthened the regional power and global reputation of the Iranian regime, despite weeks of bombing and the deaths of much of its leadership. Trump’s options would seem to be a negotiated settlement that might, at best, approximate the pre-war status quo; a potentially catastrophic military escalation favored by literally no one except Lindsey Graham, the Israeli government and a handful of right-wing Iranian expatriates; or an indefinite continuation of the current phony war over the Strait of Hormuz, in hopes that the Iranian economy will suffocate before global recession sets in (an outcome that may be unavoidable no matter what else happens).

That’s a doubleplus-ungood list of options, and while it’s easy to say that the first one presents the most rational outcome for all sides, it’s not clear that even matters. . . . [the Felon] Trump is “quite fed up” with this war and eager to make a deal, reports Amos Harel of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, but is trapped between Benjamin Netanyahu on one side and Iran’s new war-hardened governing faction on the other, both of whom are more than willing to fight on.

We know Trump wants something he can sell as a big win to his dead-ender congressional loyalists and his declining support base, and that Netanyahu still hopes for an all-out U.S.-led war of destruction (although Harel reports that the Israeli leader now understands that’s unlikely). Opinions about what Iran’s new leaders want are all over the map, but in the words of Foreign Policy columnist Michael Hirsh, they now seem to be “calling the shots.”

From the beginning of this conflict, the Iranians identified the fundamental weakness of U.S. strategy, which was based on a litany of false assumptions, starting with the premise that total victory could be achieved with air power (something that has never happened in the history of warfare) and that killing Iran’s senior leaders would cause the regime to surrender or collapse.

Hai Nguyen, a Vietnam War scholar at the Harvard Kennedy school, told Hirsh that he saw history literally repeating itself. Like the Viet Cong of 50-odd years ago, the Iranians have perceived the American superpower’s Achilles heel: “They understand that the U.S. could drop thousands of tons of bombs, but it does not possess the patience to withstand a prolonged war.” . . . . the Iranian regime is observing a time-honored principle attributed to Napoleon: Never interrupt your opponent when he’s making a mistake.

Tucker Carlson . . . . is probably correct to describe the Iran war as the worst single decision made by any American president in his lifetime. It brings together all the worst tendencies of U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s — overconfidence, bad intelligence, inflated bluster and outright lies as a cover for irresolution and incompetence, xenophobic hubris, a misguided reliance on technical superiority and outmoded strategy, and a fundamental failure to understand the nature of asymmetrical warfare — as implemented by a team that not only failed to learn from history but proudly proclaimed that history was woke and for girls.

Whether or not this war will outdo the long-term destructive consequences of George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq is a question for future historians to sort out (should there be any). But these military misadventures 23 years apart already appear as aspects of the same historical phenomenon, despite the ardent claims of the Trump administration and its defenders that everything is different now because real men are in charge. Both these wars represent desperate, doomed efforts to reverse the inexorable process of imperial decline that’s been underway for several decades, and has constrained or dictated the actions of at least the last five American presidents.

Let’s come back around to Tucker Carlson, whose self-serving reverse heel-turn feels partway between the old saw about rats leaving a sinking ship and a harbinger of the apocalypse. Two years ago, Carlson conducted a very long and very strange interview with Vladimir Putin, who seemed almost visibly to conclude that America wasn’t sending its top talent. It’s worth watching the whole thing, if you’re exactly the right kind of sicko. Toward the end of their conversation, Putin says that this era of history will be determined by one question: Whether America will decline in a gradual and orderly fashion, or catastrophically and all at once. We don’t have to hand it to him either, but it’s a good question and the answer is now becoming apparent.

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Trump: Iran’s Newest Hostage

I won't comment as yet on the gunman who reportedly rushed a security position at the White House correspondent dinner last evening, other than to note some memes on the Internet are suggesting the scene was faked - an extension of the growing belief among in MAGA world that the Butler, Pennsylvania "assassination attempt" was staged. One can understand why in some ways given the Felon's desperation to change the conversation from his cratering poll numbers, the stalemate in the Iran war that sees Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz (oil is currently at $95.00/barrel), and growing reports of corruption and insider trading by the Felon and his regime. Time will tell whether or not the chaos witnessed last evening was staged or not - Viktor Orban had contemplated a stage assassination attempt during his losing election campaign in Hungary.  Meanwhile, a column in the New York Times looks at how the Felon has set himself up to be Iran's latest hostage with not clear way out of the quagmire of his own creation. With negotiations currently canceled and the world still reeling from the loss of oil that would normally transit the Strait, the Felon is increasingly in an untenable position.  Here are column highlights:

“It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.” That’s the opening of the classic O. Henry short story “The Ransom of Red Chief.” The tale, written in 1907, is the ultimate parable about the perils of trying to seize and control a hellion so devious, so maniacal, so awful that the captors become the captives.

[The Felon] President Trump went along with Bibi Netanyahu’s Panglossian case for slamming Iran. It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.

After nearly two months of tangling with the demonic Iranian leadership and its allies, [the Felon] Trump looks desperate to run for the hills. He constantly says he has defeated the mullahs and “obliterated” their military power, and yet Iran refuses to be subdued.

Trump says there’s a new regime that’s easier to deal with, but actually it’s the same regime but worse — run by hardened, fanatical generals. Iran has not turned over its enriched uranium, and negotiations are touch-and-go. The Strait of Hormuz, which Trump keeps insisting is open, is closed. Trump is blockading the Iranian blockade.

“Iran has proven to be far more resilient and resourceful than he was prepared for,” Richard Haass, a foreign policy adviser for President George W. Bush, wrote in his newsletter, “Home & Away.” “Almost all the administration’s assumptions have been proven wrong.”

Aside from the weakening of Iran’s conventional military capability, Haass said, “virtually every other metric shows the United States, the region and the world to be worse off.”

The Iranians are tormenting Trump — even as they out-troll the master troller, viciously mocking the president as a “L.O.S.E.R.” and Bibi puppet who wants to distract from the Epstein files.  One viral Iranian rap addressing Trump calls the conflict “a trap you couldn’t see. Welcome to the graveyard of your vanity.”

Now that Iran has flexed power in the strait, [the Felon] Trump has to bargain with it to get back to where things were before.

He is pinioned in a weird nook and cranny of the planet that seems almost medieval, sitting next to a backward, villainous theocracy. And yet ships carrying over 20 percent of the world’s oil must traverse the narrow passage to get to the Arabian Sea.

[The Felon] Trump, who grew overconfident after his adventurism in Venezuela, is being driven to distraction.

He got so rattled when the two American airmen were shot down, Josh Dawsey and Annie Linskey reported in The Wall Street Journal, that he “screamed at aides for hours.” Last month, Trump talked about the danger of becoming another Jimmy Carter, spiraling amid the hostages and a failed rescue with eight helicopters lost.

Trump tried to scare the Iranians with a profane post on Easter and a wild threat to destroy their civilization. But Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq. The Iranian mullahs and generals are the terrors of the strait.

[The Felon] Trump has forsaken the one good Middle East policy he had: avoiding the mirage of quick wins while getting sucked once more into “blood and sand,” as he dismissively called it during his first term.

But, seduced by the detestable Bibi, he got suckered into the blood and sand. Unlike W., who had the good grace to trump up a case for war, Trump let Bibi lead him by the nose into this one, blowing off Congress, our allies and many furious MAGA acolytes.

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reveal in their forthcoming book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” that the [Felon] president brushed aside Gen. Dan Caine’s warnings that a war with Iran would drastically deplete our weapons stockpiles and jeopardize the traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. . . the United States has burned through half — around 1,100 — of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China.

The president with the attention span of a gnat posted on Truth Social that “I have all the Time in the World, but Iran doesn’t — The clock is ticking!” But he is the one who has lost control of the timeline, and himself. . . . now, in frantic Truth Social posts, in calls with reporters and in interviews, he employs hyperbolic wishful thinking. His staff is resigned to a midterm electoral disaster brought on by higher gas prices and a lack of focus on the economy.

And he keeps returning to his gargantuan ballroom. According to a Washington Post analysis, “Trump has invoked the ballroom on about a third of the days this year.” It’s a pleasant mental escape, now that he has tied himself into a Gordian knot with Iran.

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Let’s Hope The Felon's War Doesn’t Become Tragic

This morning, the price of oil is hovering around $95.00/barrel - 50% higher than before the Felon at Israel's urging went to war with Iran - and there remains no end in sight.  Recent polls show that the Felon's war of choice remains very unpopular and that a super majority of Americans blame the Felon for the current gas prices - which may worsen as scarcity in other parts of the world comes home to roost in America.  What's perhaps most upsetting (at least outside of MAGA Kool-Aid drinking circles) is that the entire Iran mess was created by the Felon, beginning with his decision to  tear up the agreement the Obama administration had negotiated. Frighteningly, to the Felon and his idiot Secretary of Defense, the war in some ways continues to be a live video game with little concern for the lives lost or damaged or the economic pain being suffered by other nations around the world. All to the delight of Vladimir Putin who revels in America's self-destruction under the Felon's misrule.  A piece at The New Republic traces out how the Felon set this whole mess in motion and the very real concerns that in his desperation to escape his self-created mess, something tragic may happen:

As we barrel toward the ninth week of this two- or three-week war, virtually all of the reporting and most of the commentary is focused on the strategery of the moment: who really controls the Strait of Hormuz, when the ceasefire might actually end, what Donald Trump might do next. That’s all understandable. But it also means that this is a good time to take a step back and summarize exactly what Trump has done here, because if we look at it from 30,000 feet, we see exactly what so many of us knew was dangerous about putting this unstable and petty and frankly stupid man back in the Oval Office.

To put it in a phrase: He and he alone created the conditions that made war possible. He and he alone created the chaos that, he then told the American people and the world, made war necessary. Imagine the mayor of a town where there were acute ethnic or racial tensions taking office and inheriting a fragile but holding truce between the antagonistic parties. He then annuls that truce, calling it weak and fraudulent. Tensions, predictably, flare up again. And the mayor sends in armed agents to disarm the minority. And while he’s doing it, he threatens to destroy their entire culture and compares himself to Jesus, while the man in charge of the military operations constantly invokes God and Jesus as being on his side.

That’s what has happened here. Trump backed out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Barack Obama and five other nations had negotiated with Iran. Was it perfect? Of course not. It was a compromise, with an enemy that hates the United States. But it capped uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent—far, far short of the level required to make nuclear arms—until 2030. Most provisions expired in 10 years (2025). Still, that’s not nothing. Experts agreed that it was working, and Iran was abiding by its terms, and it left it for a future administration to pick up the baton.

Trump, far from picking the baton up, threw it in the incinerator. The JCPOA ran to around 160 pages. The chance that Trump actually read it is zero. In fact, the agreement, minus the annexes, was only 18 pages. And still, we know to a 99.55 percent certainty that the chance Trump read even those 18 pages is zero. Those 18 pages were agreed to by Obama. That was all Trump needed to know. So he withdrew from the agreement in May 2018. He imposed stricter sanctions and announced a policy of “maximum pressure.” Oooh, tough! Amurka, baby!

But what happened? The other signatory nations tried to hold things together, but without the United States, everyone knew that was a joke. Iran very quickly increased its enrichment. By 2020, outlets were reporting that “Iran is now enriching more uranium than it did before it agreed to the landmark nuclear deal with world powers . . .

In other words: Trump made this problem. Entirely and solely. By pulling out of the JCPOA in 2018, he ensured that Iran would start breaking the terms of the deal. He’s the one who made Iran strong. Then, eight years later, he comes back to us and says, Bad Iran! They broke the terms of the deal! They’re too strong. We must invade them.

But it’s actually even worse than that. Because we didn’t invade Iran because they broke the terms of the deal. We invaded Iran because Trump, having conquered (in his mind) America, needed to conquer farther reaches.

It was only when it became clear that it wasn’t easy that Trump settled on his current rationale for the war (that Iran must not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon). Because at first, the rationale was regime change. And we took out the supreme leader, and Trump probably thought well, that was that. But that just handed everything to the supreme leader’s son, who is more radical, and whose father, wife, and son were killed by U.S. bombs. So when it became clear even to Trump that the regime wasn’t going to change, he settled on the rationale about nuclear weapons.

But there’s a little problem with it. Namely, that Iran is today a hell of a lot closer to nuclear weapons than it was in 2015, after Obama’s deal. So Trump, who created this problem, now tells us that he may have to solve it by eliminating Persian civilization, one of the great civilizations in the history of humanity (these last 47 years, not even a blink of an eye in human history, notwithstanding).

The United States has fought a lot of dumb and unnecessary wars. And it’s fought a lot of wars that cost more lives than this one has so far. But this one has to be the most unnecessary war of all. And now here we sit, the whole world nervously watching the president of the United States, whom everyone in every capital around the globe knows to be impulsive and ignorant and concerned mainly with his vanity, wondering what he’ll do next—hoping that America’s most unnecessary war doesn’t also become its most tragic.

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