Were Operation Midnight Hammer, Epic Fury and ‘Economic Fury’, all for nothing?
American and Israeli allied forces decapitated Tehran’s leadership, reduced nuclear plants torubble, entombed enriched uranium, dealt fatal blows to naval and air defences, broke capacity to restock drones and missiles and brought the economy to the point of collapse.
Yet some 84% 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’ never allowed it to win a war.
Israel won the 1948 War of Independence. Armistice lines and treaties were formalised on its behalf.
In 1956 Israel took Suez. Then the US, Soviet Union and UN forced it to withdraw.
In 1967 Israel mangled all Arab armies in six days. The territories which fell in its lap led to UN Security Council Resolution 242 requiring Israel' to withdraw.
In 1978 the deployment of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) thereafter obstructed Israel from keeping Hezbollah away from the southern border.
In the 1982 first Lebanon War the IDF advanced all the way to Beirut. The Sabra and Shatila massacres caused both international and domestic outrage. Israel pulled out of Beirut.
And so on and so forth.
President Trump would break the mould. So Israelis thought. Not he. The consummate deal-maker gave Israel, after ignoring Israel in the MOU, 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 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 US President treats Prime Minister Netanyahu with an audacity that has made it something of a pastime to second guess Trump.
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 decided that the MOU would do no favor to the former’s re-election bid.
`A poll confirmed as much. A risible 13% of Israelis trusted Trump to look out for Israel’s interests, while a whopping 71% 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.
It’s the gravest mistake to assume that when he entered the war against Iran, Trump was implementing a strategic plan. Instead he specs the opportunities and threats. Such ruthless pragmatism gets normal politicians and diplomats stranded on their pedestal of complex strategies.
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 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. Meantime kicking out the nuclear issue to the 60 day process it’s a fair bet the can will be kickable down the road. Kicking the proverbial can was the ultimate legacy President Obama’s real nuclear accord left the world to tackle.
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 with whom or what they’re wheeling and dealing.
To the Iranians it’s no more or less than 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 can stop believing in the global triumph of Islam against unbelievers as much as Jews or Christians can 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 Khameini 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 to break.
They also chant ‘Death to Israel’ at Friday Mosque services in the Islamic Republic.
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 after.
When Trump said that Iran was behaving "very well" in peace negotiations, agreeing to the terms set by Washington, that’s when the mock talks became dynamite potential.
Trump told reporters that "Iran is being very nice. They're agreeing to everything that I want". At this point in front of his lying eyes, 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 to bend 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 world-wide 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 US 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 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.
It’s that which gives Trump’s piece of paper waiting for signatures the impetus of prophecy. Not in the petty sense of prophecy foretelling the future but stoking upheavals of which the bible speaks.
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 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. Middle East 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 how to stop the magic. He breaks the broom in half, hoping that will do the trick. Indeed 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.
Steve Apfel was once an economist and the founder and director of the School of Management Accounting. Now he writes full time. A veteran authority on anti-Zionism, his 2012 book, ‘Hadrian’s Echo: the why and wherefores of Israel’s Critics’ was acclaimed by top Middle East scholars. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007PIVM6G