Steve Apfel was formerly a business economist, founder and director of SMACC, the School of Management Accounting. Since then has been a full time granddad, author and blogger.
The meaning of Peace in the Devil’s Dictionary is “a period of cheating between two periods of fighting". Ambrose Bierce who compiled it, fought in the American Civil War, and may have been farsighted.
Iran, emulated by its handmaidens Hamas and Hezbollah habitually break Trump’s cease fires by complaining that America and Israel are cheating. Irate Trump’s peace projects thereupon collapse.
The terrorists have a point. Analysts can hardly keep count of how many times the great dealmaker has made aggressive ultimatums only to revoke them. Who can blame Tehran’s cocky junta for fancying its chances of indefinite survival. Not Trump by the way he coaxes it back to negotiate.
In the course of this chronic cycle, Iran’s nuclear threat as the casus belli gave way to the control of Hormuz.
Trump’s empty threats, to believe anti-war elements, embolden the murderous regime.
Meantime his MAGA base pins faith in the adage, slowly slowly catch the monkey: “Iran is losing whether it is being bombed, sanctioned, or embargoed-or all three." It’s for the White House to decide Iran’s fate.
Waverers aren’t convinced. Recalling Afghanistan they categorise fighting wars in Asia or the Middle East as debacles if not fiascos. Irrespective, the stock of the Islamic Republic has climbed. On top of all it retains the big prizes: nuclear dust and a stranglehold on Hormuz.
Despite it attacking supportive gulf states, Iran’s abiding ambition for regional hegemony is no pipe dream.
Is Trump’s peace project for Gaza looking any better? It might have been if Trump was held in awe and respect for the way Iran was handled.
It would be too shame-making for him to go into campaigning for the midterms were his plans for Gaza to go belly up. Could it be this anxiety that led to the extravagant way Trump announced on social media that peace had broken out in Gaza.
“Today the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT OF Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step towards lasting peace and security."
Imagine Trump’s temper when the senior member of the Hamas negotiating team, Shazi Hamad, poured cold water on his claim.
“We talked about storing heavy weapons under the responsibility of the National Committee. Period. End of story. We did not talk about any other term. Not about disarmament or anything else."
Nor was his greatest ally very co-operative. Benjamin Netanyahu did not feel ready to make the right noises about the Board of Peace and its plan for Gaza. In fact he refused outright to withdraw from Gaza until Hamas had fully disarmed.
Indifferent to the real possibility of Hamas rearming under the plan, and the Israeli leader’s own need to project strength ahead of fateful October elections, Trump darkly said he’d be “very disappointed" if Israel blocks progress on the 20-point plan. A senior administration official repeated his threat. The US President will be “very, very disappointed" by Israeli intransigence.
So there Trump stands. He can hardly go on the campaign trail exposed to the indelible taunt he made about Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal. The worst ever made, he claimed. As President he promptly withdrew from the JCPOA pact for which Obama had walked off with a Nobel Peace Prize.
Hamas and Iran are fortunate. They don’t have elections to worry about. They can afford to play a waiting game knowing that Trump will be out of office sooner than their leaders. What can he do?
As luck would have it Iran, unsuspecting and all, can help Trump gain pole position.
How so? By ridding the world of the most evil member of Iran’s evil regime. I mean, he rid the world of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, and brags even now. It would be a triumph of greater magnitude if Trump repeated what he did, this time with Mohsen Rezaei, the former commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Last Sunday Rezaei was promoted to head the country\s highest security body, the Supreme National Security Council.
His demise could be a Game of Thrones event in and of itself: Rezaei is going to wear the boots of Ali Larijani whom Israel despatched in 2026, in mid March. Besides a baleful domestic impact he could make Trump’s war games with Iran more difficult than ever. The new man swears that never will he allow unauthorized routes through the Strait of Hormuz, and that control of it is “more important than dozens of atomic bombs".
That’s the least of it. There happens to be a bounty on the man’s head. Interpol’s been trying to arrest him for three decades. Israel’s Mossad at this moment may well be itching to eliminate Rezaei.
What did he do to get attention like that? He masterminded two atrocities two years apart, both on Jewish targets. As an IRGC member Rezaei conceived a bombing that turned Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aries into rubble. It was the trial run for an even deadlier attack.
The horrendous June 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Centre AMIA mere blocks away from the Israeli Embassy, killed 85 and injured hundreds more.
To make terrorists pay is simple to promise and difficult to do. You have to: (1) identify them; (2) go after them; (3) attack them. Even then diplomacy may shove a foot in the door. Often there can be strong motives for not making terrorists pay.
The heinous AMIA crime is a case in point. Biden as VP stood by while President Obama made moves to let the culprits, identified and all, walk off into the golden sunset.
“It is a better outcome for America, Israel and our Arab allies than any alternative on the table," the President told Tom Friedman of the New York Times. Some table. It had to be clutter-free, no side issues to offend the scum (Trump’s word) slouching and sneering on the other side of the table.
Obama took everything off the table - bribes excluded. For caliphate fanatics the deal breakers were (1) holocaust threats they routinely level at Israel; (2) sleeper terror cells in every capital.
Had Obama tabled those issues the Iranian team would have walked out and gone home. Then they would have made the Bomb - according to Obama. The deal he finally shook at adoring Dems was actually more of a swap: Jewish blood for reptilian allies.
But a special crime had to be committed to make the JCPOA (unsigned) a reality. It involved the President of Argentina conspiring with Rezaei and his minions to assassinate the investigator - who happened to be Jewish.
Alberto Nisman, a government prosecutor, had by 2006 indicted seven members of the Iranian regime, one a former President and Foreign Minister. He did one better by securing international arrest warrants.
The decision to carry out the AMIA bombing, Nisman found, was taken at a meeting held a year prior to the crime, in August 1993 in Mashhad, by Iran’s “Committee for Special Operations." His 2006 indictment named Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The go ahead had been given by him along with President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The latter conceived and orchestrated the attack, while IRGC chief, none other than Mohsen Rezaei, helped conceive the project.
Nisman’s indictment also charged Rezaei for implementing the attack. To this day Rezaei has a “Red Notice" out for his arrest, along with five Iranian and a Lebanese national.
Onto the set flounced Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President of Argentine, an Eva Peron in her beauty and blinding ambition. She bartered the AMIA bombing for commodities. Her country got Iranian oil in return for her scuttling Nisman’s decade long investigation. For its part Tehran bought Argentine grain and had its crime covered up. It was a commercial deal with murder thrown in.
By now Nisman had compiled a docket a million-pages thick, in addition to a secret 300- page docket against de Kirschner and cronies. They were accused of inventing Tehran’s innocence in order “to pursue commercial, political and geopolitical interests." So a vixen and four terrorists exchanged barrels of oil for sacks of grain topped with Jewish blood by the barrel.
At this juncture Obama came into the picture. Western diplomatic sources disclosed that his Administration twisted the arm of Argentine leaders to end the investigation into Tehran’s involvement
Obama’s men met with Argentine counterparts on different occasions. The source close to Argentine leaders explained:
“One of the first demands by Iran to the Obama administration was that Argentine be pressed to drop arrest warrants," said a source close to Argentine leaders. “Within months, the meeting was followed up with a higher level one where Argentine leaders were asked to lay off. They eventually complied."
But Alberto Nisman’s moment arrived. On January 14, 2015 he publicly accused President Kirchner and her Foreign Minister of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to bury the AMIA case. “The order to execute the crime came directly and personally from the President of the Nation," the docket charged.
Nisman was summoned to testify before Argentine’s Congress. He feared for his life, he told friend, but was determined to see the case through. Days before his testimony he texted: “On Monday I am going in strong with evidence!"
Nisman failed to live that long. The night before his date with destiny he got a bullet to the head in his bathroom. In the trash police recovered a draft legal document clearing the way for de Kirchner’s arrest.
War, Napoleon said, is a contest of blunders. The side that commits fewer blunders wins the war. Trump, being human and having hubris and all, has made his share. But adulation beckons. He cannot afford to throw it, not with the risk of a new king-maker in the White House who considers Trump’s war on Iran a betrayal.