What’s up with Trump and Iran?
I admit I haven’t been pleased with what’s going on lately from Trump on Iran. My main beef has been that he appeared to encourage the demonstrators with promises of help and then, when many were massacred, did nothing. I don’t think he caused the killings, which would have happened anyway. And he may have had good reasons for pulling back. But the whole process has left a distinctly bad impression and sends a weak, blustery message.
Trump is often blustery. But he’s not often weak.
And then, after the empty threats, it seemed (and still seems) odd to me that he appeared (and appears) to be willing to negotiate. Hadn’t he learned how fruitless that is with Iran? Does he think he can work some sort of magic with the mullahs? Or is he playing for time with another goal in mind?
Reports are pretty much useless, IMHO, because each party is posing and putting a spin on it that could be false. But if you read this sort of article, based partly on NY Times reporting, you get a gloomy feeling. Here’s a sample:
he U.S. delegation, led by Steve Witkoff, on Friday, conducted two rounds of inconclusive talks with the Iranian regime negotiators in the Gulf Arab state of Oman amid alarming reports that Tehran is relocating its weapons-grade nuclear material and rebuilding its ballistic missile stockpile. …
Iran appears to be dragging the negotiations, gaining time to crush the popular uprising and secure its nuclear and missile stockpile. The Guardian (UK) quoted Iranian negotiators, saying that “[f]urther talks are on the cards at a time and date yet to be determined.”
The regime seems pleased with how the talks are going. “It was a good start to the negotiations. And there is an understanding on continuing the talks,” Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Aragchi, said following the talks on Friday.
From the 1979 U.S. Embassy hostage ordeal to the Obama-Kerry nuclear deal, the Mullah regime has always played for time while counting on the other side to make concessions or lose focus.
This isn’t esoteric information. Trump and his negotiators surely know it, unless they’ve lost their minds. Those who hate Trump and think he’s stupid probably don’t find these developments odd, but since I neither hate him nor think he’s stupid, at least so far, I am both surprised and puzzled.
The most benign explanation I can come up with is that it’s Trump himself who is playing for time, perhaps based on some Israeli information. Another less-good possibility is that he is so taken with the role of peacemaker that he’s making some poor calculations.
I don’t think the threats have been empty, and I don’t think Iran thinks they have been.
As for talking to the mullahs, a better statesman than Trump said, “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.” I’m sure we do realize how many people a war with Iran is going to kill, not just mullahs and not just the Iranian people for whom a war would ostensibly benefit.
As for it taking a while, not sure what to say about that I haven’t said already; we all seem to have much shorter attention spans than we did ten or twenty years ago, and seem to have forgotten how long it took, for example, to begin action in Iraq and Afghanistan and how much time and talking went by first. Men and machines and missile defenses don’t teleport themselves into an area at short notice.
Others who appear to be informed can give other reasons for the delay:
There’s also the critical component of some kind of idea of and planning for what takes shape in Iran afterward. The “regime change” track record is really not so good.
I’m with you Neo on this!
Turns out Khameini owns a lot of property in the UK and Dubai through his son. It looks like Starmer will give them asylum if they show up.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15508955/Secret-property-empire-Iranian-Ayatollah-heir-London-Dubai.html
Secret global property empire of Iranian Ayatollah’s heir including mansions on London’s Billionaires’ Row and ‘Beverly Hills of Dubai’ – as regime massacres impoverished protesters
Niketas:
No one here is saying Trump should have started an actual war with Iran. But he shouldn’t have made promises he didn’t keep, and he shouldn’t trust the Iranian negotiators.
Churchill said that quote (or something like it), but he wasn’t talking about Hitler, for example. He certainly wasn’t always into jaw over war.
Possibly we aid ourselves by casting our memories back to the initial hours of the IDF’s assault on Iranian targets (or persons targeted) in the 12 day war, so called. Then we might think how that thorough “ass-kicking” may unfold when multiplied by a factor of perhaps ten to twenty fold in the American and IDF’s combined hands. That would require an enormous intelligence data set for starters, leaving aside for the moment the assemblage of weaponeering, rehearsals and detailed instructions to carry it out.
So, on my belief that the President intends to both “go big” and “be complete”, I am not mystified in the least at the time consumed in preparation.
Plus, of course, the necessary predicate laying satisfactory to President Trump’s genuine dislike of killing to start with, affording every and all opportunities to our adversary to surrender without a fight (which, sad to say, he cannot do). And thus I await what will come.
No one here is saying Trump should have started an actual war with Iran.
I’m certain someone will say that, and can predict the username. Regardless, whatever it is you think Trump ought to have done, I bet Iranians would consider it “war”. I’ve never experienced my own country being bombed by a foreign power but perhaps I could be talked into not seeing it as “war”, though I am not immediately seeing the argument.
But he shouldn’t have made promises he didn’t keep, and he shouldn’t trust the Iranian negotiators.
It is too early to say that promises have not been kept–should he have publicly said “wait for the aircraft carriers that are coming at the end of January?”–I would say the available evidence is that he is keeping it as fast as is logistically possible–and we don’t know that he is “trusting” Iranian negotiators. I’m sure it’s occurred to you that the process of negotiating with someone untrustworthy probably takes quite a bit longer.
Churchill said that quote (or something like it), but he wasn’t talking about Hitler, for example. He certainly wasn’t always into jaw over war.
Who said he was? But the war was not of his making–he was not brought into the government until the war had started and not Prime Minister until Norway fell–and war was not his first resort. Over his career he negotiated with Britain’s enemies, including Communists and terrorists, including terrorists killing his own friends. He was not allowed to negotiate with Hitler before the war started, perhaps if he had been there might have been no Anschluss, no Munich agreement, and no war. There’s no way to know now how Churchill would have handled things had he not been a backbencher. Churchill was one of the architects of the United Nations and seeing to it that the Soviet Union had a seat at the table, and he knew perfectly well what that implied as you can see in his correspondence on the topic with Jan Smuts.
Just to add a side note: Kurt Schlicter rightly pointed out this morning that the real threat is not the nuke program, but the missiles. Iran has literally 1000s of the damn things and any attack on the country has to take that into account. There’s a chess game going on where Iran moves and protects the missiles, and Israel and US have to find them and neutralize on a first strike.
To paraphrase what Jack Sparrow said to Will Turner, “Wait for the opportune moment”.
Niketas:
Iranians see their own leaders as warring on them, not the US or Israel.
I have written before that Trump still might make good on his threats. But so far he has not.
@neo:Iranians see their own leaders as warring on them, not the US or Israel.
And you know this how? That aside, if we attack Iran, again, then we will be warring on them AND their leaders. There are no magic bombs that only kill bad guys. Yes, I’m sure some of them will welcome us as liberators. They always do, right? But there is no way to only war on the bad guys. Other people are going to get killed, and this is a decision not to be taken lightly.
Like I said, I’ve never been bombed by a foreign country in my home. If I were, even if I believed it’s ultimately for my long-term benefit, it’s definitely at the moment pretty seriously adding to my woes, and people in armchairs across the sea might take a minute to think about that. The kind of war needed for regime change is something way over and above what the people of Iran are going through now. Some way to better their lot without killing tens of thousands of people should definitely be explored first. Perhaps you are convinced already there is no such way, but you may be mistaken, and it’s not your life on the line. We can always kill more people, and we can never unkill them, so maybe a little bit of time is perhaps a better way to go.
But so far he has not.
He did not promise to push a magic regime change button, and he has none to push. But he has moved at least carrier groups into the area, that’s public, and other things that are not public. He is not sitting on his hands.
Couple of possibilities:
1) we have to get military assets in place. Now we do have a large air base in Qatar, but we’d need their permission to use it.
2) Maybe the Arabs don’t want a destabilized Iran.
3) Maybe the Arabs will be on board if they see good faith negotiations fail.
4) We need a plan to capture the mullahs and then we need to train, train, train. The operation to get Maduro and his wife took a loot of training.
5) +-What replaces the mullahs, at least on a short term basis?
No one here is saying Trump should have started an actual war with Iran. -Neo
I’m trying to imagine a scenario that doesn’t include starting an actual war with Iran.
I suspect President Trump was told that the force structure at the time would not have resulted in regime change. I’m not sure the force structure in place now will result in regime change without a protracted air campaign and covert operations.
Based on what we know about the President he will be hesitant to engage in a three month air campaign that might result in a leaderless country. That’s a recipe for a civil war which could spread into a regional conflict.
I suspect they are looking for a general in the Artesh military that would launch a coup against the regime once the IRGC was weakened sufficiently. How much of the IRGC would need to be killed first? Are they concentrated enough that air strikes could kill not just the leaders but the soldiers? Last June it was reported the IDF took out some of the IRGC leadership, but obviously did not collapse the government.
From what I understand, the IRGC owns a significant part of the Iranian economy, which gives them an incentive to maintain the regime at all costs in addition to their Islamic ideology.
Think of the IRGC as the SS of Hitler’s military. They are embedded in the Artesh command structure to ensure allegiance.
The President said:
“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!!”
It is unfortunate the President said it that way, given the amount of time it has taken to bring sufficient missile and air defenses into the region. Maybe it was to gauge how strong the opposition was to the regime.
Would be be willing to engage in nuclear deterrence that might result in the collapse of the regime if 100,000 of the IRGC had to be killed which might result in 50,000 Iranian civilians to die at the same time?
If there is a reasonable chance of success (greater than 50/50) I would support the effort, but if it doesn’t succeed or succeeds after an air campaign of months, how does that effect the political calculation to the Republicans losing the House and possibly the Senate?
@sdferr: So, on my belief that the President intends to both “go big” and “be complete”, I am not mystified in the least at the time consumed in preparation.
That’s my take.
It’s one thing to aid Israel in the 12 Day War then launch a huge, surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear program. It’s another to intend regime change without getting embroiled in something very messy.
The mullahs are the weakest they ever have been. They are an implacable enemy which has already killed over a thousand Americans. I don’t believe Trump or Netanyahu will settle for anything less than regime change. I agree.
But doing that surgically is tricky, including for Iranian deaths. Thus Trump wishes to make an overwhelming show of force while planning an optimal attack.
He hopes to persuade the mullahs to step down, take their loot and scoot. But otherwise he will do it the hard way.
The stakes are very high. I don’t blame Trump for wanting to get it right.
I have the same worries as neo. But maybe Trump is just being really, really careful because the Middle East is a maddening and frustrating place. And those are its good points. It’s not just about Iran, or even Iran and Israel and the USA.
rbj1’s five bullets are a good starting point. And I have long had the following worry – if the mullahs fall, then maybe Arabs will not be quite as anxious to cozy up to Israel because undoubtedly one of the main reasons they have for the past few years is the old “enemy of my enemy is my friend” since there are a lot more enemies than friends in the ME. Not that I don’t want the mullahs out and sooner rather than later. But there are a lot of moving parts here and even the seemingly impetuous Orange Man may be taking them into account. As he likes to say we will have to see what happens.
rbj1 — you missed one influential possibility. Netanyahu.
The dithering and delay may be the result of request(s) from Netanyahu.
Another possibility? JD Vance and the anti-interventionist crowd.
Their most unassailable point is this: If we break the Mullahs rule, how can we disown Iranian people?
Thus, the slide into foreign adventurism and “occupation,” if only by another name, that becomes a trap for the US to stay…years. AGAIN.
In addition to all those missiles, the Revolutionary Guard has operational units and weapons stashes all over the country. This isn’t going to be easy.
I think he’s got to get MbS on board and that’s taking a while. He’s got the Abraham Accords to consider.
Thus, the slide into foreign adventurism and “occupation,” if only by another name, that becomes a trap for the US to stay…years. AGAIN.
TJ:
Exactly.
And Trump ran against that.
Iran has literally 1000s of the damn things and any attack on the country has to take that into account.
I’ve heard (can’t quote the source) that Israel has been urging Trump not to attack Iran for this reason. The imams under siege would try to go out in a blaze of glory by raining missiles down on Tel Aviv.
It’s likely that Israeli assets in Iran are preparing too. Recall the drone factory in the 12 day war.
Perhaps bibi has a trick up his sleeve, as Israeli leaders are furiously meeting with the us counterparts.
Sunni countries are very nervous about an attack on Iran, as they are targets of both Iranian retaliation and Muslim brotherhood internally.
I’m quite anxious about any prospect but the longer Trump waits, the weaker the US is, and our allies alike. He should not have blustered but that’s what you get with him.
Remember, this is bibi’s hill to die on. He’s campaigned for this exact moment for decades.
”Trump is often blustery. But he’s not often weak.”
On foreign policy Trump is often weak.
His overall strategy in the Ukraine War is to “prevent World War III” by forcing Ukraine to surrender. To that end he took a 28-point peace plan written by Russia and tried to force Ukraine to accept it.
He has issued four ultimatums to Russia, threatening “severe consequences” to them if they ignored the ultimatums, then did nothing when they ignored the ultimatums. Well, that’s not true. On one of them after Russia ignored the ultimatum he actually unilaterally lifted some sanctions.
The whole Alaska Summit with Putin telegraphed weakness on a grand scale.
When Israel achieved total air supremacy over Iran and was pounding Iranian leadership, air defense, military assets, and nuclear sites he forced Israel to stop fighting after 12 days. He also forced Israel to suspend operations in Gaza when Israel had Hamas on the run.
In Venezuela he apprehended the usurper in power but made no attempt to actually overthrow the evil regime. Nor did he allow the elected government to take power.
None of these are signs of great strength, but they are all consistently Trump.
Why does he do this? Who knows for certain, but I think we can hazard some good guesses.
1) Trump ran on an agenda of “No new wars!”, and that was a major reason for his support among his base. Because of this, Trump only supports quick operations that can accomplish significant results in just a few hours. He wants the operations to be done before his base finds out about them.
So he supports a quick mission to bomb nuclear sites in Iran but not one to force regime change. Likewise he supports a quick mission to grab Maduro in Venezuela but not one to force regime change there.
There is no way to quickly force regime change in Iran. It would require at a minimum a long and extensive bombing campaign and quite possibly boots on the ground. He and his base just don’t have the stomach for that. I think the pivot to discussions over Iran’s nuclear program is a face-saving result of that lack of intestinal fortitude.
2) Trump and his team are susceptible to Russian propaganda and are terrified of “starting World War III.” It was right there in the Republican Party platform in 2024:
[emphasis in original]
This preventing World War III thing was discussed frequently in 2024 and early 2025 and often couched in terms of preventing nuclear war. Zelensky and his team have definitely noticed it, noting in the Ukrainian press in early 2025 that the new American negotiating team is terrified of Russian nuclear weapons.
Even Elon Musk got into the act. When he got wind of a Ukrainian operation to attack the Russian naval base in Sevastopol with naval drones, he shut down Starlink in the area, thwarting the attack. He then explained that he had been in contact with Vladimir Putin and that Putin had threatened nuclear war if such an attack were to occur. Such an attack did later occur, and no nuclear war resulted, but there are a lot of people in Trump’s circle who take such threats seriously.
As for possible airstrikes on Iran, it has now come out that airstrikes had been scheduled to start on Jan. 14th. But Trump met with Tucker Carlson in the White House on Jan. 9th, and he told Trump not to “start World War III by attacking Iran.” Those airstrikes were subsequently cancelled.
3) Trump is obsessed with the Nobel Peace Prize and feels “starting a war with Iran” will deny him one. That’s not a good reason, but it’s a very Trumpian one.
There may be other reasons. Maybe some day we’ll know.
Considering the US is the only (?) country publicly on the record as supporting the Iranian people, and the American president the only (or one of the very few) opening speaking in their defense, about their protest, when the rest of the world is pretending nothing is happening in the region, except maybe the evil Jews are killing the poor palestinians. Trump has given moral support – that’s help, of a kind. At least he is acknowledging them! The other world leaders are either in bed with Iran, or too afraid of Iran, or of being seen as “islamaphobic” to say anything.
Regardless of who does what, many many more Iranian people are going to die before this is all over. The mullahs absolutely will go out in a blaze of glory and try to take as many others with them as they can, and it does not matter to them who that is. The Iranian government is like a hydra, or that weedy grass that spreads by rhizomes – you kill off a patch here and 10 others pop up nearby. It’s not like Qaddafi – he of the “We came we saw he died, haha” fame. And how well did that work out for the Libyan people? Are the Afghanis any better off? The Iraqis? The Syrians?
The mullahs are a metastasized cancerous tumor, and as with the human patient, the cure is sometimes more deadly than the disease. So we go in guns ablazin’ – Iranian people start dying in droves – it’s war, it will happen, especially if we go in all emotional and half-cocked. How soon do the people who wailed that Israel was genociding Gazans start wailing that the USA is genociding Iranians? How soon after Iranian missiles start raining down on everyone in the middle east and beyond does the world suddenly decide it’s not worth it for regime change in Iran?
When the Americans and their rag tag army started fighting the British, the rest of the world did not jump in and send armies and weapons to support them. Most of the people we asked for help were either allies of, colonies of, or otherwise trading partners with, Britain. And we had some idea of how we would govern ourselves afterwards! So we had to lose and lose, and many died until Lafayette(?) came with some reinforcements. I think the Iranian people have to move past protesting and into fighting. They don’t have weapons, or an army, so, like Washington, it would probably be some kind of guerilla approach, or sabotage, and they need a leader, one of their own to rally around. Revolutions are usually bloody, destructive, and horrible for all involved. Have been throughout history, including our own.
My guess is much like the other commenters who said intelligence is being gathered, and behind the scenes plans are being laid, because when it goes down, it will be big, and it will be complete, or nearly so, because it has to be. There’s no Qaddafi or Saddam Husein to take out in Iran and the rest of the regime crumbles.
There are reports of many very large explosions of unknown origin inside Iran. “Tal the traveling klat” [sp?] has had a number of videos on his YouTube channel in the past few days. He’s an Iranian living in London. Things are going on but no one is taking credit for them.
Taking heads don’t provide useful information, just opinion for what it’s worth.
And what could be a better source for objective, unbiased reporting on Israel than the BBC lol
I hate to bring up Nazi Germany, but it’s Neo’s fault for raising the topic of Iran. To begin, can we not acknowledge that Iran has loudly, publicly, repeatedly told everyone that it was waging war on us for the past fifty years? And this was not mere rhetoric, since it financed or otherwise supported every terror attack on America and The West, whether shia or sunni, during that time. And our response was usually a sternly worded rebuke followed by business as usual. Meanwhile Iran’s islamic leadership continued to build its arsenal with oil revenues. Which brings me back to the Nazis. I have often read that, had England and France but responded in force to Hitler’s beligerence earlier, he would have been stymied in his quest for power and WW II might have been avoided. Even as late as the invasion into Poland, had France and England actually pursued vigorous military action after they declared war, HItler would have been forced to withdraw from Poland to counter the attacks from the west. But France chickened out after a few huffs and puffs and Hitler went on his merry way of conquest. However, the piper was eventually paid, but at an unimaginably high cost to all involved. And so it is today, after fifty years of feckless, Carter-like responses to Iran’s depredations, culminating in the closet moslem Obama’s absolute kow-tow to the mullahs we find ourselves at the brink of a serious military event. Nobody is more opposed to war-for-war’s-sake than I, but I also recognize that it is best to call the exterminator when you find the first termite instead of waiting until they have eaten away your house’s foundation. When Iran took our diplomatic staff hostage, it would have been appropriate to acknowledge this as an act of war and responded accordingly. Oh well, hindsight is always 20-20. I have the greatest confidence in President Trump, whose instincts and insight have been shown to be accurate and who knows how to both klotzen and kleckern, to borrow a phrase from that other Nazi, Heinz Guderian.
Neo I know what you mean about news about contemporaries, I think it’s more of a realization that it’s not our “world” anymore.
So we’re going back to TEAM AMERICA:World Police?
F**k No!
Batemjo:
Whether you’re aware of it or not, the US is part of the world and the world affects it. Iran has been America’s sworn enemy for over 40 years and has killed many Americans and worked against its interests. We have a lot of reasons to want regime change there. Iran is not some isolated uninvolved tiny third-world country somewhere that we are trying to liberate.
Batemjo has the understanding of the world on parallel with his World Police characters.
@Batemjo
It’d be far better to have TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE than to have Team Twelver: Ayatollah Apocalypse Police. Argentina did nothing any sane person could argue to wrong these people, but they have still been attacked. The Mullahs wish to destroy the world in order to bring about the “perfection” of “religion” from the Twelfth Imam, and even besides that are cruel, perfidious scumbags. This is something that we have worked hard to ignore but that cannot and should not be.
I intend to criticize mkent harshly for staggering ignorance, bias, folly, and apparently getting everything they learned about Trump’s foreign policy from the same source that told them the Kremlin’s grip on Crimea was “marginal” (a statement of abject stupidity that is remarkably absent from basically any serious student of the matter’s analysis, no matter their stance), but I will give mkent this. Whatever else they may not comprehend, they comprehend that well.
So Batemojo, how should we deal with the Ayatollah?
We have a lot of reasons to want regime change there.
Yes, but how to pull that off.
– Iran is big
– The opposition is not organized
– Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Israel are part of the mix
– We are stuck with air and naval power, no land border
It is a difficult problem, and not just military. We continue to build up forces in the region, but the question of how to use them remains.
Iran is a big key to the behaviors of Russia and China.
Chuck:
Agreed that it’s a difficult problem. That’s why I have objected to Trump’s telling the demonstrators that he will help them, if he didn’t know how.
As quite a few here have remarked, Islam is at the center of all of this. An addle pated belief system derived from an Arabian tribal raider perspective (religious and/or ideological) with a supremacist goal state. Followed by hundreds of millions of people who have no other viewpoint available to them. Yet Douglas Murray and others point out that a modest fraction of these “believers” are also realizing “something is off” in their system vs. the (previous?) power and prosperity of the West.
Our Western leadership has failed to recognize this core source for a long time (1979 being only the beginning of a more obvious exposure, with the 1993 and 2001 tower “episodes”, and a misguided “religion of peace” proclamation. The Iraq debacle and all of the smaller scale attacks since then still make the focus on “terrorism” as a result and not Islam as the cause.
Now Western scholars over the last 50 years or so have been critically examining the origins and related history of Islamic claims and finding the Muslim story to be largely false. I keep thinking a concerted PR effort at proclaiming these errors would unsettle enough of the believers as to reduce the jihad/terror element and eventually the flawed social structures and cultures of those nations and societies. I am probably naive about this, or at least have to accept that it would still take 50 years to obtain the desired results even if our leadership all had a crash course in the more realistic view of Islam and its history and validity.
I have seen a very few Muslim and nonMuslim voices suggesting the politicization of Islam really only began in the early 1800’s, gained significant strength in the 1920’s and later, and then fully hitting its stride with the 1990’s and later. This suggests some alternative amelioration might be possible. But I remain skeptical as these views don’t really seem to be gaining ground in any meaningful way.
++++++++++++++
Somewhat related: I am truly totally baffled by the EU, WEF, Starmer, et al. and their jettisoning of Western political theory and practice. I just don’t understand how they can do what they seem to be doing as a syndicate/cabal/club/consortium of some few thousand people focusing on ruining their societies, supposedly for I am not really sure what goal beyond petty power over surfs vs. leading a set of real republican democratic nation states.
If their populist fractions don’t rise up vigorously enough soon, the demographics of the European immigration practices will make any corrective moves almost impossible.
Looks to me as though Bibi and Trump are running their playbook again this week (doling out to the rumor-mill “They’re at odds! Bibi has had it with Trump!”), pulling the ever fresh okie’doke on the foreign policy rubes. Heh, these guys: what a sense of humor.
“…truly, totally baffled…”
Yes…but only if one REFUSES—and there are some very good reasons for such refusal—to comprehend that we have arrived at a very SINISTER, GLOBAL juncture where our elites have decided—in their collective wisdom, concern and hard-headed “compassion” for our world, its inhabitants of ALL varieties, species and sizes, and for nature itself—to take charge and institute what they would characterize—rationalize— as a “BENEVOLENT” (and if not “benevolent” then NECESSARY) totalitarianism, “necessary” so as to save us all from ourselves…
Call it, if you will, an all-encompassing “tough love”, where what’s at stake is nothing less than global survival—at least in the eyes of those “benevolent” but clear-sighted elites; (and if they can make a buck or two from their efforts, well they are, after all, doing their very bestest to save the planet and all its inhabitants, thereof…).
It is, after all, the cutting edge of morality….
One can perfectly understand why any DECENT person would wish to refuse to comprehend such a grim, cynical—even nihilistic—conclusion: the glorious elite’s uncompromising effort (or creed?) in the pursuit of GLOBAL SALVATION…but where have we seen this before?)…
OMMV…
peter schweitzer’s invisible coup, does show how some of these disparate elements, mexican government officials, the sao pablo forum, and various flavors of islamism do operate against the west, it seems like a spectre board meeting but with many more seats, at the table, did I leave out the red chinese dragon,
shia islamism seems to be a relatively new phenomenon, they had some elements in indian provinces like oudh, but was a rarity, maybe that was where
mamdanis indian strain, arose from certainly not before 19th century persian
the sunni ummah was on the march since the 7th century in various phases, there was brief respite with the mongol encounter, which was the source of
the more recent salafism of ibn Thamiyah, but certainly the Ottomans had a major influence for about 400 years, certainly Vienna was the high water mark of incursion into Europe, but like Marxist, they are not deterred but delayed,
one might say the colonial incursions into north africa and the levant might have reawakened such impulses represented by abdu mawdudi rida and finally ak banna in various guises
the leftists, start through marx, and then go fabian trying to breach through gramsci and the frankfurt school
as o’sullivan and conquestt noted in their own way, any institution, intrisincally anti communist cannot prevail, that psoes a problem as there are few institutions that treat
— Chuck
— neo
I don’t know what’s going on, and I hope for a good outcome. But I have a nasty suspicion that part of the problem might be that Trump and his circle still just can’t see a way to make the outcome they want happen at an acceptable cost. Yeah, they could obliterate the regime. We’ve had the power to do that since 1979.
But this is a case that calls for a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer, and it looks to me like a genuinely hard problem to solve.
And it’s also true, of course, that some problems are just insoluable. I don’t know if that’s true of this one, but I can’t say I’m sure about that.
But this is a case that calls for a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer, and it looks to me like a genuinely hard problem to solve.
HC68:
Quite so.
Of course, with enough force the US can drive out the mullahs. But at what cost?
My guess is that Trump got out ahead of his skis with his announced support of the protesters. He had hoped the protesters could overturn the regime on their own with just threats of American support.
I don’t doubt he will do something, but he is now thinking it through more carefully. He’s bringing in the fleet to make his threats more credible and ratcheting up the negotiations still hoping for a peaceful resolution.
Which I doubt will happen.
Stay tuned.
ZeroHedge reports:
https://x.com/i/status/2020546949397541295
Can’t all be fun and games with levels like that. Looks like March will be spicy.
Related:
“…F-22s removed from Super Bowl flyover”—
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/f-22s-removed-super-bowl-flyover-official-says
I would like to blame Bad Bunny for all this, but it’s looking more and more like he’s a deliberate plant—IOW another trademark Trumpian distraction.
Guess we’ll soon find out…
I’m hoping we hit Iran in such a way the mullahs fall.
If Trump ends up doing nothing it will be a black mark on his presidency.