MAGA’s Kobayashi Maru

In the history of politicians stepping on a rake, over and over again, this ongoing fiasco in Iran is one of the most egregious.

It might be difficult to remember now but just about 18 months ago Trump 2.0 came into the Oval Office again looking like he was going to finally get stuff done. He signed a pile of executive orders rolling back the Autopen regime’s orders. Jared “Wormtongue” Kushner didn’t seem to be anywhere around. He was focused on sealing that border, deportations and getting Bidenflation under control. Sure it wasn’t going to fix the problems that had been brewing for decades but at least it looked for a minute like some pushback.

Ah, that didn’t last long. Pretty soon we were bombing Iran and then earlier this year Trump was manipulated into a more full on attack on Iran, manipulated by Our Greatest Ally and Benjamin Netanyahu who has been telling American leaders that Iran was 3 1/2 minutes away from a nuclear bomb for the last 30 years or so.

Making matters worse, Netanyahu was endlessly being invited to come to D.C. to remind Trump of who was in charge, and all of this as public opinion on Israel was cratering in the U.S. thanks to Israel’s genocidal campaign against civilians in Gaza and then Lebanon. No matter how awful the optics, Trump kept being led around by the nose by The Nose.

After the initial flurry of attacks that followed the decapitation strike of Iran’s leaders while they thought they were negotiating with us, it started getting weird. Israel desperately tried to censor video coming out of the country to hide how badly they were getting pummeled. We had a “laundry fire that definitely wasn’t a missile strike” on an aircraft carrier that is going to perhaps take years to fix. Our bases in the region were flattened, Americans started coming home in flag draped coffins and no one seems to know just how many servicemen and women were badly injured in attacks because that has been hushed up. All of those cool high tech unstoppable weapons systems we spent trillions on? Well they are just too valuable to risk in an actual war.

Pretty soon Israel seemed to get tired of being smashed and left America to deal with Iran after suckering Trump into starting this war. They don’t even bother hiding it, with one Israeli minister coming right out and saying it: Top Israeli Minister: ‘Best For Us’ If US Fights Iran While Israel Sits Out New Round of War

As four more American families grieve the deaths of soldiers killed in the war on Iran, one of the top-ranking ministers in Israel’s cabinet told an Israeli audience that having America do all the fighting and dying is “the best for us.” Israel had intensely lobbied President Trump to launch a joint war on Iran on Feb 22, and traded blows with Iran up until early June. Since Trump restarted intense, daily bombardment of Iran 11 days ago, however, Israel has sat out the action, sparing Israelis from lethal Iranian retaliation.

“The State of Israel has no interest in joining the contained confrontation between Iran and the United States,” far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a session at the Katif Conference for National Responsibility, which endorses Jewish settlement in Palestinian territories. “The current situation is the best one for us.”

Notice now it is a “contained confrontation” between Iran and the United States when the whole reason we started the conflict was at their urging. Now Israel is like “Let’s you and him fight” while they bravely concentrate on bombing civilians and gobbling up territory while their most dangerous adversary is fighting with us.

For weeks now we have been in a weird stalemate and an endless cycle where Trump or his cronies claims a deal is imminent and Iran is “begging” us for a deal only to find out Iran is saying one is not imminent, then some bombs are dropped that do nothing, Iran closes the shipping lanes again and Trump starts to bluster about TOTALLY DESTROYING THEM LIKE NEVER BEFORE before backing off again and again and again.

What is really happening is that Trump and his cult supporters are in a no-win scenario. The U.S. can’t defeat Iran short of a widescale nuclear attack and we are running out of our high tech munitions. This is showing up in Ukraine as the Zelensky regime is incapable of stopping any Russian attacks. Last night Russia pounded Kiev and the missiles just dropped in without even a token attempt at intercept: Ukraine Shot Down Zero Missiles In Huge Russian Overnight Salvo That Killed At Least 21. The Russians are building more missiles faster than before while Ukraine is sending drones to attack civilian infrastructure and people at the beach, all while Russian forces keep grinding Ukrainian territory. Thanks to this ill-fated war with Iran, the U.S. no longer has extra goodies to give Ukraine.

The only real “way out” is to basically surrender the region to Iran and scamper home but Trump’s ego, his neocon advisers and Israel haven’t been allowing that to happen. Meanwhile gas prices are raging in the U.S. and things are looking ugly for the midterm “elections” and the Presidential “election” in 2028 while lame duck Trump seems completely disinterested in what happens to the country after he leaves office.

That might finally be coming to a close as the latest rumors of an actual deal are being leaked and it sounds an awful lot like a victory for Iran who comes out of this war in a stronger position and a humiliating defeat for the U.S., now exposed as a paper tiger to the rest of the world.

Iran-Oman Hormuz Route ‘Agreed To’ As Iran Warns Against US ‘Interference’

For all of Trump’s claims, Iran sure doesn’t sound like a nation that has been thoroughly destroyed and on it’s knees.

Draft Deal Widely Seen as Victory for Iran

If all the above comes into force, it will widely be seen as a victory for Iran. It will leave Iran with greater control over energy transit than before the war. Simultaneously this would be Trump essentially cutting and running in order to finally extricate American forces from the deepening quagmire, while approaching the six-month mark since Operation Epic Fury started.

For example, even the NY Times admits, “Iran and Oman are closing in on an agreement to reopen shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian and American officials, but if the accord goes into effect it could come at a high price — ratifying Tehran’s control over what, before the war, was an open, international waterway.” While markets would breath a sigh of relief, Tehran would be in the driver’s seat geopolitically.

US officials cited in the same report have only said the Hormuz scheme would the “temporary” – and so the ongoing contrasting interpretations suggest another tenuous and shaky agreement in the works.

“But if, ultimately, Iran asserts continued control over the passageway, the opening might come with a geopolitical cost. Iranian officials say they are designing the accord to ratify their capacity to control the strait and therefore retain strategic leverage that they did not employ before the war,” the NYT also wrote.

Did someone say quagmire?

No, not that kind of quagmire.

None of this is “taking Iran’s side against America”. It is just being realistic about what happened/is happening. We were lied and manipulated into a war few Americans were interested in and now we can’t get out of it. That isn’t anything other than an admission of the truth.

I can’t tell you how much I hate writing about this bullshit in Iran. It was a dumb war started for a variety of shifting dumb “reasons” and listening to people trying to defend it as somehow in the U.S. national interest is painful. There is so much that is so wrong right here in America but that seems to be of no interest to Trump, as he has repeatedly asserted that the suffering of his base isn’t his concern.

Not only has Trump done little to “Make America Great Again”, he has in many ways made things worse or at least as bad as they were under Biden. The closed border is great but it is the proverbial shutting of the barn door after the horse is already out and not only are we not deporting anywhere close to the numbers we need to be, there are at least as many naturalizations of non-Whites as there are deportations.

It is indefensible but Trump’s sycophants on social media are trying. Anyway, it serves as a useful reminder that we aren’t voting our way out of this.