Let me be clear. I have no independent knowledge of what is going on with Trump’s Iran War. All I can do is what any of us can do: I read the tea leaves. If you listen to President Trump, we are almost home. If you listen to our Democrat friends, the whole thing is a disaster. If you listen to the Iran regime, you think of the aliens in Galaxy Quest: “Never give up, never surrender!”
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Here are a few thoughts.
The whole point is to stop Iran from getting The Bomb. And that’s because Israel is a one-bomb country.
President Trump really, really wants to avoid Boots on the Ground. I think he has a point. We had Boots on the Ground in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. How did that work out, sports fans?
Somebody, somewhere — and surely not just Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — is advancing a strategic plan to integrate Israel with the Arab regimes of the Middle East. What we get to see are the tactical offensives.
Following October 7, the Israelis have been systematically demolishing the Hamas regime, tunnel by tunnel.
In December 2024, after our presidential election, the Assad regime fell after 50 years in power. Experts have said that the new regime makes it difficult for Iran to move assets to Hezb’allah in Lebanon.
Then, last year, we saw President Trump giving a speech in Saudi Arabia with MBS grinning like a Cheshire Cat and Elon Musk in the frame with him.
Lately we have seen an agreement between Israel and Lebanon to demolish Hezb’allah. Now there is an agreement between Turkey and Iraq to extend their pipeline agreement to build pipelines across Iraq and Turkey to make the Strait of Hormuz redundant.
Finally, Saudi Arabia seems to be cranking up to neuter the Houthis.
What is going on here? Honestly, I just don’t know. But the vibes I get from the day-to-day news tsunami is that something has changed in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, because experts agree that Margaret Brennan may soon have to seek mental health therapy.
Then there is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. I get the feeling that Secretary
When asked about the Strait of Hormuz, Bessent notes that… [Iran] will never again recapture the position they held with the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint…
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Capital does not tolerate chokepoints; it routes around them.
So is Trump winning or losing? If you read PJMedia, Trump has already won.
A year ago, Iran held the ability to yank over a fifth of the world’s energy supply off the table whenever it felt like throwing a tantrum. It can’t do that anymore. Full stop.
Whereas:
[T]he people screaming “Trump has lost” have a very specific, very consistent full-time job — casting literally anything this president does as a failure, regardless of what actually happened on the ground.
Who is right? Ask me after the midterm elections. Meanwhile, the Iranians say they aren’t going to meet with the U.S. until their demands are met. And National Review says that Trump is a wimp.
Oh, for the days when our beloved Mass Media just broadcast the ruling class’s daily propaganda message, and there was never a discouraging word! We knew back then that whatever FDR said was true, and whatever the economic royalists said was a lie. Sen. McCarthy was a monster who could never decide how many Communists in the State Department fit on the head of a pin. And as for Whittaker Chambers: No Words!
And then this just turned up in my email: “The Anatomy of a Leaked Operation,” by Greg Roman.
The Mossad reassigned the men who promised to topple Tehran. The mission stands; the instrument was wrong.
Mossad had the idea that they would send the Kurds from Iraq into Iran back in March. But then it got leaked, and then President Trump put a stop to it. So what happens next? Good question.
It’s not just that the old Mass Media has lost its grip. We now have a president who lives by sowing confusion.
Bottom line, in the words of philosopher Lina Lamont, our liberal friends “cain’t stand it.”
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.