THE DEEPER DIVE into the Donald's TOTAL Failure in his US-Israel-Iran War
Agreement about President Trump's LOSS can already be found almost everywhere you look, even among some of the President's biggest allies.
I had a paying subscriber of many years quit me this week because he said I was dishonestly representing Trump as being the major loser in the Iran war based on the deal he has now struck with Iran. He said I know better than to frame it as a lost war or to claim that he has stopped the war when clearly he can always go back to it if he wants to because he doesn’t like the final deal. I think it is clear he will do everything he can to avoid going back to it because of how badly he is losing, and I’ll lay that out more exhaustively than I did the first time because apparently I need to, and it IS a major claim, and major claims need major support; but it is claim for which I will show there is tremendous evidence and a world of support.
While a multitude of people all over the world from parties on every side of politics now see this as a clearly lost war for everyone but Iran, there may be many Trump supporters, who still refuse to see how bad the Memorandum of Understanding is based just on what I presented earlier. So, I decided to make it an early Deeper Dive because it is certainly the most important decision in front of us right now, which is why I couldn’t get it out yesterday.
It’s also the perfect topic for an editorial coming out of last two days of news headlines because I have rarely seen the news so loaded with stories FROM ALL SIDES on how truly terrible this deal is. Let me start of by saying that, at the time of composing this article, we have only “leaked” versions of the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed ahead of schedule by Trump and Iran yesterday, so it is possible that what I’ve seen is a fake version.
However, the version I’ve seen is widely spread across news outlets now, and Trump has not, this time, called it fake news, as he ordinarily does quite quickly. Neither has Iran, and if it is the wrong version, Trump has only himself to blame because he has refused so far to release his version of the deal. Perhaps he is releasing it today, and it may even hit the news before I finish this article. So, I’m working based from what Trump has allowed us to believe is the real version by saying nothing against it and presenting no alternative as of my starting this writing.
The Second Middle East Oil Crisis has just arrived on US shores!
I want to lead off by presenting how much the world has lost already due to this war in order to reinforce how deadly serious this topic is. I predicted the US would be reaching tank bottoms in the last week or two of June. Here we are, and that has hit. Hal Turner, who has done a pretty good job with presenting early facts that bear out, ran an article yesterday, quoting Zero Hedge, saying that day of tank bottoms has hit and hit hard right on schedule, and Hal was loaded for bear because he was angry at the flack he took for making that prediction:
For WEEKS, I warned all of you . . . . Today, it happened . .
For literally WEEKS, I warned readers of this website and listeners to my radio show that we here in the US would start hitting “tank bottom.” Now, the “pipeline crossroads of the world” in Cushing, Oklahoma, HAVE hit tank bottom.
Any oil flowing into Cushing, is redirected to flow straight out. Storage tanks are at their operational bottom; NO RESERVES AVAILABLE.
So now we need to see, who is going to GET oil and who isn’t? You’ve got to know the Military will get THEIRS first . . .
Once we start hearing who won’t get more oil until “two weeks from next Friday” we will have an idea of which parts of the country will run out of Gasoline, Diesel, Propane, Aviation, and Bunker fuel(s). EXPECT TO SEE GAS RATIONING in Parts of this country, soon.
MORE ! ! ! !
U.S. President Donald Trump, attending the G7 Meeting in France, told the media just minutes ago “`We Run Out of Reserves in About Four Weeks’ (if the Iran deal wasn’t done.)
Now, here’s the “rub:” If Israel screws-up the Iran deal, and attacks either Iran or Lebanon again, then Iran will shut the strait of Hormuz all over again - BEFORE WE GET THE OIL -- which will take 35 days to arrive at the West Coast, 45 Days to arrive at the Gulf Coast, and 55 days to arrive at the East Coast. That time does NOT count the number of days it takes to physically LOAD those massive tanker vessels.
So we are most definitely NOT “out of the woods” and we will be running-out of fuel in some areas of THIS country within weeks.
I earnestly hope you took my warnings seriously, and got yourselves several five-gallon gasoline storage cans - and FILLED THEM UP.
Right now, we have no way of seeing the internal oil distribution priorities that will have to be implemented, so there are, in fact, areas of THIS country that WILL run out of fuel for some period of time. YOU need reserve gasoline (or perhaps Diesel) to try to get yourself through that outage.
Oh, and for those of you who mocked my reporting, who called me “Chicken Little the sky is falling” or smeared me as “The Boy who cried Wolf”, and those others who scorned my reporting as “click bait” or “Doom Porn” it turns out I was right, and you were wrong. Tank Bottom arrived today at the Primary commercial oil reserves for this nation.
So the real question is, will those smart-asses who doubted me, NOW go out and get prepared? Or will it just be too much for them to admit I was right, and they were wrong?
You’ve read my repeated predictions that said the same thing Hal says he has been saying, even claiming this part of June would be the time when we hit tank bottoms. While I got one kind comment from someone with some good knowledge of the oil industry that thought I might be premature on that timing, I did not get any flack from any of my readers on that particular prediction, so I don’t feel the frustration Hal does; but I’ve been there plenty of times in the past.
I know how he feels, because I like to say I give “the news before it happens” because I make lots of predictions in order to reveal how predictable bad policies often are if you are an honest broker of the facts who does not skew his view to please his paying subscribers or to suit what I want to believe either. I am often as “far out” as a year ahead of when things turn bad, telling my readers why specific things will turn bad and often when they will turn bad and why it will take that long for it to get bad enough for everyone to see it; and I often lose paying subscribers for presenting views they hate to hear. So far as I have seen, they never come back when those views turn out to be right. So, I know how he feels.
What is important to note with Hal’s reporting of the arrival of “tank bottoms” is how serious this arrival is for the US and the world. Cushing has the nation’s largest tank farms. It is the central hub for oil distribution in the United States. When Hal says that no oil is going into the tanks—it’s all just passing straight through the connections to other places and the tanks are empty—what he means is that there is zero buffer left at Cushing. It’s tanks are not only a part of our long-term reserves in oils, their purpose is to let the solids and the junk like sand, settle out of the oil to the bottoms of the tanks (which is why crude oil don’t drain from the bottom) before moving it along and to act as a buffer because often more oil flows in than we need at the moment; and then, at other times, such as the last half of June when school is out and family vacations begin or during times of extreme energy consumption for heating homes, there is not as much coming in as we need. The buffer of these large tank farms, evens out the flow.
So, what Hal is saying is the ebb and flow will create moments now when some areas are underdelivered … right as vacation time arrives when jets need far more fuel and cars need more gasoline and diesel. There is no way of predicting which areas will get hit with the first gas stations out of gas; but for those of us who lived through the seventies, we remember how gas stations would periodically run out of gas and have to put up signs that they were out while other stations nearby still had gasoline, so that those with gas had lines that went clear around the block until they ran out, too. Some stations limited how much gasoline you could get in one purchase. So, we had de facto gasoline rationing as service stations did what grocery stores often do when they advertise a special but limit quantities per customer so that the supply will last for all of their customers.
That is how this will hit, and I think it may get even worse than that. If Cushing is at tank bottoms, then a lot of other tank farms are probably not far off. For now there may be be some buffer left in the system at other sites; but Cushing is the main hub. President Trump, himself, admitted he had to sign this deal with Iran because the US is running out of fuel. He places the timeline for running out to where we will see shortages at the pumps a month out. With shipping schedules, that timeline will hit us because we cannot ship oil fast enough out of the gulf to resupply before that month timeframe hits. When Trump finally realized that, he got afraid and tried desperately to end the war, still looking like he had some kind of victory.
Trump saying the world will run out in four weeks undoubtedly includes the US, given what just transpired at Cushing. I want to point out his statement here is tacit admission by the president of the United States that he felt he HAD to sign this deal because Iran’s strong arming via the Gulf of Hormuz WORKED! Trump, himself, is saying that the oil crisis Iran created by closing Hormuz “put pressure” on him to make a deal, even to the point of admitting that not making a deal would have resulted in global “bedlam.”
THAT IS LOSING! It means Iran’s scheme worked exactly as Iran had always hoped closing the Strait of Hormuz would work. Trump, himself, states that pressured him to sign a deal to avoid “bedlam,” I will argue it pressured Trump to sign a VERY BAD deal that gained the US absolutely nothing, while it gains Iran a great deal and is ALREADY far worse than Obama’s JCPOA, regardless of whether it puts a better end to the uranium than the JCPOA.
Trump insists that he will negotiate term he likes into the deal over the next sixty days, but the agreement, itself, says its terms cannot be renegotiated—that the only things that can be negotiated are the things the deal specifically postpones for negotiation within the now-beginning sixty-day period, which is primarily whether Iran gets to continue enriching uranium and what happens to its existing highly enriched uranium. That means the part left up in the air that Trump did NOT secure with this agreement is the part he constantly said was most important. Therefore, the deal is likely to blow up or just go into endless extensions if Iran fails to give up its uranium.
Now, here is what else is important to understand to realize how dire the damage to the US already is, before we even get into discussing how bad the parts of the deal that are already locked in are. The other main reserve storage facility that the US has—the SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve)—is in the worst shape it has been since 1983. And why does that date mean so much? 1983 takes us back to the Reagan years when the SPR was created BECAUSE OF THE ENERGY CRISIS of the seventies in order to provide a buffer against any future oil crises coming out of the gulf region. It takes us back to a year when THEY WERE STILL FILLING THE RESERVES FOR THE FIRST TIME. They have never been this low since that date when they were still in the process of being filled. So, Cushing is out, and the SPR, taken down by Biden and lately by Trump to help reduce gasoline prices some during the present war, has never been this low, other than when they were still filling it up for the first time:
The reserve is now more depleted than it was in July 2023, when it hit 346.8 million barrels, as then-President Biden struggled to counter the energy shock triggered by the start of the war in Ukraine.
To find a lower level than last week’s reading, one has to go back almost 40 years to July 29, 1983, when the reserve stood at 339.9 million barrels as it was first being built up by the Reagan administration.
As Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, put it Monday, “No matter where you stand politically, it’s a remarkable statistic.”
With Cushing effectively empty, and the SPR at its worst point since its initial filling, we are in the worst energy crisis we have seen since the seventies, and it is still going to get a lot worse because of the long delivery times for getting that extra oil to the US, AND the problem is global just as it was back then, so everyone else will be competing for the limited shipments that can eventually get through. It is also worse than the situation in the 70s because equipment and storage all over the Middle East has been damaged by the war, which was not the case back then; so, the ability to load more ships than those that are already loaded, once the strait is reopened, is nowhere near what it was. Also, before any significant shipments can commence without tolls under the MOU, the strait has to be cleared of mines.
So, as Hal pointed out, you would be fool to kid yourself into thinking this is not going to be bad. Whether it is safe or feasible for you to store a lot of volatile gasoline will depend on your property and circumstances. When I had a farm, I could easily do that in drums, and I would, as I did for my tractor; but now that we’ve moved into a small town, I have only a garage, and I don’t want hundreds of gallons of gasoline in my garage. So, I’ll have to tough it out. We may have to minimize our driving at times when local shortages appear as they are likely to do. If it’s like the seventies, empty gas pumps will be spotty, but prices will soar. If you can stock up safely now, it will likely be a good hedge against fuel inflation, in the very least, because, for the moment, oil prices are down because of speculators giving to much credence to the eventual reopening of the gulf. That will flip quickly when some refineries cannot get enough of key ingredients they need for making finished fuels.
It’s actually lower now than the graph shows. I think Trump’s timeline for running out of oil likely refers to when the SPR will be sucking bottom, too. With Cushing running out and other tank farms likely starting to do the same, the draw on the SPR will become intense. When that happens, as is almost certain, the crisis goes full-blown.
Genocide is the next likely stage if the war goes on
Before we talk about just HOW BAD this deal is, let me also lead off by clarifying that I don’t think Trump should prolong the war to get rid of Iran’s uranium, because I doubt he will succeed at doing that, and the damage for the entire world is already severe due to Iran’s successful retaliation to the first phase of this war, and Trump has now proven to Iran that their leverage worked splendidly, so they will certainly deploy that leverage fully again if we go back to war and do the same for access to the Suez Canal as they threatened.
Trump said he completely eliminated the “Iranium” problem, as I have called it for a long time, last summer. I’d prefer to stay with that solution, though I never believed it was anywhere near being “totally decimated” and “completely obliterated” as the always-lying, boastful braggart claimed. It was, however, crippled, and I think the occasional bunker buster could keep it crippled without reigniting a massive war and even make it nearly impossible for Iran to get people to work in those places by dropping a bomb on their heads whenever they get close to recovering uranium, sending Sisyphus back to rolling his bolder up the mountain all over again.
I also think going back to war will be more horrible than anything we’ve already seen, besides being much more damaging to the oil situation than what we’ve already seen because Iran has said it will pull out all the stops on destroying oil around the gulf, and the US will have to pull out all the stops on destroying Iran if it is to have any hope of getting the regime changed, having clearly failed at that objective already, though Trump left himself intentional “plausible deniability” for now denying that was ever an objective. (We’ll get to that below.)
Trump will have to follow through on the threat that proved to be the bluff and bluster that I believed it was (and hoped it would be), which was to bring genocide to Iran. It will not likely turn the heads of the regime, but will will make them all the more fierce in their response now that they have had time to restock their war supplies, likely from allies like Russia (which probably doesn’t have much left to offer), N. Korea, China and who knows how many other sources? Iran has pretty well followed through on all of its threats of late, rather than just saber rattling.
Trump’s threat was to blow up every significant bridge in Iran while Israel blew up all the railways and to blow up every electrical generation facility in Iran. In a dessert in the summer time, as I pointed out when he first made the absurdly illegal (by the Geneva Convention) threat, that would starve people to death, except that they would die for thirst first. With no generation to run municipal pumps, water would dry up even as they began drowning on their own sewage because sewage treatment uses a lot of electricity and pumps, too. They would quickly run out of all fresh and frozen food due withering and rot. Without all major bridges and railways out, no food replenishment or tanked water could be shipped in, except along navigable rivers, which there are not a lot of in the dessert, especially with an equal blockade imposed on the gulf by the US, as Trump had in place but has temporarily lifted. You can be sure it will go back into place when this deal blows up, as I think it is likely to do, except that Trump has nowhere left to turn that I can see, except to his threatened genocide. So, he’s best accepting his already extreme losses and moving on.
Finally, the war that has already happened has been expensive, has degraded the US defenses for any war that might really need to happen, should the US be attacked. Replenishing those arms will be more expensive than what we’ve already seen. I think the US has piled on enough massive debt, and needs to stop, as Trump originally, promised from involving itself in wars over problems that were not a serious threat to the US. Iran apparently did not have a bomb, just as Tulsi Gabbard, head of intel, declared it did not have before the war started; or it seems they would have used it while they could. Maybe they are saving it as their final recourse, but they would likely rather deliver one to Tel Aviv than to the US, given their intense hatred Islamic for Jews and especially the State of Israel to which hatred the US holds a close second in Iran’s eyes in good part because of its support of Israel.
Trump promised to stop fighting other people’s wars and to put America first. I don’t see that going further than what he did last summer with Iran puts America first. However, that concern is small compared to the concern for millions of citizens in Iran who would die if this war became an all-out conflict, should Trump fail to truly rid Iran of its uranium so he goes back to “dropping bombs on their heads” as he just said he will do if he doesn’t like the deal:
In my estimation, I don’t THINK he will go back to doing that because he has already chickened out over the oil crisis, and he knows he will make the oil crisis extremely worse if he does go back to war. So, I think he’s likely bluffing again to try to wrench the best deal out of them on the uranium that he can. I think he’ll try to sell whatever smoke-screen of a deal he can get as a victory on the uranium, though it won’t likely be any better of the victory that the JCPOA was, which he already resoundingly criticized as a horrible deal, which means, after all of our losses that we still have to face, all we likely end up with is a worse deal than the “horrible deal” Trump tore up during Trump 1.0.
I also don’t think Trump will go back to war, though I am not predicting he won’t, but I think he really, strongly wants to avoid that because I don’t think he has such an evil heart that he could care less about creating mass genocide. I think that was a vain bluff. I think he will prefer to accept a bad deal over being responsible for the prolonged death of millions of people, which is likely if he really does what he threatened to do.
If he does go back to war, it may be with a different plan than utterly destroying the infrastructure necessary for civilian survival in a dessert country. I could be wrong on that. I won’t stake much on it, but I find it hard to believe his heart is that dark, even though I think he is clearly the worst president this nation has ever had, and I think that part will bear out when we see what a horrible nation he has delivered to us over the next 2.5 years of his term, instead of the “golden era” he promised.
Now, let’s talk about what Trump got.
The no-deal bad deal
First, as both sides clearly stated, this isn’t a peace agreement. It’s a ceasefire in order to talk about a peace agreement, and Iran has repeatedly made clear it will not give Trump what he claims he is going to get. They’ve pretty well proven their resolve, and they have a great deal more reason to have such resolve now that they have seen Trump say that he signed what he did because he was pressured by how bad the oil situation was about to become (and frankly, still is, though it will be far worse if they go back to war). I think Trump means it when he says this would be “global bedlam,” and I doubt he sees global bedlam that includes the US as a success.
To make this easy by way of introduction to how badly this present agreement stacks up to the deal made by Obama with the JCPOA, I’m going to post a simple chart that compares the basic facts of the two agreements:
The most important objective, getting rid of the Iranium problem, is the part where Trump got nothing but an agreement to keep talking. Of course, that has always been Iran’s plan for buying time for clandestine enrichment. So, Iran is happy with buying time to keep working in secret. Trump got nothing out of this deal that was a claimed objective, and if you don’t win any of your goals in war, you did not win the war.
My friend and longtime supporter claimed that one reason Trump has not lost is because we still have the ability to destroy Iran, and we can always do that. We leave with the most weapons; but that has nothing to do with winning a war. That is, in fact, how the US has retreated from other true quagmires. If that was winning, then Vietnam was a huge US success, and so was Afghanistan. We left both wars, leaving lots of our weapons behind for our enemies to use in controlling the people we claimed we were trying to help; yet, we still left with possession of far more weapons than what we gave away to them as we fled the scene. And most of us consider those wars a total loss.
We left because it became clear we were not winning anything. In Afghanistan, the war went bad and useless as soon as it strayed from just capturing bin Laden to regime change to get rid of the Taliban. The Taliban are now more in power than ever because they are more heavily armed than ever because of how shamefully President Biden ended the war by fleeing and leaving lots of serious weaponry in place for the Taliban to claim, leaving the Taliban in power, and leaving the Afghan people who had supported our cause defenseless against them. It was a pathetic retreat.
Vietnam was not much better. In both cases, regime change failed because both wars became a quagmire due to the fact that these regimes never surrender as easily as the US thinks they will if it just hits them with a lot of heavy weapons. We never learn. The Russians learned the same thing in Afghanistan. The regime in Iran is every bit as hardened as the Taliban, every bit as religiously driven. It’s also driven by hatred that goes back for centuries and a sense of loss over the once-great Persian Empire that it wants to see restored, and it believes Allah will give it all of that empire and more if it perseveres. The regime will all die rather than surrender, and I think they have now pretty well proven that. Everyone from staunch conservative war hawks to screaming liberals is saying that. So, the regime-change objective of the war was a complete fail.
Now, as I said above, President Trump intentionally left himself “plausible deniability”—well, I wouldn’t call it plausible, but that’s what he tried for—by never fully and clearly stating regime change as an objective. He frequently waffled around stating it as a definite objective of the war, but the fact that he constantly talked about it at first but then quit talking about it when it became clear that had failed showed me he was intentionally a bit vague on that objective. HAD he accomplished that when killing the prior ayatollah, I have zero doubt he would have boasted endlessly about how he toppled the regime and so clearly won his primary or secondary objective the war. In fact, he claimed he won the war as soon as he did decapitate the regime, though it quickly went and grew another head on him; and, like the hydra, it will keep doing that if it needs to. It is still the same group in charge, so Trump has gone to saying he was never really seeking regime change as a goal of the war.
Clearly, however, he was, or he was incredibly evil and immoral for coaxing the Iranian people to rebel against the evil ayatollahs and their Muslim regime that seeks to totally suppress the people and shove Islam down their throats. 30,000 civilians who took up the Trump challenge and rebelled against there regime when the bombs started falling were slaughtered. No doubt many of them finally got up the courage to rebel against their oppressors because Trump convinced them help was on the way—that the US was set on regime change. He told them that now was the time for them to seize their own country.
It is, in my moral philosophy, unforgivable to provide that kind of false hope—the kind that leads tens of thousands of people to face death by implying so strongly that the cavalry is coming, and then stop the cavalry from arriving. That, to me, and there is room for moral disagreement I suppose, was a massive fail. I’ve had many people provide big false hopes to me in life that they sounded very sincere about, and they were nothing compared to the scale of losing one’s life, but I can tell you I have come to hate it when people give false hopes and then back away from doing anything to deliver what they promised.
I’d rather you never speak any hope to me at all. I’ve had a belly full of those kinds of promises in my life, BUT I DIDN’T DIE BECAUSE OF THEM. So, this, to me, is completely unconscionable, and that’s why I’m not about to allow Trump to claim he did not raise regime change as a goal of the war. So, he lost that objective completely, and he clearly has not gained his statde objective of ending the Iranium problem where he also has nothing to show but TALK.
Now, look at the rest of the deal to see how badly he already lost this war by how bad the terms that are locked in are:
Trump constantly criticized Obama for giving Iran a lot of money in order to get them to accept the JCPOA, but what Obama gave Iran was “peanuts,” as Trump likes to call the huge inflation in energy prices that he delivered via his war, compared to what Trump has already given away.
Let’s be clear, that Obama did not give US funds. Obama released frozen Iranian funds, and by the same reasoning Trump has not, at least, stated that he is giving any US funds, but the Trump MoU does promise an immediate massive release of Iranian funds that dwarfs what Obama released to get a deal—$25-billion off the top compare to $1.7 billion; but that is just the immediate give. Trump’s deal already promises $300-billion more down the road if Iran follows through with a final deal Trump can stomach. So, there much greater bait is on the table than Obama ever had to deploy and a much greater amount promised to immediately turn over when Iran re-opens the strait.
Moreover, Obama kept the sanctions in place. Trump has already promised that, if Iran follows through, all sanctions will be ended. So, Trump has now placed himself in a situation of one of the following outcomes: 1) Massive giveaways and total sanction relief if Iran signs a deal he accepts on the uranium, which is many are saying is likely to not be better than the uranium freeze in the JCPOA, or 2) going back to a more savage war than we’ve already seen with far more permanent damage to ME oil facilities and far worse shortages for the the entire world than we’ve ever seen, or 3) endlessly extending the 60-day negotiation period without the JCPOA anymore, which Iran would love, so that it can continue its clandestine enrichment free of gunfire and inspections.
I don’t see afourth alternative other than the one I think is unlikely, which is that Iran totally surrenders its enrichment and its uranium and allows wide-open inspections everywhere to prove that is actually happening. As emboldened as they now are, I don’t see that as even remotely plausible. If it happens, then I will have to say Trump won something, but right now, he’s releasing far more money to them than Obama did and letting them ship their oil to make even more money in order to get them to open the strait. So, it’s already worse than what Obama actually did, and many Republicans are saying so. Many Trump supporters are saying so.
As the summary above shows, we’ve lost more of our own people’s lives, suffered a lot more injuries and spent a huge amount more treasure in order to gain, so far, much less than we already had in the deal Trump tore up. So, we stand at a major loss right now. We may be better for having bombed some of Iran’s stored uranium last summer than we were under the JCPOA, but we could have accepted the win then, as Trump claimed, and stopped there. We have not significantly improved that situation with the subsequent war. At least, not that Trump has been able to show.
It is also not clear that some of the $300-billion promised from the “gulf consortium” to rebuild Iran if the deal goes through will not be provided by the US. The “gulf consortium” is vague and could easily include the US. It would be a terrible loss if we had to spend our treasure on this war only to spend a lot more of it fixing the damages our war created if we do not get unconditional surrender of the regime as we did with Germany and Japan at the end of WWII before aiding in their reconstruction under the Marshall Plan. Yet, the MoU promises that won’t happen. It promises all the reparations if a deal is finalized and takes regime-change off the table up front as necessary for getting them.
I’ll leave off on the global costs, impacts on wage growth etc. that the summary mentions because I believe those are speculative numbers, though they may very well be right. Instead, let’s go to what people on all sides of the question are saying about the deal, starting with those most likely to want to claim a Trump victory.
Obama’s JCPOA - torn up in 2018 by Trump - and supported by the UK, France and Germany- agreed on intrusive oversight of Iran’s nuclear programme. It was a landmark accord to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons in exchange for some economic relief from some of the heavy sanctions it was under. And what is believed to be Trump’s agreement amounts to a devastating and even bigger cave-in on sanctions relief and billions in reparations to Tehran.
Much of which is said to be heading straight into the warchests of Tehran’s proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Yemeni Houthis. Israel may have found Obama’s JCPOA wrong because it did rely on Tehran cooperation but Tel Aviv and in fact most Israelis absolutely hate the Trump deal. It cuts Israel out of the negotiations and will, if adhered to, prevent it from attacking Hezbollah - something it is impossible to imagine Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreeing on. [—The Mirror, granted not a great news source, but I agree with the summary statement here.]
Even Trump’s own big supporters HATE this agreement
Here’s where it gets fun. While it is unlikely that Israel will (as the summary just quoted says) ever stand by this agreement (as we’ll also get to below,) Republicans across the spectrum HATE this agreement. It’s a given that warmongers like John “Bomb-’em” Bolton would come out and eviscerate the deal because he has always leaned hard toward just nuking ’em, and he hates Trump viscerally anyway for firing him; so we won’t give any like him any space here. However, many Senate Republicans who are in pretty good with Trump are torching the no-deal deal as well.
Let’s start with Ted Cruze because that is where Trump’s own son gets comical in his retort. Cruze, who has been a huge and stalwart MAGA supporter of Trump since he changed team when he lost his primary against Trump, stated the following:
What has been released so far suggests that, unfortunately, the president is getting, I think, very poor advice when it comes to this deal. History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a bad idea. Under the terms of what’s been released, somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion will flow to the Ayatollah immediately before they make even a single nuclear concession.
I think that’s ill-advised. That money, if it goes to the Ayatollah, will go to fund terrorists trying to kill Americans and weapons that will be used to try to kill Americans. And it also appears to formalize a permanent role for the Islamic regime controlling the Strait of Hormuz. It is difficult to see what possible benefit to America could come from that….
And then to the silly retort by Trump Jr.:
So, MAGA is splitting further based on this bad no-deal deal, and the best Trump Jr. can come up with is that “We’re not giving them a cent.” The comical weakness of that retort is that Cruze never said “WE” are giving them any money, and the no-deal deal does not say that either. Cruze said exactly as the deal says—that we are “releasing” the money. The agreement immediately gives to the Iranians $30-BILLION dollars of their own frozen funds, MORE THAN TWENTY TIMES MORE than the amount that Obama released in frozen Iranian funds in order to get a solid deal that was fully worked out and had more of a treaty status. Trump gives up front over twenty times more just to get Iran to reopen the strait (i.e, to stop hurting us) and keep talking about what kind of a uranium solution the new deal will achieve. If Trump gets more than Obama out of them, maybe it still won’t be worth all that this deal concedes, but getting that is far from being accomplished so far, and his own supporters think that is hugely unlikely, so I’m not going to just give him that as a possible win from the war. Far from it. You don’t have to take it from me: Read on from others on Trump’s side of the aisle:
Senate Republicans raise alarm over Trump’s deal with Iran
President Trump’s deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting sanctions on Iran is getting strong pushback from Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill who warn that giving Iran’s theocratic regime access to billions of dollars in economic relief would be a major “blunder.”
Some Republicans are warning that the likely outcome of the more than 100-day conflict is not worth the cost to the nation: the lives of 13 American service members and more than $100 billion spent….
“Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” fumed Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in a social media post, calling the war and its outcome the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”
“Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal,” he wrote on the social platform X….
A classified CIA assessment estimated that Iran still had 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile and 75 percent of its mobile missile launchers, according to a report by The Washington Post.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the lack of significant Iranian concessions on its nuclear program, its weapons arsenal and its long-standing practice of funding militant proxies throughout the Middle East raises serious concerns. He pointed out the deal doesn’t prevent Iran from continuing to enrich uranium or toll the strait, and “it gives them a lot of money they can use to fund their proxies….”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said it’s hard to argue that Trump’s decision to order joint missile strikes with Israel against Iran in late February produced an outcome to justify the cost in lives and munitions….
“You got to do the balance of accounts: a hundred billion roughly, maybe more, spent today; 13 dead, 365 wounded, injured; our partners in the Middle East bombed, they’ve had casualties. There’s got to be a lot of return on that,” Tillis said, summing up the cost of the conflict.
He said Trump appears to have fallen well short of his objectives at the start of the war.
“We set out by saying we were going to drive down to zero their nuclear capability. Now we’re equivocating on that. We said that we were not going to make the mistake that Obama did by sending them a plane full of cash. I got to reconcile the numbers there,” he said….
If you have to offer a $300-billion bribe to gain only one objective of a war you started, then clearly you did not win the war! And that is Trump’s best-case landing point. Worse yet, look at the completely obtuse arguments Senate Republicans who want to support the deal have to turn to. They should be ashamed at their falsehoods or their stupidity:
Moreno says that while Iran will benefit from the easing of sanctions on its oil exports, U.S. consumers will also benefit from lower fuel and fertilizer prices, which factor heavily into the cost of food and other goods and services.
“That helps us. Yes, of course it helps the Iranians also. It helps us lower energy prices,” he said.
You might as well argue that the benefit of this massive war effort was that it managed, in the end, to stop short of creating more of the damage that it created. His best defense is that Trump won an end to furthering the severe damages to the US that HIS war created!
What an idiot! We should consider this a good deal because we won the right to stop hammering our own feet with a jackhammer. I’d call that “damned by faint praise!”
Even Moreno’s claim that this takes us back to lower oil prices is completely idiotic. Such vapid thinking! We are going back to HIGHER prices once the truth about those diminishing oil reserves fully manifests.
He continues …
“We’re on the verge of a historic possibility in a world that is not under threat by Iran, where we don’t live in fear of an Iranian regime with a nuclear weapon,” he said.
Are we? Is the Iranian threat over? Even the JCPOA provide such a “possibility.” But possibilities are far from accomplishments, and that possibility was always a possibility until Trump vacated the JCPOA, minimal as it was. I’m confident that possibility will be blown to bits in no time by Israel, if no one else, because Israel, one of the major parties to this war was not included in negotiating the agreement, absolutely does not sign on to it, and some leaders in Israel vow to blow it to bits, as we shall see.
When one of the major warring parties refuses to sign on and states its commitment to continuing war, you are far from having a ceasefire. So, we’re back to a Schmeasefire because Israel will likely blow it up before it will accept it. You haven’t ended a war until all the warring parties sign on; but back to the Republicans where Trump is mostly likely to find support.
Cassidy said Trump’s new MOU with Iran “is going to leave Iran stronger, and it’s going to leave our allies weaker, and it may commit U.S. taxpayer dollars….”
Cassidy said Iran now has leverage over the rest of the world through its demonstrated ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
“Now, Iran recognizes they can use their leverage over the Strait of Hormuz to extract from the other countries of the world whatever they want. And whereas before there was a credible threat that something would happen if they attempted to do so, I think that threat under this president seems to be exhausted,” he said…. [As in their ability to do so is now a reality. So, that’s a loss for the US and the world because we flinched first and flinched hard.]
Many Republican senators are skeptical that Iran will negotiate an end to its nuclear enrichment in good faith.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) warned last month that agreeing to a 60-day ceasefire to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran would be a “disaster.”
“The rumored 60-day ceasefire — with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith — would be a disaster. Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!” he warned in a post on X.
Wicker on Wednesday declined to comment on the deal….
If all are wrong in their statements about what the deal spells out, those errors are entirely on Trump:
Republican senators and a senior Senate GOP aide said they were not aware of any plan to brief the broader Senate on the details of the agreement and what to expect from the negotiations over the next 60 days.
The Senate has a right to know, just as congress had the right and constitutional obligation to declare this war, which Trump thwarted because he has no regard for the constitution, and Republicans in congress had no resolve to protect their own constitutional powers and responsibilities, so they let him get away with that even though Trump has shown his willingness to push beyond constitutional limits several times until the Supreme Court is pressed to corral his overreach.
That is historically pathetic on the part of Republicans, who once claimed to be constitutional conservatives.
In another article, we read further “conservative” Republican criticism:
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporter Jamie Dupree, “the $300 billion fund for reconstruction and economic development of Iran—though not funded by U.S. taxpayers—would make Iran’s payoff under President Obama’s 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Semafor he’s “concerned about” the agreement, adding, “I’ve heard it described as an intermission, unfortunately leaving Iran with the capability to rebuild its arsenal and continue enriching uranium….”
Looking outside the Senate to current and former MAGA people:
Former Vice President Mike Pence, expressed support for the war initially, but said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday, the deal is “much bigger than a mistake,” adding that he’s particularly concerned about “these immediate concessions, particularly sanctions wavered right out of the gate.”
Conservative podcaster and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, who supported Trump’s attacks on Iran, told Fox News on Wednesday the agreement appears to be a “disaster that does not achieve any of the actual goals set by the administration at the beginning,” including eliminating Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, requiring Iran to end support of terrorist groups and open the Strait of Hormuz toll-free, and leaving U.S. sanctions against Iran in place until it makes progress to meet its end of the agreement.
New York Times neoconservative columnist Bret Stephens, who supported the war initially, wrote that the “hard men of Tehran appear to have scored a decisive victory over the vain man of Washington,” accusing Trump of betraying Israel, the Iranian people and Americans who supported the war, and calling the deal “a debacle.”
Trump ally Steve Bannon said on his podcast “we can’t get in the business of giving these guys all this money and giving them access. We got the sanctions, keep the sanctions on, don’t let them sell any oil, don’t put in $300 billion or let anybody do it . . . I think we’re looking at this cockeyed, we shouldn’t be doing anything for these people….”
Fox New host Brian Kilmeade said Wednesday “it doesn’t look like Iran has been brought to its knees . . . at this moment, it seems like Iran got a lot out of it that many people weren’t expecting.”
Tell me those are not words depicting a massive loss for Trump and the US from the people most likely to support Trump. So, how am I being a dishonest broker for calling this a total loss? Even most of those who do support the present deal do so, not on the basis that it is better than the JCPOA that we had before Trump destroyed it, but solely on the basis that Trump has lost the war and that getting out of the war is better than soldiering on with it where we would have to shorten our remaining weapons supply a lot more, spend a whole lot more treasure, and puts boots on the ground to achieve anything more. Their arguments really come down mostly to supporting this losing deal on the basis of cutting our losses now. Nothing about it being better than where we were before the Second Iran War began or having any possibility of being better than the JCPOA which never gave anywhere near this much away to our sworn enemies as Trump has already promised if he gets a final deal.
As for those Republicans like megaMAGA Trump supporter Lindsey Graham, who is an Iran hawk who tries to focus on the possibility that this may be worth it if it gets Iran to completely end its enrichment and turn over its uranium, I’ll just note that even Trump is now doing his usual pre-TACO move where he starts walking back from the stated objective. Trump is now saying he doesn’t need to recover Iran’s uranium and minimizing that former objective by referring to it as “uranium dust” because, while it probably is dust, calling it that reminds everyone it is buried under the dust of the earth by his summer quest. He looks like he is feinting back to the position that what was accomplished then is good enough. If he does, the war was a total waste but at an enormous cost of coming pain to the rest of the world and of considerable empowerment to Iran for having proven how it can use its reach over the strait to harm the world and having proven to the whole world that it can stand up to the worst the US is willing to throw at it and squeeze the US so hard it will promise to put together a reconstruction package in order to get out of the war with a deal.
Consider the following maxim of war: “To defeat the enemy, your willingness to kill the enemy has to be greater than their wellness to die.” We would have to slaughter Iranian civilians in the process of continuing a regime-change war or even to get the present regime to cave in on the uranium issue by use of warfare. Trump does not appear willing to do that, and it will be a war crime if he does what he threatened in his original bluff.
I won’t go on with criticisms from the Left about what a loser Trump is with this deal because they are, of course, going to say that, though I agree with many of their criticisms. It’s just that they are not going to convince any remaining MAGA supporters that this deal was was a huge loss for Trump, for the USA, for Israel, and for the whole world that has a lot of suffering ahead of it. I also won’t stretch this out further with criticism from those who may be politically neutral who come at it as analysts because I don’t want to stretch this out, and you can read all of those criticisms in the section of the headlines below that I will make available to all subscribers, paying or not paying, just to prove how resounding from all sides the criticism is. There are, of course, always going to be MAGA cult members who will support anything Trump does to their dying day, rather than hit their own pride by admitting they were wrong; so, I won’t quote them in their support either, for the same reason I didn’t quote the liberals. They are the other extreme of the bell curve—the parts you cut off at both ends to find the mean of public opinion.
With that, let’s finally turn to Israel because they will likely blow the whole thing up anyway because it is far worse than the JCPOA that they hated:
Israel absolutely ABHORS this deal
As I said in my recent podcast interview, Israel is likely to completely isolate itself with this war that Trump CLEARLY wants out of because he bit off more than he can chew. You can play a short video clip of that part of the interview here:
Netanyahu is being torn to shreds over where this has ended up. Unsurprisingly, he continued to make some strikes in Lebanon, both because he hates the deal and it is his personal bias to bomb evil Hezbollah to extinction and because of the huge pressure he is getting from all sides not to let this rest where Trump has left it.
Israel violated the ceasefire in Lebanon yesterday, June 16, carrying out a double-tap strike in Mayfadoun.
A vehicle was struck, and the subsequent arrival of medical crews and civilians was then bombed three times.
First-Responders were reportedly all killed.
Iran then issued a warning to Israel: “Stop attacks in Lebanon or face severe response from Iran.”
That’s a snapshot at the tenuous state of affairs. Iran seems to be holding back from retaliating because this deal is such a sweet deal for Iran, and it would love to, at least, get its hands on all the proffered front money in the deal before it torches the deal with retaliation against Israel, but that desire may not even last that long.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes of clinging to power in an election this autumn have long been shaky, but the interim U.S. deal with Iran has added yet another complication.
U.S. President Donald Trump has opted to end the wars in Iran and Lebanon long before Israel’s goals were accomplished, and Netanyahu’s boast in March that “we are changing the face of the Middle East” looks increasingly empty.
Already facing corruption allegations, domestic political controversies and criticism over security failings in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, he will now face voters’ judgement of his handling of the wars and Israel’s relationship with the United States, its most important ally.
That relationship suffered when Obama cut Netanyahu out of further involvement in any discussion when Bibi decided to short-circuit the US president and take his case straight to congress. It suffered stress when Biden found him a horrible person to deal with. It has suffered further stress now under Trump as Bibi has tried more than once to torpedo Trump’s aim for a peace plan of some sort. If he keeps pushing it, as seems highly likely, he may destroy that relationship. Trump has sounded pretty angry and VERY disparaging of Netanyahu at a level that is imperiling a re-election of any government involving him. His critics are using Trump’s deal to fight back and seem to by tying into some serious Israeli rage due to the price Israelis have paid due to direct hits by Iran.
NO LASTING VICTORIES
However the election unfolds, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, whom supporters once called “King Bibi”, is already the most consequential leader of recent Israeli history and the object of boundless fury to critics.
Netanyahu’s Likud party portrays him as the security hawk who staved off demands for a Palestinian state while urging attacks on Israel’s enemy, Iran, and its regional proxies….
“There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu said in 2025, adding “for years I have prevented the creation of that terror state, against tremendous pressure”.
His hawkish image was dented by security failings before the Hamas attack, for which he has not taken responsibility, and by wars that brought military successes but no lasting victories. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza and Lebanon, and Israel’s military death toll is at its highest in decades.
And, for that war in Gaza, he lost European allies over what they claimed was genocide because of the numbers of civilians who died and the huge destruction of civilian property in Gaza. Even if that was necessary to extinguish Hamas, he is likely to lose even more European allies, if he has any left to lose, over this war with Iran, especially if he re-ignites it, which all Europeans seem to agree should be put to rest before they wind up in the Great Depression 2.0. It is costing them a fortune directly in economic damage, and it cost a lot of civilian lives in Iran, too.
Although Israelis mostly backed the war in Gaza, many turned against Netanyahu’s handling of it. Some prominent generals and families of hostages were among critics who said he lacked a clear strategic plan.
The killings of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were celebrated in Israel. But Hamas still controls much of Gaza, revolutionary theocrats still rule Iran and Hezbollah has survived in Lebanon.
As a result, the competition against his re-election has grown fierce and potent as it taps into Israeli rage and frustration over the undecided state of affairs that is already empowering Iran.
“Netanyahu lost the war. Netanyahu did not deliver - at the moment of truth he collapsed,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said after Trump imposed a new Israel-Hezbollah truce as part of his deal with Iran.
Trump was practically a hero in Israel, more so than in the US prior to this war. They are none to happy at the moment.
Netanyahu decries such criticism as part of a campaign to diminish Israel’s accomplishments. Warning of a potential nuclear threat from Iran, he said: “If we had not acted in time and with overwhelming force – we would not be here today.”
They already were there “today”, so that’s nonsense—at least nearly today. It’s far from evident that Iran would have finally pushed them into the sea over the past four months if this war hadn’t happened. So that’s not true. They would still be here, as Iran did not use any nuclear weapon even during the full heat of this intense war. So, that claim is as desperate a claim as Trump’s statement that Israel would not exist today without Trump’s support.
The devastation in Gaza drew accusations abroad of genocide that Israel rejects and an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Netanyahu on war crimes charges, which he called absurd.
While he has assiduously courted Western support for Israel, he has also antagonised U.S. presidents and other world leaders. A biographer quoted former U.S. President Joe Biden as in private calling him a “son of a bitch” and “a bad fucking guy.”
Increasingly, Netanyahu’s brazen determination to carry out his forceful and bullheaded way of trying to claim the Promised Land through militant Zionism without any mandate from God to do so—at any cost—is costing him a loss of allies; and this war has taken those losses of allies further. While I have called that relentless march toward the prophecies of Israel’s isolation that seem to correlate with other prophecies about Armageddon, that doesn’t mean I think Armageddon happens this year or next, just to be clear about what I’ve said or meant in the past when I brought Armageddon up as many do these days. I am just saying it is the continuation of relentless and reckless moves on his part in that direction that will eventually assure Israel gets there, whether that is in three years or ten. I don’t think it will take much longer; but I’m not saying this war will become Armageddon, but it is march of madness in that direction.
In the U.S., his close ties to the Republican party and attacks on Democrats have helped upset decades of bipartisan support among politicians. Backing for Israel is falling among voters of both parties.
Trump, the U.S. president he has been closest to, called him “fucking crazy” during a June phone call.
Trump actually said that several times and through various media, which has dented Netanyahu’s reputation at home because losing America as an ally would be the last straw for the secular state of Israel’s viability, and Netanyahu is clearly pushing the boundaries, especially given how many Israelis revere Trump, even though they hate where the latest war has left them. It’s kind of a no-win situation for Bibi either way. If he doesn’t push the war back into being a full-on war at this point, Trump may cool off; but it is far from clear that he will stop and stay stopped for sixty days (plus whatever extension Trump agrees to, as he usually TACOs out and does, if he still doesn’t have a solid deal in sixty days).
It goes against Bibi’s gut instincts to now sit on hold when he had far more he intended to accomplish and stated those objectives a lot more clearly than Trump did, and that is made more difficult as his political rivals hold him accountable for capitulating to the demands of Trump at the cost of losing in Israeli public opinion significant ground to Iran by where this has ended up.
Things have gotten hostile between Bibi and Trump:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Donald Trump last year that he was the “greatest friend Israel ever had in the White House.”
Now, as Trump tries to finalize a deal to end the war with Iran, he’s unloading on Netanyahu with rhetoric that no other American leader has dared to use publicly.
He claimed credit for Israel’s existence — “without me, there would be no Israel” — and cursed his judgment in interviews. He even described him as “crazy.”
Netanyahu’s tenure as prime minister spans four U.S. presidents, and he’s frustrated all of them at one point or another. But none has voiced that as openly as Trump, who started the conflict in tandem with Netanyahu.
The tension comes as Trump criticizes recent Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which threatened to jeopardize negotiations between Washington and Tehran. Trump has been pushing for a deal as he faces political blowback at home, where the war is unpopular and has driven up gasoline prices….
“Without the U.S., there would be no Israel. Without me, there would be no Israel because no other president was willing to do what I did,” Trump said. “I have had a great relationship with Bibi. Now Bibi has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon.”
There has long been a bipartisan consensus around supporting Israel in Washington, but that has frayed in recent years. Liberals have been increasingly outraged by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, especially during the war in Gaza, and conservatives have questioned the importance of longstanding American support for Israel. There are concerns about antisemitism on the left and the right….
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris often disagreed with Netanyahu during the war in Gaza, and sometimes they criticized him publicly. But they were more circumspect to avoid facing accusations of being anti-Israel.
That’s how much more severe Trump’s criticism of Netanyahu is than anything by any American leader to date, and many of them had big issues with Netanyahu who, in my opinion is a snake in the grass that plays America however he can. It is getting pretty bad, however, when Israel starts losing conservative Republicans and sees lots rising anti-Semitism in the MAGA movement. At one time, Republicans, and especially Evangelical Christian republicans were monolithic in supporting everything Israel does at all costs to America. That monolith of support is now showing lots of cracks. Will it topple in a year? Probably not, but it is folly to think it is impervious to crumbling right as it shows so many strains through every structure of former pro-Israel support.
Conservative, pro-Israel groups were divided on the seriousness of Trump’s public condemnation of Netanyahu.
Divided isn’t good for Israel. Not too far back there was a time when Republicans and other conservative groups were about as close to undivided on that topic as any people get. Netanyahu’s arrogant bullheadedness keeps costing him more and more support.
Republican Jewish Coalition President Matt Brooks described Trump’s criticism as little more than the inevitable disagreement among family members.
Brooks dismissed that any muted criticism of Trump's comments from his party represented a political mixed message because Trump has been reliably supportive of Israel as president.
If Biden or Harris said something critical, it came from the position of someone who was hostile toward or didn’t have the same level of support for Israel that President Trump has,” Brooks said.
I would argue the risks there are in the opposite direction. The fact that such large cracks are starting to show in the strains Trump is feeling over Bibi’s disregard of his wish to end the war as quickly as possible because of the serious oil pressure he finally openly admitted to feeling and the acknowledgment that he knows it will be much worse in another month, makes those cracks in Trump’s support far more serious than any discontent Biden or Obama had with Israel. They are visible, highly audible cracks in Israel’s most reliable foundational support. That actually is far more threatening than when the cracks are heard from people who are already considered somewhat hostile toward you.
Trump, remember, to the world’s chagrin, moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This is foundational support making the sound of large cracks with hostile rants.
Klein, president of the conservative Zionist Organization of America, said he worried that Trump was making the comments in public to appeal to Israel critics “because he sees that Americans have become more hostile toward Israel than they’ve ever been.”
“That worries me,” Klein said.
And these critics that Trump wants to appeal to are in his own MAGA movement which is replete with antisemite cockroaches among many others who are not antisemite. The antisemitic ones are especially fed up with Trump’s Iran war as they see it as putting America LAST and Israel first!
Moreover, One of Netanyahu’s most formidable opponents has seized on Bibi’s failure to deliver on his objectives in this war and that opponent promises, if he wins the elections in October, he will take the war to its full conclusion, regardless of how much that thwarts Trump’s interests and demands:
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett said on Monday that Iranian regime change will start when Israel has a new government.
“The clock for regime change in Iran will start as soon as the government in Israel is changed,” said Bennett. “The leadership is a disappointment.”
“The term of the Netanyahu government began with a civil war, continued with the massacre of October 7, and ends with a historic failure against Iran,” he added.
So, many are calling this an historic failure in one way or another. Other hardliners in Israel, even within Netanyahu’s present government coalition, agree:
Earlier on Monday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in an X/Twitter post that Israel is not bound to US President Donald Trump’s US-Iran ceasefire agreement.
“Trump’s agreement does not bind us. Israel is not subject to the United States, and we are an independent and sovereign nation,” he said.
“We are not partners to this agreement that does not ensure our security, and it does not bind us in any way,” continued Ben-Gvir. “We must not compromise on anything less than the dismantling of Hezbollah, we must not withdraw from any territory that our fighters have captured and cleared of terror infrastructure, we must not return to a situation where thousands of terrorists sit on the fences of northern settlements, and certainly we must not remain silent for a moment in the face of fire directed at the State of Israel.”
Other Israeli officials took to X on Monday morning to state their positions, including Yair Golan, leader of The Democrats, who criticized Netanyahu for capitulating to a deal he deemed unsatisfactory.
Netanyahu “stood on the sidelines” as Israel’s “military achievements secured with the courage of our pilots and the blood of our fighters have been erased,” Golan said.
“Trump signs an agreement that funnels billions to the Ayatollahs’ regime, leaves the nuclear infrastructure intact, preserves the ballistic threat as is, and throws a lifeline to the murderous regime in Tehran,” he said in harsh criticism of the agreement.
Pinning much of the blame for the agreement he sees as unsatisfactory on Netanyahu, Golan continued, saying, “Netanyahu is good for Hamas. Netanyahu is good for Iran. Netanyahu is good for Hezbollah. Netanyahu is not good for Israel.”
Golan ended his post by saying, “Replacing him is not just a political necessity - it is an existential security imperative….”
Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White party, said “…it is forbidden to agree to restrict Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon or to a withdrawal that endangers the residents of the north…. The emerging agreement with Iran appears to be a strategic failure that will require Israel to engage in diplomatic, military, and legal struggles in the coming years, which only a broad Zionist government can lead….”
So, the hardliners are out in force against Netanyahu’s semi willingness to capitulate to Trump’s demands, and Netanyahu, himself, is a major hardliner—always has been.
Former IDF chief of staff and leader of the Yashar! party, Gadi Eisenkot, lamented what he views to be a major failure of the government in his own X post, saying, “What began as the gravest failure, with historic internal and international legitimacy, is ripening into the bleak outcome of a failed government.”
“A government that operated without strategy or diplomatic or leadership courage, and over three years lost the public’s trust and that of its allies while abandoning Israel’s residents,” Eisenkot continued.
“An abyss yawns between the empty promises of ‘total victory’ and this morning.”
So, this is a deal that pleases almost no one. Granted, it is not a done deal, but, as it stands right now, it is a deal that has won absolutely nothing for the US that it didn’t have a lot more of before this war and nothing of objectives clearly gained for Israel. All it has won at great cost is the right to keep talking in hopes of the possibility of a deal that may someday match up to the JCPOA, which was barely and acceptable deal, but was far better than where the world stands a this moment. After all, opening the strait, as I said in my former article, is not a win from this war. It was already a lot MORE OPEN before the war.
And I give a high probability to Israel finding a way to torpedo the deal:
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also posted on X, saying, “The agreement with Iran is bad for Israel and for the entire free world. Period.” He also implied that Israel will have to continue to carry out the war against Iran itself in order to ensure that Iran does not achieve nuclear weapons.
He alluded to heavy pressures upon the Israeli government and on Netanyahu to comply with the ceasefire’s restrictions, while maintaining defiance of stipulations he views as detrimental to Israeli security.
Netanyahu also knows Bennet is capable of defeating him and replacing him as PM because he already did so once in the past, though his coalition government only lasted a year.
So, all of Israel appears to hate this agreement.
Conclusion
The cost of this no-deal deal for Trump on this world stage has been as high as it is for Netanyahu, though both men have done their best to lose global respect consistently over the years:
How Trump’s ‘Operation Epic Disaster’ turned the world against America
[The original British Telegraph version of the story adds “Donald Trump wanted to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees. He failed on all counts.” I’m presenting here a version you can fully access, as I promise in my subscription offerings The Daily Doom will always TRY to do in its aggregation of headlines that you can read for free without any membership.]
The Iran war has revealed the limits of US military power to achieve political objectives. But it has also left allies and partners questioning their relations with Washington.
“We deployed American power recklessly and incomprehensibly,” said Aaron David Miller, a former US state department negotiator and adviser during multiple Republican and Democratic administrations.
“The moral and strategic argument is that Operation Epic Fury has been an epic disaster,” he said, adding: “What significance did this war have to advancing the national interests of the US?”
That is what many in MAGA and throughout the US are now asking.
It’s better to end the war than continue deeper into an extremely costly quagmire, but to call anything about the no-deal deal a victory is a travesty! It is another Schmeasefire that is unlikely to hold because Israel won’t tolerate this conclusion. It so far accomplished no stated objective. If the war continues in order to accomplish the Iranium objective, the losses to the US and the world will become even greater.
The better approach since the JCPOA no longer exists, was always to accept the PARTIAL win from last summer, though it was far from the complete victory Trump boasted of at the time in order to try to claim his Nobel Peace Prize. It would have been better to just keep reburying the uranium with occasional bunker-buster bombs as necessary. Not a great solution, but far better than where the whole world stands now after this war as Trump retreats with nothing won or, at best, with the uranium situation somewhat better settled akin to the JCPOA but at far, FAR higher costs to the US and the world and consolations given to re-empower Iran.
If he doesn’t retreat via a deal no better than the JCPOA and likely a lot worse in terms of everyone it gives to Iran, all hell breaks lose. He sounds already like he is preparing the path for saying securing the uranium doesn’t matter, and Iran promises not to do any more enrichment, which is the same baloney Iran already promised under the JCPOA with far fewer concessions from the US (and no war). Those massive concessions will lead to ayatollahs’ re-empowerment, and that is not good for anyone, not even in Iran. That assures Israel goes back to war on its own.
I could have presented a lot more evidence of how widely this deal is hated by people of all political stripes due to how much the no-deal deal concedes up front and what it gives down the line for getting nothing for now but a reprieve from the damages Trump’s war brought on and not a lot going forward but possibilities in exchange for significant empowerment of the existing Iranian regime.
You can feel my opinion is wrong of the outcome is, but stop short of accusing me of simply playing fast and free with the facts and accusing me of showing intellectual dishonesty in how I handle them. There is obviously ENORMOUS agreement around the world that this deal stinks, even if Trump gets some control back over the uranium, which is far from sure or even likely.
You can disagree with my conclusion, but I’m clearly not playing loose with the facts, and for once I am solidly within an opinion that seems to be shared by majorities on all sides, and that doesn’t happen often; and I never get there because I feel compelled to agree with any majority.
The short of this deal is that Trump’s won nothing yet, except the right to keep talking at extraordinary cost, and he’s fronting a lot of money to provide enough incentive for Iran to agree to go back to talking out an agreement on the Uranium. He’s put up ten times that much money down the road as enticement to cinch an agreement, which is more than an agreement on the uranium is worth given how much it will empower Iran and its continuous incitement and funding of terrorism around the world. He has effectively allowed the US to become hostage to a terrorist enterprise, and is offering to pay the ransom.
He’s even already backpedaling enough to say it’s not necessary to get all the uranium out of the country and never was. Trump will get no thanks from me, even if we wind up better than we were under the JCPOA because the cost to getting there is already WAY too high, and will be far higher down the road even if we don’t go back to war, and a re-empowered Iran will find holes in any deal anyway or ways to keep creating trouble anyway.
Paying subscribers can enjoy some fascinating videos below about Jupiter’s bizarre, potentially life-supporting moon, Titan; lava-caused whirlwinds on Kilauea; and some government UFO files, including a document from the Soviet military that claimed a UFO fought back with truly bizarre, deadly results, made mostly interesting by the fact that the Soviets were pretty serious guys that don’t seem likely to make that stuff up. The headlines supporting this editorial are free for all.
Economania (national & global economic collapse plus market news)
Dow rises to record as oil ticks higher, traders await Fed rate decision
Inflation Factors (too much money chasing too few goods due to weather, sanctions, tariffs, quarantines, etc.)
For WEEKS, I warned all of you . . . . Today, it happened
The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now at its lowest level since the early 1980s
Wars & Rumors of War (including cyberwar, civil unrest and revolts)
US and Iran sign Memorandum of Understanding ELECTRONICALLY
Trump And Iran Sign MOU Deal Ahead Of Schedule, President says why must give money now.
See how Trump’s terrible Iran deal is far worse than Obama plan in simple chart
Senate Republicans raise alarm over Trump’s deal with Iran
‘Ted Cruz Is Lying Thru His Teeth’: Don Jr. Unloads on Father’s Ally
Trump’s Iran nuclear deal risks falling short of Obama version
Iran Gets Major Economic Lifeline for Minimal Concessions in Initial Deal
Iran is returning to nuclear talks no longer afraid of America
Trump’s Iran Deal Blasted By All Sides As ‘Incredibly Foolish . . . Much Bigger Than A Mistake’
Trump says U.S. will ‘go right back to dropping bombs’ if he doesn’t like Iran deal
The 14-point Iran deal in full – and how it favours Tehran
Israel Strikes Lebanon Again Yesterday; Iran Warns Stop or Be Attacked Again
Netanyahu set to face voter fury over Iran deal
Bennett: ‘Clock for Iran regime change to start as soon as government in Israel changes’
Trump in Defeat: The president went to war triumphant and will likely leave greatly weakened.
Iran says the deal to end the war with the U.S. requires Israel to withdraw from Lebanon
Gulf States Are Frustrated by Failure to Tackle Iran’s Missiles
Three Iranian tankers exit U.S. blockade for first time in months as shipowners eye Hormuz in ‘wary disbelief’
Apocalyptic hell for Moscow as Ukraine stages its biggest attack of war on Putin’s capital
