Wars and Rumors of Wars ... Again
Today the drums of war are not the usual loud Trump bluffs that are then routinely followed by Trump TACO trades on the stock market and feinted major attacks that didn’t happen. These drum beats seem more like the kind that actually do become a surprise launch into war like the, at first, quiet and slow beats in the movie Jaws that tell you the big shark is lurking someplace out there in the deep shadows. They sound like the hints of a weekend war outbreak.
The first quiet drumbeat that hints at action is a Truth Social post by the president in which he abruptly cancelled an important family trip from the White House to the Bahamas for his son’s wedding, saying …
“While I very much wanted to be with my son, Don Jr., and the newest member of the Trump Family, his soon to be wife, Bettina, circumstances pertaining to Government, and my love for the United States of America, do not allow me to do so,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “I feel it is important for me to remain in Washington, D.C., at the White House during this important period of time. Congratulations to Don and Bettina!”
One report by CBS says, President Trump mentioned “the situation with Iran, among other things.” In his usual way of feinting left, then feinting right to maintain constant suspense and the element of chaos, if not surprise, he also said,
I’m going to try and make it [to the wedding]. I’m in the midst — I said, you know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things. That’s one I can’t win on. If I do attend, I get killed. If I don’t attend, I get killed. By the fake news, of course, I’m talking about.”
Of course, if he was preparing to make an attack of some kind, he wouldn’t likely telegraph it … or would he? He often does, but only when he’s bluffing.
The second indication that a move to real war could be imminent is yet another clarification from Iran that no deal to end the war is possible that stops it from enriching uranium and/or keeping the uranium it has already enriched:
“We will not reach a conclusion if we try to delve into details related to highly enriched uranium in Iran,” the official IRNA news agency quoted [the Iranian Foreign Minister] as saying.
Also,
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi said Friday that he was “not aware of any visit right now” when asked about reports by Iranian state media since Thursday that [Pakistan’s] Army chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, a key mediator between Iran and the U.S., was expected in Tehran.
Is the implication there that negotiations are off and visits cancelled? It’s unclear.
Despite the attempts of some regional outlets to spin a narrative of imminent peace (which we saw yesterday), a senior Iranian source told Reuters on Thursday that “no deal had been reached with the US” - though he did also claim that “gaps had narrowed” - somewhat in line with the optimistic narrative.
Again, the rumored peace deal sounds as elusive as at all other times when we were told a deal looked likely. No one quite says the rumor is wrong this time, but no one affirms it, though Iran made clear that any deal that includes sacrificing its uranium enrichment is not going to happen, and Trump has always said that position is a non-starter.
So, what was portrayed as an imminent deal that would have been a total loss for Trump, if the rumors were false, was as I hinted about yesterday, likely another no-deal deal, perhaps a chance to talk markets back up; and that leaves us to wonder what is happening that is big enough this weekend to keep the president away from his own son’s wedding, given Trump normally has no qualms about taking time away from the White House. Maybe that is a hint with the power of understatement actually intended to threaten Iran into its last chance at making a deal.
Is it time to finally make good on all of his threats of a genocidal attack on Iran; or, given the other news I laid out this week about ships moving into Caribbean, is time to divert attention away from a go-nowhere war in Iran to a new imperial distraction by following through on the president’s repeated threats to annex Cuba into the imperial sphere? Is Cuba one of the “other things” the president said were causing him to stay close to the White House and miss his son’s wedding? Or will it be two attacks at once?
Trump has meanwhile explicitly warned that further military action remains firmly on the table if Tehran doesn’t bend the knee.
Nothing from Iran indicates any change in the terms it has always presented. In fact, …
Fadahossein Maleki, an influential member of Iran’s Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, strongly hinted that Iran might not wait around to be hit. When pressed on whether the ceasefire could collapse, Maleki bluntly stated, “Anything is possible.”
He took it a step further, openly floating the idea of an Iranian preemptive strike if Iran believed the Pentagon is moving its forces into position for resumption of military action.
“It could even come from Iran’s side, frankly,” Maleki warned, according to a report by Iran International. “If we feel that something is happening from a US base, Iran has the legitimacy to respond and prevent it.”
Despite these threats, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has freshly said there has been some “slight progress” in talks with Iran to end the war, but followed by saying he did not wish to exaggerate how much.
On the other hand …
Rubio is going full press against Iran’s efforts to impose a Hormuz toll system under its own permission protocols. “They’re trying to convince Oman, by the way, to join them in this tolling system in an international waterway. There is not a country in the world that should accept that. I don’t know of a country in the world that’s in favor of it, except Iran, but there’s no country in the world that should accept it,” Rubio said in Helsingborg, Sweden, on the sidelines of a NATO ministers meeting…. “It can’t happen.”
It sounds like they are far from a deal. As another writer in the headlines below synopsizes today:
It just keeps happening over and over again. False rumors about a peace deal between the United States and Iran start circulating, and a lot of people out there just keep falling for it. How many times is this going to play out? Look, the reality of the matter is that Iran is only going to make a deal if President Trump basically surrenders and gives the Iranians everything on their completely absurd wishlist. If that doesn’t happen, there simply isn’t going to be a deal. The Iranians and the Trump administration are not even in the same universe when it comes to the nuclear issues and as I discussed in my last article, the fact that the Iranians intend to make the status quo in the Strait of Hormuz permanent is completely and utterly unacceptable to U.S. officials. Those that keep expecting some sort of a “breakthrough” are going to be disappointed every single time….
The Iranians have not moved from their core negotiating positions and they aren’t going to move.
At this point, the Iranians are telling us that negotiations are in a “permanent deadlock” and that they have “no desire to even continue negotiations.…”
“BREAKING: An Iranian source close to the negotiating team says claims of a ‘final draft’ US-Iran agreement are false, the talks are in ‘permanent deadlock,’ due to the US insistence on nuclear negotiations, Iran has no desire to even continue negotiations,’ and ‘the conflict could start at any moment.’
As I concluded yesterday,
There is not much reason to think this is any different than all the other deals that never happened….
He’s already positioning for his next war in Cuba by moving the USS Nimitz into the Caribbean Sea today and charging President Raul Castro today with whatever Trump believes he can charge him for in order to capture him and take him to the US to help babysit Nicolás Maduro in prison….
It could … all be nothing but intentional disinformation “leaked” on purpose by the White House in order to jawbone oil back down again and stocks back up and bond yields back down because of their extreme risk to the US government’s debt.
So, look out Cuba!
Having put out an article on Monday, titled “A Whirlwind of Dust and Dollars: The Bond Crisis Has Begun,” which wound up being a Deeper Dive into the bond crisis, today’s collection of news headlines and this editorial will be all there is for this holiday weekend unless such significant news develops that I cannot restrain myself. Otherwise, see you all on Tuesday.
