If American politics were an Irwin Allen disaster movie, this would be when the small tornadoes combine to form a giant storm that endangers everyone.
Rick Wilson said it so well yesterday, as he usually does: “One of the safest bets of all time is that Trump has never, ever “learned his lesson,” in the words of the soon-to-be-ex Senator Susan Collins, or experienced some moral awakening, or decided to take a path beyond his own narcissism and greed. He’s pausing his 48-hour deadline to bomb Iran’s power plants into the stone age because of markets, polling, and politics. Trump is looking forward to about 200 days from now and sees a looming electoral disaster that will result in deep and serious investigations of his family’s vast collection of scams, grifts, crypto frauds, and pay-to-play access or pardon-selling. He sees a future where the impeachments for perjury, lying to Congress, obstruction of justice, and corruption don’t start with him, but lower down the food chain, slowly knocking out his minions in the Cabinet and the implementers of his corrupt will. He isn’t pausing the missiles out of a sudden respect for international law; he’s doing it because he knows that if the house of cards falls this November, the next two years will be spent explaining exactly how much his son-in-law cleared on the Witkoff-brokered “diplomacy” of the decade. How much he scored in his corruption. Every crime he has committed will be reviewed in public.”
There are some familiar patterns visible behind Donald Trump’s out-of-the-blue claim that the United States wants a peace deal with Iran, and talks are ongoing. On Monday, Trump told reporters: “So tomorrow morning, sometime their time, we were expected to blow up their largest electric generating plants that cost over $10 billion to build. It’s a very good one. There was no dearth of money and one shot, it’s gone. It collapses. Why would they want that? So they called. I didn’t call. They called. They wanna make a deal. And we are very willing to make a deal. It’s gotta be a good deal. And there’s gotta be no more wars, no more nuclear weapons. They’re not gonna have nuclear weapons anymore. They’re agreeing to that. Any of that stuff is no deal.” (ALL OF THAT IS A LIE) Trump was asked, “Iran’s foreign ministry says, you’re not telling the truth when it comes to productive conversations to end the war.” Trump answered: “Well, they’re gonna have to get themselves better public relations people. Uh, we have had very, very strong talks. We’ll see where they lead. We have points, major points of agreement. I would say almost all points of agreement, uh, perhaps that hasn’t been conveyed. The communication, as you know, has been blown to pieces. They were unable to talk to each other, but we’ve had very strong talks. Uh, Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner had them, uh, they went, I would say perfectly. I would say that if they carry through with that, it’ll end that, that problem, that conflict, and I think it’ll end it very, very substantially. Uh, we have very much in mind our partners in the Middle East. We’ve had great relationships with a lot of them. As you know, a lot of ‘em were surprisingly hit and, uh, I was surprised to see it and so was everyone else. But we have, uh, they’re very much in mind and the discussions. So the discussions took place yesterday. They went into yesterday evening. Uh, they want very much to make a deal. We’d like to make a deal too.”
When he says “Uh” that often you know he’s making it up as he goes. When he “plays an accordion” with his hands, you know he’s lying. He was doing that. Given Trump’s history and track record, the odds are high that he is making up these peace talks. The signs of a lie are all over Dilbert’s statements.
Prof. Robert Pape has important points to bear in mind about this “breakthrough”: Is there still an off-ramp? Yes, but it is narrower than most people think. A real off-ramp requires more than a pause. It requires credible constraints on future escalation. That means: enforceable limits, verifiable commitments, and consequences for breaking them. Without that, any pause is temporary. The problem is structural: Each side now has incentives to continue; each believes stopping now creates greater long-term risk. That is why off-ramps exist in theory, but are rarely taken in practice. At this stage - Iran in control of Hormuz and all that means - military containment of Israel would have to be part of any diplomatic solution.
Dr. Phillips P. O’Brien also comments: “The basic inability of the US government to say exactly why it started the bombing of Iran and what would represent a positive strategic outcome for from the operation, remains very much in force. The United States government from the President on down has constantly changed the supposed strategic purpose of the bombing, usually so that they can declare “victory” at any point and try to go home. However in the medium term Iran will be able to rebuild and present an even more formidable challenge. It will and has learned from what it will experience, what it must do to make its threat more effective in the future and will probably end up surprising the US down the road with military capabilities that the US did not anticipate. A damaged Iran now holds out the prospect of coming back stronger and better prepared, far more quickly than people realize.”
How much money did the Trump grifters make off Trump’s Tehran TACO with the chaos they created on Wall Street? Speaking on Jim Acosta’s show, Heather Cox Richardson pointed to the fact that on opening today, Wall Street went down from the weekend news of Trump’s threat to “bomb our hearts out” if Iran didn’t open Hormuz by Monday, which then went back up on news of the Tehran TACO. She pointed out that after TACO Boy made his morning tweet, holding off his attack on Iran for the next five days the stock mrket is “coincidentally” open, that the S&P 500 climbed 240 points, while Brent Crude dropped from $112/bbl to $96/bbl. When Iran said there were no talks and no likelihood of any talks, the S&P lost 120 points and Brent Crude climbed to $100/bbl. Prof. Krugman said someone with insider knowledge could have done well on the futures markets. Yun Li at CNBC noted that 15 minutes before Trump’s “TACO”, there was a jump in S&P 500 and oil futures.
Monday, France’s General Michel Richoux told Mad King Dilbert to go fuck himself. On live TV. The general said: “He shot himself in the foot. He wanted to invade a European Union country, Greenland, not long ago. and now, his old friends whom he didn’t consult, whom he scorned, especially the British, telling them, ‘We’ll remember this,’ and now he needs us? Frankly, he can go fuck himself.”
