It was a dark evening. The Islamic Republic of Iran struck Israel, and Trump told Netanyahu not to retaliate, saying that a deal was very close to being concluded. This was nonsense from the beginning. The idea that the Islamic Republic would abide by any deal it made with the United States was always based on a towering house of cards of false assumptions, including the idea that the Islamic Republic wanted peace at all, and that it would give up its jihad against America and Israel, and that it would ever stop pursuing whatever weapons it needed in order to destroy both of those enemies.
Now it looks as if all that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and whoever else is leading Iran these days need in order to emerge victorious from this conflict is Donald Trump in the White House. Trump is so avid to be seen as the great peacemaker that he has turned against Israel, which is America’s ally, and embraced Iran, where the leadership screams “Death to America.” This is as craven and wrongheaded a betrayal of an American ally as Obama and Biden ever perpetrated against Israel, and Trump has done it for strikingly similar reasons, albeit with some important differences.
Obama and Biden wanted to bring peace to the Middle East and the world by bringing the Islamic Republic of Iran into the family of nations as a partner of the United States and a rock of stability in the region. They would do this with Obama’s nuclear deal and other conciliatory gestures, including sending billions of dollars to Tehran. Meanwhile, the various constraints they placed upon Israel — opposition to the “settlements” during the Obama years, and Biden’s withholding of weapons shipments after Oct. 7 — were meant to appease Iran’s inveterate hostility to the Jewish state, while America’s continuing alliance with Israel at the same time deterred Iran from waging all-out war against Israel.
Trump was a vociferous critic of the Obama/Biden appeasement of Iran, and promised toughness: the rescinding of the disastrous nuclear deal during his first term was a manifestation of that. But now he has decided that peace is the foremost goal of his foreign policy. He must be remembered as the man who ended wars. He must get that Nobel Peace Prize. And so as the Oct. 7 war dragged on, Trump hit on a grand solution: he would force Israel to make peace with Hamas before it had attained its oft-stated goal of destroying the jihad terror group. He would launch airstrikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran in tandem with Israel, but not in order to help the Iranian people (despite his repeated promises to do so) free themselves from the Islamic regime they detest and abhor. Instead, all he wanted to do was accomplish what Obama and Biden failed to accomplish by sending billions of dollars to Tehran: if their carrots didn’t work, he would use the stick to show the Islamic Republic that waging jihad against Israel was fruitless and not going to be tolerated. Nevertheless, he still wants peace above everything else, including Israel’s self-defense. So he has adopted what is essentially the Obama/Biden policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran: constrain and scold Israel while reaching out in friendship to Tehran.
Trump seems to think in doing this, he will bring the Iranian leadership, whether it be putative Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whom Trump “respects” and would be “honored” to meet, or the leaders of the IRGC, to the negotiating table to conclude the deal that will establish the great dealmaker as the greatest peacemaker of all time. In this also, he has come around to the Obama/Biden establishment foreign policy perspective that he used to mock and promise to consign to the dustbin of history. They assumed that the problem underlying all the hostility between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran was a lack of trust. Iran repeatedly denounced the U.S. as “the global arrogance,” and portrayed it as a rapacious neo-colonialist power. And so the establishment foreign policy solution was to show good will, demonstrate that the U.S. was not hostile to Iran and had no wish to exploit it economically or in any other way, and expect that these gestures of good will would be reciprocated.
This was naive and wrongheaded from the start, and was based on abject ignorance of what really motivated the Iranian leaders’ hostility to the U.S. and Israel: it was all about Islam and jihad, not a response to alleged American (or Israeli) excesses, from the beginning. American good will would only be seen as weakness, to be responded to with increased aggression. Trump seemed to see that back in the days when he was ridiculing Obama’s nuclear deal and vowing to withdraw from it. He was right about that nuclear deal. But now he has become what he has detested. Now he has embraced the same set of false assumptions, and is acting upon them, thinking that if he restrains Israel and holds out olive branches to Tehran, all will be well: the Iranians will come to the table, work out a deal that satisfies everyone, and Trump will get his Nobel and the distinction of being the greatest U.S. president of all time.
Instead, the Islamic Republic fired ballistic missiles into Israel on Monday night. They see that Trump lacks the will to fight, and are exploiting his cowardice to the fullest. If only first-term Trump could reappear and remind second-term Trump of the dangers of appeasement, and the danger of showing weakness to an enemy that seeks your destruction. But alas, first-term Trump is nowhere on the horizon.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Thankfully, Israel has retaliated, and given Trump the 🖕
My support to this president is now a thing of the past. 2028 can’t come soon enough
carpediadem says
Good to know. Trump has no right to effectively tell Israel to lie down and be murdered.
gravenimage says
+1
jimjames says
This is a great article and while speaking of Trump and his foolishness and his pursuit of more earthly fame sets the foundation for understanding the dissolution of the American Constitutional Republic. That dissolution is for another article. This article does lay bare what anyone who has an objective view of Islam is well aware of… they practice deceit in a most 1500 year practiced behavior. Islam is the antithesis of Biblical teachings and, I might add of Vedantic philosophy. Only Robert Spencer could have written such a timely and accurate commentary on the most predatory and imperial force this world has ever seen.
40 rounds says
The “deal” only existed in Trump’s mind, the rest of us can see he is totally getting played the fool by Iran. Ceasefire my ass.
gravenimage says
Sadly true–and this just emboldens the Mullahs.
jerry glenn says
Thump should fire the idiots advising him on Islam. The same crew who told W it is a religion of peace?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I don’t think anyone is advising him. I believe that he’s trying to play footsie w/ the antisemites in the MAGA movement
SURJIT says
Log on http://www.thereligionoofpeace.com
gravenimage says
SURJIT, thanks for that link–but it does not work, because you misspelled it. Here you go:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com
David Lakatos says
Just another Murdering Muhammadian jihadist hugger. Being soft on Islam will get your throat slit.
David Lakatos says
Yeah, they banned me from Truth Social because they didn’t like me talking about Islam.
Wellington says
What the Hell is Trump thinking?
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
I’m not sure – and I follow this very closely.
He either knows something that we don’t know, or he doesn’t understand the very devout muslim mindset.
Pres. Trump is used to making deals – even with people that he does not particularly like or agree with. But these kind of people are still rational. Each side “gives a little” until a compromise “deal” is made.
Even JFK was willing to negotiate with Khrushchev during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Khrushchev was a commie through and through, but he was rational enough to understand the concept of MAD mutual assured destruction.
The IRGC “leaders” are very devout muslims and cannot be dealt with rationally. They need to be totally destroyed and replaced by a group led by someone like exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.
Wellington says
I have allowed, James, for Trump doing things behind the scenes we don’t know of, can’t know of, but ever increasingly I find myself relegating this possibility to a more and more improbable status. If machinations behind the scenes is not the case, then Trump is simply not acting in an informed and wise manner. Time will tell but time itself seems to be running out.
carpediadem says
He’s used to real estate deals, not real war.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
carpediem
Very true! Like I point out in Hugh’s post on what Israel hit in Iran, we have no idea who we are talking w/, and whether they are the ones calling the shots. The people negotiating – the Speaker Ghalibaf – are said to be “moderates” (even though they changed “Death to America” in the majlis) and are getting overruled by the IRGC top brass, such as Ahmed Vahidi (who is now said to be “status unknown” after Israel’s retaliation yesterday). I do wonder whether in his book “Art of the Deal”, Trump covered whether or not to ascertain in the first place whether the people he’s doing the deal w/ are even capable of keeping their end of the bargain, even if they wanted to?
Also, there are differences b/w real estate deals and international deals, in that
⮞ For real estate, people are usually not emotionally tied to a deal that makes them lose perspective that it’s just a piece of property – a certain acreage of land w/ property values that have an x% probability of going up, and a (100-x)% probability of going down. Also, usually the people are just doing it for themselves, or their companies
⮞ For international borders otoh, leaders are no longer calling the shots for themselves alone: they also have to take into account the sentiments of their people. Netanyahu couldn’t give away Jerusalem even if he wanted to (which he never would). Mahmoud Abbas couldn’t give up claims to Jerusalem, b’cos he’d be ousted pretty quickly. The IRGC leadership could not agree to stop attacking Israel or the US b’cos all their supporters have bought into their lies that we are the big Satan and little Satan: if they did, they’d lose even that 20% or whatever support that they have in Iran. Zelenskyy would similarly have trouble negotiating away Crimea, while Putin would have trouble giving up on his claims to all of Ukraine
So national negotiations are absolutely nothing like deals, and Trump should stop thinking that they are one and the same
gravenimage says
Why should Ukraine have to cede her land to Russian invasion?
somehistory says
Israel must have ignored him because the news cycle last night said iran was hit by Israel. Then the cycle said iran had done something first.
Ezekiel 38-39 will have fulfillment.
Walter Sieruk says
It’s both terrible and shame ,that the righteous and strong President Trump is obviously degrading into the wicked and weak Barack Obama by starting to practice the appeasement policy of that ‘Mullah regime” of Iran
As observed by Trump’s not wanting Israel to back at the hostile Islam’s latest attack on the Jewish State.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the government authorities and officials of the State of Israel have a duty and responsibility to ensure the safety security and lives of the people who are citizens of that nation.
As the fifth President of the United States, James Monroe, rightly and wisely, had declared “The right to self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.”
Walter Sieruk says
A greatly corrected and improved version of the part of this above posting is the following.
It’s both terrible and shame ,that the righteous and strong President Trump is obviously degrading into the wicked and weak Barack Obama by starting to practice the appeasement policy of that ‘Mullah regime” of Iran
As observed by Trump’s not wanting Israel to back of striking at the hostile latest attack on the Jewish State.
Walter Sieruk says
Hopefully,,President Trump will start of think about it, and then come top his senses and reject that Obama policy towards horrific tyranny in Iran.. Trump needs to wake up and realize that it’s best and wisest to finish the job by getting it over with by eliminating dangerous hostile and menacing Islamic regime, once and for all. For the sake of America ,for the of Israel , for the sake of the Iranian people , and for the sake of all the civilized nations of the world.
In addition , letting Iranian down now after so many of them had died or had been maimed for live by that regime’s vicious and death -inflicting IRGC would be treachery on the part of Trump. It would after so much US military action to stop now would be very foolish . As it had been ,rightly , said “Half-measures in war is madness and folly,:”
Lady of the Lake says
Spot on Robert!
You’re the best.
OLD GUY says
Iran will never uphold a peace agreement or another agreement as long as the IRGC is in charge. The Art of the Deal needs to kick some ass in Iran and turn over the leadership. Anti-akbar
gravenimage says
Trump Becomes Obama
……………………………………..
So it seems–very depressing.