Iran: The Burning Question
Why does a man hellbent on retaining vast power seem to be doing everything he can to have that power curtailed by voters in November?
By Ciro Scotti
The arrogance of power doesn’t get much more pronounced than what we have seen from this American President in the past fourteen months. Donald Trump loves power, drinks power, eats power, bathes in power, revels in power, and every minute he is alive, craves more power.
So as the midterm elections loom, why in the name of Christ Jesus or any other deity would he launch another foreign adventure that is putting our troops at risk, drawing down our military might, dividing us further, blatantly breaking his America First/no-more-wars pledge to MAGA, and pushing up prices as Americans struggle to afford their lives?
Gasoline & beef prices since Inauguration Day Jan. 20, 2024
U.S. national monthly averages — indexed to Jan. 20, 2024 = 100”
Gasoline in blue ($/gal, regular) Ground beef in red ($/lb)
By almost any real-time measure of how the war is unfolding, it was a strategic miscalculation that underestimated the resistance of the ayatollahs, overestimated the ability of the regime’s longing-for-liberty opponents to rise up again, and apparently didn’t factor in the Strait of Hormuz trap.
As to the question of “why now,” theories — conspiratorial and otherwise — abound.
Starting a war with Iran is a reckless sop to shore up the support of the estimated 30 million Christian Zionists in the U.S. Members of this influential cohort are among the more than 80 percent of evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2024. As a recent article in The Forward says, they see “the modern state of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy…as a prerequisite for the second coming of Jesus.” One key proponent of the theory is American Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, sees himself as a modern-day Crusader.
It is another misguided attempt to divert the endless attention from the Epstein Scandal. An op-ed in The Guardian said, “…the strikes function as a classic ‘diversionary war’ — an attempt to hijack the global narrative and drown out domestic scandal with the thunder of cruise missiles.”
It is evidence that Trump is a willing — or compromised — tool of Bibi Netanyahu’s Israel, which surveyed the immediate future and decided that the opportunity to crush its mortal enemy might slip away. The possible calculus: Tehran was at its most fragile in many bloody moons because of unrest and badly damaged surrogates like Hamas. At the same time, the prospect of Trump’s power being curtailed come November was growing ever more likely by the day.
But if Trump was a willing partner of Israel, presumably he had to be deluded about his ability to prevail in the midterms. And many signs suggest that behind the bravado, he is worried. They include trying to ram through the SAVE America legislation, which would require voters to show photo identification; pushing to nationalize control of elections; and ejecting mid-flight widely despised deportation queen ICE Barbie and accomplice Greg Bovino.
A compromised Trump leads to the Epstein Conclusion: The Mossad’s pedophile agent gathered enough sleaze on onetime pal Donny, who became the most pro-Israel President in history, that Trump has been forced to do Jerusalem’s bidding.
It’s not inconceivable that all those motivations intersected in Trump’s always-churning, always-calculating mind.
Under extreme pressure from an Israeli regime with damaging goods in its back pocket, Trump is persuaded — or convinces himself — that a massive assault on Iran could keep the lid on more bad Epstein news and take America’s mind off the scandal and affordability, all while throwing a large bone to wavering evangelicals in his base.
Trump hasn’t yet lashed out at those who got him (and us) into this smoking briar patch, but absent a dramatic turn of events, he will. And the objects of his ire could say much about his motives.
Relevant Reading
Top US Counterterrorism Official Resigns Over Iran War, Urging Trump to ‘Reverse Course’
How Christian Zionism Explains Mike Huckabee’s Expansive View of Israel’s Borders
Christanist Commanders Painting Iran War as End-Times Prophecy
Half of Americans Believe Trump Bombed Iran Because of Epstein files
Profiles in Integrity
Dario Amodei of Anthropic
Remember when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was globe-trotting-out an altruistic message about artificial intelligence with integrity and the good the fast moving technology could do?
Now he’s not so preachy — or trustworthy.
But there still are thoughtful AI pioneers with morals. One is Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
Last week, Anthropic sued the Defense Department for tagging it as a security threat. DOD was retaliating against the creator of the chatbot Claude because it has accused the Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon of violating company prohibitions against using its tools for autonomous warfare and surveillance.
Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina
If you’re a liberal Democrat or progressive, there’s not a lot to like about Senator Tillis. But he has blocked the nomination of financier Kevin Warsh to lead the Fed until the Justice Department drops its retribution campaign against current Chair Jerome Powell.
Last week, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who gives meaning to the term “Your Honor,” scorched the filler in U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s face with a fiery decision quashing subpoenas of Trump bête noire Powell. Pirro vowed to appeal. Tillis vowed to persist.
The Senator, along with fellow Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, is also standing in the way of Trump’s SAVE America bill.
Hot Links/Entertainment
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FrankensteinLove Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette has its flaws (just ask Daryl Hannah). But the portraits, especially of the Bessette we hardly knew, can sate any Page Six sweet tooth. And the depiction of Manhattan in the 1990s remembers a world to long for — lived in the flesh, not on a phone.