Are Israel and the U.S. ready to declare a bogus victory and walk away — if Iran lets them? Or is Trump doubling down asking NATO for help, while Israel applies the Gaza playbook to Lebanon?
From the international space station, view of Gulf of Oman, to the right of the Strait of Hormuz choke point. (NASA/Public Domain)
SUNDAY
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
New York Times Asks: Double Down or Walk Away
The New York Times began a story Sunday about the bind Donald Trump put himself into and the danger he’s put the world into:
“Two weeks into a war against Iran that he chose to launch, President Trump faces a stark choice — stay in the battle to achieve the dauntingly ambitious goals he has set, or try to extract himself from an expanding and intensifying conflict that is generating damaging military, diplomatic and economic shock waves.
He has quickly discovered that both options are deeply problematic, littered with consequences that he and his team downplayed when he plunged the United States, alongside Israel, into the biggest war in the Middle East in nearly a quarter-century.”
In other words, despite his bravado about having already won the war, Trump is increasingly desperate because Iran is clearly not losing it. Trump has to decide whether to cut his losses and get out, or double down on the dodgy proposition that he could pull a victory out of his extremity. He may want to declare a false victory but Iran is not in a mood to buy it.
Trump Wants NATO and China to Open Hormuz
To try to get out of the mess, the desperate Trump, realizing now how foolish his pronouncement is that he’s already won the war, is lashing out at other countries for refusing to help him extricate himself from the disaster he’s made. He’s calling on the world to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz that his precipitous action closed. He has the greatest military “the world has ever seen, nobody has ever seen anything like it,” but he has to beg NATO for HELP!
“If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO,” he told the Financial Times Sunday. He’s so desperate he also asked China, even though as an Iranian ally, Chinese ships are being allowed through the Strait.
Trump is stomping his feet at Beijing and threatening to postpone his Chinese summit scheduled for early April in with Xi Jinping if China doesn’t help him. How much will the Chinese care if he doesn’t show up? Keir Starmer says he’s considering Trump’s request with other European governments. Japan and Australia, two staunch U.S. allies, if not vassals, have refused to send warships. Trying to force open the Strait would put their sailors in danger and this is not their war, after all. It is Trump’s.
US Threatens Media Over War Coverage
Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is threatening to withhold broadcasting licenses to media that don’t cover the Iran war the way Trump wants it covered. Carr wrote on X:
“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions – also known as the fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not. And frankly, changing course is in their own business interests since trust in legacy media has now fallen to an all time low of just 9% and are ratings disasters.”
He didn’t really mean that broadcasters must operate in the public interest. He meant in the interests of Trump and his administration. This blatant threat to use licensing to censor media that is not publishing unadulterated war propaganda during this illegal attack on Iran should raise alarm bells across the country.
SATURDAY
Out of Iran & the Gaza Playbook for Lebanon
Alastair Crooke, former British diplomat, writes in his Conflicts Forum that some among the Israeli brass want out too:
“Senior Former Israeli IDF Intelligence Official: ‘ISRAEL SHOULD STOP THE WAR;’ ‘The Israeli public and IDF are exhausted’ — Yossi Melman, quoting a former senior Israeli IDF Intelligence Official — ‘[Israel] and Trump should declare victory, announce that all objectives have been achieved, and cease fire. Just end the war that way. No negotiations, no deal, and no lifting of sanctions. Simply let the regime collapse into itself.”
In its failure to achieve an early victory, Israel may indeed want to get out of Iran, as Netanyahu has set up the Iranian people for blame if the government isn’t overthrown. But Israel always has Lebanon.
Axios reports that Israeli officials are now openly applying the Gaza Playbook to Lebanon: “‘We are going to do what we did in Gaza,’ a senior Israeli official said, referring to the flattening of buildings Israel says Hezbollah uses to store weapons and launch attacks.”
Al Jazeera wrote:
“The same playbook has now arrived in Lebanon, but with a revealing difference from previous Israeli operations here. In the first Lebanon war in the 1980s, Israel sought to install a sympathetic government. Gaza has shown that Israel has abandoned that aspiration.
The goal is no longer to determine who governs a territory but to ensure that no coherent governance exists at all. Nor is Israel alone in this; the UAE’s approach in Yemen and the Horn of Africa – and its support to Israel in Gaza – reflects the same preference for isolated enclaves. What has emerged is a regional doctrine of fragmentation shared between aligned powers.”
The empire of idiocracy is clearly incapable of learning from its past blunders. They just double down on the next imperial invasion thinking that will change the outcome of trying to force their will on sovereign people. Oligarchy is a mental disorder and the West in general is in its grip. The only way to cure the illness is to turn off the money spigot. That should be our primary focus until this insanity is excised from the body politic.
The U.S. needs to immediately stop funding Israel’s government, genocide and war mongering! I do not want my tax dollars funding any part of Netanyahu’s evil agenda.
“… should raise alarm bells across the country. ”
I agree. But, it might be hard to hear those alarm bells. After all, we are already hearing the alarm bells from a government that not only beats, but shoots and kills protestors in the streets. And the alarm bells that say that the state is operating and expanding massive detention camps. Coming soon to a warehouse near you. Plus, we are hearing the loud alarm bells that says our nation is now a militarist state that is attacking nation after nation in a campaign for world domination. Not to mention that there are already alarm bells that have long been reading that shout that America’s media is really a state media with corporate ownership. So, while I agree that these alarm bells should be raised across the country, they might be a bit hard to hear above the existing din.
Heck, I remember an America, that we all thought was kinda Great, where the whole town would come out and respond to just one alarm bell for one little ole building fire.
When I was young, Hollywood did a major movie production about General George Patton, and especially his time as a World War 2 US Army general in Europe. I recall this American Master of military strategy giving his ultimate in strategic thinking ….
“Hold ’em by the nose, and kick them in the ass!”
General Patton may have looked like a street Pimp with his pearl handled pistols, but he did know what it was like to be in the middle of a real fight. I wonder if the rich kid from the NY Penthouses learned anything like that?
At this point, it appears that just perhaps Iran has the USA and America’s 51st state held by the nose. The nose is called the Strait of Hormuz. The astounding thing is that the Pentagon has been planning this war ever since Carter, so how they heck did they not see the friggin’ Strait of Hormuz?
Iran did the most predictable thing in the world after a major war was begun against them by assassinating their leader. And the geniuses in the Pentagon did not see it coming. They are acting surprised! These are of course just a new generation of the geniuses in the Pentagon who led America into the Big Muddy of Vietnam. And its obvious that if anything they’ve only gotten stupider and more arrogant without the Soviets to keep them honest.
That’s not pearl, that’s ivory. Only a pimp in a Louisiana whorehouse uses a pearl handled revolver. Your comment is otherwise accurate.
Astute observation , pearl really ?, I agree .
As the saying goes .
You would complain if they hung you with a new rope
but know how to dress when in Rome