After losing the war, a major U.S.-Israel row is coming to a head with the fate of Mideast peace and the global economy on the line. With Ray McGovern and Patrick Lawrence. Saturday 8 pm EDT.
Guests: Ray McGovern and Patrick Lawrence. Host: Joe Lauria. Producer: Cathy Vogan.
Welcome to the World This Week
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
The United States has surrendered to Iran in the unpovoked war of agression it launched against Iran.
Donald Trump is trying to spin it, but the defeat is clear for all to see.
He had to do it to save himself in November, and to save the world economy, which he admitted was just weeks from going off the cliff if the Strait of Hormuz was not opened.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened,” he said at the G7 summit this week, explaining why he signed the deal with Iran. He said he didn’t want to be “the next Herbert Hoover.”
But Israel says it’s not a party to the deal.
And it holds one big card to destroy it all: Lebanon.
Iran is dead serious about Israel withdrawing from Lebanon and delayed the start of negotiations on the MoU because of it.
So top U.S. officials are unloading on Israel in ways almost never heard in Washington.
Donald Trump scolded Netanyahu for attacking Lebanon: “What the fuck are you doing?,” he said, according to a confirmed Axios report. “You’re fucking crazy.” He added: “You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” ”
At the G-7, Trump said: “Bibi has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon… I’m not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and with Hezbollah. … You don’t have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that’s from Hezbollah… You can do a little softer touch, Bibi.”
He added: “We have to keep him a little bit sane… They have a lot of respect for me, and so they do as I say.”
Vice President J.D. Vance said this week: “Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time… If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.
“You’re a country of nine million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”
Even Hillary Clinton got into the act: She accused Netanyahu this week of being “obsessed” with going to war with Iran and said he “bamboozled” Trump into starting a war with Iran that the United States had definitively lost.
These are extraordinary, even historic, though not unique, U.S. criticisms of Israel.
Under intense pressure Netanyahu agreed on Friday to another cease-fire with Hezbollah, which is already breaking down.
But while the Iran deal could save Trump’s bacon in November, it could cook Netanyahu’s by October.
Netanyahu is being skewered at home for losing the war and losing the peace.
But he’s still in charge. And he has lots of leverage to destroy the whole thing, including the Middle East and the world economy.
Joe Lauria is the editor-in-chief of Consortium News.
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We can only stop this insanity by cutting off all funds to Israel. We also need to pay reparations for the Iranian school girls killed with our bombs. And to all the families whose relatives have been murdered with our tax money over the last decades.
To begin oil becomes he military strategic resource of WWI;
An OPEC oil embargo threatened B-52 fuel for Vietnam and US gas station lines form
The Shah is helped out of the way for Islamic ventures a long with Afghanistan and a Saudi King is assassinated by a lone gunmen.
Now after Iran faked us out with embassy hostage situation they also help usher in Reagan with an election year deal.
Now we try regime change in Iran again and we get hit with another oil embargo as result of trying to control everyone’s access to a strategic resource once again fails due to addiction to 20th century thinking.
To me, the 20th century was when some more advanced ideas about peace and society tried to break out. As much as a failure as the League of Nations and the United Nations have proven to be, both were the result of newer thinking in the 20th century. What you are citing appears to be more the 19th century thinking of Clausewitz and other Prussians, with some 16th century Machiavelli thrown in.
PS … both the League of Nations and the United Nations carry the reason for their failure in their names. Both are based on the notion of nationalism. While unfortunately, their lofty goals required moving beyond nationalism. I wonder if we’ll get another chance?
The best thing I’ve seen on the net since I started out on the net around 23 years ago. Thanks Joe, Ray, and Patrick!
Bull Shit! Next week the orange Jabba the Trump will be praising the SOB Nutty yahoo. It’s not Trump or Nutty yahoo that is crazy, It is American Right, MAGA and Center Right sweeties all of whom don’t know if they are shot, fucked, powder bunt or snake bit.
Americans are so in love with Israel and Trump that the two could spit in their faces and tell them it’s raining, and they would stick out their tongues and beg for more..
It is so interesting to watch the Dems reveal their true nature, as they attack Trump from his right for being ‘too weak’ on Iran. The Democrats do not attack for an infamous Pearl Harbor-style attack to launch an illegal war. The Democrats do not attack for an illegal assassination of Iran’s leader. The Democrats do not attack for the war crime of attacking the school dorm at Minab. The Democrats attack Trump for making peace with Iran.
The Democrats welcome this as a change of pace to their attacking Trump for even talking to Russia and thus disrupting the Democrats’ war with Russia. It is so fascinating to watch all the Dem former officials come out and scream in pain at the notion of peace. Peace anywhere is apparently highly offensive to the Dems. Apparently nothing makes the visitors to the Obama Library cry like peace breaking out.
Not only was it easy for the modern Dems to continue many of Trump’s policies during the interim where the voters had tossed Trump out. This was true ranging from Trump’s tax cuts for corporations to immigration policies. Now we see that it is very easy for these modern Dems to move to Trump’s right to attack Trump from the right. This is of course a continuation of Obama’s 2008 campaign plan where he told the oligarchs that he could manage the American Empire better than Dubya had been doing.
THANK YOU, once again, for sharing your expertise!
i find every episode extremely insightful and take
much pleasure in each one, despite the saddening,
infuriating subject matter …
re. mr. mc govern’s worries pertaining to the israeli PM’s
use of nuclear weapons “in extremis”: did not scott ritter
explain, in a previous episode, that the “samson option”
is merely hypothetical? he pointed to seymour hersh’s 1991
book w that title, sounded quite convinced that the option is,
in fact, a non-option.
then again, who, at the time the book was written,
would have thought that israelis would take their genocide
of the palestianians to such unbelievably extreme levels,
and with CONstant impunity, too?
as to the amount of fear-/ warmongery in my country,
i can only hope that the young generation will remain
firmly unenthusiastic abt joining the army, which the
current chancellor [sch]merz* intends to turn into the
EU’s largest conventional army. how? by letting VW
join wartime production bc they failed to excel in cars?
weren’t we there before? and $till haven’t had €nough?
__________
* i see schmerz + merz as one and the same pain.
but, of cour$€, it’s not him alone who takes the country
down the wrong roads again.
Ray, please tell us the name of the book Mr. Ball wrote about the Israeli lobby that has been pulled from the market. I’d like to see if we can find it. I’m interested in reading it. Mr Ball was someone’s assistant. I’ll have to listen again to get the details.
Benjamín Netanyahu, sea convertido en “un lobo solitario” en el contexto internacional”.