Trump's Disturbing Middle East Rhetoric--Again

Trump engaged in a fairly extended colloquy with the press yesterday. It was a mixed bag. Some of it was, if not exactly amusing, certainly bemusing—the Gulf of America? Does anyone actually care? What about the state of New Mexico—to be renamed next? Then there was the talk of war over Greenland and the Panama canal—which can’t actually accommodate our larger naval ships. I’m not saying the canal deal with Panama was smart, but going back on it—and especially with strong military or economic pressure—sends the wrong message to an entire continent that has long held reservations about the Yanquis and is growing in economic importance. OTOH, the larger perspective on the Canada/Greenland talk (and events!) is Trump’s apparent plan to decouple from Europe, at least as matters now stand. The rhetoric regarding the UK and German elections fits in there.

Then there was his return to previous rhetoric directed at unleashing “hell” in the Middle East—a prospect he said wouldn’t be good for anyone. He’s right about that—it wouldn’t be good for America—so what exactly is he planning? Is this payment on the debt he owes for campaign backing from Zionists (rank and file Jewish Americans, in fact, voted overwhelmingly, as usual, for the other genocide party)? Is there some sort of geopolitical quid pro quo going on here—a free hand with NATO for fealty to genocidal Israel? I don’t know.

As it happens, one of the first things I read yesterday was this:

Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

I don't think people have processed just how crazy this report published in Israel's Hayom newspaper (owned by the family of Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul) is: https://israelhayom.com/2023/11/29/senior-us-lawmakers-review-plan-that-conditions-aid-on-arab-countries-receiving-gazans/…

It describes how “senior US lawmakers review [a] plan linking Gaza refugee resettlement to US aid to Arab countries. The proposal, which reportedly has support from senior officials in both parties, calls on the US to condition foreign aid to Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, and Turkey on those countries accepting a certain number of refugees”.

In other words this is the US actively planning the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (with "support from senior officials in both parties"), by looking into tying aid to Arab countries to them receiving the refugees. Which obviously completely contradicts what the Biden administration is publicly saying on the matter, and violates just about every principle of international law.

As described in the report, "the plan even goes so far as to envision how many Gazan residents each of these countries will receive: one million in Egypt, half a million for Turkey, 250,000 for Iraq, and another 250,000 for Yemen".

Which totals to... the entirety of the Gazan population.

Senior US lawmakers review plan linking Gaza refugee resettlement to US aid to Arab countries

A new initiative submitted to the US Congress calls for conditioning American aid to Arab countries on their willingness to receive refugees from Gaza, Israel Hayom has learned. Follow Israel Hayom...

6:41 PM · Dec 5, 2023

This is America today, where you have to read Israeli media to find out what our elected “reps” are actually up to. We’ve seen this talk before, emanating from the directors of US foreign policy in Tel Aviv. On the one hand, I don’t doubt it’s being seriously proposed by the Zionists. On the other hand, Egypt has been adamantly opposed and it’s hard to see any prospect of Turkey accepting this in any shape or form. In fact, I would foresee massive opposition throughout the region. The one thing certain is that it would add to the humanitarian catastrophe and blacken the American image further.

Later yesterday I listened to videos of Danny Davis (a monologue) and Doug Macgregor (with the Judge). They both addressed both the Russia front of our war on the world as well as—at length—Trump’s Middle East rhetoric. I won’t be presenting a transcript of Davis’ Russia remarks, but I found them quite sensible. Likewise, Macgregor’s remarks about Russia and Europe generally will be truncated. Instead I’ll focus on the Middle East in the transcripts. However, since both Davis and Macgregor to mention Trump’s clown envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, I’ll offer one comment on that front.

It seems notable that Elon Musk continues to stir the geopolitical pot with rhetoric that would normally be considered highly inflammatory—German elections, UK elections, Greenland, Canada (he addressed Castreau as “girl” in a tweet). You name the place, he had something to say that was designed to upset the status quo. One presumes Trump is behind that strategy and that this fits into Trump’s planned remake of America’s place in the world. On the other hand, Kellogg—who was scheduled to fly to Kiev for talks—recently repeated his goofy strategy ideas re escalating against Russia. His trip was cancelled yesterday. Coincidence? Kellogg’s crazy talk the other day didn’t jibe at all well with Trump’s very conciliatory rhetoric directed at Russia yesterday. Which once again raises the question, Why all the wasted motion involved in appointing knuckleheads to ostensibly important positions if they’re just going to be contradicted? Something to watch.

With that, let’s turn to the fairly heavily edited transcripts, with Arnaud Bertrand’s tweet in mind. These will lead into further discussion:

Trump on Ukraine, Russia, Iran & Israel

Davis: The last thing I want to talk about here today, or show you a little bit of what [Trump] said, has to do with the situation in Gaza.

Trump: Well, do I have to define it for you? Look, all hell will break out if those hostages aren't back. I don't want to hurt your negotiation. If they're not back by the time I get into office all hell will break out in the Middle East and it will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don't have to say any more, but that's what it is and they should have given 'em' back a long time, they should have never taken them.

Davis: Yeah, listen, I don't know what he means by that. I mean, all you gotta do is is look at any of the latest film or headlines from the Gaza Strip and it's honestly hard to understand how it could be any more hell than it already is. I mean, it is a literal hellscape. Hardly any buildings are left. Entire sections of cities have been reduced to complete rubble or dust. Tens of thousands, scores of thousands of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands more have been wounded. Millions have been made homeless. Virtually the entirety of the Gaza Strip has been made homeless. Only a handful of people still live in their original homes. The quality of life is basically non-existent and--you want to make it more hell? Look, if if being a hellscape and bringing hell onto Hamas would have released the hostages that would have happened a long long time ago. Just threatening to kill everyone isn't going to work. It would already have worked because, believe me, Netanyahu's been trying that exact same thing for the duration of this around 15 months now war. It hasn't worked up to this point, it won't work when Trump comes in.

Next, Macgregor and the Judge—and pay attention to some of the things Mac says about Russia, because that will have a bearing on events:

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Will Germany leave NATO? Will Israel Invade Egypt?

Judge: I want to speak to you about the consequences of Germany potentially leaving NATO--depending upon the outcome of the German elections--and Israel potentially invading Egypt if it can look for an excuse to do so. But first breaking news. Down at Mar-A-Lago in the past three hours president Trump said he would not rule out American military use in Gaza in order to extricate Israeli hostages. I don't know if he's thought about this. He didn't mention anything about Palestinian hostages there. There are 10,000 Palestinian hostages. How dangerous is a statement like that?

Mac: We're already complicit in this tragedy in Gaza. What he's talking about identifies us with a cause that, frankly, I don't think Americans want to be identified with, and that is the destruction of a whole people, in Gaza and potentially the West Bank. That places us in a position of unwanted opposition to the entire Islamic world, and if people dismiss that out of hand as meaningless I think they need to step back and think very carefully about the implications of our soldiers shoulder-to shoulder with the Israelis involved in operations which most of the world that we live in regards as criminal.

It’s become increasingly clear that what Americans think doesn’t enter into our foreign policy—not when the Israel Lobby has spoken.

This war has run out of control. The Israelis are overextended they don't have forces that are required to be everywhere, and this is only going to get worse with the introduction of Israeli forces into Syria and potentially further in Lebanon along with the likely confrontation with Iran. So I'm sure that there's some pressure being applied by Netanyahu's friends in Washington to get American soldiers into the action, but I don't think it's in our national interest and I don't think it's going to help Israel very much.

[Video of Blinken denying that there's any genocide going on.]

I've long since lost any real respect for the man. The man does not represent the interest of the American people. He's not the Secretary of State for the United States--he's representing a foreign country with alien interests. We have no interest in the mass expulsion and murder of millions of Palestinian Arabs from their lands. That is not in the interest of the American people and we don't want to do it, and this is after decades of systematic propagandizing of the American people to ultimately hate Muslims, and Arabs in particular. I'm disappointed when President Trump says that he's Israel's best friend. I think that's dangerous. I think it's sending a signal to Netanyahu, 'I'll give you even more than what old Joe gave you.' If he wants to be Israel's best friend he ought to be interested in essentially de-escalating and disengaging. This is not the time to escalate. Israel is already overstretched militarily, economically it's in ruins, it has no chance of holding all of the terrain that it aspires to conquer, and it's amassing enemies at a rate that boggles the mind.

Judge: Do you think Israel will look for an excuse to invade Egypt?

Mac: I think the Israelis are greatly concerned about Egypt because they understand that everything depends upon our unconditional support for whatever [Israel] wants to do. They also know that their force as it is today is exhausted but they're looking at Egypt and they're really very concerned about General Sisi's longevity. Frankly speaking, General Sisi who rules Egypt was installed in large part by us against the Muslim Brotherhood, which is led by Mr Erdogan in Turkey. A man named Morsi had won the election in Egypt and we decided that it was not in the interest of the United States States, Israel, and and the West for a member of the Muslim Brotherhood to rule Egypt. [Morsi] won an election and we were unhappy with the outcome and ultimately there was a coup--for all intents and purposes--subsequently validated or legitimated by another election that obviously was tainted, but the bottom line is that we got what we thought we wanted. We have bankrolled General Sisi and his regime. He's not the only one. That's also true for King Abdullah in Jordan. But right now Sisi's position in Egypt is very fragile, and the 100 million people of Egypt are desperately unhappy at the failure of Egypt and the other Arab states to raise any hand whatsoever against Israel in view of its mass murder and expulsion campaign in Gaza. If you get a new government that is probably either the Muslim Brotherhood or close to it and then the Suez Canal falls into the hands of people who are ostensibly enemies of Israel, the United States, and the West, so there is some thinking going on about intervening in Egypt to seize the canal if it looks as though Sisi is going to be run out of power. We have a different set of circumstances today [than in 1956]. The Israel Lobby controls the United States government and it also wields powerful influence inside London and Paris. It's not impossible that the French and the British could be persuaded to compensate for the lack of Israeli Ground Force in seizing control of the canal. This of course would would be adding insult to injury on a strategic scale that's hard to even describe. The rest of the world will be horrified.

Judge: How unstable is NATO today and how would that instability be exacerbated if the United States or Germany withdrew?

First of all, without Germany there is no NATO. It is indispensable to the survival of not only NATO but the European Union, and I would argue that both organizations are in very fragile condition. I think we're going to see a rise ring tide of German nationalism that charts a fundamentally new course, and that course will take Germany back to where it spent most of its time over the last 300 years, as a strategic partner for Russia.

I remember in 2019 and 2020 discussing these things when I was in the Trump Administration. I actually wrote a memorandum that said, 'Whatever you do, stop treating the Nordstream 2 as some sort of security threat to the United States or Germany, because it isn't.' But everyone insisted that it was and said this would make Germany permanently dependent upon Russia. Well, we destroyed it, we destroyed the economy, and we destroyed industry in Germany as a result, and now we're going to see the Germans make a 180 degree turn to the east.

Europeanizing NATO has to happen--that's something they've got to do. We need to step back from it and that involves a reduction of our profile, a reduction in our forces over there. This is the kind of thing that we had an opportunity in 2021 and 2022 with the Russians to discuss a comprehensive reexamination of the security structure in Europe, because we knew then as we know now that you can't have a discussion of European security without Russian participation. You cannot have a discussion of what happens in Europe and its future economically or militarily without Berlin. Yet we act as though no one matters but Washington. That's wrong.

Judge: General Keith Kellogg, who president Trump has indicated he wants to be his principal emissary and adviser on Ukraine and Russia, sounded the other day like he had just had breakfast with Tony Blinken. He is reported to have said--it has been reported and not denied--that if Putin doesn't discuss quickly the concept of a ceasefire we'll send more ammunition, military gear, and equipment to Ukraine. How crazy is that?

Mac: It's worse than crazy. There are three things. First of all we are risking a direct confrontation with Russia. We don't understand and don't care to listen to people who tell us that the Russians are at the precipice of going to war against us. In other words, they're asking themselves, 'What's the point of trying to talk to the Americans? There's no evidence that they will keep their word, there's no evidence that they will honor any agreement we make, so under these circumstances why not just mobilize the country and strike to the West all the way to the Polish border?' This is frightening. It's not something that the Russians want to do, but when you hear the kind of thing that you just mentioned uttered by General Kellogg, that suggests that they may not have any choice. Again it's a failure to admit that Russia has any legitimate interest whatsoever. They do have legitimate interests and we ought to recognize that. We need to stop treating them as the redheaded stepchild that has no rights, no opportunity to speak, and then we also need to look at Europe and understand Europe is rapidly slipping from our grasp.

Interesting point: As mentioned above, Kellogg was scheduled to go to Kiev, but all of a sudden that was canceled or delayed. What happened? Typically a fair amount of planning would go into a trip like that.

Extended discussion of Blinken and some Air Force guy claiming that we can have a Korean style ceasefire with Ukraine on a path to join NATO follows.

If we look back on that track record they were 100% incorrect. The Russians have won this war. It's not a question of can the Russians move further west--the question is will they and have they decided to do so and, if they do, how far will they go? I think that this line could move right up to the Dnieper river and it could eventually include Odessa as well as Kharkov.

A lot of people went out and voted for President Trump--I certainly did--and I think everyone who did voted for him for the same reason--because they saw in him someone who would disrupt the money flow. Colonel Leighton [USAF] is on contract with CNN and CNN's positions are very clear. They are divorced from reality. In fact the foreign minister of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, as well as President Putin have made it very clear there will be no Korean style outcome from this war. We need to understand that they're in it for the long haul. They want their country to be secure. They are not going to allow rump Ukraine to metastasize in the future into this cancerous tumor aimed at Russia. They want peace, they want an end of the war. They're not interested in marching any further west but, again, people need to take them seriously. If they see no alternative to it they will do it. They're prepared to fight and the Russian people are squarely behind President Putin. Forget all this nonsense about regime change and people are unhappy with this or that policy that President Putin represents. I can tell you the Russian population is very definitely behind him on this and we should not underestimate that. So I would just dismiss that [regime change in Russia fantasy]. It's worse than fantastic--that is very dangerous thinking.

Okay, what we’’re left with is Trump seemingly making big plans to reshape our whole relationship with NATO—to include Canada, Greenland, and possibly the UK. But at the same time he’ll be confronted with a Russia that is victorious on the battlefield and is deeply skeptical of American intentions. It doesn’t stop there. The Middle East could be on the verge of a major conflagration, and Trump is playing with matches. And then he has domestic politics to take into account.

By all accounts Israel is pressing hard for the US to attack Iran. Which brings us to an article on that point at Axios. I’ve omitted the sub points. And I’ll put two caveats up front. First, the article is by a rabid—I think that’s the right word—Zionist. Barak Ravid is obviously pushing for a US military strike. Second, sourcing to “Trump advisers” could mean just about anything, ranging from Gorka to Gabbard. That leaves us with no real way to weight the reliability of the article. Still, it does, at a minimum, reflect the heavy pressure Trump’s Zionist funding wing is exerting on him.

Iran 2025: Nuclear crisis awaits Trump

Iran's recent nuclear advances give President-elect Trump a crucial decision to make in his first months in office: Try to neutralize the threat through negotiations and pressure, or order a military strike.

Why it matters: Trump's decision in 2018 to withdraw from an Obama-era nuclear deal prompted Tehran to accelerate its nuclear program, such that it's now a de facto "nuclear threshold state." Officials and diplomats from the U.S., EU and Israel all told Axios they expect Trump to face an Iran crisis in 2025.

State of play: Trump and his advisers are planning to quickly return to the "maximum pressure" campaign they conducted against Iran between 2018 and 2020.

Behind the scenes: Several Trump advisers privately concede Iran's program is now so far along that the strategy might not be effective. That makes a military option a real possibility.

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The flipside: Others close to Trump expect that he'll seek a deal before considering a strike.

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What they're saying: "Anything can happen," Trump told Time in November, when asked about the possibility of war with Iran. "It's a very volatile situation."

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Driving the news: Despite all of the crises on the global agenda, a senior diplomat who attended a virtual meeting of the G7 countries two weeks ago tells Axios it ended with the conclusion that Iran would be the primary issue to contend with in 2025.

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The bottom line: Trump will take office with fewer options to contain or destroy Iran's program than he had in 2017, and less time to decide.

There are all sorts of wild cards in all this. Turkey is one, of course, but a major wild card is Russia—which will be signing a defense pact with Iran on January 17th. Military feasability remains dicey, and will become much more dicey with Russian involvement. China enters into this equation, as well. A shutdown of most of the Persian Gulf oil exports could also happen, shutting down much of the world economy. The US isn’t in any way prepared for a major war involving US forces directly, and there are a lot of things that could go wrong very quickly—the unipolar moment is over. It all comes down to Trump, and whether he’s willing to blow up his new administration on Miriam Adelson and Benjamin Netanyahu’s say so.