Update: Trump, Russia, Iran

Because it’s all connected.

Yesterday I focused on Trump's phone call with Putin. I expressed broad agreement with Prof Mearsheimer's take, which was that this is just Trump "flailing around." From the start of Trump's new admnistration it has been apparent that Trump is on board with continuing the war on Russia, just with slightly different optics. Whereas Biden was openly hostile to both Russia and Putin personally, Trump campaigned once again as a peace candidate--albeit with his usual tough guy pose thrown in. In reality, Trump's talk of "peace" is just an attempt to gaslight both his voters and the Russians. Trump doesn't want peace--certainly not in any sense that woud be recognized as such by Russians. Given that the war on Russia using Ukraine as a proxy has developed into an enormous failure for the Anglo-Zionist Empire--both militarily and economically. Europe cannot hold up their side economically or militarily, and Trump has now embarked on an enormous gamble by running up our debts to astronomical levels to rebuild our military--a pipedream, given the state of our industrial base and the endemic procurement corruption of our military.

Here's another bit of reality. Putin knows all of this. In particular, Putin knows that it's very much in Russia's--and China's--interest for the war in Ukraine to continue. The Ukrainians made the idiotic decision to throw their national existence away by backing the Anglo-Zionist attempt to destroy Russia once and for all. Putin may not want to kill fellow East Slavs, but if that's what it takes to preserve Russia, he'll do it. But this is far more than a war of attrition against Ukraine. This is an economic and military war of attrition against the Anglo-Zionists. That's why--short of a negotiated settlement in which Russia is handed all of its demands--Putin will continue the war. Trump's attempts to sucker Putin into a "cessation of hostilities" will therefore fail, because Putin knows it's in Russia's interest to run down the US militarily--as is happening--as well as to force Trump into disastrous fiscal policies that will weaken the rule of King Dollar. Predictably, Trump is belly aching that Putin won't be played for a sucker--this is the guy who made the war in Ukraine possible and has started wars with Yemen and Iran complaining that Putin won't play along with a fake "peace":

Megatron @Megatron_ron

5h

JUST IN:

 Trump says he is 'disappointed with Putin' and that Putin doesn't want to end the war

I am very disappointed with the conversation with Putin. It seems to me that Putin is simply no longer there. I don't see that he wants to stop. And that's very bad, he doesn't want to end the war.

Given the above, what in the world was Trump thinking when he let the Jewish Nationalists and the US generals that they own talk him into a major regional war? The never ending Middle East wars will not improve Trump's deal making position with Putin and Xi. In any event, after Trump once more revealed himself as a double crosser vis a vis Iran, why would Putin and Xi enter into any less than ironclad deal with Trump? Let's continue with a summary of Prof Mearsheimer's argument that Trump has walked into another forever war.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Unpacking Netanyahu's next-steps. Why the DC visit w/ Trump?

Mearsheimer argues convinclngly that Netanyahu is coming to DC to keep Trump on board with the war on Iran. Doug Macgregor has often remarked that Trump seems easily impressed with "tough guys" like "Gorilla" Kurilla and "Raisin'" Caine, the two generals who (with strong Mossad support) were instrumental in talking Trump into what Trump apparently thought would be a "one and done" "brilliant strike". Instead, argues Mearsheimer, Trump has foolishly walked into another forever war. The goal has always been to destroy Iran as a possible regional power center. That didn't happen and is now probably less likely to happen--Larry Johnson and Scott Ritter expressed amazement at how little Israel and the US military (or at least the two generals) understood about Iran's capabilities. Israel wants to turn Iran into another Syria. It took a long time to destroy Syria and: 1) Iran is a MUCH harder nut than was Syria, both politically and militarily, 2) Syria was destroyed with direct help from the US and Turkey (as well as additional Western countries), 3) Russia and China will be pretty much all in to help Iran. It will be very hard to reduplicate Syria in Iran.

Netanyahu's arrival in DC is just one more indicator--for anyone who hasn't noticed--that Israel is utterly dependent on the US. The pretense that Israel could fight its own wars has been definitively revealed as the fantasy it always was. Netanyahu's job is to prevent US support for forever wars on Israel's behalf--and this war on Iran has all the potential to morph into a global war--doesn't erode. To do that Netanyahu will butter up Trump's self image as a wannabe strong man who needs to be tough with Iran. Iran has handed Netanyahu a card to play. Because Iran has--justifiably--kicked the IAEA out of Iran, Israel will spin all sorts of narratives about what this means, that we no longer know what Iran is doing. On the one hand, Russia and China may look for a way to defuse this situation by talking to Iran, but on the other hand Trump stupidly walked right into this--Iran's reaction, given that Trump should have known Iran couldn't be defeated or "obliterated" so easily, was readily foreseeable. Currently Trump is telling crowds that Iran is "desperate" to talk to him. Uh, they're too busy talking to Putin and Xi to waste time on Trump the double-crosser.

Worse, it's quite possible that Iran will ignore Russian and Chinese advice and will develop nuclear weapons in self defense. Mearsheimer argues that, if that happens, a really big war becomes highly likely.

As I've said before, Israel is a giant albatross around our neck, both strategically and morally. I mean, as a result of what's going on in Gaza, we're complicit in a genocide. And from a strategic point of view, we're now in another forever war, this one involving Iran. Furthermore, it's more likely than ever that Iran is going to get nuclear weapons, and if that happens, it's going to do enormous damage to the NPT [Non Proliferation Treaty--Iran, but not Israel, is a signatory]. Furthermore, supporting Israel the way we support it has done great damage to the international legal system that we set up. ... We're running down all sorts of military stock piles in this war in the Middle East and, of course, in Ukraine as well. ... I think the Russians and the Chinese understand that they have a vested interest in helping Iran buttress its defenses and improve its inventory of ballistic missiles. I don't think the Russians and the Chinese want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, but I do think that they would like to see Iran possess a highly potent ballistic missile force and also have air defenses that could shoot down Israeli aircraft and Israeli missiles as they attack Iran.

To fill out this picture, let's move on to Judge Nap's second video of the day (yesterday):

INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & RITTER (for McGovern this week) 3-July

They begin with a discussion of Trump's phone call with Putin. They all agreed that Putin simply didn't back down from what his position has been all along. It's all about the "root causes", and there will be no end until those are addressed. Meanwhile, American munitions stocks are being run down to "alarming" levels, and Russia has exposed the inability of America to ramp up production to the levels needed to conduct war on an industrial scale. Then Ritter pointed out that it looks like Putin and Trump spent a lot of time talking about Iran:

I think Trump is waking up to the fact that Iran is a problem that isn't going to be solved unilaterally by the United States militarily. That to avoid the kind of war that Trump promised the American people he wasn't going to get entangled with, he he'll need help from Russia.

Of course, an Iranian win is very much in Russia's favor, so any help Putin offers will be offered from that perspective. My guess is that Trump is doing more of what Mearsheimer described as "flailing around." Trying to move Putin off Putin's well thought out position. Not gonna happen. LJ makes the point that when Putin initially called for a diplomatic solution to Trump's war on Iran, Trump responded stupidly:

Remember about 10 days ago when Donald Trump was asked a question about Putin and he--smartass that he is--popped off: "I told Putin he needs to worry about his own problem." I.e., We don't need his help on Iran. Oh yeah? How about now? Now he needs Russia's help with Iran to try to keep Iran in the IAEA program. And Russia's attitude is, 'Sure, we'll help, but there's going to be a price for the help.’

The discussion then moves on to the question of whether Iran was actually "days away" from a nuclear weapon. This starts with a clip of Senator Kennedy, but for our purposes it starts at about the 14:00 minute mark. Scott gives his presentation--I've heard it several times before--that Iran misplayed this whole thing by going to 60% enrichment. Scott's view is that, while Iran apparently thought this would force the US to come back to JCPOA. For 20 years, he says, Iran was reliably opposed to a nuclear weapon, but starting in October 2024 they began describing Iran as a "thresshold state" and stating that they had all the components necessary to assemble a nuclear device. The final enrichment process would, in fact, only take days. Scott goes into a fair amount of detail on this, so I recommend a listen if you're not familiar with this. He quotes the ubiquitous Prof Marandai as saying, in a debate with Ritter:

"Yes, we have positioned ourselves to be a nuclear weapons threshold state." Boom. End of story. Once you're a threshold state, you might as well be a nuclear state.

Scott then goes on to explain Tulsi's testimony, which was very careful and nuanced. However, Scott then goes on to explain Trump's foolish double cross. The Iranians had apparently thought that by moving to the 60% enrichment level they had established a position that could be negotiated away. They were, in fact, prepared to do exactly that--in essence, return to the JCPOA:

Ritter: We know that around June 10th Iran had committed to signing a treaty which would ... verifiably commit them to not ever having a nuclear weapon. They would allow US inspectors to participate in the IAEA inspections and to participate in the verification of the no nuclear weapons. They would get rid of their 60% enriched uranium, commit to a 3.75% cap, reduce the number of centrifuges they had. The bottom line is the Iranians said any fear you had that we posed an imminent threat will now be resolved. It would be gone.

Judge: All of those terms that you just articulated were blown away by Trump, figuratively and literally on June 21st.

Ritter: On June 12th and 13th. [When Trump greenlit the Israeli sneak attack]

This leads to a discussion of where Iran will go from here. Ritter is of the view--perhaps shared by Russia and China--that the best thing to do is to get back to 3.7% enrichment and some sort of inspection regime, fixing the problems of the past inspection regime (allowing any inteface with Mossad, for example). He also cautions Iran against loose talk about going nuclear. CIA and Mossad, he says, have a Mission Center in Azerbaijan. They will know if that happens, and that invites another attack, perhaps with tactical nukes.

I will interject myself that this may all point to one of the sticking points in the Russia - Iran security agreement. For various reasons, I suspect that Russia--while completely open to a mutual defense pact with Iran--may have stipulated that the pact would not operate if Iran went nuclear. Russia and China will still be more than happy to help Iran upgrade its air defense, but nuclear weapons will remain a sticking point. Remember--Putin is an international lawyer and is not a double crosser, like Trump. Putin is fully aware that Iran is a signatory of the NPT. He'll want to be on the right side of international law and not enter into a treaty with a country that talks about breaking treaty obligations--this is a distinguishing factor between Iran and North Korea. And Putin won't want a nuclear war on Russia's borders.

At this point Larry emphasizes that, regardless, Netanyahu will never be satisfied until Iran is destroyed. This is true, and important to keep in mind. It's all about regime change.

Moving forward, Scott argues that Netanyahu is having to walk a tight rope. Iran did serious damage to Israel, Israel is scared. So how can Israel maintain pressure on Iran without provoking another war that it can’t win, but can lose? From this point on—about the 23:00 minute mark—Scott presents a detailed explanation about how Iran only used it’s older missiles. I had thought that Iran may have used one of its most modern missiles, but Scott addresses that and states that that did not happen. What all this means, of course, is that next time—assuming that Mearsheimer is correct, that it’s basically just a matter of time—will be different. The internal security situation in Iran will be different. The quantity and quality of Russian and Chinese support will be different—Anglo-Zionist ability to use Azerbaijani and Iraqi Kurdish staging areas may not hold. The aggressiveness of the Iranian response will likely also be very different—not just use of its most modern missiles but also willingness to attack vulnerable Western tanker aircraft, without which Israeli attacks become largely impossible. Larry follows that up with an explanation of the strategic problems that Israel and the US ignored—the vulnerability of Israel—both in terms of military as well as civilian infrastructure—compared to Iran’s enormous size and ability to take punishment and dish it right back in massive amounts.

Basically Iran hit [Israel’s] equivalent of the Pentagon, their equivalent of the CIA, their equivalent of the FBI, their equivalent of the National Security Agency, as well as their equivalent of our national laboratories. So yeah, Iran inflicted some serious damage on Israel.

Scott then finishes with an account of Israel’s long history of selling sensitive US military and intel technology to Russia and China. This is something I touched on in a comment recently, but Scott goes into more detail. He starts with the the proposed bill advanced by two Jewish Nationalist in Congress to turn over B2s to Israel, and continues:

To turn this over to the Israelis--who have a history of selling our technology and our intelligence to China and Russia--I point people to the Lavi fighter program back in the 1980s--F-16 technology, test bed. We said, 'this is F-16 technology. We don't want to share it with anybody.' Next thing you know, a Lavi is in China at a research and development facility being reverse engineered by the Chinese [think: Chengdu J-10] because the Israelis gave it to them for favors from the Chinese. Jonathan Polard stole the crown jewels of the US intelligence community. Basically, the Bible that had all of the codes around the world, all the frequencies that we were monitoring, what we were getting from them, what their encryption was, how we could break the encryption, all of this, which systems collected it. He stole that, gave it to the Israelis-- who then turned around and sold it to the Russians or the Soviets in favor of you know immigration benefits [to flood Israel with millions of Russian Jews to counter the demographic problem of the Arabs]. So Israel has betrayed us across the board. They spy on us. Obama White House was infiltrated with the Israeli listening devices, the whole thing.

One last thing that confirms that the Israel - Iran war isn’t over, no matter what Trump may think:

DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics

22h

 Sources now reporting that sites in Kirkuk and Erbil, including the international airport, have been struck by drones.

Explosion near Erbil Airport moments before a Beirut–Erbil flight (UBD706) was due to land.

The aircraft was diverted mid-descent, and the road to Harir Air Base was later shut down.

Kirkuk and Erbil are in the Iraqi Kurdistan region, from which many of the attacks on Iran were launched. Mossad, CIA, and MI6 have operated freely there for decades. What goes around comes around? Perhaps Shiite militias are involved in these drone attacks? Recall that Doug Macgregor described Iraq as “a force multiplier” for Iran.