Except Netanyahu?
“Nobody knows what I’m going to do,” President Trump said Wednesday morning in regard to a potential bunker buster strike by the US Air Force on Iran’s Fordow enrichment facility south of Tehran.
To which Democrats, never-Trumper Republicans, pundits and podcasters to the left of Joe Rogan and importers trying to figure out our tariff policy are muttering, “including Donald J. Trump.”
No question, by January 21 Trump had abandoned fixing everything on “Day One,” his single-day dictatorship, with a set of hairpin policy switchbacks to keep us guessing. This is The Art of the Deal.
The Dealmaker in Chief already is pining for the negotiations he thought he had teed up a couple of weeks ago that would have stopped Iran’s nuclear weapons program and potentially do for President Obama’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action what the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement did for the North American Free Trade Agreement five years ago.
But there have been two constants for all of Trump 47 so far. One is Vladimir Putin, who, even after Trump got angry when he violated Moscow’s own ceasefire with Ukraine a couple of weeks ago, had Trump on the phone for an hour last Sunday, according to Politico.
The other constant is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After Netanyahu launched missiles against Iran last week, he had Trump’s State Department vacillating on whether our president knew about the offensive and may or may not have blessed it ahead of time.
Pundits argue over how exposed the US might be to Iranian retaliation even as State has closed its embassy in Tel Aviv out of an abundance of caution. But seriously – does it matter whether the Trump White House is implicated in the impetus for Israel’s attacks?
Iran’s leaders have implicated the US in every offense against Iran since the CIA played a major role in the 1953 coup overthrowing democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh for the brutal authoritarian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to preserve Western oil interests.
This is not to say that the Islamic revolution of 1978-79 did not make things worse for Iran’s own people. Netanyahu and Trump are on-point in suggesting Iran’s war with Israel could free a long-oppressed citizenry there.
But Iran’s dictators would have lumped the US in with Israel on this war, no matter Trump’s actions, or lack of. And Netanyahu, who adores Trump publicly, has been emboldened to attack Iran as Israel’s military continues to “succeed” in Gaza. Just as Netanyahu seeks to prevent any serious consideration of a two-state solution, his end-game in Iran certainly will include regime-change, and the Trump administration certainly will go along with this.
The only question now is whether Donald Jr. and Eric have begun to envision a Trump Hotel in Tehran.
Lassa is founding editor of The Hustings.