Blame it on Nicolás Maduro – the Venezuelan president made it look easy. Plots to take over Canada and Greenland failed because both were too nice and had too many friends.
But nobody liked Maduro. He was a genuine bad guy. So, with barely a shot fired, he was quickly in chains and on his way to downsized federal housing in Brooklyn.
Nobody likes Iran or its leaders, who are even worse than Maduro. US President Donald Trump was convinced that he should liberate the poor, oppressed Iranians and protect the world by decapitating the Islamic regime with a massive show of force. What’s more, it has nearly as much oil as Venezuela.
Overthrowing two malevolent regimes and tapping their oil, which combined account for over half a trillion barrels of proven reserves, would be a great victory for a great leader of a great nation. The greatest in history, he’d say.
A leader who is convinced “he knows more than the generals” doesn’t need plans, only his own instincts, because “my gut tells me more than anybody’s brain.”
It worked on the first shot when Trump’s junior partner, Israel, decapitated the Iranian regime by taking out the supreme leader and several of his top henchmen. It worked until the enemy hit back in ways and places they weren’t supposed to. Our overconfident leaders did not bother telling American civilians to flee the war zone before the bombs started falling.
Trump may have been a bit premature in declaring victory: “It was over in the first hour.” Like a Timex watch, Iran took a licking and kept on ticking. By the end of the second week, things began falling apart.
Lack of planning over Strait of Hormuz
Trump didn’t expect Tehran to close the Strait of Hormuz and trigger a global oil disruption. That’s when he demanded the Europeans and others rush in to reopen the vital passage. No thanks, they said. You never consulted us before you started this war, so don’t expect us to clean up your mess.
The petulant president responded with seemingly empty threats to withdraw all his forces and leave everyone to fend for themselves.
Back at home, things began unraveling and could not be quelled by his boasts that he was getting tired of so much winning. His base was cracking.
The shot heard around the world was fired by a MAGA loyalist whom Trump had picked to be his director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent.
Kent announced he could not “in good conscience” support Trump’s war. Despite the president’s insistent declarations, he said, Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation.”
Kent, who has been linked to white supremacists and neo-Nazis, said the Jews were responsible for this war.
To Kent, “it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” It was “the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war” that cost so many American lives, he charged.
He wasn’t the first one to point that finger. On March 2, the third day of the war, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio tossed Israel under the proverbial bus.
He told reporters, “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” so the US had no choice but to follow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lead.
Trump quickly slapped back at Rubio and pulled Bibi out from under the bus, saying he’d made the “go” decision himself. If the war doesn’t go as Trump wants, however, he will need someone to blame and could roll out the bus again.
Kent, a Christian nationalist and conspiracy theorist, joins a list of right-wing Israel bashers that includes Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Meanwhile, Trump was spooked when gasoline passed $4 a gallon, and fissures began appearing among Republicans. People were feeling the pinch of rising prices caused by Trump’s war, and were upset that their leader was starting more foreign wars instead of ending them.
The TACO – “Trump Always Chickens Out” – effect began kicking in. He quickly undercut his own war strategy by giving Iran more money to build more missiles and to Russia, which is helping Iran kill and wound more Americans.
Russia is not only helping Iran kill more Americans, but the new income will help Vladimir Putin prolong his war in Ukraine, thanks to Trump’s generosity.
By lifting oil sanctions on both rogue states, America’s president is also giving Iran more money than it got from all the sanctions US president Barack Obama lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump later tore up, according to Edward Fishman, author of Chokepoints, a book about economic warfare.
Gas prices will go down. Not as much or as soon as Trump says. But many other things will cost more for a while. Democrats may capitalize on that as they campaign on the affordability issue and against the Trump war tax.
Kent’s bombshell resignation fed the rising tide of antisemitism on the Right that Trump has been trying to ignore.
Blaming the Jews exposed Jew hatred on the Right and among the MAGA cult and “America First” notion nativists. It also exposed the fraud of the administration’s sham crackdown on antisemitism as a transparent excuse to attack liberal universities and institutions.
Kent also exposed another threat to the nation’s well-being – negligent vetting. Screening candidates for Trump administration posts focuses on one thing: blind loyalty, not quality. And that fealty is expected not only from office seekers but more alarmingly from Republicans in the US Senate who have shirked their constitutional responsibility to advise and consent to nominations.
They seem to learn nothing. Any doubts about this were erased by the ill-suited pugnacious ex-MMA fighter, Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who many consider unqualified by experience, temperament, and the Senate’s dimmest bulb, to become the next secretary of homeland security.
He’s just the latest in a frighteningly long list of unqualified, sub-mediocre – potentially dangerous – cabinet secretaries like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Howard Lutnick, Lee Zeldin, Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, Keri Lake, and Kristi Noem, who was fired not for incompetence (deserved) but because she embarrassed Trump.
Trump wasn’t about to repeat his first administration mistakes when some uppity folks took their oaths seriously and had the temerity to disagree with the supreme leader. No Jim Mattis, Mark Esper, Jeff Sessions, John Bolton, Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, or Dan Coats this time. Speaking truth to power is treasonous.
As the war drags on, Trump may have found a diversion from what’s being dubbed “Operation Epstein Fury”: he plans to deploy ICE agents, known for their people skills and sensitivity, to help screen passengers at busy airports. Buckle your seat belts.