The mullocracy doesn’t understand Trump Rules.
My high school had a problem. During the Baby Boom, they built a beautiful new campus that housed a parallel high school. There was great competition between the New Trier East Indians and the New Trier West Cowboys. Then, the number of kids started going down. The situation was dire enough that the schools had to be combined, but how? One of the critical decisions was regarding the name of the mascot. It was ruled that it could be neither Cowboys nor Indians. I had a PE teacher who had gone to the original New Trier in the late 1930s. I remember him holding a lacrosse stick and telling us that it was pure communism that we weren’t allowed to choose the original Indians name going forward. A friend’s father, who was a teacher at the school, suggested “Trevian,” the name of people from Trier, Germany. And it stuck. Since those days, they rented out the new campus, thought to sell it, took it back, and have it today as a freshman campus.
The idea of a freshman-only new campus started in my time. You can see the school making a cameo in the John Candy comedy, “Uncle Buck.” The 1901 vintage old campus held grades 10-12. One effect of this arrangement was that freshmen generally had no one around to slam them into lockers or beat the daylights out of them for not handing over their lunch money. Everyone noticed that they seemed a bit uppity, and when they joined the big leagues as sophomores, they required some remedial butt-kicking to explain to them the normal order of the world. I recalled the freshmen with chutzpah when I thought about Islamic Iran. To date, nobody—until the 12 Day War—had given it back to the mullahs for all of the destruction they had brought to the world. Their IEDs killed a lot of American soldiers, but the U.S. had never paid back the IRGC until six B2 bombers made some holes in an Iranian mountain. Sure, the country endured sanctions, but sanctions are somewhat impersonal and at times can be circumvented. Nobody had really given them a thorough thrashing that would define for them the range of allowable activities. This state of affairs may soon change—even before I have an opportunity to file this report.
Iran claims that it has some inalienable right to enrich uranium like other countries do. If such an activity was solely associated with energy production—like drilling for oil—then their argument might be legitimate. But everyone knows that uranium can be used to make horrific weapons of mass destruction. We also know that in spite of all Iranian statements to the contrary, the mullahs have been working furiously toward obtaining nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery. Israel’s pilfering of one ton of “nuclear documents” proved that case. And finally, the mullahs’ form of Islam is one based on the destruction of other peoples and religions. Put it all together, and the claim to have some natural right to enrich uranium is not true—as its impact could be extremely negative for other countries. And as such, like high school seniors keeping the freshmen in line, the U.S. is expressing its veto of the theocracy’s plan. The moron Right will claim that only Israel is at risk and that the U.S. shouldn’t attack Iran for Israel’s sake. Pro tip: when they called Israel the Little Satan and the U.S. the Big Satan, they were telegraphing the order in which they plan to destroy their ideological and religious enemies.
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In days of yore, countries calibrated their strength and position in the world to figure out what they could get away with. Those who overplayed their hands often were crushed by their enemies. Nasser whipped up Arab nations to destroy Israel. Israel made a preemptive strike on his air force and added the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank of the Jordan. The Iranians do not believe that they are part of a larger world order in which a superpower can tell them what to do. During all of the decades of sanctions, the Iranians hid secret nuclear sites and obtained dual-use items that were supposedly off-limits. The Chinese are big enough that nobody—including the U.S.—is willing to go head-to-head with them when they grab land in the South China Sea or fish in economic zones of other countries. Iran does not have the Chinese heft to do whatever it pleases and not expect that a displeased superpower might not respond. I don’t know if there will be war. The president is sending a lot of military hardware to the region. It cannot be maintained on station forever: use it or send it home. Most here in Israel believe that war is on the way, and there are reports that the home front heads and emergency services have been told to be ready to spring into action.
Iran has every right to claim whatever it wants, but like the freshmen who found themselves inside a locker when a stray senior went to the other campus, the Iranians might find that their nuclear enrichment, ballistic missile development, funding of world terror, and murder of tens of thousands of their own citizens might meet an American veto. In the past, countries would have possibly modified their offending behavior so as to remain whole and under existing leadership. The Iranians are so sure of themselves and so disdainful of Jews and Christians that they have no way to back down from their stated positions. They are dragging out talks so as to buy time. They figure that either Trump will get bored (or it will be too close to the midterm elections), and they can always use the time to move their military assets and further crush the citizens’ revolt. The president might not be opposed to their buying time, as the USS Ford and other tools are not yet in position. The Iranians will not give up their nuclear efforts or stop developing more sophisticated missiles. They believe that they can withstand Hurricane Trump because nobody—other than the Israelis—has ever challenged them. They don’t understand Donald Trump, and they assume that every U.S. president is a patsy like Obama and Biden. In Israel—and all other countries—it is sometimes very hard to understand the whiplash that occurs when administrations change. One day, Biden holds up critical weapons deliveries; the next day, Trump sends the same and more.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy had a very poor view of naval air power. They had done some testing and obviously had a couple of aircraft carriers that were fortunately away from Pearl Harbor when the attack occurred. They felt that it was still the battleship and big ships that would win naval battles. The Japanese disabused them of this view with the aerial bombardment of Hawaii and the sinking of multiple capital ships. The Iranians are doing drills and making noises and threats. But, like Saddam before them, they don’t understand the professionalism and seriousness of U.S. military forces. There are presently 40 U.S. aerial tankers in the region. Israel’s fleet has seven old tankers.
Every weekend, somebody predicts that the U.S. will make war on Iran. Maybe one weekend, one of them will be right. The Iranians claim rights for activities that could lead to the destruction of other states, and the U.S. and Israel may well show that they don’t accept those “natural rights.” It ain’t over until the fat lady sings, and it doesn’t start until the first Tomahawk heads out from a submarine toward its target in Iran.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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