The Iranians are doing a cut-and-paste of Saddam’s folks from 1990.
I do not know if there will be a war between the United States and Iran. The Iranians are refusing to discuss three major topics: their ballistic missile program, funding of terror groups worldwide, and treatment of protesting citizens. On the fourth topic, they apparently are not willing to end their nuclear work. Sounds like a completely losing program, but don’t worry, Witkoff and Kushner will pull out a flimsy piece of paper and declare, “We have peace in our time.”
In Israel, everyone is trying to guess when the attack—should it occur—will take place. I noticed this past Saturday that our parking garage-turned-bomb-shelter had its main gate open, something that is generally not the case. Aha! They know something and left it open so that if we have to run there, we can enter quickly. When Saturday came and went and thank God no Iranian missiles were seen in the skies over Jerusalem, that was one more false lead in the story. People on the lunatic Right suggest that any action taken by the U.S. against Iran is some favor done for Israel. The reality is that should the U.S., in the person of the Commander-in-Chief, decide to go to war, there would appear to be a serious chance that Israel would once again be bombarded by Iranian projectiles. Israel being attacked is a weird way of getting the U.S. to do you a favor. It would appear that, beyond a very small group of people, nobody knows anything about U.S. plans, other than a lot of military assets that seem to be coming to the area around Iran. The president said that, like in Venezuela, he is taking his time getting pieces in place, but on the other hand, suggested that talks went well. He would give investors betting on war in Polymarket a heart attack.
One thing that I noticed is that in some ways, the standoff is reminiscent of the weeks and months prior to Desert Storm. The Iraqis talked themselves blue, and none less so than Saddam. “It will be another Vietnam!” “We will bury the Americans in the desert.” “We will destroy the Americans and defeat their coalition.” While the Iraqis were bellowing and threatening, the Americans sounded like the guy who just checked your car for a bad muffler. “Yes, we’re aware of the intake problems with the Apache and are currently working on a fix.” “Iraq has the third largest standing army in the world and its multilayer air defense is impregnable.” So for those of us at home watching what was still a decent CNN, we heard that the Iraqis were going to destroy our forces with the Americans discussing the different types of sand found between Iraq and Kuwait. There was this queasy feeling that we were on the verge of another military quagmire.
When the fighting started, obviously, the outcome was the exact opposite of the rhetoric. Those soft-spoken Americans destroyed the Iraqi air defenses and radars. General Shwarzkopf moved his massive army and caught the Republican Guard completely off guard. American tanks could shoot further, move turrets mechanically (the Iraqis had to crank them), and had thermal vision so as to see the Iraqi tanks hidden in the sand. The Iraqis lost over 3,000 tanks, while the Americans lost around 20, none to enemy fire. I certainly do not want to denigrate the capabilities of Iran, especially as Israel took some serious damage from those missiles (but not drones) that got through the different anti-missile defenses. But the Iranians would have done well to learn from the Americans and speak softly and carry a big stick. Instead, they are carrying a big mouth and might find that the Americans wipe them out before they even realize what happened. Bibi Netanyahu is scheduled to meet President Trump later this week. I wish he had told me; there are some items from Amazon that I would have asked him to bring back. What will the two men discuss? Is a joint attack in the offing? I don’t know. I do know that if the present Iranian regime is replaced by something not pushing total world domination, then the world itself would be much better. Iran is definitely the head of the octopus, and without it, Hezbollah, Hamas, and others would be high and dry. For those who hate Israel—like all of the Western pro-Hamas people who could not find two minutes to protest in favor of the Iranian people being slaughtered in the streets—the prospect is horrific. And for this reason, they support the regime that took American hostages for over a year and provided IEDs to kill and maim thousands of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. When one hates Israel, he attaches himself to the worst of the worst, just as long as he is not on the side of those Joos.
And this is how our world is shaping up: there are two camps. One has the U.S., Israel, and the countries with right-leaning leaders like Japan and Argentina, which support both. On the other side are Israel-haters, including Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, and all of the countries that refuse to recognize Israel. It’s a modern Cold War, without the nice, neat “Iron Curtain” that cuts between the two sides. The South Koreans love Israel and relations are growing. Israel and the Chinese have relations, but they are frosty. The Chinese refused to stop providing the Houthis with up-to-date, accurate satellite data during the time that they were firing on ships and Israeli cities. Israel is finding out, as Kojak used to say, “Who loves ya, baby?”
If there is such a thing as American bombast, it generally comes after victory is secured. The U.S. military forces are characterized by professionalism and seriousness. The Iraqis, and now the Iranians, shot their mouths off, maybe to scare the Americans from attacking. Instead, the former were on the losing end of a clinical exhibition of how to take your enemy apart in real time. I remember a group of shell-shocked Iraqi soldiers trying to surrender to an NBC reporter. They had a white flag and came running toward him: Just get us out of the bunkers that were getting pulverized by those B-52s. Take us to your leader—and give us a much-needed shower and meal. President Kennedy said in his inaugural address that the world should not mistake civility for weakness. And boy did the Iraqis make that mistake. The question is whether the Iranians will do likewise?
There are some folks who claim that I am hankering for a war, for Israel’s benefit. The only passport I have is American, and I know that, unlike some of his predecessors, Donald Trump will make a decision on Iran that he believes is right for the American people. If he goes to war, I might be spending some of my best sleep time sitting between parked cars and trying to get internet on my phone. The missiles are not a joke, and people learned from the 28 killed in the previous round that when one gets a warning on a phone or hears the air raid sirens, he had better move to a safer place—pronto. Sure, I want the evil theocracy gone, but that is not the obligation of the American president. If nuclear weapons and potentially long-range ballistic missiles are a threat to the Republic, then they need to be dealt with, not by pallets of cash or reduction in sanctions. The Iranian regime is a threat. One can bury his head and claim otherwise. Burying one’s head still does not protect the rest of his body from potential ballistic missiles or shrapnel.