Trump Wants Us to Believe He Tried to Cut a Deal with Iran Before Israel Dropped Bombs

WASHINGTON, D.C. — All is subtropical and appears fairly normal in anticipation of the March of the Metal Penises Saturday night here in Pyongyang on the Potomac. (By the way, my walk from the Metro to my hotel led me to thinking that agreeing to put the national capital here in exchange for the federal government’s assuming all the Revolutionary War debt may have sounded like a fair deal at the time, but now with June headed full speed into July, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison can, you know, bite me.) Outside town, of course all hell is breaking loose. From the BBC:

In the darkest hours before dawn the Israeli Air Force targeted not just sites linked to Iran’s nuclear program but also the country’s air defenses and ballistic missile bases, thereby reducing Iran’s ability to retaliate. On the ground and in the shadows, the network of operatives working for Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence agency, reportedly helped to pinpoint the exact location of key figures in both the military command and nuclear scientists. Those killed overnight include the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the guardians of the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the Shah’s regime in 1979, as well as the head of the mainstream armed forces and the head of the IRGC air force. Iran says at least six of its scientists have been killed. Once again, Israel’s spy agency is shown to have successfully penetrated the very heart of Iran’s security establishment, proving that no one there is safe.

I’m sure that’s not destabilizing at all. Want the definition of the phrase “one fell swoop?” You got it right here.

Mossad was reportedly able to launch drones from inside Iran as part of this attack. The primary targets of this whole operation have been the nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz and bases belonging to the IRGC. For Israeli military planners, this has been a long time coming. Iran is reeling and this may be only the first wave. There will be many more potential targets on Israel’s hitlist, although some may be beyond its reach, buried deep underground in reinforced bases beneath solid rock.

Oh, okay. Now I’m sure this was a good idea.

This week the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), found Iran to be in breach of its non-proliferation obligations and threatened to refer it to the UN Security Council. Many of the concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme arise from its stockpiling of highly enriched uranium (HEU) that has been enriched up to 60 per cent, far beyond the level needed to generate civil nuclear power and a relatively short hop to the level needed to start building a bomb.

Wait. Wasn’t there some sort of a ... whatcha call it? Deal cut with Iran back in the day that seemed to solve this issue? I’m sure I remember something like this.

There was a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program. It was concluded in 2015 during the Obama presidency, but Donald Trump called it “the worst deal in the world” and when he got into the White House he pulled the U.S. out of it. The following year Iran stopped complying with it.

Don’t hang it all on him. He was just the dopey front man. Most of the conservative establishment actively worked to sabotage the deal. Senator Lindsey Graham nearly wore a hole in his fainting couch. It was our first encounter with then-newly elected Senator Tom Cotton, the bobble-throated slapdick from Arkansas, maybe. His hand was barely off the Bible when Cotton—and forty six of his Republican colleagues—sent a letter to the Iranian government. The sheer presumption of this letter was exceeded only by its arrant stupidity. as Fred Kaplan pointed out at the time in Slate. Cotton. it seemed, didn’t understand his own government any better than he understood Iran’s. However, stupid was on the rise, and the letter galvanized the Republican Party so that, when it transformed itself into its present cult, the president had no trouble withdrawing from the deal. Hence, this week’s events over which, it hardly needs to be pointed out, Cotton and the rest of the Iran hawks are presently turning handsprings. “Game on!” Graham burbled on X.

As for Benjamin Netanyahu, our president’s colleague in the Keep Me in Power to Keep Me out of Jail Society, he plainly doesn’t care what the United States thinks about unilateral action any more. Gaza proved that, and now he’s doubled down in a huge way on a general war in the Middle East. Why shouldn’t he? He knows he has a safe one in the bag over here.

The president seems to want the world to believe that he tried to cut a deal, that he even came close to one, but that the Iranians walked away and brought “destruction” on themselves. God, does he want that Nobel Prize. At the same time, he’s laying all the blame on Iran, as though it is dropping bombs on its own head. The Iranians already have started firing missiles into Israel. The president is planning his big parade.