A friend whatsapped me with the following comment on my earlier article:
“Unjust is an inadequate word to describe the atrocities — especially the killing of so many Iranian schoolchildren — committed by the Americans.
“Trump and Hegseth tried to claim that the bombing was carried out by an Iranian jet fighter. But the USAF had 100% control of the airspace over Iran and had already shot down an ageing Iranian fighter jet.
“How could any Iranian fighter jet even be flying? And why would it bomb its own school buildings?”
This friend, whose opinions, knowledge and wisdom I great appreciate, is a very distinguished retired academic. Now in his 80s, he was once a senior engineering professor and head of department at the University of Malaya, and later at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore.
I could feel his anger and scorn.
He is right. I should have used a stronger term to condemn Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s attack on Iran. Their bombing of the school was indeed a criminal act of the worst kind and deserves outright condemnation by all fair-minded people of the world.
Cowboys and Mullahs are from different worlds
I do remember the crisis. However, it did not cross my mind when I wrote the earlier article. I was entirely focused on condemning what I saw as the immorality of Trump’s actions rather than analysing the history of US–Iran relations in depth.
That crisis lasted well over a year.
Yes, that was a big wound on Uncle Sam’s collective psyche. My friend was kind enough to forward to me the following information he obtained from Gemini:
“Following the Iranian Revolution earlier that year, the Shah fled the country. When US President Jimmy Carter allowed the cancer-stricken Shah to enter the United States for medical treatment, it triggered massive outrage in Iran. A group of militant Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took 66 hostages, 52 of whom remained in captivity.
“A secret American rescue mission in April 1980 ended in tragedy when a sandstorm and mechanical failures led to a helicopter crash in the Iranian desert, killing eight US servicemen. The failure was a severe blow to American morale. The crisis dominated US news coverage and became a central issue in the 1980 presidential election. The hostages were finally released just minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president.”
At that time, however, I had little sympathy for the Iranian government and regarded the hostage-taking as a foolish act by the revolutionary regime. I also encountered several Iranians who had chosen to flee their country, both in Melbourne and in Kuala Lumpur.
In the Middle East, Iran generally supports governments and groups that are aligned with its survival and religious commitment — those that oppose the United States and Israel, and those connected to Shiite political networks. It strongly supported the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Iran’s closest non-state ally is Hezbollah in Lebanon, which was created with Iranian assistance in the 1980s and continues to receive funding, weapons and training from Tehran.
Iran also supports Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories, although Hamas is Sunni. It backs Shiite militias in Iraq that have fought against the Islamic State. The Houthis, who are fighting a Saudi-backed coalition in Yemen, also receive support from Iran.
My attitude changed after Benjamin Netanyahu came into power. His Zionist design, cruelty and hand-handedness made me cheer for these Iranian supporters. But I still think the Iranians do deserve far better leadership.
From detracting to sympathising
We now see that its new supreme leader is determined to block the Strait of Hormuz. He has also threatened to set the region’s oil and gas infrastructure on fire. Even CNN reports that Trump may be unable to end the war he has started, even if he wishes to do so.
Iran has deployed cluster munitions to challenge Israel’s air defences. Some of its ballistic missiles are reportedly equipped with such munitions, which are released at high altitude before raining down over a wide area. Iran has also turned the waters of the Gulf into a weapon, relentlessly targeting vessels in the Persian Gulf and energy facilities across the region. Even its cheap drones have proven difficult to stop.
Many of the wealthy are now fleeing the Middle East.
Trump is indeed riding a tiger and does not know how to dismount.
How long Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states can endure the disruption of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz remains anybody’s guess.
China helped bring about a thaw in relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023. With strong economic ties to both countries, China brokered an agreement under which the two rivals restored diplomatic relations, reopened embassies, and pledged to respect sovereignty and avoid interference in each other’s affairs.
The relationship, however, remains fragile and cautious. With Iran retaliating against the US–Israeli attacks by striking targets near Riyadh and oil facilities inside Saudi Arabia, the relationship is now under severe strain. Fortunately, both sides have kept diplomatic channels open.
The new supreme leader has vowed to fight the United States to the end. This time, I believe the resolve is real. In the past, Iran often bent to American pressure. But things are different now. As long as Trump remains at the helm, there is simply no way the new leadership can trust his words. The hatred is too deep for them to forgive.
Trump has jumped into a mud-trudging war. It is not winnable unless he is prepared to destroy the world — and the United States along with it. He has surrounded himself with sycophants and cronies even worse than those who served under Joe Biden.
Credible reports suggest that the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, had actually warned against attacking Iran. Trump has reportedly admitted that it was his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who influenced him to launch the strike. Other hawks are said to include Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff. None of these four possesses serious military qualifications to prosecute a war. Witkoff is a real-estate businessman with no diplomatic background, yet he has been sent to Moscow to talk with Putin about ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump has also just suffered a major setback on the tariff front. Following a ruling by the Supreme Court, the US government may face refund claims estimated at between $166 billion and $182 billion. In lieu, Trump has announced a temporary universal tariff of 15% for 150 days under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974; however, the legal status of the situation remains uncertain.
Trump’s economic warriors include Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing — the former, a buddy of Jeffrey Epstein, is widely criticised for his business associations and the latter, is often accused by economists of promoting dubious theories. His Treasury Secretary, Auntie Scott Bessent has largely been reduced to talk like a parrot.
But Trump remains the chief clown. Nobody around him dares to say anything he does not wish to hear.
His old toys — the Ukraine wand, the Board of Peace theatrics, his proposals to annex Canada and Greenland, the containment of China through tariffs, technology bans and semiconductor blockades — are no longer working. Despite all his hyperbolic shouts, none of his antics was actually a success. But his twisted mind needs him to seek new ones to excite himself: hence the attack on Iran and the threats against Cuba.
There is also a
strong belief that he has merely played into Netanyahu’s grand design. Be that
as it may, Trump is the one who pushed the button. Trump has dragged the US into a war
that serves no clear strategic purpose and carries enormous risks for the
entire world. The Middle East may yet be set ablaze, the global economy shaken,
and countless innocent lives destroyed — all because of the reckless judgment
of a single man and the small circle of jesters who surround him.
History will one day
record how unnecessary this war was.
And throughout these processes, he and
his family have reportedly continued to enrich themselves. He is many times
wealthier now than when he began his second presidency.
Yet what remains
astonishing is that even now, nearly half of America still looks upon this man
as their saviour.
End
1. The Israelis were astonished how obtuse was the abortive American planning to extract the embassy hostages, remarking it missed out both 'space and time'. The insertion force was defeated by a sandstorm.
ReplyDelete2. Trump's brute force and illegal attack while negotiation talks were still underway as brokered by Oman is now met with the US' worst nightmare, Iran's asymmetric attacks on US bases and commercial interests throughout the Gulf. History records the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor before declaration of war. Intoxicated by power, the US has blinded itself from the lessons of history.
Trump and gang also assumed the Iranians would take to the streets in a national uprising to overthrow their regime; that hasn't happened because civilians don't have weapons; they hadn't when the IRGC quelled the earlier riots.
Now that 165 or so elementary school pupils have been killed, ditto over a thousand civilians, and an Iranian ship in international waters off India torpedoed 'just for fun' at cost of a hundred sailors, the national outrage would steel Iranian resolve to continue the war meted on them despite the sanctions and destruction of their nuclear facilities, the assassination of their leaders and scientists, and the inspectorate's earlier determination that Iran had no nuke making assets.
3. At the same time, closure of the Straits of Hormuz has endangered global oil supply and spiked oil prices beyond the USD100/barrel mark which in turn caused Trump to remove oil sanctions on Russian oil thus giving Putin more funds to continue his Ukraine operations. And although the US is a net oil exporter, gas pump prices have spiked; when push comes to shove, people will always vote with their wallets.
At the same time, container transports have dropped, insurance premia risen and strategic reserves drawn; one other bad thing is that fertilizer prices have increased which will affect harvests and food security.
4. Trump has bitten off more than he can chew. His War Minister Hegseth effused like a teenager over the lethality of his US war machine. Indeed the attacks were simultaneously executed using AI tools by Palantir and Anthropic to take place on different targets in dispersed locations at the same time, thus the term time-to-target.
5. But while Stephen Miller and Robert Kaplan may exult American military power, the late Joseph Nye, Jr would have lamented the US has destroyed its vaunted soft power and thus its alliances. With the world not trusting Trump's words anymore, to the loss of trust for business deals must be compounded the loss of all moral exponents in any US-led international order going forward. From extortionate bully, the US has added the crimes of sovereign crook and exterminator. What the gods want to destroy, they first make mad.
6. The same gods must have seen the Epstein files despite redacted by Pam Bondi who was excoriated by the select committee senators. It is odd that although mentioned repeatedly in the files, Trump's involvements have not been explicitly investigated; neither the complaints by the aggrieved. Maybe the attacks on Iran were designed to draw attention away so that he can survive impeachment before the November midterm elections where if not the Senate, he could lose the House.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, Trump's ratings are tanking. Absolute power corrupts absolutely; how will he and his sycophants of the new Swarm he created in his mould to replace the old one he promised to drain find absolution for the death and destruction of lives and livelihoods throughout the world? Huntington's clash of civilisations between the Judeo-Christians and the Muslims? But the US has lately shown not one iota of being civil. Trump may think he's on a crusade but it is fogged with a sulphurous air.
7. Maybe the Jews will say a protective prayer for him and his ilk. Ask first why Epstein would have a second fetish of keeping millions of files if not to use as leverage? Some said he was an Israeli agent. If so, Tel Aviv has a hold on Trump, enough to preemptively attack Iran, deemed Israel's nemesis (just as Israel is viscerally Palestine's nemesis). That would imply the tail wagging the tyrannosaurus rex. However, mounting a ground invasion next would be suicide. Those captured and not lynched will number more than the last 8 hostages.
8. Trump's entourage for the Beijing summit is unprepared. He doesn't even have any expert on China. So it'll be just a photo-op. He may swagger forward thinking he has China by the cojones, having now control over 60% of the world's oil supply after Venezuela and Iran but someone commented that in the short term, China has diversified sources including her coal, in the midterm, China will be remembered by suppliers as the one which did not bomb them, and in the long term, China has green technology.
So, why should China buy high priced US oil, for that matter US microchips price-upped by 25% just on his whim? China should just accupressure on the rare earth point.
Knowing the US' three fears (loss of face eg Vietnam debacle, loss of petrodollar privileges, and loss to China), Beijing can humor him - but not his entourage.
Bessent is under pressure from the private equity collapse leading to contamination of the US bond market thus the standing of the greenback, Lutnick is in tatters over the tariffs; 301 hits 16 countries which will retaliate; 122 is really illegal, and the rest are mired in legalities. That 15% now demanded may unsurprisingly have to be refunded as well. Meanwhile, Hegseth will be consumed by Gulf events.
As for Rubio, on his appointment, he was told by Beijing 'to behave'. He took revenge using Panama. Yet he may ascend to the Resolute desk come 2028 but he remains just a glib political chameleon who talks like a Musk robot reading a prepared script.
The power game dynamic has to account for Europe. If it is serious about wanting to emerge from the US' hold on oil and gas, it must exercise true strategic autonomy away from the old transatlantic alliance. Else it will continue to be used as first line of cannon fodder defense for the US, a US which also knows if it fights China, she will have the advantage of logistics and projectile scales.