Trump was speaking about how the people of Iran should seize the once in a lifetime opportunity to rise up and build a prosperous and free society. I believe I have heard that before. For example; that was the plan in Libya too. Not a great precedent.
There is no viable plan here.
If the idea really was to block Iran getting a nuclear weapon that is exposed by the negotiations. It was clear Iran was offering: no stockpiling of enriched uranium, no sunset clauses, permanent IAEA monitoring. If this was about nuclear weapons, that would have been accepted.
I think what is happening is Israel is aiming to Gazify Iran – turn it into a wasteland of people living in tents. It seems the Israelis need to do this; they have a psychological need to be surrounded by pitiful people living in refugee camps.
I think Israel has pulled the wool over Trump’s eyes, persuaded him that some kind or regime change option is possible here. But, what this is really about is the Gazification of Iran.
Meanwhile, Starmer, Macron and Merz, the leaders of the free world, are lecturing Iran – that Iran should “negotiate”. I can’t really find the word for that. They were negotiating. They offered very substantial concessions. Then, they were bombed. It could be the biggest case of “victim blaming” the world has ever seen. Starmer “condemns” Iran’s attacks in region. He says:
They should refrain from further strikes, give up their weapons programmes, and cease the appalling violence and repression against the Iranian people – who deserve the right to determine their own future, in line with our longstanding position.
That is the route to de-escalation and back to the negotiating table [1]
Which somehow manages to make Iran sound like the aggressor.
This is not even real. Nothing here about the nuclear programme which was, ostensibly, the cause of all this. But, it does appear, that the UK supports a regime change op. in Iran. Starmer perhaps did not watch the video of his predecessor Cameron, and then French leader Sarkozy on a balcony in Libya in 2011 talking up the new prosperous and free Libya that would result from their regime change operation. We’ve come on a little way from then; Sarkozy is currently on release from jail where he was sent having been found guilty of accepting election funds from Gaddafi, who was butchered on the battlefield, with the help of the UK. Libya is in a horrible mess, with two rival camps fighting it out.
There seems to be something in the water these people drink that causes them to just go in a loop, repeating the same tragedies time and time again. I guess that, for them, these tragedies are profitable. They are all without any moral compass whatsoever. And aided and abetted by the media at every turn – which never provides the context and thus facilitates the memory loss which is essential to the project.
Notes