Trump: The Man With All The Cards

Israel now has complete air superiority over the entire country of Iran. According to Israel Hayom:

Israeli Air Force jets struck a manned command center in the heart of Tehran, killing Ali Shadmani, Iran’s “chief of war staff,” who was the most senior operational military commander in the country and the closest adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Shadmani had served as the chief of war staff and commander of the emergency command center of Iran’s armed forces, overseeing both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the regular Iranian army.

Shadmani was appointed to command Iran’s armed forces about five days ago because his predecessor, Gholam Ali Rashid, was eliminated on day one. These are all people working for one of the most evil regimes on the planet, a regime that not only spreads terror throughout the region, but is responsible for the murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops across the region, and also happens to oppress its own people to an extraordinary degree.

Iran keeps trying to fire missiles. The problem for them is that if they fire hundreds of missiles at one time, Israel can spot which ballistic missile launchers are lighting up and then can destroy the ballistic missile launchers. So instead, what they’ve been relegated to doing is firing ten at a time, five at a time, one at a time, in the hope that maybe somehow it will hold off a revolution from within. This is a radical decrease from the beginning of the war, when Iran was shooting off 100 or 200 missiles at a time. 

At the same time, Iran International reported, “The hacker group Predatory Sparrow claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a cyberattack targeting Bank Sepah, one of Iran’s oldest financial institutions with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Army. The group alleged it had “destroyed all data” at the bank. The claim comes amid reports of widespread banking disruptions in Iran.”

On Monday, Israel attacked Iranian state media headquarters.

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So the banking system is collapsing in Iran, the propaganda system is collapsing in Iran, and the military system is collapsing in Iran as well.

Qatar, a front for the Iranian regime, is trying to talk its way out of this, saying that the Israeli strikes are ill-considered and will have repercussions on oil prices, adding that they had discussed with the IAEA ways to improve the security of the nuclear facilities.

Too little, too late, guys. Sorry, but that’s going to be a big no on that one. By the way, the idea that there is a giant oil spike is also not true. Qatar is lying about this. According to The Wall Street Journal:

The big news in oil markets since Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear program is the price spike that wasn’t. Brent crude popped from $66 a barrel or so to a high of $78 last week, but by Monday it was back below $73. The non-panic owes to ample global supply, and it’s a lesson for Congress and the Trump Administration as they contemplate putting new sanctions on Russian oil exports.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated, “We’ve had half a century of conflict spread by this regime that terrorizes everyone in the Middle East, has bombed the Aramco oil fields in Saudi Arabia, is spreading terrorism and subversion and sabotage everywhere. The forever war is what Iran wants. And they’re bringing us to the brink of nuclear war. In fact, what Israel is doing is preventing this, bringing an end to this, this aggression.”

Because the Iranian media were taken completely offline yesterday, Netanyahu actually gave a message to the Iranian people via an alternative network that was broadcasting into Iran. He stated: 

I think you should understand, these dictators in Iran, sure, they fear us, but they fear you, the people of Iran, even more. And your hour of freedom is near. It’s happening now. They understand that 80% of the people of Iran despise them. I hear a lot of them.

You know, I do these videos that I broadcast to the Iranian people. I tell them how we could offer them help in the water shortage that you have. The regime refuses, of course. We tell them how we could cooperate, these two glorious, ancient people that have cooperated from the times of Cyrus the Great, who freed the Jews. Now it’s time for you to be free. And you have that opportunity. The people of Iran, I think, have a brilliant future, and our friendship can be restored to what it was and what it should be. This is the time.

Thus far, the Israelis have basically done the world’s dirty work. The Israelis have taken out the vast majority of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers. They’ve now taken out Iran’s top military layer and many of the members of that secondary military layer. They’ve taken out a vast bevy of maybe up to 90% of its nuclear facilities. The only things really left on the table for the Iranians right now are the Ayatollah himself, the nuclear facility at Fordo, and the oilfields.

Israel has refrained from hitting the oil fields specifically because it does not wish to create any sort of serious oil spike, it has refrained from hitting Khamenei because it would like to see Khamenei surrender or flee, presumably because if Israel were to kill Khamenei, then there’s always the possibility that there’s some sort of red button somewhere that does let off the rest of the missiles all at once.

Then there’s the Fordow nuclear facility. If Fordow goes down, that ends all nuclear future for the ayatollahs. And at that point, the regime is extraordinarily vulnerable.

This is why the Ayatollah has built Fordow below a mountain, roughly 90 meters deep, encased in cement, in order to prevent exactly the kind of Israeli airstrikes that have been taking offline nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan.

So the only people on planet Earth who have the planes capable of carrying the bunker busters, which would make the process easy, are the Americans. Israel, I’m sure, has come up with some clever ways to take out Fordow or to wreck the inside of the facility. There’s no way the Israelis went into this believing that there was no way they could take out Fordow.

The thing that would end this war pretty quickly, and when I say pretty quickly, I mean within 24 hours, is one B-2 sortie from the United States carrying a couple of bunker busters that drill Fordow. That’s the end of the story, because at that point, the Iranians have nothing to negotiate with.

At that point, Khamenei would have nothing to hold out for. He would likely say, “Listen, you guys got what you wanted. Please leave. Please, please, please.”

And then it’s just a question of whether the people of Iran want to do anything.

Meanwhile, President Trump is playing this absolutely brilliantly.

Trump was asked about negotiating, as there are some who’ve been leaking to the press that President Trump is trying to negotiate with Iran. Trump responded, “I told them to do the deal. They should have done the deal. The cities have been blown to pieces, lost a lot of people. They should have done the deal. I told them, do the deal. … I’m not too much in a mood to negotiate.”

“I’m not too much in the mood to negotiate” is just spectacular. This is great stuff. This is, among many other things, what I voted for. I voted for Trump 1.0 foreign policy. This is Trump 1.0 on steroids. And it is great.

This is what peace through strength looks like. Because guess what? Iran’s a hell of a lot less of a threat to the region now than they were even a week ago. And they will be a hell of a lot less of a threat a week from now than they are even now.

Trump was asked about a ceasefire, or just what specifically he was looking for. He answered, “A real end, not a ceasefire. Giving up entirely. That would be okay, too. … Give up. That’s possible.”

Trump has played this all the way to the mat. He’s got all the cards. As President Trump likes to say, he is the one with all of the cards.

That’s real.

And he’s playing all of those cards.