President Trump continues to play his cards, and everybody seems roiled by this.
Everybody on the anti-Israel Right and Left, the horseshoe theory group, seems to be very encouraged by the idea that President Trump is going to TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) out with regard to Iran, that somehow he’s now going to let Iran have a clear pathway to a nuclear weapon or something like that. And some people on the pro-Israel side are very agitated about this as well, thinking the same sort of thing.
That’s not what’s happening.
The Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime in Iran is a deeply evil regime that represses its people. It shoots protesters in the streets. It targets its various geopolitical opponents, ranging from Israel, which it wishes to extirpate, to Saudi Arabia. Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago that they were attempting to burn Saudi oilfields.
Does that mean that the goal here should be regime change by either Israel or the United States? Benjamin Netanyahu has said that regime change is not, in fact, the goal. President Trump also has said that if regime change occurs as a result of taking down the nuclear regime in Iran, destroying their capacity to create nuclear weapons, that’s only a side product.
But nobody — no one — and this is important because you’re hearing many, many people, on that horseshoe theory Right and on that horseshoe theory Left lie about the actual agenda here, just lie straight up — no one is calling for hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground in order to effect regime change in Iran.
And when people compare this to Libya, that’s ridiculous. It is not like Libya. In Libya, most of the work was done by people who are already on the ground. There was some tangential association with Western intelligence. I opposed it at the time. It was wrong. We shouldn’t have done it.
But in this particular case, the goal is to extirpate the Iranian nuclear program. If the regime falls, it’s up to the Iranian people. That’s their job. It’s their country. But no one is calling for a full-scale, boots-on-the-ground, Iraq-style nation-building operation. The phrase nation-building has not even entered the conversation on any side here with regard to Iran.
So all the people who are suggesting that all of this must end because otherwise Iran is going to cascade into chaos and violence and the regime is going to fall and then we’re going to get involved and we’re going to be the ones responsible are just wrong.
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The big news yesterday was that at the White House press conference with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement from President Trump that essentially set yet another deadline with regard to the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program: It read: “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future. I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”
Okay. Within the next two weeks. So first of all, not in two weeks, within the next two weeks. In that period, President Trump is going to make a decision.
My guess is that the president already knows what he is going to do, because the reality is that the Iranians have no interest in giving up their nuclear program.
And that’s the point when you listen to the rest of what Karoline Leavitt had to say yesterday.
Donald Trump put out a post on Truth Social quoting Marc Thiessen of The Washington Post saying, “Donald Trump is not an isolationist, but I think some of the Republican isolationists are suddenly discovering that they’re out of touch with the MAGA movement and Donald Trump…I have total confidence in Donald Trump. This is the guy who killed Qasem Soleimani. You think he’s afraid to take out Fordow? Of course not.”
If you listen to what the rest of the White House Press Secretary was saying, Trump has not changed his opinion, and he’s not going to change his opinion. Iran cannot be nuclear.
“Let’s be very clear,” she stated. “Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon. All they need is a decision from the Supreme Leader to do that. And it would take a couple of weeks to complete the production of that weapon, which would, of course, pose an existential threat not just to Israel, but to the United States and to the entire world.”
And then she continued by suggesting, what are the conditions for a deal to be made? And guess what? The conditions are precisely the same as they’ve always been.
I don’t know who’s high on their own supply here, who believes that President Trump has now radically shifted his position. He has not. He just put a clock on this issue. That’s all.
“No enrichment of uranium … Iran is absolutely not able to achieve a nuclear weapon. The president has been very clear about that,” Leavitt stated.
No uranium enrichment, no working toward a nuclear weapon. Does that sound like President Trump has changed his opinion now?
There was a quasi-celebration that broke out among the horseshoe theory folks suggesting that perhaps, finally, the isolationists got their win. Perhaps now Donald Trump was abandoning his entire stated goal with regard to the Iranian nuclear program for two decades.
Guys, you read him wrong. You are still reading him wrong. That’s not what the president of the United States is saying. That’s not what the president of the United States is doing.
Do you guys not speak English?
“Nobody should be surprised by the president’s position that Iran absolutely cannot obtain a nuclear weapon. He has been unequivocally clear about this for decades, not just as president, not just as a presidential candidate, but also as a private citizen,” she said. “In fact, I have some quotes for you. In 2011, President Trump said America’s primary goal with Iran must be to destroy its nuclear ambitions. We cannot allow this radical regime to acquire a nuclear weapon that they will either use or hand off to terrorists. In 2015, the president said, the problem is that Iran poses an existential threat to Israel, our Middle Eastern allies and the United States. And of course, the president has repeated that in his first term as president, in his second term as president as well. That’s why he was adamantly opposed to the disastrous Iranian nuclear agreement that was implemented by President Obama. And as I just told you from the president directly, he will make a decision within two weeks.”
Is this Trump chickening out? No. This is President Trump setting a clock again and saying, “This is your final chance. This is your final, final chance.” There are no more final chances. Do not pass go; do not collect $200.
Leavitt points out that the president is doing a good job of getting the whole world on board. And one of the astonishing things about this is virtually everyone agrees — yeah, the Europeans are mewling a little bit, but that’s what you would expect, when the Israelis want the opinions of the French on something, they can always call the French and learn how to surrender in war —the truth is most of the Europeans are truly grateful to Israel for taking out the nuclear program. In fact, the chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, said specifically that he is thankful that Israel is doing the dirty work the rest of the world has ignored for several decades.
“Well, certainly the entire world is on the president’s side when it comes to the fact that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon,” Leavitt said. “This is something that pretty much all of humanity — except for the Iranian terrorist regime themselves — agree upon.”
Meanwhile, the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, says his country will not surrender.
For all those who believe that this is likely to end in some sort of conciliatory negotiation with the Iranians, I think it’s highly doubtful.
Very highly doubtful.
