The chattering classes are busily chattering about what a defeat for the USA it all is.<\/p>\n
Well of course<\/em> it is a defeat. That was baked into this thing at the onset: Trump decided to start an asymmetric war in which the asymmetry strongly favoured Iran. Criticisms of the deal, as if a significantly better deal were somehow possible, completely miss the point. A significantly better deal is not possible, sorry. The U.S.A. is now restricted by circumstances to choose between various forms of bad deals.<\/p>\n Why do you think every other post-Carter president had a chance to start a war with Iran but decided to take a pass instead? Yes, this one was that<\/em> obvious. Any semi-sane, semi-intelligent observer, wherever he or she landed on the political spectrum, could see it. This outcome was as predictable as the sun rising in the morning and the tides ebbing and flooding.<\/p>\n The next thing \u2014 which is already starting to dawn on some people \u2014 is the start of the end, or at least the restructuring, of the US\/Israel special relationship. Again, because of course. The zio-fascists who run Israel want war with Lebanon. Iran does not want Israel making war on Lebanon, and is willing to deny Trump the end of the war he so desperately wants to end in order to accomplish this.<\/p>\n So Israel is now standing in the way of Trump getting what he wants, which means Israel now gets to experience first hand Trump’s famously one-way concept of loyalty: it is your obligation to be endlessly loyal to Trump, who has zero obligation to reciprocate that loyalty. As Trump likes to say: Israel doesn’t have the cards. They are dependant on U.S. aid and if the U.S. cuts off that aid, Israel faces an existential crisis (an actual one, not the pretend one the Israeli government always trots out any time it wants to treat its neighbours like untermensch<\/em>).<\/p>\n Thanks to Israel’s self-inflicted reputational damage<\/a>, Congress is unlikely to get in the way of this political hardball. Per Rule No. 1<\/a> the GOP is just a bunch of sheep following their f\u00fchrer. Oh, the odd GOPig here and there will stand by Israel\u2026 and then proceed to be on the receiving end of that famous one-way loyalty of which I just wrote. The remainder will forget their loyalty to Israel approximately as quickly as they forgot their loyalty to free trade. Meanwhile, support for Israel is deeply underwater<\/a> amongst Democratic voters. Sure, a few of the most diehard “Israel can do no wrong” crowd in the Democratic party will stand by Israel, but the majority probably won’t. Simple politics.<\/p>\n As I wrote two years ago: Reputation is just touchy-feely stuff that doesn\u2019t much matter\u2026 until, suddenly, it does. Looks like that suddenly part is about to start happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The chattering classes are busily chattering about what a defeat for the USA it all is. Well of course it is a defeat. That was baked into this thing at the onset: Trump decided to start an asymmetric war in which the asymmetry strongly favoured Iran. Criticisms of the deal, as if a significantly better […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6936,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6935\/revisions\/6936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}