April 7, 2025
Chris Bambery
The war drums are beating in Washington once again. This time, the drummer is the man who came to the office describing himself as the ‘President of Peace’, Donald Trump. The target: Iran.
Chris Bambery
The war drums are beating in Washington once again. This time, the drummer is the man who came to the office describing himself as the ‘President of Peace’, Donald Trump. The target: Iran.
Cheering Trump on all the way is the Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long wanted to involve Washington in a war with Iran. Trump and his team claim Iran is set on building a nuclear bomb, despite clear evidence it is not and despite the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, having issued a fatwah (a religious ban) on doing just that.
Trump told NBC News on Sunday: ‘If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.’ On the same day, the US State Department stated: ‘President Trump has been clear: the United States cannot allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.’ It added that ‘The president expressed his willingness to discuss a deal with Iran. If the Iranian regime does not want a deal, the president is clear: he will pursue other options, which will be very bad for Iran.’
The ‘deal’ means Tehran pledging it will never develop a nuclear weapon (that would involve constant inspections) and dropping support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Iraqi Shi’a militias. Iran understands the U.S. wants to reduce its sovereignty and is not going to accept this.
On Monday, U.S. Department of State spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, told a press briefing:
Trump told NBC News on Sunday: ‘If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.’ On the same day, the US State Department stated: ‘President Trump has been clear: the United States cannot allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.’ It added that ‘The president expressed his willingness to discuss a deal with Iran. If the Iranian regime does not want a deal, the president is clear: he will pursue other options, which will be very bad for Iran.’
The ‘deal’ means Tehran pledging it will never develop a nuclear weapon (that would involve constant inspections) and dropping support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Iraqi Shi’a militias. Iran understands the U.S. wants to reduce its sovereignty and is not going to accept this.
On Monday, U.S. Department of State spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, told a press briefing:
"Yes. Iran’s behavior across the globe threatens U.S. national interests, which is why President Trump reimposed the maximum pressure campaign designed to end Iran’s nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program, and stop it from supporting terrorist groups. As the President has said, Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. He has also been very clear that the United States can’t allow that to occur. As we know, the President expressed his willingness to discuss a deal with Iran. If the Iranian regime does not want a deal, the President is clear he will pursue other options, which will be very bad for Iran."
In fact, Iran has responded to Israeli assassinations in Iran and Lebanon and an attack on its diplomatic building in Damascus (technically Iranian) with caution. It is widely accepted that despite its strong support for the Palestinians, it does not want war with Israel, let alone the USA.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Iran has never attacked another country, it was attacked by Iraq in 1980, supported by the USA and Britain. In that eight-year-long war, the regime of Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons supplied by the West.
Threats and negotiations
Iran has formally declined to begin those direct negotiations with the country’s president. Masoud Pezeshkian said that a message was delivered to U.S. negotiators through the Omani government. He said that the official response from Iran left open the possibility for continued indirect negotiations but added that the U.S. must regain trust with Iran in order for formal diplomacy to resume. ‘We don’t avoid talks; it’s the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far,’ Pezeshkian said at a televised Cabinet meeting.
"They must prove that they can build trust."
Trump’s threats to bomb Iran followed a statement from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who insisted last week that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon: ‘The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapon program that he suspended in 2003.’ In January, the outgoing head of the CIA, Bill Burns, gave an interview in which, when asked if Iran had reversed its position on ruling out building nuclear warheads, he answered:
"We do not see any sign today that any such decision has been made, but we obviously watch it intently."
That is not going to get in the way of the U.S. making war. U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has sent a second aircraft carrier strike group, led by USS Carl Vinson, to join the USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group in the region. The USA has at least six nuclear-capable B-2 Spirit bombers at Camp Thunder Bay on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The planes can take 30,000-pound ‘bunker-buster’ bombs and are now situated within range of Iran.
Nearly every major U.S. military attack in the Middle East, dating back to Operation Desert Storm in 1991, began with bomber sorties launched from Diego Garcia. Diego Garcia is a British possession, and Britain leases the base there to the U.S.
One examination of what a U.S. attack on Iran would involve pointed out:
"any significant military action to eradicate Iran’s nuclear program, its terror infrastructure, or the regime would first require striking enemy airfields, command-and-control centers, and anti-aircraft batteries, all requiring a minimum of 1,400 sorties."
How would Iran respond to such a thing? Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) aerospace unit, said American troops in the region are ‘sitting in a glass house’. Furthermore, the ‘Americans have around ten military bases in the region—at least near Iran—and 50,000 troops,’ Hajizadeh told state TV on Monday.
"It’s like they’re sitting in a glasshouse. And when you’re in a glass house, you don’t throw stones at others."
The shape of a war
The US Council on Foreign Relations states that:
"In total, the United States has military facilities across at least nineteen sites—eight of them considered to be permanent by many regional analysts—in countries including Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. military also uses large bases in Djibouti and Turkey, which are part of other regional commands but often contribute significantly to U.S. operations in the Middle East. Qatar hosts U.S. Central Command’s forward headquarters. Bahrain hosts the most permanently assigned U.S. personnel and is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet."
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base is home to the US’s 378th Air Expeditionary Wing, which operates F-16 and F-35 jet fighters. The U.S. operates MQ-9 Reaper drones and jet fighters out of the UAE’s Al Dhafra Air Base. Kuwait’s Ali al-Salem Air Base is home to the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing.
Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base hosts the regional headquarters for U.S. Central Command. It has also hosted some Israeli military officials; Bahrain is home to around 9,000 U.S. troops that belong to the headquarters of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The Royal Navy also has a base in Bahrain.
Let’s just suppose that the U.S. takes out Iran’s air defences and more. It is worth saying here that last October, after an initial Israeli air attack launched short of Iran’s border, the second, bigger, air attack was called because unknown air defences had been discovered, so that first supposition is not a given.
The next move would be to seek to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme and its ballistic missiles, and more. Iran has had years to prepare for this and all will be deep underground. The U.S. plans to use bunker buster bombs.
These were used by Israel in Gaza. To what effect? An academic study of Israeli attacks on Hamas tunnels and bunkers during the current Gaza war concluded: ‘Israeli air raids have left massive destruction without causing serious damage to Palestinian combat infrastructure.’ Looking at the effect of U.S.-provided bunker busters, it found: ‘these bombs are ineffective for tunnels deeper than 30 metres, and they only destroy part of the tunnel vertically without necessarily neutralizing the rest, especially tunnels with multiple entrances and branches.’1 This is borne out by the simple fact of Hamas fighters emerging en masse during the truce in pristine uniforms with up-to-date weaponry.
The indications are that an attack on Iran would not be some lightning war, and the longer the U.S. got bogged down in a protracted campaign, the more that could spin off into a regional war. In two Gulf Wars, the U.S. has relied on its regional allies for air bases, supply ports and much more. A senior U.S. official told Middle East Eye that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait have all told the U.S. they will not permit their airspaces or territories to be used as a launchpad against Iran, including for refuelling and rescue operations. Iran has some 2000 ballistic missiles, which have penetrated Israel’s air defences. It has a modern air defence system supplied by Russia and has produced drones, stealth missiles and much more.
If the U.S. is about to attack, a clear sign will be the withdrawal of its carrier strike force from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf into the Indian Ocean, because they would be extremely vulnerable to attack. The U.S. would be fighting an air war from a considerable distance. Its B-2 aircraft can operate without refuelling, but that’s not the case with other warplanes. The Houthis and the Iraqi militias are likely to join in any retaliation against the U.S. A ballistic missile fired from Yemen, but not Iran, could hit Diego Garcia.
Foreign Policy concluded its assessment of a U.S. attack on Iran by saying:
"While tactically feasible, a full-scale aerial offensive against Iran’s nuclear program may undermine U.S. national security priorities in the long run. It would require sustained force posture, continuous military operations, and resource commitments. This ongoing engagement would detract from other U.S. priorities, particularly the strategic focus on countering China’s rise and influence. This diversion of military and intelligence assets to the Middle East would strain U.S. capabilities elsewhere, weakening deterrence against other global adversaries."
Russia is formally allied with Iran, and it is close to China. Neither is likely to get involved militarily, but they could provide weaponry or more air defences. However, any U.S. attack would confirm strong suspicions of the USA in Beijing and Moscow.
And there is one last point. Trump’s every move could well push Iran to do the one thing he says he wants to stop: to develop a nuclear deterrent. It’s being threatened by two nuclear powers, the U.S. and Israel. Despite Khamenei’s fatwah, there must be many in Iran who are asking, ‘Don’t we need our own weapons of mass destruction?’. We have many reasons to be scared of what a U.S. attack on Iran might unleash.
Alastair Crooke
Trump’s ultimatum to Iran? Colonel Doug Macgregor compares the Trump ultimatum to Iran to that which Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia in 1914: An offer, in short, that ‘could not be refused’. Serbia accepted nine out of the ten demands. But it refused one – and Austria-Hungary immediately declared war.
On 4 February, shortly after his Inauguration, President Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM); that is to say, a legally binding directive requiring government agencies to carry out the specified actions precisely.
The demands are that Iran should be denied a nuclear weapon; denied inter-continental missiles, and denied too other asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities. All these demands go beyond the NPT and the existing JCPOA. To this end, the NSPM directs maximum economic pressure be imposed; that the U.S. Treasury act to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero; that the U.S. work to trigger JCPOA Snapback of sanctions; and that Iran’s “malign influence abroad” – its “proxies” – be neutralised.
The UN sanctions snapback expires in October, so time is short to fulfil the procedural requirements to Snapback. All this suggests why Trump and Israeli officials give Spring as the deadline to a negotiated agreement.
Trump’s ultimatum to Iran appears to be moving the U.S. down a path to where war is the only outcome, as occurred in 1914 – an outcome which ultimately triggered WW1.
Might this just be Trump bluster? Possibly, but it does sound as if Trump is issuing legally binding demands such that he must expect cannot be met. Acceptance of Trump’s demands would leave Iran neutered and stripped of its sovereignty, at the very least. There is an implicit ‘tone’ to these demands too, that is one of threatening and expecting regime change in Iran as its outcome.
It may be Trump bluster, but the President has ‘form’ (past convictions) on this issue. He has unabashedly hewed to the Netanyahu line on Iran that the JCPOA (or any deal with Iran) was ‘bad’. In May 2014, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA at Netanyahu’s behest and instead issued a new set of 12 demands to Iran – including permanently and verifiably abandoning its nuclear programme in perpetuity and ceasing all uranium enrichment.
What is the difference between those earlier Trump demands and those of this February? Essentially they are the same, except today he says: If Iran “doesn’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before”.
Thus, there is both history, and the fact that Trump is surrounded – on this issue at least – by a hostile cabal of Israeli Firsters and Super Hawks. Witkoff is there, but is poorly grounded on the issues. Trump too, has shown himself virtually totalitarian in terms of any and all criticism of Israel in American Academia. And in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, he is fully supportive of Netanyahu’s far-right provocative and expansionist agenda.
These present demands regarding Iran also run counter to the 25 March 2025 latest annual U.S. Intelligence Threat Assessment that Iran is NOT building a nuclear weapon. This Intelligence Assessment is effectively disregarded. A few days before its release, Trump’s National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz clearly stated that the Trump Administration is seeking the “full dismantlement” of Iran's nuclear energy program: “Iran has to give up its program in a way that the entire world can see”, Waltz said. “It is time for Iran to walk away completely from its desire to have a nuclear weapon”.
On the one hand, it seems that behind these ultimata stands a President made “pissed off and angry” at his inability to end the Ukraine war almost immediately – as he first mooted – together with pressures from a bitterly fractured Israel and a volatile Netanyahu to compress the timeline for the speedy ‘finishing off’ of the Iranian ‘regime’ (which, it is claimed, has never been weaker). All so that Israel can normalise with Lebanon –and even Syria. And with Iran supposedly ‘disabled’, pursue implementation of the Greater Israel project to be normalised across the Middle East.
Which, on the other hand, will enable Trump to pursue the ‘long-overdue’ grand pivot to China. (And China is energy-vulnerable – regime change in Tehran would be a calamity, from the Chinese perspective).
To be plain, Trump’s China strategy needs to be in place too, in order to advance Trump’s financial system re-balancing plans. For, should China feel itself besieged, it could well act as a spoiler to Trump's re-working of the American and global financial system.
The Washington Post reports on a ‘secret’ Pentagon memo from Hegseth that “China [now] is the Department’s sole pacing threat, [together] with denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland”.
The ‘force planning construct’ (a concept of how the Pentagon will build and resource the armed services to take on perceived threats) will only consider conflict with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war, the Pentagon memo says, leaving the threat from Moscow largely to be attended by European allies.
Trump wants to be powerful enough credibly to threaten China militarily, and therefore wants Putin to agree speedily to a ceasefire in Ukraine, so that military resources can quickly be moved to the China theatre.
On his flight back to Washington last Sunday evening, Trump reiterated his annoyance toward Putin, but added “I don’t think he’s going to go back on his word, I’ve known him for a long time. We’ve always gotten along well”. Asked when he wanted Russia to agree to a ceasefire, Trump said there was a “psychological deadline” – “If I think they’re tapping us along, I will not be happy about it”.
Trump’s venting against Russia may, perhaps, have an element of reality-TV to it. For his domestic audience, he needs to be perceived as bringing ‘peace through strength’ – to keep up the Alpha-Male appearance, lest the truth of his lack of leverage over Putin becomes all too apparent for the American public and to the world.
Part of the reason for Trump’s frustration too, may be his cultural formation as a New York businessman; that a deal is about first dominating the negotiations, and then quickly ‘splitting the difference’. This, however, is not how diplomacy works. The transactional approach also reflects deep conceptual flaws.
The Ukraine ceasefire process is stalled, not because of Russian intransigence, but rather because Team Trump has determined that achieving a settlement in Ukraine comes firstly through insisting on a unilateral and immediate ceasefire – without introducing temporary governance to enable elections in Ukraine, nor addressing the root causes of the conflict. And secondly, because Trump rushed in, without listening to what the Russians were saying, and/or without hearing it.
Now that initial pleasantries are over, and Russia is saying flatly that current ‘ceasefire’ proposals simply are inadequate and unacceptable, Trump becomes angry and lashes out at Putin, saying that 25% tariffs on Russian oil could happen ANY moment.
Putin and Iran are both now under ‘deadlines’ (a ‘psychological’ one in Putin’s case), so as to enable Trump to proceed with credibly threatening China to come to a ‘deal’ soon – as the global economy is already wobbling.
Trump fumes and spits fire. He tries to hurry matters along by making a big show of bombing the Houthis, boasting that they have been hit hard, with many Houthi leaders killed. Yet, such callousness towards Yemeni civilian deaths sits awkwardly with his claimed heart-rendering empathy for the thousands of ‘handsome’ Ukrainian young men needlessly dying on the front lines.
It all becomes reality-TV.
Trump threatens Iran with “bombing [the] likes of which they have never seen before” over an ultimatum that likely cannot be met. Simply put, this threat (which includes the possible use of nuclear weapons) is not given because Iran poses a threat to the U.S. It does not. But it is given as an option. A plan; a ‘thing’ placed calmly on the geo-political table and intended to spread fear. “Cities full of children, women, and the elderly to be killed: Not morally wrong. Not a war crime”.
No. Just the ‘reality’ that Trump takes the Iranian nuclear programme to be an existential threat to Israel. And that the U.S. is committed to using military force to eliminate existential threats to Israel.
This is the heart to Trump’s ultimatum. It owes to the fact that it is Israel – not America, and not the U.S. intelligence community – that views Iran as an existential threat. Professor Hudson, speaking with direct knowledge of the background policy (see here and here) says, “it's NOT just that Israel as we know it – must be safe and secure and free from terrorism”. That's Trump and his Team’s ‘line’; that's the Israeli and its supporters narrative too. “But the mentality [behind it] is different”, Hudson says.
There are some 2-3 million Israelis who see themselves as destined to control all of what we now call the Middle East, the Levant, what some call West Asia – and others call “Greater Israel”. These Zionists believe that they are mandated by God to take this land – and that all who oppose them are Amalek. They believe the Amalek to be consumed with an overwhelming desire to kill Jews, and who therefore should be annihilated.
The Torah records the story of Amalek: Parshat Ki Teitzei, when the Torah states, machoh timcheh et zecher Amalek—that we must erase Amalek’s memory. “Every year we [Jews] are obligated to read – not how God will destroy Amalek – but how we should destroy Amalek”. (Though many Jews puzzle how to reconcile this mitzvah with their ingrained contrarian values of compassion and mercy).
This commandment in the Torah is in fact one of the key factors that lies at the root of Israel’s obsession with Iran. Israelis perceive Iran as an Amalek tribe plotting to kill Jews. No deal, no compromise therefore is possible. It is also, of course, about Iran’s strategic challenge (albeit secular) to the Israeli state.
And what has made the Trump ultimatum so pressing in Washington’s view – apart from the China-pivot considerations – was the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. That assassination marked a big shift in U.S. thinking, because, before that, we inhabited an era of careful calculation; incremental moves up an escalator ladder. What is understood now is that ‘we're no longer playing chess’. There are no rules anymore.
Israel (Netanyahu) is going hell-for-leather on all fronts to mitigate the divisions and turmoil at home in Israel through igniting the Iranian front – even though this course might well threaten Israel’s destruction.
This latter prospect marks the reddest of ‘red lines’ to ingrained Deep State structures.
Trump’s ultimatum to Iran? Colonel Doug Macgregor compares the Trump ultimatum to Iran to that which Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia in 1914: An offer, in short, that ‘could not be refused’. Serbia accepted nine out of the ten demands. But it refused one – and Austria-Hungary immediately declared war.
On 4 February, shortly after his Inauguration, President Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM); that is to say, a legally binding directive requiring government agencies to carry out the specified actions precisely.
The demands are that Iran should be denied a nuclear weapon; denied inter-continental missiles, and denied too other asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities. All these demands go beyond the NPT and the existing JCPOA. To this end, the NSPM directs maximum economic pressure be imposed; that the U.S. Treasury act to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero; that the U.S. work to trigger JCPOA Snapback of sanctions; and that Iran’s “malign influence abroad” – its “proxies” – be neutralised.
The UN sanctions snapback expires in October, so time is short to fulfil the procedural requirements to Snapback. All this suggests why Trump and Israeli officials give Spring as the deadline to a negotiated agreement.
Trump’s ultimatum to Iran appears to be moving the U.S. down a path to where war is the only outcome, as occurred in 1914 – an outcome which ultimately triggered WW1.
Might this just be Trump bluster? Possibly, but it does sound as if Trump is issuing legally binding demands such that he must expect cannot be met. Acceptance of Trump’s demands would leave Iran neutered and stripped of its sovereignty, at the very least. There is an implicit ‘tone’ to these demands too, that is one of threatening and expecting regime change in Iran as its outcome.
It may be Trump bluster, but the President has ‘form’ (past convictions) on this issue. He has unabashedly hewed to the Netanyahu line on Iran that the JCPOA (or any deal with Iran) was ‘bad’. In May 2014, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA at Netanyahu’s behest and instead issued a new set of 12 demands to Iran – including permanently and verifiably abandoning its nuclear programme in perpetuity and ceasing all uranium enrichment.
What is the difference between those earlier Trump demands and those of this February? Essentially they are the same, except today he says: If Iran “doesn’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before”.
Thus, there is both history, and the fact that Trump is surrounded – on this issue at least – by a hostile cabal of Israeli Firsters and Super Hawks. Witkoff is there, but is poorly grounded on the issues. Trump too, has shown himself virtually totalitarian in terms of any and all criticism of Israel in American Academia. And in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, he is fully supportive of Netanyahu’s far-right provocative and expansionist agenda.
These present demands regarding Iran also run counter to the 25 March 2025 latest annual U.S. Intelligence Threat Assessment that Iran is NOT building a nuclear weapon. This Intelligence Assessment is effectively disregarded. A few days before its release, Trump’s National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz clearly stated that the Trump Administration is seeking the “full dismantlement” of Iran's nuclear energy program: “Iran has to give up its program in a way that the entire world can see”, Waltz said. “It is time for Iran to walk away completely from its desire to have a nuclear weapon”.
On the one hand, it seems that behind these ultimata stands a President made “pissed off and angry” at his inability to end the Ukraine war almost immediately – as he first mooted – together with pressures from a bitterly fractured Israel and a volatile Netanyahu to compress the timeline for the speedy ‘finishing off’ of the Iranian ‘regime’ (which, it is claimed, has never been weaker). All so that Israel can normalise with Lebanon –and even Syria. And with Iran supposedly ‘disabled’, pursue implementation of the Greater Israel project to be normalised across the Middle East.
Which, on the other hand, will enable Trump to pursue the ‘long-overdue’ grand pivot to China. (And China is energy-vulnerable – regime change in Tehran would be a calamity, from the Chinese perspective).
To be plain, Trump’s China strategy needs to be in place too, in order to advance Trump’s financial system re-balancing plans. For, should China feel itself besieged, it could well act as a spoiler to Trump's re-working of the American and global financial system.
The Washington Post reports on a ‘secret’ Pentagon memo from Hegseth that “China [now] is the Department’s sole pacing threat, [together] with denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland”.
The ‘force planning construct’ (a concept of how the Pentagon will build and resource the armed services to take on perceived threats) will only consider conflict with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war, the Pentagon memo says, leaving the threat from Moscow largely to be attended by European allies.
Trump wants to be powerful enough credibly to threaten China militarily, and therefore wants Putin to agree speedily to a ceasefire in Ukraine, so that military resources can quickly be moved to the China theatre.
On his flight back to Washington last Sunday evening, Trump reiterated his annoyance toward Putin, but added “I don’t think he’s going to go back on his word, I’ve known him for a long time. We’ve always gotten along well”. Asked when he wanted Russia to agree to a ceasefire, Trump said there was a “psychological deadline” – “If I think they’re tapping us along, I will not be happy about it”.
Trump’s venting against Russia may, perhaps, have an element of reality-TV to it. For his domestic audience, he needs to be perceived as bringing ‘peace through strength’ – to keep up the Alpha-Male appearance, lest the truth of his lack of leverage over Putin becomes all too apparent for the American public and to the world.
Part of the reason for Trump’s frustration too, may be his cultural formation as a New York businessman; that a deal is about first dominating the negotiations, and then quickly ‘splitting the difference’. This, however, is not how diplomacy works. The transactional approach also reflects deep conceptual flaws.
The Ukraine ceasefire process is stalled, not because of Russian intransigence, but rather because Team Trump has determined that achieving a settlement in Ukraine comes firstly through insisting on a unilateral and immediate ceasefire – without introducing temporary governance to enable elections in Ukraine, nor addressing the root causes of the conflict. And secondly, because Trump rushed in, without listening to what the Russians were saying, and/or without hearing it.
Now that initial pleasantries are over, and Russia is saying flatly that current ‘ceasefire’ proposals simply are inadequate and unacceptable, Trump becomes angry and lashes out at Putin, saying that 25% tariffs on Russian oil could happen ANY moment.
Putin and Iran are both now under ‘deadlines’ (a ‘psychological’ one in Putin’s case), so as to enable Trump to proceed with credibly threatening China to come to a ‘deal’ soon – as the global economy is already wobbling.
Trump fumes and spits fire. He tries to hurry matters along by making a big show of bombing the Houthis, boasting that they have been hit hard, with many Houthi leaders killed. Yet, such callousness towards Yemeni civilian deaths sits awkwardly with his claimed heart-rendering empathy for the thousands of ‘handsome’ Ukrainian young men needlessly dying on the front lines.
It all becomes reality-TV.
Trump threatens Iran with “bombing [the] likes of which they have never seen before” over an ultimatum that likely cannot be met. Simply put, this threat (which includes the possible use of nuclear weapons) is not given because Iran poses a threat to the U.S. It does not. But it is given as an option. A plan; a ‘thing’ placed calmly on the geo-political table and intended to spread fear. “Cities full of children, women, and the elderly to be killed: Not morally wrong. Not a war crime”.
No. Just the ‘reality’ that Trump takes the Iranian nuclear programme to be an existential threat to Israel. And that the U.S. is committed to using military force to eliminate existential threats to Israel.
This is the heart to Trump’s ultimatum. It owes to the fact that it is Israel – not America, and not the U.S. intelligence community – that views Iran as an existential threat. Professor Hudson, speaking with direct knowledge of the background policy (see here and here) says, “it's NOT just that Israel as we know it – must be safe and secure and free from terrorism”. That's Trump and his Team’s ‘line’; that's the Israeli and its supporters narrative too. “But the mentality [behind it] is different”, Hudson says.
There are some 2-3 million Israelis who see themselves as destined to control all of what we now call the Middle East, the Levant, what some call West Asia – and others call “Greater Israel”. These Zionists believe that they are mandated by God to take this land – and that all who oppose them are Amalek. They believe the Amalek to be consumed with an overwhelming desire to kill Jews, and who therefore should be annihilated.
The Torah records the story of Amalek: Parshat Ki Teitzei, when the Torah states, machoh timcheh et zecher Amalek—that we must erase Amalek’s memory. “Every year we [Jews] are obligated to read – not how God will destroy Amalek – but how we should destroy Amalek”. (Though many Jews puzzle how to reconcile this mitzvah with their ingrained contrarian values of compassion and mercy).
This commandment in the Torah is in fact one of the key factors that lies at the root of Israel’s obsession with Iran. Israelis perceive Iran as an Amalek tribe plotting to kill Jews. No deal, no compromise therefore is possible. It is also, of course, about Iran’s strategic challenge (albeit secular) to the Israeli state.
And what has made the Trump ultimatum so pressing in Washington’s view – apart from the China-pivot considerations – was the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. That assassination marked a big shift in U.S. thinking, because, before that, we inhabited an era of careful calculation; incremental moves up an escalator ladder. What is understood now is that ‘we're no longer playing chess’. There are no rules anymore.
Israel (Netanyahu) is going hell-for-leather on all fronts to mitigate the divisions and turmoil at home in Israel through igniting the Iranian front – even though this course might well threaten Israel’s destruction.
This latter prospect marks the reddest of ‘red lines’ to ingrained Deep State structures.
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