At this point, everyone on the planet with the exception of United States President Donald Trump and his own, perverse, neocon circle, must see that the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been an unmitigated disaster. Let us broadly review the situation:
For some bizarre reason, they were not quite so astounded and shocked when the U.S. violated the agreement, and seemed to conveniently ignore the fact that they had done so, too, long before Iran did. It is completely counter to reason and logic to expect an agreement between eight (8) parties to remain effective when five (5) of them (the U.S., Germany, France, Britain and the UE) have all violated it. Before those nations point the finger of accusation at Iran, they need to clean up their own houses of government.
As a result of U.S. actions, tensions in the Persian Gulf have been growing, and reached a dangerous level when a U.S. drone flew into Iranian airspace and was shot down. A few weeks later, Trump reported that the U.S. had shot down an Iranian drone that flew too close to a U.S. ship (which was in the Gulf where it had no legitimate business to be). However, Iranian officials reported that all of their drones had returned safely, and Trump & Co. haven’t bothered to show any evidence whatsoever that the U.S. did, in fact, shoot down an Iranian drone.
Based on what has been revealed about the Trump White House, how his closest aides discreetly remove from his desk papers that they don’t want him to see, how they brief him with the briefest of information due to his limited interest and attention span, and his own narcissistic personality, it’s likely that, enraged that Iran dared shoot out of the sky a drone of the mighty U.S., he ordered that the U.S. retaliate in like manner. Some aide with a brain in his or her head, recognizing that shooting down an Iranian drone in Iranian airspace could easily be seen as an act of war, probably invented the fairy tale that a drone had been shut down, advised Trump, thereby satisfying his lust for revenge.
The military went along with it, realizing, perhaps, that a war against Iran would be a worldwide disaster. So Trump has been told what he wanted to hear (he appears to have no ability to discern truth from fiction; he recently announced that he was a first responder on September 11!), a war has been averted at least for now, and the U.S. continues to be the laughing stock of the world, since everyone except Trump seems to know that no Iranian drone was shot down.
What will be next? Will the U.S. invade Iran? Surely, there are some people in U.S. government circles who are not willing to shove the world into that deadly abyss, and are in a position to prevent it.
Will Israel get tired of waiting for the U.S. to invade, and do so itself, knowing that the U.S. will come to its aid? One thinks Israeli officials would need some pretext for doing so, but they can certainly draw on the U.S.’s many examples of creating some false flag to start a war.
Will the European signatories to the JCPOA finally create some way to circumvent threatened U.S. sanctions, or will they simply develop some strength of character and advise the U.S. that it can’t tell them how they will run their countries?
With the U.S. democratic farce of a presidential election just over a year away, Trump may do anything, however deadly and irrational, to try to gain another four-year term. Should he not war with Iran before then, his successor (one desperately hopes the Democrats don’t do anything sufficiently stupid to ensure another four years in the White House for Trump, as they did in 2016), will, one hopes, re-embrace the JCPOA.
But the next presidential inauguration isn’t until January of 2020; seventeen months is a long time for someone as unpredictable and unhinged as Trump to have his finger on the war button. We can only hope and pray that he doesn’t decide to push it.
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