What The Hawks Miss About The Iran Negotiations
Posted by freedomforall 3 days, 4 hours ago to Politics
Excerpt:
"A lot of Trump’s critics are treating the Switzerland talks as a humiliation, a sellout, or a failure waiting to happen.
That misses the point.
The war came first because, in a real sense, it had to come first. For Americans old enough to remember 1979—and Donald Trump is certainly one of them—the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was never just a diplomatic incident. It was an act of war, covered at the time by the regime’s fig leaf that “students” had done it rather than the regime itself.
The United States never imposed a price commensurate with that act. Jimmy Carter’s response lodged in the American memory as weakness. For a country that still thinks in terms of honor, deterrence, and humiliation, that mattered.
Now Iran has paid a price.
American and Israeli strikes killed Ali Khamenei, Ali Larijani, Ali Shamkhani, Mohammad Pakpour, Aziz Nasirzadeh, Abdolrahim Mousavi, Esmail Khatib, Gholamreza Soleimani, Behnam Rezaei, Alireza Tangsiri, Majid Khademi, and other senior regime, military, intelligence, and IRGC figures. They destroyed Khamenei’s compound. They hit Iranian air defenses, command nodes, missile infrastructure, naval assets, and military facilities repeatedly. The regime survived, but America and Israel punished it.
That matters on the American side of the ledger.
It matters on the Iranian side too."
Read the entire article for the details behind the excerpt above.
"A lot of Trump’s critics are treating the Switzerland talks as a humiliation, a sellout, or a failure waiting to happen.
That misses the point.
The war came first because, in a real sense, it had to come first. For Americans old enough to remember 1979—and Donald Trump is certainly one of them—the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was never just a diplomatic incident. It was an act of war, covered at the time by the regime’s fig leaf that “students” had done it rather than the regime itself.
The United States never imposed a price commensurate with that act. Jimmy Carter’s response lodged in the American memory as weakness. For a country that still thinks in terms of honor, deterrence, and humiliation, that mattered.
Now Iran has paid a price.
American and Israeli strikes killed Ali Khamenei, Ali Larijani, Ali Shamkhani, Mohammad Pakpour, Aziz Nasirzadeh, Abdolrahim Mousavi, Esmail Khatib, Gholamreza Soleimani, Behnam Rezaei, Alireza Tangsiri, Majid Khademi, and other senior regime, military, intelligence, and IRGC figures. They destroyed Khamenei’s compound. They hit Iranian air defenses, command nodes, missile infrastructure, naval assets, and military facilities repeatedly. The regime survived, but America and Israel punished it.
That matters on the American side of the ledger.
It matters on the Iranian side too."
Read the entire article for the details behind the excerpt above.
Few days ago, one faction of the regime’s gangsters has been faking letters supposedly from Mojtaba Khamenei to claim that negotiations with the US were personally approved by him.
Others quickly learned the trick and started playing the same game. Today, one of the rivals claimed they have access to Mojtaba’s confidential letters with the current negotiating team. It turned into a full-blown public shitshow.
Honestly, it was both ridiculous and entertaining. The pigs are turning on each other. Let me lay out the full picture for you. Khamenei, to coup-proof his rule, massively empowered the IRGC and turned it into a powerful state-within-a-state. But then he became afraid of his own creation, so he deliberately prevented power from concentrating in any single hand and allowed different competing cartels to form inside the IRGC.
Most of the top figures in these cartels are deeply corrupt, ideology is just a facade for them. At the same time, he personally cultivated a loyal base from the poorest and most broken layers of society: fanatical, powerless people who were extremely loyal to him personally and would attack anyone on his command like rabid dogs. After his death, the IRGC clearly took full control of the country, but they are far from united.
They’re now openly fighting each other for the real seat of power.
Trump, with his deal-making style and the huge carrot of money, especially after the naval blockade pushed them into real poverty and begging, has brilliantly pushed these corrupt elements forward. This has created open clashes with the more ideological factions.
One of these hardliner cartels belongs to Saeed Jalili and includes figures like the cleric Mahmoud Nabavian, a sitting MP.
Today, Nabavian went on state TV and announced he wanted to reveal Mojtaba Khamenei’s confidential letters criticizing the negotiating team and the current deal. He started reading them live, but they cut him off mid-sentence. The network later called it a serious violation, announced legal action, and even one of the directors resigned and was rebuked.
This was their last desperate attempt to stop the negotiating team from reaching Geneva. But it failed. Just hours later, the other side, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and his crew, still made it to Geneva.
A few days ago, they even put the approval of this Memorandum of Understanding to a vote in the Supreme National Security Council. Everyone approved it except one person, and many believe that lone dissenter was Saeed Jalili, from the same cartel as Nabavian.
Meanwhile, another IRGC cartel, Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters, tried to sabotage the surrenderist negotiators’ trip to Geneva by claiming they had closed the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM immediately clapped back and said the Strait is wide open (and ships are moving freely).
Perfect own-goal. Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. He understands these animals better than anyone. He’s weakening the regime from within, without firing a single shot. Just as he predicted, as soon as the corrupt ones smelled real money, they sold out the entire regime and its ideology without hesitation. Let the man cook, trust the process.
Now I do not have any inside sources, I rely on the usual media, exclude NYT, BBC and such of course, but Dob's descriptions rings true.
Statements from Trump need interpretation. But stand back and it appears he knows what he is doing.
Statements from IRGC or the Iran government appear scattered, as if they neither know what they are doing nor what is happening.
"deeply corrupt". Yes, some/many of them. We read about the antics of family members in LA, the Riviera and other flesh-pots. We see behavior indicating much money but no culture, no responsibilities, no shame.
There was a time when I had a number of friends and acquaintances from Iran, all were decent and cultured. Perhaps Trump can end this 50-year long nightmare for the good people of Iran, as well as end the threats.
Nicely argued, there is more good sense here than I have seen most anywhere else.
Trump has surrendered, Iran needs more bombing, capitalist/imperialism must be shattered, etc. All tough talk nonsense.
Recall, this war started in 1979.
Instead we should look at what a sensible/realistic end to hostilities can look like and how to get there from here.
Maybe Trump is doing that, almost alone.
https://blog.portfolioarmor.com/p/the...
Thanks -