“Caught in a trap, I can’t walk out, Because I love you too much, Bibi!”

President Trump is caught in a trap—very much of his own making!

In being the leader of the Western Hemisphere, Trump has also ensnared the West in the trap, laid by Netanyahu and Israel over decades.

For at least 25 years Israel, and Netanyahu in particular, have had as their heart’s desire the convincing of the US President to use American power to destroy Iran.  US Presidents from Bush to Biden, all war-fighting Presidents to varying degrees, have resisted the ongoing Israeli persuasion.

The Appeaser Obama committed the cardinal sin of making an agreement with Iran—probably to get Israel off the US back!  It, unfortunately, was undone by Trump, and Israel was back on the US back, leading to the trap.

Trump’s predecessors listened to their military advisors, who told them that a US war on Iran might be in Israel’s interest, but it was not something that the US should do:  It was fraught with danger for both the US and the West in general, because of its uncertain military and economic outcome.

The Iraq War had not turned out well.  And Iran was not Iraq:  it would prove a much harder nut to crack!  And then there was the issue of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran guarded, through which 20% of the world’s oil came—as well as a good many other essential things besides.

The military men told each President—Bush, Biden, Trump and Obama—that they could not guarantee success:  despite the tremendous power they had at their disposal.

Trump, of course, does not listen well to advice.  He believes he knows better than those who are employed to know.  He has removed obstructions to action within his administration and does not care for people who tell him he is wrong.  He wishes to prove that he is right, and they are wrong.  His Venezuela operation convinced him of his judgement and power.

Trump has been listening to a very small circle of people—Netanyahu, Kushner, Hegseth, Rubio, Witkoff—who convinced him to ride to war on Iran with Israel. 

The President had seen his first administration stymied by the Washington ‘swamp’:  and he said he’d drain it.  To this end, he carefully prepared his new administration of trusted, radical, outsiders.  The danger of this approach is now apparent:  these reckless people have encouraged Trump’s worst megalomaniac characteristics, with serious implications for the US and for the world.

The main concern of every US President should be to constrain and restrain Israel.  Many have failed in this, but Trump is pretty unique in acting as though the US has no interest separate from that of Israel.  He has hitched the US completely to Israel—as no other President has done.  President Biden had come under enormous pressure to attack Iran during Israel’s rampage against the Palestinians after October 7th, but he resisted.  He settled for supporting the Jewish State in the destruction of Gaza and its attempted Genocide.  But he drew the line at committing the US to War on Iran on Netanyahu’s behalf.

Trump has boasted that he has dared do something that no other US President has. But there are good reasons why Trump is the only US President to have been snared in Netanyahu’s trap!

Along with not listening to advice, Trump seems to have sidelined Vice-President J.D. Vance—a voice of comparative reason in his administration—who he has probably begun to view as a weakling. 

Marco Rubio, the loyal warhawk, has replaced the Vice President as his favourite and anointed Presidential candidate for 2028. 

The Trump ultimatum to Iran, in which he threatened to destroy its energy infrastructure if it didn’t surrender to US/Israel demands, reveals the extent of the trap he is in:  since Trump is now presented with a choice of either backing off with a whimper (declaration of victory!), or attempting the annihilation of Iran. Any middle course—the Art of the Deal—is closed off because of the steadfast he has encountered from Iran.

Enforcement of the Trump ultimatum—issued with great confidence of success—has now been postponed from 48 hours to 5 days and now to 10 days (as of 28th March).  

Both the markets and the US Opinion Polls have spooked Trump:  that is why he decided to ‘kick the can down the road’!  There has been a plea for Vice-President Vance to help escape from the position he has let himself be manoeuvred into.  It would be in Vance’s interest to help, as getting the US out of this hole Trump has dug for himself would be some achievement.  But an escape from his quandary seems unlikely, because Trump is already in too deep.  He is looking like an increasingly desperate man:  wanting to declare victory and move on to some other adventure, like Cuba.

But this swift exit cannot be achieved without losing face—Israel wouldn’t let him, and Iran wouldn’t let him!

Trump wanted another Venezuela, but he was foolish if he believed such a thing was possible in Iran.  But Netanyahu undoubtedly would have encouraged him to believe that it was!

Unlike the 2003 conquest of Iraq, there is no alternative administration-in-waiting prepared by the US.  Trump himself said a number of years ago, in Saudi Arabia, that the US was no nation builder.  The US war plan seems to have been an improvised one by Trump:   and therefore, it does not go beyond State collapse.  And that suits Israel just fine.

The fly in the ointment is that the State shows no sign of collapsing, despite assassination and mayhem.

It should now be very clear to everyone that Israel wants this unequal War to proceed until the Iran and its people are ground into the dust. 

The objective is social chaos and not regime change.

This is obvious from their assassination policy—unprecedented in warfare—the aim of which is to leave no one to negotiate with (even if Trump wanted to). 

Netanyahu might have his “little list” of people to assassinate (as Koko had in the Mikado), but all he has done is pare back the functional core of the layered State apparatus of the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps].  Names are crossed off Netanyahu’s “little list” to great fanfare, but the system remains unbroken! 

If anything, the moderating former Ayatollah has been replaced by the less inhibited Republican Guard Corps.

Israel’s wrecking objective is also apparent from the American and Israeli escalatory energy facility attacks:  these are intended to provoke counter-strikes against the Gulf states and potentially others.  Because the US and Israel have largely neutralised the Iranian air defence, the only defence it has is attack. 

And the only form of resistance open to it is to give the West pain where it hurts—in its economy.

The Israeli policy was always designed to destroy Iran, no matter the cost to any person or country.  And Trump has been taken on that tiger ride.

If Trump/Israel were to succeed in weakening the Iranian command and control sufficiently, it should be of no surprise that there will be increasing strikes against neighbours.  One cannot expect Tehran to maintain tight discipline in such circumstances— particularly if it is felt that the State is going down and there is nothing to lose! 

The elements in Iran—which had been contained within its Mosaic [meaning decentralised, ed.] defence, and who feel the time has come to settle scores with enemies—will be freed of the constraint of government by the US and Israel.  And black flag operations will be mounted in parallel with those of the Israelis—like the one against Azerbaijan.

Trump believed he could win a swift decisive War against Iran, obtaining a rapid waving of the white flag in Tehran.  But he failed to intimidate the Iranians into surrender:  despite the full might of US military power advancing toward and surrounding Iran.

He has  failed to bring about regime change, twice:  he has failed to turn Iranians against their Government.

The Iranians have undoubtedly surprised the US. 

It seems to have been expected that this second War on Iran would result in the same limited Iranian counter-punches at Israel as happened last year.  Trump does not seem to have understood that the Iranians would fight a different War if they were boxed into a corner by the US assembling massive military might around it, posing an existential threat!

The Iranians switched their strategy, concentrating their response on the Gulf States and on US bases.  All US bases in the region have been destroyed.  Only the big US base of Israel survives!

The large number of drones and small missiles deployed by the Iranian defence have been very effective in depleting the expensive and limited US inceptors sold in commercial dealings.

At the same time Iran has closed the gates to the West through the Straits, denying it one fifth of its energy supplies.  The West is in a panic.  There is talk of oil and petroleum rationing and the reserving of it for emergency services.  Asia, with limited supply, is already on short time.  Things will get critical by the end of April.

Despite the level of force deployed against it, Iran still holds the Trump card.

Iran has made its conditions for the suspension of resistance to the US/Israel clear:  US withdrawal from the region, reparations for damage, acknowledgement of Iranian control of the Straits of Hormuz—with permission required for passage (as Ataturk achieved in the Dardanelles Straits), along with international guarantees against future aggression and an end to Western sanctions.

There is no chance of a deal for Trump, because there is so much difference between his surrender document and Iran’s understandable demands.  

If Trump tries to interrupt the current check-point arrangements being enforced by Iran—which enable Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Pakistani, and Spanish tankers to pass through the Straits—the Iranians will block the Straits with destroyed shipping, using their suicide drones and unmanned ships.

And, on an economic level, it is Trump’s interest to allow the Iranians to keep the current arrangement, as it adds to the supply of oil that keeps the market from collapse and prices from soaring.

Any further US escalation, responded to by Iran, would shut Western economies down for months—at the very least—and wreak havoc on agriculture across the globe.  Migration flows would be put on steroids.

What is Trump, Hegseth and Rubio triumvirate going to do?  They appear non-plussed by the Iranian tactical ingenuity.  They only have one plan—assassination and the use of overwhelming force.  And this time it is failing.

If Trump is forced to make concessions to Iran to get out of the War he started, this will be a massive humiliation for himself and for the US.  It could be America’s Suez moment!  

And Israel is likely to do everything in its power to keep the US in the war—unless it senses that America might go down:  in which case Israel faces an existential crisis itself!

Europe is in a bind.  When it gave up its cheap and reliable Russian fuel pipelines, yielded its independence to the US (and Israel).  Trump is right when he says Europe needs Middle East energy more than America does.  He feels it entirely reasonable that Europe should sacrifice its ships in forcing the Straits in a kind of Dardanelles 1915 operation.  

But in fact the Europeans and Starmer are concluding that Trump is toxic and a temporary hazard.

Will all founder on the rock of Iran?  We can but hope. Western democracy may depend upon it!

One waits patiently for the response from the US democracy:  hoping to see moves that it will attempt to save itself.

Trump exhibits all the characteristics of the worst of American capitalist society.  But he has to break down the ramparts of the most formidable democratic system on earth—with its strong checks and balances that Fukuyama called a vetocracy.  But Congress, paid by Israel, is dilly-dallying.

Trump can only act as a dictator in the US system by initiating a great war and consequent emergency powers.

The influence of Israel through Netanyahu, its lobby, and US Jewish business interests, has proved to be the cancer within the US system that the American political philosopher, Professor John Mearsheimer, always said it was.  This tendency is responsible for the Jeffrey Epstein spy and blackmail racket.   Now it has the US interest has been captured:  superseded by that of a foreign state, while a great democracy is negated by a President with little time for the system.

If the war on Iran becomes an economic and political catastrophe for the US and the West, there is little doubt where blame will be heaped.  Perhaps there may be a large global outbreak of what we used to call “Anti-Semitism”—before that term was rendered meaningless by the Israeli lobby.

When something becomes meaningless it becomes ineffective as a restraint on action.

Israel and its friends in Washington, and elsewhere, declare Iran to be the problem.  But Iran has existed for centuries within its mountain-ringed fortress without troubling its neighbours.  The problem is evidently elsewhere.

Unless people haven’t noticed, the British Government’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 has proved a momentous policy of catastrophic proportions. 

Not only did it fail to do what its British supporters intended—turn the Jews away from destabilising international activity by giving them a nation “to range themselves within” (Halford Mackinder).  But it also created a small, aggressive, genocidal and expansionary nation-state that—freeing itself by a bloody campaign against the country of Palestine within the British Empire, and by capturing control of the most powerful State in the world—has become a serious problem for all humanity.

Pat Walsh