From Mark Wauck’s “The LARP before the TACO?”

No one that I take seriously believes that there are actually any talks between the U.S. and Iran. Trump as usual wants to make the markets happy and buy some time, but it’s hard to believe it will have lasting implications. The fact is that to really get an offramp Trump would have to bulldoze the Israelis and they  want nothing short of regime change. And given Trump’s  subservience to Israel and its American Lobby, that won’t happen unless Trump grows a pair and decides to live with the inevitable blackmail fallout.

Mark Wauck:

Judge Nap: Before we get into the issue of Iranian missile missile dominance over Israel, do you think Trump believes his own propaganda [larp]?

Alistair Crooke: There are new headlines just now, breaking headlines that say that Trump has decided in the light of “productive conversations” that are taking place with Iran to postpone the energy strikes for 5 days while he pursues talks with Iran. However, this is just lying. It’s not true. The Iranians have said very clearly: There are no direct or indirect talks taking place with Trump. The five-day pause, essentially, I sent this one word to someone in Tehran and they came back and said: TACO. That’s what has happened. TACO. So that’s where we are.

I guess it’s Monday. The markets are down and I expect Trump wants to get them up again quickly. So we now have the talks taking place–which are not taking place–and we have a 5-day pause. Probably also because it was a dangerous game of chicken that was developing between Washington and Tehran in terms of the nuclear side of it, but also in terms of the ultimatum that the Supreme Leader had given to America, saying: If you don’t do what I ask you, then there will be major escalation across the entire Gulf.

Judge: How did the Americans so radically–drastically–miscalculate the shrewdness and the potency of the Iranian response?

Crooke: I think partly, first of all, they believed Mossad–and Mossad have got this completely wrong. They don’t understand the nature of Iran. They don’t understand the nature of the Iranian system and structure. I know this sounds incredible, because we regard Mossad as this sort of extraordinary intelligence service. It is a major failure and one which they’ve passed on to America.

Two things.

First, with regard to Mossad—or perhaps with regard to the Israeli intel apparatus that sorts and synthesizes the information coming in. I wouldn’t want to discount Mossad’s capabilities—we’ve seen that Mossad has repeatedly been able to recruit high level sources in targeted countries and organizations. I suspect that what has happened is that the Israeli intel apparatus has become heavily politicized and ideologized, just as has happened in the US. They say what they want to believe, regardless of what the intel really says and regardless of operational successes—indeed, the operational successes, rather than being as such, are used to feed the larger narrative. So, for example, there are Israelis who do ‘get’ Iran. But they’re ignored. Just last night we quoted one:

Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz ,داني سيترينوفيتش @citrinowicz

Iran has publicly admitted that.

The Iranian strike on Dimona and the Haifa refinery following the Israeli attack on the South Pars gas field highlights a clear and consistent pattern: escalation managed through deliberate signaling.

In both cases, we see effective command and control, with strategic guidance translating into precise operational execution at the tactical level.

More importantly, Iran is working to preserve a response equation: whatever you do to us, we will do to you — and more.

This is not random retaliation. It is structured deterrence, designed to shape behavior and impose costs.

Any strategy that ignores this dynamic risks fundamentally misunderstanding how Iran calibrates escalation.

That very specific evaluation points to larger and basic misunderstandings. Perhaps Israelis have come to paint Arabs and Iranians with the same brush—a big mistake.

Second, with regard to miscalculating Iran, it’s not just the Jewish Nationalists and their American proxies who have drastically miscalculated. You might have expected that the Gulf Arabs—having lived in the shadow of Iran for many centuries—would have known better. They did not.

Patricia Marins @pati_marins64

1h

A few days ago, I said that the Gulf countries made a bet, believing in the US-Israeli outlook that a victory over Iran would be quick and triumphant.

These countries took a side, not only by allowing their territory to be used for attacks, but Saudi Arabia even used a tanker to provide mid-air refueling for planes on their way to strike Iran.

All these countries chose a side and are collaborating with the war, but the Iranian reaction has been so strong that it has left them stunned, and now all they do is deny having any knowledge of it.

The only certainty is that this war has ruined any normalization of relations between the GCC and Iran.

Trump is left looking at the smoking ruins of American prestige and hegemony in the region:

— GEROMAN — time will tell –  — @GeromanAT

47m

only Erbil [Iraqi Kurdistan] remains partly under US regime control

US is out of Syria and most of Iraq – perhaps some dudes hangng around in the Green zone in Baghdad (as far as I know)

Holding on to isolated outposts isn’t a long term proposition.

Continues…