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Scott Ritter: The Consequences of Incompetence

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The Consequences of Incompetence

The US lost the first round of the war with Iran decisively. If Trump decides to go a second round, the results will be disastrous for American and its allies.

For nearly 40 days, Israel and the United States carried out an extensive aerial campaign against Iran designed to topple the government and suppress Iran’s ability to defend itself. This campaign failed to achieve any of its stated objectives. Instead, it devolved into a numbers game where inflated outcomes were sold to an unquestioning public by military professionals and politicians alike. The Iranian government not only withstood the efforts at decapitation-induced regime change, but actually strengthened its hold on power when the people of Iran, instead of turning on the Islamic Republic, rallied to its cause. Moreover, rather than suppressing Iran’s ability to launch ballistic missiles and drones against US military bases, critical infrastructure in the Gulf Arab States, and Israel, Iran not only sustained its ability to strike, but deployed new generations of weapons that readily defeated all missile defense systems while, using intelligence information that permitted accurate targeting, destroyed critical military infrastructure worth tens of billions of dollars.

Regional experts had long warned about the consequences of entering an existential conflict with Iran, noting that Iran would not simply allow itself to be erased as a viable nation state without ensuring that the other nations of the region were subjected to similar existential threats to their survival, and that global energy security would be disrupted in such a manner as to trigger a world economic crisis. These assessments were backed up by a belied that Iran would not only be able to shut down shipping transiting the Strait of Hormuz, but also effectively target and destroy the major energy production potential of the Gulf Arab States.

It wasn’t that the politicians and military planners in the US and Israel doubted Iran’s ability to impact global energy markets or strike targets in Israel and the Gulf region.

They knew Iran had the potential. They just believed that they would be able to achieve regime change in Tehran in relatively short order, thereby mooting any threat Iran might pose to energy supplies and infrastructure.

They were wrong, which is why the US was looking for an offramp from the war soon after it started.

The end result was this current ceasefire, which was ostensibly entered into to buy time for US and Iranian negotiators to hammer out a lasting peace plan.

There is a fundamental problem, however.

While Iran has approached the current negotiations from a practical, reality-based posture predicated on resolving the actual major points of difference between the US and Iran, the US is being held hostage by the politicized whim of an American President who needs to shape domestic public opinion in a way which transforms the reality of a humiliating defeat into the perception of a bold victory.

Continues…

Trump’s Desperation

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Mark Wauck: Trump About To Double Down On Failure

That’s the betting—more bigger war tomorrow. The WSJ has an article out that highlights the truth that Trump largely winged his war, with no real plan, against advice, and under the direction of Netanyahu. He recognized he had failed early on, but now—as predicated by Professor Pape’s doctrine of the “escalation trap”—sees no other option that to … double down. Think about that. Netanyahu somehow—we hardly dare ask how—got Trump to destroy his own presidency, yet how do you figure that he’ll do it again, as seems likely? As Patty Marins asked: What is the weird hold that Jewish Nationalists have over him?

DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics

1h

 Behind Trump’s confident public posture on the Iran war, the Wall Street Journal reports a president gripped by fear, distraction and no clear exit strategy.

No “clear” exit strategy? Is there even a fuzzy, unclear one?

When a U.S. jet was shot down over Iran on Good Friday, Trump screamed at aides for hours. Images of Jimmy Carter’s failed 1979 hostage rescue were haunting him. Aides kept him out of the Situation Room during the rescue operation because, a senior official said, his impatience wouldn’t be helpful.

Trump had told his team before the war that Iran would capitulate before closing the Strait of Hormuz, and that even if they tried, the U.S. military could handle it. He was wrong on both counts. He has since marveled at how easily it was shut down, telling aides: “A guy with a drone can shut it down.”

Notably, as early as late March, before the plane was even shot down, Trump had already ordered his negotiating team to find a way to start talks, according to the WSJ. The public threats and the private reality were moving in opposite directions.

In other words, trust the Iranian reports, not Trump. That’s exactly what Iran has said—that within 10 days Trump was begging to negotiate.

Iran as a second Venezuela? Anyone with half a brain new there was no valid comparison—at all. That points to an ego driven, impulsive gamble.

The war itself was partly Netanyahu’s sell. After a persuasive February briefing from the Israeli Prime Minister in the Situation Room, Trump said he trusted the military to pull it off, pointing to the swift U.S. operation in Venezuela as proof it could work. In Iran, he was shown clips every morning of explosions across Iranian terrain and remarked to advisers how impressive the military was, seemingly in awe of the scale of the bombs. But he had done little to sell the American public on the war, and soon grew frustrated that his administration wasn’t getting enough external praise.

Videos of big explosions? How naive is that? And no preparation of the public? This war was baked in from the outset of Trump 2.0. How can you not prepare the public? What was going on in the White House?

He resisted ordering the capture of Kharg Island, the launch point for 90% of Iran’s oil exports, telling aides the troops would be “sitting ducks.” His threat to destroy Iranian civilization was improvised, with no input from his national security team. His Easter morning post telling Iran to “Open the F***in’ Strait,” which included “Praise be to Allah,” was also unilateral. Afterwards he asked aides: “How’s it playing?”

My guess: Driven by utter frustration. He could see no way out and couldn’t get Iran to play along with his emotional needs. These were people who were serious about their country, their nation, their civilization. Trump was only serious about his brand.

The two-week ceasefire was announced less than 90 minutes before his own 12-hour ultimatum expired.

As the war dragged on and poll numbers dropped, top aides repeatedly urged Trump to stop giving impromptu media interviews, telling him his contradictory statements were only convincing the public he had no coherent strategy. Trump agreed briefly, then resumed. His chief of staff Susie Wiles pushed him to address the nation to reassure the public he had a plan. Trump resisted, asking what he would even say, admitting he couldn’t declare victory and didn’t know where the war was going. He was eventually persuaded, delivering the April 1st address. It didn’t move public opinion.

Which shows that he wasn’t actually delusional, in the true sense. And yet he did continually declare victory.

Meanwhile Trump held meetings about the White House ballroom he is building, attended midterm fundraisers hours after the war began, and at a donor reception mused aloud about awarding himself the Medal of Honor, citing as justification a scary landing in Iraq during his first term. His press secretary said he was joking.

“We are witnessing astonishing military successes?” So says a McCain goofball. Such as? Killing a handful of top officials, who are quickly replaced while the Iranian war effort doesn’t skip a beat?

“We are witnessing astonishing military successes that do not add up to victory,” said Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute, who served on George W. Bush’s National Security Council. “That is squarely on the president and how

Patty Marins sees Trump doubling down.

Patricia Marins @pati_marins64

7h

President Trump Returns to the Offensive

He posted a video on his Truth Social platform a few hours ago in which he once again appears to be betting on a popular uprising inside Iran.

In other words, he’s doubling down on Jewish Nationalist fantasies of regime change. Wait, didn’t that just fail for the umpteenth time? How does the definition of insanity run? Exactly what is the hold that Jewish Nationalists have over Trump—and America?

Here’s a good question:

But if this uprising did not happen at the beginning of the war, why would it occur now, after more than 2,000 deaths, including more than 200 children?

There are already more than 10,000 people hospitalized in Iran due to the attacks.

There are already more than 3 million displaced people in Iran.

Who in their right mind, regardless of any local disagreements they might have, would support an enemy that is bombing their cities and killing their own people?

This is yet another misguided calculation, induced by Netanyahu, who erroneously promoted this idea.

That’s the question: Is this “misguided calculation” simply “induced by Netanayahu”, or is there more to this? Surely, after getting on to two months of recognized failure, Trump got some alternative views? What’s going on?

Continues…

Jewish Insider: Jewish Democratic disillusionment deepens over party’s direction

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Jewish Insider

[The votes] served as a proxy for the war in Iran that nearly all Democrats oppose, but also were a signal of opposition to Israel’s operations in Lebanon, settler attacks and settlement expansion in the West Bank, the war in Gaza and — to a substantial degree — the Democratic enmity that has been growing for years toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his government and his alignment with President Donald Trump and Republicans.Former ADL chief Abe Foxman: ‘This is a calamity for the Democratic Party, if it will not be contained and stopped’

The Democratic shift on Israel policy was on full, dramatic display on the Senate floor on Wednesday night as 40 of 47 Senate Democrats voted for at least one of two resolutions to block U.S. shipments of bulldozers and bombs to Israel.
The votes left many pro-Israel Democrats shocked and disillusioned — exemplified in the muted statements, if any, on the vote from key pro-Israel groups — and is being seen by some as the marker of a new era of Democratic policy on Israel, in which critics of Israel are firmly in the party mainstream.

“It’s yet another data point that the bipartisan consensus [in support of Israel] is, at least at the moment, no longer,” a former Biden administration official told Jewish Insider on Thursday. “Democrats think it’s politically advantageous to take these votes that would have been completely out-of-bounds just two-and-a-half years ago. … It’s deeply concerning if you care about the relationship, if you care about the security of [Israel]. But that’s the state of play at the moment, I think until or unless there’s an event that changes the trajectory.”

Abe Foxman, the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, said the vote highlights the “progressive socialist wing” of the Democratic Party’s increasing takeover. “This is a calamity for the Democratic Party, if it will not be contained and stopped,” Foxman told JI. “What’s also disturbing to me is that this litmus test is being first administered to every Jewish candidate.”

He added that the votes send a terrible message to U.S. allies beyond Israel that the U.S. can’t be relied upon.

Pro-Israel Democrats who spoke to JI said the votes came about as a combination of several factors: They served as a proxy for the war in Iran that nearly all Democrats oppose, but also were a signal of opposition to Israel’s operations in Lebanon, settler attacks and settlement expansion in the West Bank, the war in Gaza and — to a substantial degree — the Democratic enmity that has been growing for years toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his government and his alignment with President Donald Trump and Republicans.

And lawmakers are also responding to the growing progressive pressure, fueled by two years of imagery from the war in Gaza, amplified by social media platforms that boosted antisemitic content, that has changed the politics around Israel in a “really dramatic way” in the Democratic Party, the former Biden administration official said.

“Those [resolutions], at this moment in time, were just a proxy for real discomfort with the direction of the Trump-Netanyahu relationship in this war, which is not the right reason to vote for these,” another former Biden administration official told JI. “I understand the [vote to block] bulldozers at this moment in time. [Withholding] the munitions — I think it’s really, really troubling.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), an early supporter of efforts to block weapons sales to Israel, said that the growing opposition can’t be blamed solely on Netanyahu. “I also think it’s watching how the weapons are used,” Kaine told reporters. “I think the observation of how the weapons are used is probably a little bit more the reason that the vote total is going up than a feeling about the domestic politics of Israel.”

Some pro-Israel Democrats say that the impact and meaning of the votes shouldn’t be overstated, and that there remains a sizable pro-Israel Democratic contingent, even including some of the lawmakers who voted for the resolutions on Wednesday.

“There were pro-Israel senators, and senators who are close partners and allies of the Jewish community, on both sides of this vote last night,” Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said. “This didn’t occur in a vacuum, and it’s not necessarily driven by anti-Israel, and certainly not antisemitic, views. It also doesn’t necessarily represent a wholesale shift in the Democratic Party. It’s a snapshot of where we are in this moment as it relates to these particular arms sales and this particular Israeli government and its policies. But I have no doubt that there’s the chance that that will change in the future.”

Soifer said that she and JDCA didn’t support the resolutions, but emphasized that some of the Democrats who voted for the resolutions said in their statements that they remain strong supporters of Israel. And she said JDCA doesn’t view the votes as “inherently anti-Israel” or necessarily an expression of alignment with the far left.

She called the vote on the bulldozers, which received 40 supporters, a particularly potent “symbolic message” — many Democrats associate the machines with the destruction of Palestinian homes and expansion of settlements in the West Bank. But she said it was something of an “anomaly” as compared to previous efforts to block systems such as bomb guidance kits.

“It’s a challenging time where both things are true at once: You do have an increased number of Democrats who are supporting these [resolutions], and you also still continue to have a majority of Democrats who support the U.S.-Israel security relationship,” Soifer said.

A common refrain in conversations with those in the Democratic pro-Israel world after the votes — and even before then — was that the end of Netanyahu’s premiership would provide a critical opening and opportunity to start rebuilding support for Israel among Democrats.

Kaine said that a change in the Israeli government would lead lawmakers to step back and analyze the potential implications, but said it wouldn’t necessarily bring sweeping changes. “I don’t think the 40 [Democrats voting for the resolutions] is baked in, I also don’t think it will immediately change.”

But a Netanyahu defeat in this year’s Israeli elections is far from a sure thing. So what happens if Netanyahu wins again? “I think it will be very difficult for Democrats to hold any center on support for Israel,” one former Biden administration official said.

The other former Biden administration official said that the intense anti-Israel pressure on Democrats would likely fade if Middle East policy issues are out of the headlines on a day-to-day basis. They further argued that the 2028 primaries will be an “inflection point,” on both sides of the aisle.

And they said that the Jewish community, particularly the non-Orthodox community, needs to be more organized and active locally and on a grassroots level in advocating for their representatives to be supportive of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Foxman said he hopes to see more Democratic lawmakers — naming Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) specifically — standing up directly to the anti-Israel wing of the party, just as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has spoken out against antisemitism on the right.

With opposition to weapons systems for Israel apparently firmly within the mainstream, we wrote earlier this week about the emerging progressive push to cut off U.S. support for Israel’s missile-defense systems as well.

Asked whether he takes a similar view, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the lead driver of the Senate votes, did not directly respond. “Let’s take one thing at a time. Right now, I think we made progress yesterday,” he told JI.

Kaine took a firmer stance in support of missile-defense aid, calling those who want to cut it off “a tiny minority,” especially in the Senate. He noted that no Democrats have offered similar resolutions to block defensive systems, and that other weapons sales to Israel have gone entirely unchallenged — though he acknowledged that the distinction between offensive and defensive weapons can be fuzzy at times.

One of the former Biden administration officials warned that opposing missile-defense support is a “totally unproductive, terrible” policy — not just for Israel, but also sending a message to allies around the world that the U.S. can’t be relied upon to follow through for its partners.

From Mark Wauck: “If it’s Thursday, Are There Talks In Islamabad?

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Sadly, I agree. Trump’s character flaws (mainly his narcissism) have gotten worse–much worse, to the point that they endanger the world economy, and GOP, and the U.S. standing in the world.

From Mark Wauck, “If it’s Thursday, Are There Talks In Islamabad?”

The problematic behavior he has exhibited throughout his adult life is, rather, due to character flaws that have long been on open display—especially a strong narcissistic streak that leads him to regularly gamble on risky actions to bolster his grandiose ego needs. These problems probably also explain the astonishing degree to which Trump indulges in wildly inappropriate rhetoric and even openly lies. It’s gotten to the point that it’s now difficult to distinguish what Trump truly believes from his deliberate gaslighting.

I certainly agree that it’s entirely possible, even likely, that aged based mental changes are exacerbating these tendencies and character flaws and leading to repeated disastrous judgment calls. I continue to believe that, within normal limits, Trump understands that his actions have led to disastrous results. However, in line with his character flaws and age related decline in his ability to take corrective action—especially recognizing his own responsibility—his reaction is twofold. First, he seeks devious ways to avoid responsibility and to manipulate those who oppose him. This is entirely in line with his past. However, second, he now—to a degree that is exaggerated beyond his past behavior—lashes out inappropriately against all opposition in counterproductive ways. Thus we see unstable and wild swings of mood and emotional reactions, tempered at times by a return to his shrewder past. The trend is clearly downward, and especially because his narcissism has led him to surround himself to an unprecedented degree with conniving and incompetent ass kissers—people who are willing to feed his ego, but often for their own fanatical purposes. And Jewish Nationalists figure they’ve just bought Trump and the GOP—and lots more war and killing:

Megatron @Megatron_ron

14h

JUST IN: Israeli megadonor Miriam Adelson gives $40 million to Republican super PACs for midterm elections.

For these reasons I’m very pessimistic about any peaceful resolution to Trump’s war on Iran. I believe that Trump is still quite capable of understanding that any attempt at a TACO in this situation will fool no one. No walkaway is possible without a huge loss of US strategic depth, both in purely military terms (loss of bases, logistic hubs, etc.) as well as in financial and diplomatic influence. Trump has well and truly boxed himself in. A TACO move may be theoretically possible, but seems very unlikely in view of Trump’s character flaws, which manifest in his adamant refusal to acknowledge mistakes, or even responsibility for his decisions and actions. He continues to double down on disastrous mistakes, to the extent that corrective action to reverse the effects of those mistakes is now impossible in the real world.

Continues…

One Day in the Life of Ann

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Liberals can ruin anything.

I’ve been trying to distract myself from the end of the world, as Trump blows up not only Iran but the Republican Party with a pointless war that has spiked oil prices, depleted our munitions, closed the Strait of Hormuz, jettisoned America’s moral standing, distracted the president from immigration, and, so far, cost us $30 billion in direct military spending, with $200 billion more requested.

So I’ve been spending my time on murder mysteries.

Reading David Baldacci’s action-thriller “To Die For,” I was willing to suspend disbelief and accept his portrayal of the CIA and FBI as all-powerful, super-stealth agencies, full of swashbuckling killers (men and women!) as opposed to what they actually are, which is incompetent paper-pushers with cushy bureaucratic jobs who didn’t see 9/11 coming. (Refusing to engage in “racial profiling,” FBI officials blew off Phoenix agent Kenneth Williams’ July 10, 2001, memo warning about the “inordinate number” of Muslim men linked to Osama bin Laden enrolled in U.S. flight schools.)

But then I got to the part where the real enemy is revealed — the hidden malevolent force that is about to take down THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Guess what that terrifying organization is …

… a reconstituted KKK! Actual quote from the book: “[They want] a population that looks the same, prays the same, speaks the same, and where white men dominate everything. Just like the KKK.”

This book came out in 2024. Yes, apparently, Baldacci was in a semi-vegetative state during the previous four years of convulsive violence from antifa and their leftist comrades — cities aflame, businesses destroyed, police stations razed to the ground, neighborhoods commandeered by fascist thugs, an explosion in the murder rate beyond anything ever seen in U.S. history. And all this violence was committed with the warm cooperation of a half-dozen local governments.

So this was just the time to release a panicky tome about the (nonexistent) KKK and their scary memes. (A hundred electroshock-therapy sessions couldn’t cure hack writers of their irrational fear of white domestic terrorists.)

Next on the escapist trail, I watched an episode of “Law & Order.” Sticking to formula, the writers took a hideous, real-life crime committed by a non-white person and made the perp a super-WASPy white man. The “ripped from the headlines” show I saw was strikingly similar to a Muslim’s mass shooting in Canada 10 years earlier.

In 1989, Gamil Gharbi, son of a French Canadian mother and an Algerian immigrant father, who hated women (no, really?), methodically murdered 14 female engineering students at École Polytechnique, a top technical school in Montreal. Gharbi barged into an engineering classroom and ordered all the men out, then shot the women, explaining he was “fighting feminism.”

The misogynist Muslim continued on his way, entering another classroom, again threw the men out, and shot or knifed the women to death. During his 20-minute rampage, Gharbi killed 14 women and injured 10. (It appears that not one of the ejected men, listening as the ladies were shot, attempted to intervene, not exactly smashing the stereotype of French Canadians as useless sissies.)

In the “Law & Order” version of this real-life Muslim murder spree, a group of 17 female pre-med students in Central Park are gunned down by a creepy guy, aiming only for women, while muttering “Damn bitches.” Description of the suspect from one of the TV witnesses: “He was white.” And just so no one missed the point, he was played by a blond, blue-eyed, all-American actor.

Hoping for a less annoying distraction, I tried one of my favorite shows, “Murder, She Wrote” — or as a cruel ex-boyfriend called it, “Underpants She Soiled.” (The lead character is a cheerful dowager who solves an apparently unending series of homicides in her small New England town.)

But even this aggressively apolitical program worked in a gratuitous shot at Republicans. It wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except for the near-perfect Opposites Day nature of the remark.

In the show, the owner of a Fifth Avenue salon says of her star hairstylist, “One of our nine Republican candidates for president pays him $600 plus airfare to fly to Washington every two weeks.”

Because, you know, Republicans are such rich, elitist snobs.

That episode aired in 1995, which happens to be just two years after President Bill Clinton made international news for stopping traffic at Los Angeles International Airport so that he could treat himself to a $300 haircut ($670 today) from “Cristophe of Beverly Hills” aboard Air Force One. The story became, as one Washington Post columnist put it, “The Most Famous Haircut Since Samson’s.” The Post alone ran more than 50 stories on it.

No one at “Murder, She Wrote” — not the writers, editors, Standards and Practices executives, cameramen, not even the actors — could have missed the story about Clinton’s tarmac trim. But the dialogue sounded good to them.

It didn’t stop with Clinton.

In 2007, Sen. John Edwards’ Federal Election Commission filings revealed that he’d billed his presidential campaign for two $400 haircuts from a Beverly Hills stylist, $250 for hair styling and makeup from a swank salon in Dubuque, Iowa, and $225 in services from the Pink Sapphire in Manchester, New Hampshire, which, NBC News reported, “is described on its website as ‘a unique boutique for the mind, body and face’ that caters mostly to women.”

Famously, Hillary Clinton got a $600 haircut in 2015 from the posh John Barrett Salon, requiring half of Bergdorf Goodman to be put on lockdown.

According to Google AI, every haircut scandal has involved a Democrat. These include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s $300 haircut in 2019 and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s spending more than $30,000 from his 2024 campaign coffers for hair and makeup.

Back to the dissolution of the world, Google also reveals that in 2016 Benjamin Netanyahu got a haircut in New York City for a whopping $1,600. Perhaps patriotic hairstylists could put an end to the slaughter by threatening to withhold services from the well-coifed prime minister.

If our storytellers ever try their hand at reimagining the Iran War, at least they’re unlikely to confuse which party bears responsibility for this catastrophe.

Mearsheimer: Israel and its enormously powerful lobby have the means to make Trump dance to their tune, as they have demonstrated repeatedly since Trump moved back into the White House.

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Mershiemer:

On 14 April 2026, I was on “Judging Freedom” talking with Judge Napolitano about Iran. My central point to the judge was that Trump is in no position to work out a deal with Iran that settles the ongoing war in a meaningful way. The reason is simple: Israel has no interest in a ceasefire, much less an agreement that satisfies any of Iran’s demands, especially its demand that it maintain the capability to enrich uranium. Israel would prefer to wreck Iran, much the way Syria was wrecked. And Israel and its enormously powerful lobby have the means to make Trump dance to their tune, as they have demonstrated repeatedly since Trump moved back into the White House in January 2025. The only circumstance where Trump might stand up to Israel and the lobby is if the world economy is on the verge of disaster, and the president feels that eventuality would be so dire that he has no choice but to stand up to Israel.

Netanyahu at the U.S.-Iran talks

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DD Geopolitics

Pepe Escobar: The ‘Second Coming’ at Hormuz — Trump Blocks the Blockade; Blessed Be the Oil; Pepe Escobar reveals the inside details of the Iran- American negotiations; The Americans came to cut a deal to divide the spoils of the Hormuz tolls. April 14, 2026.

(Partial transcript) There are some very interesting details coming out from members of parliament of Iran who were actually in the room. These are the best like our friend Professor Marandi, he was outside of the room. So people were telling him what was going on. So some of these guys, don’t forget the Iranian delegation was 71 people. So we still don’t know how many when when Aragchi and Vance were actually in the same room talking face to face. We don’t know how many Iranians. I would assume at least seven or eight because these people were and some of them are members of the security council. This guy who start leaking very discreetly some stuff is a parliament member. He said that in the beginning Aragchi and Vance there was a certain flow. It was a relatively adult conversation.

Soon guess who barges inside the room? Dumb and dumber. Heckle and Jackal, Tweedle Dee and Twiddle Dum and Kushner with messages from Netanyahu. And after that there was a phone call from Netanyahu to Vance. According to our member of parliament after that the whole thing started to derail.

I think this is all all of us need to know about it and the position of Vance was terrible. Well, to start with, can you imagine in the most important diplomatic day in the modern history of the United States and Iran in the past 47 years, the president of the United States was playing golf and then at night he went to a fucking UFC, whatever, with his secretary of state who should have been in the room. So, this means that they set Vance up.

They sent him on a mission impossible. Come on. The guy went to Yale Law School. How how how he didn’t see this thing coming? It’s unbelievable. They put him in the line of fire. He didn’t have any autonomy.

There are differences on how many calls from 6 to 12 to to Trump during the 15-hour negotiation process. And on top of it, direct interference from Netanyahu via Tweedle Dee and Twiddle Dum and the phone call. So, obviously they didn’t go there to negotiate. I put this in my my column is coming out in Russia, I think after our conversation, unfortunately. Basically the Americans went there to dictate not to negotiate.

There’s an extra little bit of information that came from another source. the whole uranium enrichment Kabuki was not the main thing.

He actually said that and then with Kushner and Witkoff the Americans wanted a cut, a very large cut on the toll booth. It was about money. Grifters. And this is what they are. They are a bunch of bloody grifters. Why do they send Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee to something so important? Because they want some money out of it. So obviously the whole thing had to collapse. And of course the degree of unpreparedness of the American delegations. The Iranians were, wow! Can you imagine that?

Only the um nuclear dossier in the Iranians, they had a file this thick, 120 pages with all the details underlined everywhere. So they they they had the whole all the dossiers on top of their hands and in written files all of them. The Americans arrived with two or three pages which they probably didn’t read somebody scribble for them, you know.

So, they were completely unprepared and dealing with an extremely well-prepared delegation. But the most incredible thing is that in the beginning at least there was some degree of dialogue.

Okay. Vance is not a grifter. At least we don’t know. But and he seems to have a brain. So it was in the beginning. Yeah. Okay. Tiny brain. But at least there was some measure of dialogue. And Aragchi is an extremely patient guy. He’s very cool, measured and patient. He listens. So obviously he was making an effort to listen to Vance.

But then the whole thing completely derailed which was expected. Our Pakistani friends, apart everything that we know about this Pakistani junta. Basically this is a this government is run by Field Marshall Munir who has Trump on speed dial, and it’s part of the industrial security intelligence complex comp complex in Pakistan. The people who put Imran Khan in jail we we all know.

But okay, credit to them they broke their backs to make this thing work. They worked like hell. And this is what I heard from Pakistan. I was doing a podcast with Pakistanis before talking to you guys. That was very interesting.

Behind the scenes, he told me a few things that he heard from the the Pakistani mediators, They were not the the architects of the whole thing. They were the gobetweens but as go-betweens. They did a great job.

There is a I don’t know you have if you have seen a photo there is uh the face of Mohammad Ishaq Dar, the Pakistani foreign minister He’s totally dejected, We cannot see the face of Vance but we see the face of Asim Munir (Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan), talking to Vance like you can see that he’s pissed. It’s like he’s saying you come to my country and you fuck us up in the middle of all that knowing from the beginning that you were just using us for who gave you the right to do this. This is what you read in Munir’s face. That’s very very impressive and that sums it all up I would say.

But they, and they keep they keep working 247. They say look maybe there’s going to be a second round. It could be here or maybe it could be somewhere else maybe in Qatar. But they’re still working for a second round of negotiations. Even though the end a as as you saw and the whole world saw that key phrase by Vance, they decided not to accept our terms…..