By Kenneth Tiven
US President Donald Trump’s exit from a NATO gathering in Ankara, Turkey in early July became a badly written political thriller film starring the US president. In retrospect it was foolish holding a NATO meeting in Ankara with Trump in attendance, while he is simultaneously waging war with neighbouring Iran. The distance between Ankara and Tehran is 1600 kilometres, a distance a ballistic missile covers in about two minutes.
Instead of using an existing Air Force One, which has multiple top-secret anti-missile systems to defeat any airborne attack, Trump insisted— perhaps demanded— to use the just acquired Boeing 747-8 plane that the Qatari royal family gifted to Trump after they couldn’t sell it on the executive used plane market for $400 million or more given its opulent interior and low mileage. Trump made the one-of-a-kind appearance that he felt befitted him in Turkey, a triumph of megalomania over sensibility.
Aviation experts had estimated two to three years work at about $400 million to bring it up to US Air Force official requirements for presidential use. Instead, after about six months of changing out the communications systems to meet US specifications, and perhaps hardening it against electronic attacks, it was repainted to look like Trump’s campaign plane. However, his departure became a surrealistic suspense movie whose premise was that the Iranians wanted to kill Trump in return for his killing the top 50 people in the Iranian leadership in the surprise bombing that started his undeclared war.
Allegedly, intelligence sources had reasons to take this seriously and decided to bring in the older Air Force One for the return trip. First, the 747-8 was flown empty to England, ostensibly so people there could see it. Iranian officials continued to lay out a series of demands the US must meet to reopen the Strait of Hormuz: lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports, permanently end the war against Iran and Iran’s allies in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, and Iraq, end sanctions and release frozen Iranian assets. Plus they want reparations, all up front, as conditions for reopening the strait.
Iran believes it has leverage which can damage Trump’s Republican Party in the upcoming US Midterm elections. Philip Gordon, a diplomat who worked for the Biden White House, described the Iranian position as “only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives.”
Trump’s view was both nice and nasty. “We are low-keying it… only semi-negotiating with them but we are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”
Within hours he flip-flopped, saying Iranian negotiators had never before mentioned reparations yet the Memorandum of Understanding he signed in June includes a $300 billion fund for Iran’s reconstruction and economic development.
Then said, “The USA has total control over the Strait of Hormuz. I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT! Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, ‘A WALL OF STEEL,’ and there is nothing Iran can do about it. They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, their remaining soldiers are unpaid, the IRGC is decimated and fleeing, and their ‘Leadership’ is uncertain, at best! They have No Money—Their country is ‘shot.’ All they have is FAKE NEWS and 300% INFLATION, and getting worse! Iran is all talk and no action, the Bully of the Middle East No Longer. Praise be to Allah!”
Consistency of thought or action is not a Trump strong point, as within hours he posted: “I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous…. I have instructed my representatives to put this firmly into any, and all, future negotiations.”
The Iranians fully grasp that Trump is unreliable, which is why they want everything upfront. That Israel and the US are not perfectly aligned was obvious when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly rejected the plan to end the fighting in Gaza after Trump announced it as a done deal.
Trump is the master of distraction, both deliberate and a function of his failing health, similar in form to Tourettes Syndrome. The war has pushed the Epstein case off the political radar, and obscures the administration’s intent on dominating South America. Trump wants to do in Cuba what it did in Venezuela, kidnapping Nicolás Maduro, and replacing him with a cooperative vice president.
Their plan appears to take Cuba back to the 1960s, by opening its economy to private enterprise, selling it petroleum products from the US, and eliminating the Russian and Chinese intelligence operations there. A perfectly located island for monitoring the USA will not be abandoned easily by Cuba’s giant supporters. Apparently the US Central Intelligence Agency has established a Cuba task force.
All of this reflects the beliefs of Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State and son of Cuban immigrants who wants to end communism on the island, or starve it trying.
Midterm election outcomes predicted based on the primary races and Trump’s underwater ratings: Democrats of all shades blue have a reasonable chance of capturing the House of Representatives.
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