Yesterday, I noted that the likelihood of the ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. holding has increased and is growing slowly each day that the war does not restart. In other words, I currently see the likelihood of a U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East growing (very) gradually.
In the Trump-End (March 16), I detailed the (harrowing) exit options of the U.S.:
The problem President Trump is facing in Iran is that he got dragged into a war that can end not just the petrodollar but the U.S. global military and financial hegemony. Somewhat counter-intuitively, this is what he promised to do during his campaign. Regardless whether this is his fate or just stupidity, the options he has to escape are harrowing. I consider him to have just three:
End the war and retrieve the U.S. from the Middle East (as per demand by Tehran) and lose the petrodollar.
Start a ground campaign against Iran, most likely leading to the death of tens of thousands of U.S. troops and ending in a defeat.
Launch a nuclear attack against Iran.
What needs to be added to this discussion is the influence of Israel.
The son-in-law of President Trump and a Middle East “peace negotiator,” Jared Kushner, is basically “in bed“ with the current Israeli leadership. Reportedly, pro-Israel groups have benefited President Trump by over $230 million since 2020. He has also given strange statements of “having Gaza” and “building” hotels there. We can consider him bought by the Israelis.
There’s also a lot of talk on the influence of the AIPAC over the U.S. Congress, and they seem to have quite a reach. Pro-Israeli lobbies have supported a great many congressmen and -women. And it does not end there.
U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson has noted that members of the U.S. Congress are terrified of the intelligence agencies. We can naturally just speculate on which ones he’s referring to, but I would be quite surprised if Mossad were not at the top of the list.
Combining the above, we arrive at an “Israeli Knot,” a mafia-style chokehold of the Israeli leadership on elected U.S. leaders (and probably on the deep state). Unsurprisingly, the role of Israeli leadership in starting the war has been reported to have been decisive.
What most analysts also seem to miss is that a U.S. withdrawal from the war, and thus effectively from the Middle East, would put the state of Israel under an existential threat.
In the war, we saw Iran mostly shying away from striking civilian targets and not resorting to AMDs (Actions of Mass Destruction). What I mean by such “actions” are strikes to highly critical civilian infrastructure, like desalination plants and nuclear reactors. In a minuscule country, like Israel, these would carry utterly devastating consequences, “mass destruction,” implying an end to the state of Israel.
As Israel is essentially a colony, with many (most) citizens holding a double passport, making Israeli land uninhabitable or very costly to live on would most likely lead to an exodus of Israelites to (more) habitable countries. This exodus tendency of the Polish-Ukrainian colony is why Iran is likely to win even in a nuclear confrontation against Israel.
What increases the odds of Iran prevailing in a nuclear escalation is the speculated and likely-real threat made to Tel Aviv by Peking (and possibly Moscow) that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran will not be allowed. This implies that at least ‘strategic,’ i.e., high-yield, high-fallout, thermonuclear weapons are off-limits for Israel.
Alas, a U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East could end Israel, which is something the pro-Israeli lobbies and Mossad agents in the U.S. would be unlikely to view kindly. Simply put, also the lives of U.S. congressmembers and possibly even the president could be forfeited if they were to exit the war.
In other words, we (the world) are stuck in a very dangerous stalemate, where at one end we’re facing the end of the world economy as we know it and at the other, the end of Israel and the U.S. global hegemony.
For the vast part of the global populace, there would be no choice between these two. Unfortunately, mostly due to the ‘Israelian knot,’ we don’t have a say.
Tuomas
P.s. Remember that the war powers of President Trump, based on the War Powers Resolution of 1973, end on 1 May. I doubt this carries much weight in the utterly deranged Trump administration, though.
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