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GELFAND’S WORLD - I fear that we are neglecting a few important lessons that our civilization supposedly learned in the 1960s and ‘70s. One is the effect of a dramatically increased human population. Another is the central role played by oil in modern civilization. Back then, Daniel Yergin wrote a book called The Prize, which explained how the use of oil had fostered modern industrial civilization and that fighting over its ownership was the price we paid.
It goes way back. Fighting over access to oil was the root of the tension between the Empire of Japan and The United States, the tension that led to Pearl Harbor, Leyte, and the destruction of the Japanese homeland. It led to the American sponsored Iranian coup only a few years later, and it led to perpetual squabbling over access to and purchase of middle eastern oil going back most of the past century.
In this era, we take for granted the role of Saudi Arabia as an oil repository, along with other gulf states.
That’s an interesting term, “gulf states,” isn’t it? It isn’t the Gulf of Mexico, but the Persian Gulf. Repeat that word, one more time: Persian.
Substitute that ancient term Persian for the modern word Iranian. Then take a look at the map. Iran lies alongside the gulf and enjoys a controlling presence over the Strait of Hormuz. If you cut off tanker traffic at that point, you affect the world’s supply of oil and therefore affect the worldwide price of oil. This of course leads to all those news stories about how the price of gasoline has risen nearly a buck over the past few weeks.
When you look at the map, the colossal magnitude of Trump’s blunder in attacking Iran without adequate planning – both strategic and political – starts to become clear. What also will become clear is that the blunder is ultimately based on Trump’s psychological weaknesses, most definitively his inability – or perhaps just unwillingness – to admit that he rubs people (and governments) the wrong way.
We have to wander off for an instant and visit that old joke that a broken clock is wrong twice a day. Our modern version is that Trump might be right once in a lifetime, in the sense of taking the Iranian danger seriously. It’s not really clear, is it? Maybe the Iranians have been capable of continued development of nuclear weapons, and maybe not. And from another perspective, it’s no secret to anybody that they have been a menace in terms of their support for terrorist governments and organizations, most particularly those with hatred for Israel.
What is interesting is how little complaining we are hearing from western democracies about the initial attacks that defined the Iran War. Even in this country, we’re not seeing anything like the mass uprising that defined the “No Kings” demonstrations.
The whole thing is like one of those television crime shows where a particularly nasty person kills an even nastier victim. It’s against the law and uncivilized, but the audience celebrates the killing even as they root for the detectives to solve the case. It’s kind of like that with the attack on the Iranian leadership. We remember the hostage crisis (or were taught about it in school), even if most of us don’t remember that the Iranians resent CIA interference going back to the 1950s.
But everything else about the Iran War is illustrative of the anger and contempt Donald Trump has generated among Europeans towards himself and towards our national policy. The proof lies in the mass refusal by European countries when asked to join us in a military campaign to cleanse the Strait of Hormuz of hostiles. Trump’s administration seems to have wandered into this question without any understanding of either the military difficulty nor the diplomatic tension. Failure to understand the military issues belongs to the White House and to Sec. Of Defense Hegseth. Creation of the diplomatic tensions is of course all on Trump himself.
It’s true that some of the tension is due to Trump’s admittedly abrasive tone and word usage. Terms like “bull in a china shop” are about the best that his supporters can do, but for the rest of us, these are the acts and words of a vindictive bully.
But it’s a lot more than personality. It’s the policies. We don’t have to spend a lot of time belaboring the obvious point that the Trump approach -- to attack foreign countries without consultation with our allies – is ruffling a lot of feathers. Add the tariff debacle and you get to the present situation. The United States finds itself bogged down in a war against Iran which would, if allowed to fester, damage the world economy to a significant extent. You know, that 20% of the world’s oil supply.
And when the European countries including NATO allies were asked to help, the answer was a resounding No. If nothing else, it’s their way of standing up to a bully. It’s a little overdue, but there it is.
What is/was Trump’s response? Over the weekend, it was typical: Make another threat couched in vague but apocryphal language, and somehow expect the other side to take it seriously. Of course the Iranians know enough to ignore such threats or to bluster back. And there was another tactical mistake by Trump in that he put a specific time frame of 48 hours on his threat. Think about it – the failure of the threat becomes clear immediately, or at least after a long weekend.
What’s even more interesting is that Trump didn’t even wait through the entire 48 hours.
He did a Taco, as in “Trump always chickens out.” That’s how the world and our own media are viewing the Monday pronouncements. Trump has extended the deadline for whatever disastrous nonsense we were threatening. He claims that there have been productive discussions, and even tosses in a claim that the Iranians have now promised never to build nuclear weapons.
That was Monday morning. Who knows what Trump’s alternative facts will be by Tuesday night?
In other words, we know from long experience that much of what Trump says is not trustworthy, not factual. We know he likes to claim things that would, if true, make him look good, and he flip-flops on such claims with monotonous regularity.
So as usual, we are stuck in a situation based on Trumpian fantasies of how other countries and their leaders will react to threats and taunts and downright hostile acts. The refusal by so many countries to agree to fight the War of the Persian Gulf is their way of saying, “Enough is enough.”
So let’s review the situation as of Monday morning. The United States finds itself in an uncomfortable situation in which it assassinated the leadership of a foreign country (they were too far away to simply kidnap them, as we did in Venezuela) and made insane demands for “unconditional surrender.” Then, in response to the Iranian counterattacks, we made even more threats. (One problem is that the threats, if actually carried out, would damage other countries and ultimately the world economy.) And now, in response to Iranian actions that anybody else in the world could have predicted, Trump has had to engage in another Taco. Of course he masked the Taco with grandiose claims of a sort-of-victory involving those wonderfully productive discussions, but the Iranians deny that they have been holding those discussions. Who’s to believe?
It’s been a costly and bloody way to distract the American people from the Epstein files.
P.S.: If you would like to read an analysis of Donald Trump’s personality and the latest floundering, you can take a look at this piece by Thom Hartmann.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]t)
