No War With Iran

I love to wake up on a Sunday morning to an announcement that we’ve bombed another country. What I love more? Finding out it’s Iran, and that we did it for Israel.

For most of my childhood, Iran was the Great White Whale of the Bush era neocon establishment. The Axis of Evil speech wasn’t about toppling Saddam or stopping the Kims from getting nukes; it was about punishing the Islamic Republic for their impudence in toppling the Shah (who we installed as a favor to Perfidious Albion after toppling Mossadegh in response to his oil nationalization scheme) and taking US hostages. Iran is a bete noir for the security state, and they were always itching to go there.

Indeed, much of the run up to Iraq was, by some Bush admin officials’ own testimony, simply a test run for Iran. So, thank god for the absolute incompetence of the Bush admin. Because it could have escalated and gotten so much worse.

Indeed, that is the root of one of my (vanishingly few) unironic compliments for the Obama admin and Obama himself. The Iran deal was Actually Good and it appears that we only got it because Obama was the most (relative scales, here) Israel-skeptic president of my lifetime (perhaps in our history when it’s all said and done).

Well, now we’re in Trump 2.0. Trump 1.0 already killed the Iran deal. And Biden gave the blank check to Israel in the interim. So, here in Trump 2.0, we’re getting the dream that would cause Donald Rumsfeld to beat his little pud AND a final nail in the coffin of one of Obama’s few lasting legacies. We’re bombing a regional power, just to make our little client state happy. We’re risking WW3 for a basket case, genocidal, racist, and generally extremely annoying ethnostate.

This time around feels different, though. Dumber, coarser, lazier. Bushies at least had Colin Powell up there, lying his ass off about enriched Uranium. They at least had Poland signing up to the coalition of the willing. They at least LIED to me, they TRIED. This time? A Trump TRUTH post, a few weird denials that we’re at war from Jimothy Dimothy Vance on the Sunday shows, and a few pathetic tweets from MAGA America First types trying to square the circle. They won’t even do THAT work for their porcine followers, leaving them to twist in the wind while Low Information Travis starts to wonder whether Charlie Kirk and Joe Rogan are full of shit.

“First as tragedy, then as farce” has been the logline of this season so far. I guess I need more of an imagination, because I couldn’t imagine how Iraq–farce of farces–could get more farcical. No matter, here we are.

No War With Iran. Critical Support for the Iranian Regime. Unconditional Support for the people of Iran, Gaza, the West Bank, and all victims of my diabolical country around the world.