Iran's 'Trump Rebuild' Is Underway

Barely two weeks ago, in the wake of rumors that Elon Musk was meeting with Iranian leaders on behalf of Donald Trump, I said:

If true, Trump fans will paint any "agreement" with Iran as evidence that the mullahs are scared.

In fact, this signals weakness, just like every other negotiation has, and it will merely provide Iran time to regroup and finish developing nukes.

This morning, I ran into the following headline, from a paper that endorsed Trump: "EDITORIAL: Trump Election Moves Needle in Middle East."

Right off the bat, it reports on a development that had me scratching my head last week, when I first heard about it:

Last week, Hezbollah agreed to a cease-fire with the Jewish state after being pummeled by Israel's might and sophisticated intelligence operations. The terror group, based in Lebanon on Israel's northern border, is an Iranian proxy with deep ties to Tehran.

It did not take me long to find out why Israel, which has been enjoying great success in clearing out the quasi-military infrastructure Iran was surrounding it with, had suddenly decided to make a deal with an entity that was still lobbing rockets at it.

The (immediate) blame goes to Team Biden:

Morph via FaceShape from pubic domain official portraits of President Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Describing the move by former officials from the Obama administration who now work in the Biden administration, he said, "What the Obama-Biden team did on their way out was to coerce the Israelis, reportedly with the threat of an arms embargo at the Security Council, into signing onto Obama's vision for the U.S. role in Lebanon, which is part of his broader pro-Iran realignment. This is the downside of the agreement: it consolidates this Obama framework that should have been dismantled -- and that's separate from the tactical and strategic gains that Israel achieved on the battlefield. Rather, this pertains to U.S. policy and how the Obama-Biden team used Israel to lock in their regional preferences."

He continued, "The deal puts the incoming Trump administration and the Israelis in a weird situation, not just because it saddles the new administration with Obama's preferences in Lebanon -- including hundreds of millions in additional aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces -- but also it makes the U.S. an arbiter for Israeli action against Hezbollah moving forward and the possibility for friction that may create between the Trump administration and Israel. [bold added]

Saddles with? -- or provides cover for? That Musk meeting was what -- at least a week before? -- that lopsided, weak agreement.

Returning to the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

The timing is no coincidence. It wasn't long ago that President Joe Biden warned Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu against hitting Hezbollah targets. And it was just a month ago that Iran's supreme leader promised "a crushing response" against Israel for defending itself in the face of terrorist aggression. He also threatened American targets. But now, Iran has signed off on Hezbollah's retreat and is rethinking its bellicose strategy.

"Iran's swing from tough talk to a more conciliatory tone in just a few weeks' time has its roots in developments at home and abroad," The New York Times reported last week. Those events include the Nov. 5 election of the "unpredictable" Mr. Trump, Israel's "decimation" of "Hezbollah -- the closest and most important of Iran's militant allies" and Iran's declining domestic economic fortunes. [bold added]

Iran, through its proxies, started this latest escalation in the war on the West it started in 1979. If its leaders really were concerned about their "declining domestic and economic fortunes" or preserving their military assets in Lebanon, they could have ended hostilities without Biden and Macron's "help."

Note that they hadn't, even after Israel basically pulled its pants down in front of the world with its last air strikes on Iran. It is revealing that Iran did not, and a shame that Israel is being held back from (rather than being assisted with) ending the Iranian threat when it would be so easy to do so now.

Furthermore, anyone with the faintest understanding of war knows the difference between a strategic retreat and actually "rethinking [a] bellicose strategy" -- as witness the popular saying live to fight another day.

It is equally astounding and disgusting how smoothly the American right is slipping straight into the same failed strategy of the left and -- now that "their guys" are doing it -- shifting from deservedly blaming Obama-Biden to praising the alleged machismo of Donald Trump.

-- CAV