“Caught in a trap, I can’t walk out, Because I love you too much, Bibi!”

President Trump is caught in a trap – very much of his own making!

In being the leader of the Western Hemisphere, Trump has also ensnared the West in the trap, laid by Netanyahu and Israel over decades.

For at least 25 years Israel, and Netanyahu in particular, have had as their heart’s desire the convincing of the US President to use American power to destroy Iran. US Presidents from Bush to Biden, all war-fighting presidents to varying degrees, have resisted the ongoing Israeli persuasion.

The Appeaser Obama committed the cardinal sin of making an agreement with Iran – probably to get Israel off the US back. It, unfortunately, was undone by Trump, and Israel was back on the US back, leading to the trap.

Trump’s predecessors listened to their military advisors, who told them that a US war on Iran might be in Israel’s interest, but it was not something that the US should do: It was fraught with danger for both the US and West, in general, because of the possibility of uncertain military and economic outcomes.

Iraq had not turned out well. Iran was not Iraq – and it would prove a much harder nut to crack. And there was the issue of the Straits of Hormuz, which Iran guarded, where 20% of the world’s oil came from, as well as a good many other essential things besides.

The military men told each president – Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden that they could not guarantee success – despite the tremendous power they had at their disposal.

Trump, of course, does not listen well to advice. He believes he knows better than those who are employed to know. He has removed obstructions to action within his administration and does not care for people who tell him he is wrong. He wishes to prove that he is right, and they are wrong. His Venezuela operation convinced him of his judgement and power.

Trump has been listening to a very small circle of people – Netanyahu, Kushner, Hegseth, Rubio, Witkoff – who convinced him to ride to war on Iran with Israel. 

Trump had seen his first administration swamped by the Washington swamp he said he’d drain, and he carefully prepared his new administration of trusted, radical outsiders. The danger in this is now apparent in what he has done – these reckless people have encouraged Trump’s worst megalomaniac characteristics with great implications for the US and the world.

The main concern of every US President should be to constrain and restrain Israel. Many have failed in this, but Trump is pretty unique in acting as though the US has no interest separate from Israel. He has hitched the US completely to Israel – as no other President has done. Biden had come under enormous pressure to attack Iran during Israel’s rampage against the Palestinians after October 7, but he resisted. He settled for supporting the Jewish State in the destruction of Gaza and the attempted genocide. But he drew the line at committing the US to war on Iran on Netanyahu’s behalf.

Trump has said he dared do something no other US President dared to do. But there are good reasons why Trump is the only US President to have been snared in Netanyahu’s trap.

Along with not listening to advice, Trump seems to have sidelined J.D. Vance – a voice of comparative reason in his administration – who he probably began to see as a weakling. Marco Rubio, the loyal warhawk, replaced the VP as his favourite and anointed Presidential candidate for 2028. 

The Trump ultimatum to Iran, in which he threatened to destroy its energy infrastructure if it didn’t surrender to US/Israel demands, reveals the extent of that trap, since it presents a choice of either Trump backing off with a whimper (declaration of victory) or attempting the annihilation of Iran. Any middle course – the Art of the Deal – is closed off.

The Trump ultimatum, declared with great confidence of success, has now been postponed from 48 hours to 5 days and now to 10 days.  

Both the markets and polls have spooked Trump and he decided to kick the can down the road. There has been a plea for Vance to bail him out of the position he has let himself be manoeuvred into. It would be in Vance’s interest to help, as getting the US out of this hole Trump has dug for himself would be some achievement. But it is unlikely, because Trump is already in too deep. He looks an increasingly desperate man who wants to declare victory and move on to some other adventure, like Cuba.

But he cannot without losing face – Israel won’t let him, and Iran won’t let him.

Trump wanted another Venezuela, but he was foolish if he believed such a thing was possible in Iran. But Netanyahu would have encouraged him to believe it.

Unlike in the conquest of Iraq there is no alternative administration-in-waiting prepared by the US for Iran. Trump himself said a number of years ago, in Saudi Arabia, that the US was no nation builder. The US war plan seems to be an improvised one by Trump and it, therefore, does not go beyond state collapse. And that suits Israel just fine.

It should be very clear to everyone now that Israel wants this war to proceed until the destruction of Iran and its people. They have the objective of social chaos in Iran and not regime change.

This is obvious from their assassination policy – unprecedented in warfare – which is aimed at leaving no one to negotiate with – even if Trump wanted to. Netanyahu might have his “little list” of people to assassinate (as Koko had in the Mikado) but all he has done is polish the functional core of the layered state apparatus of the IRGC. Names are crossed off Netanyahu’s “little list” to great fanfare, but the system remains unbroken. If anything the moderating former Ayatollah has been replaced by the less inhibited Republican Guard Corps.

Israel’s wrecking objective is also apparent from their escalatory energy facility attacks, because this is meant to provoke counterstrikes against the Gulf states and potentially others. Because the US and Israel have largely neutralised the Iranian air defence the only defence it has is attack. And the only form of resistance open to it is to give the West pain where it hurts – in its economy.

The Israeli policy was always designed to destroy Iran, no matter the cost to anyone. And Trump has been taken on that tiger ride.

If Trump/Israel were to succeed in weakening the Iranian command and control sufficiently it should be of no surprise that there will be increasing strikes against neighbours. One cannot expect Tehran to maintain tight discipline in such circumstances – particularly if they feel the state is going down and there is nothing to lose. The elements in Iran, contained within its mosaic defence, who feel the time has come to settle scores with enemies, will be freed of the constraint of government by the US and Israel. And black flag operations will be mounted in parallel by the Israelis – like the one against Azerbaijan.

Trump believed he could win a swift decisive war against Iran, obtaining a rapid waving of the white flag in Tehran. But he failed to intimidate the Iranians into surrender with the full might of US military power advancing toward it and surrounding Iran; he failed to regime change, twice; he has failed to turn Iranians against their government.

The Iranians have undoubtedly surprised the US.

It seems to have been expected that this second war on Iran would result in the same limited Iranian counterpunches at Israel as it did last year. Trump does not seem to have understood that the Iranians would fight a different war if they were boxed into a corner by the US assembling massive military might around it to produce an existential threat.

The Iranians switched strategy, concentrating their response on the Gulf states and US bases. All US bases in the region have been destroyed. Only the big US base of Israel survives.

The large number of drones and small missiles have been very effective in depleting the expensive and limited US inceptors sold in commercial dealings.

At the same time Iran has closed the gates to the West through the Straits, denying it one fifth of its energy supplies. The West is in a panic. There is talk of oil and petroleum rationing and the reserving of it for emergency services. Asia is already on short time. Things will get critical by the end of April.

Despite the level of force being employed, Iran still holds the Trump card.

Iran has made its conditions for the suspension of resistance to the US/Israel clear: US withdrawal from the region, reparations for damage, acknowledgement of Iranian control of the Straits and permission for transport (as Ataturk achieved in the Dardanelles Straits), international guarantees against future aggression and an end to Western sanctions.

There is no chance of a deal for Trump because there is so much difference between his surrender document and Iran’s understandable demands.  

If Trump tries to interrupt the current check-point arrangements made by Iran by which Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Indian, Pakistani and Spanish tankers are let through the Straits, the Iranians will block the Straits with destroyed shipping using their suicide drones and unmanned ships.

And economically it is Trump’s interest to allow the Iranians to keep the current arrangement, as it adds to the supply of oil that keeps the market from collapse and prices soaring.

US escalation, responded to by Iran, would shut Western economies down for months – at the very least, and wreak havoc on agriculture across the globe. Migration will be put on steroids

What is Trump, Hegseth and Rubio going to do? They look nonplussed by the Iranian tactical ingenuity. They only have one plan – assasination and overwhelming force. And this time it is failing.

If Trump is forced to make concessions to Iran to get out of the war this will be a massive humiliation for Trump and the US. It could be America’s Suez moment. And Israel is likely to do everything in its power to keep the US in the war – unless it senses America might go down, and then Israel faces an existential crisis itself.

Europe is in a bind. When it gave up its cheap and reliable Russian pipelines it gave up its independence to the US (and Israel). Trump is right when he says Europe needs Middle East energy more than America does. He feels it entirely reasonable that it should sacrifice its ships in forcing the Straits in a kind of Dardanelles 1915 operation. But the Europeans and Starmer are concluding that Trump is toxic and temporary.

Will all founder on the rock of Iran? We can but hope. Western democracy may depend upon it!

One waits patiently for the response from the US democracy in saving itself.

Trump exhibits all the characteristics of the worst of American capitalist society. But he has to break down the ramparts of the most formidable democratic system on earth – with its strong checks and balances that Fukuyama called a vetocracy. But Congress, paid by Israel, is dilly-dallying.

Trump can only act as a dictator in the US system through a great war and emergency powers.

The influence of Israel through Netanyahu, its lobby and US Jewish business interests has proved the cancer that Mearsheimer always said it was, within the US system. It is responsible for Epstein and now the capturing of the US interest by a foreign state and the undermining of the great democracy through a President with little time for the system.

If the war on Iran becomes an economic and political catastrophe for the US and West there is little doubt where blame will be attributed. Perhaps there may be a large global outbreak of what we used to call “Anti-Semitism” – before that term was rendered meaningless by the Israeli lobby.

When something becomes meaningless it becomes ineffective as a restraint on action.

Israel and its friends in Washington, and elsewhere, declare Iran to be the problem. But Iran has existed for centuries within its mountain-ringed fortress without troubling its neighbours. The problem is evidently elsewhere.

Unless people havent noticed, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 has proved a momentous event of catastrophic proportions.

Not only did it fail to do what its British supporters intended – turn the Jews away from destabilising international activity by giving them a nation “to range themselves within” (Halford Mackinder). But it also created a small, expansionary nation-state that, freed by the British Empire, and in capturing the most powerful state in the world, has become a serious problem for all humanity.