Both Trump’s Iran war and the closely connected Israeli war for Jewish hegemony across the Middle East are unravelling fast.

Both Trump’s Iran war and the closely connected Israeli war for Jewish hegemony across the Middle East (termed ‘Permanent Security’ in Israeli military vernacular) are unravelling fast.

Iran is standing defiant in the face of Trump and Israel’s threats, leaving Trump gambling the entire U.S. economy and its global strategic standing on conjuring up a decisive ‘win’ over Iran — however deceitful and Pyrrhic that ‘win’ might prove to be.

Trump has now arrived for the summit in China (reportedly with little groundwork preparation ahead of the visit). Possibly he relies on his usual hubristic notion — that China needs the U.S. more than the U.S. needs China — and he will tell Beijing that ‘you (Xi) have to instruct Iran’ that time is moving on, and that it should capitulate to the U.S..

Well that’s not going to happen. China supports Iran’s fight for sovereignty and shares with Russia the Iranian objective of seeing the U.S. gone from the Middle East. They want instead a Gulf-led security architecture to replace the American one. Moscow concurs.

Maybe Xi — in politest of language, of course — will tell Trump, rather, that it is Washington that should concede to Iran. The longer he delays, the harder any U.S. course correction will prove to be.

In any event, despite the innate Trumpian hubris, the U.S. President arrives in Beijing bereft of ‘big wins’ (if Venezuela is counted as a gimmick, rather than a strategic victory). Contrarily and more significantly, Beijing understands that the U.S. hovers at the brink of an economic inflationary catastrophe, whereas China largely is insulated from the coming global energy shock and is in price deflation, rather than experiencing inflation.

Put bluntly, there is almost nothing that Xi wants from the U.S., but in the interests of harmony, they may buy some soya beans (to save U.S. farmers) and perhaps some airplanes. (Even though soya beans are not really required by China which has been purchasing them easily from Brazil).

Trump has taken with him to China an entourage of U.S. oligarchs — presumably in the expectation that China will give him business valued in several ‘billions’; but China’s response may be somewhat scant. They are angry, reportedly, at the games the U.S. Treasury Secretary has been playing with sanctions on Chinese firms, the seizure of Chinese oil tankers, and the obvious attempt by Trump to squeeze China out from the Western Hemisphere.

What looms in the backdrop however, is darker: America’s collapsing standing as the unipolar hegemon — and the consequential global instability. The Iran war has provided the world with an object lesson of a major world power stuck in a conceptual rut from the Cold War era. One that refused to see the writing on the wall of a tectonic change that required it to ‘move on’ from its ‘end of history’ complacency, though all the signs of a shift to another ‘way of war’ had been present since early this century.

The turning point came with the abundance of cheap and easily available tech components.

The U.S., as the Cold War began, chose a strategy of outspending the USSR – by going for high-end, high-cost weaponry – with a main focus being on air-power and mass aerial bombardment.

That approach, at the time, had seemed justified by the subsequent Soviet implosion. This collapse was presumed to have been triggered by the American maximal spend that had over-stretched the USSR (though the collapse is now well understood to have been more a matter of a more complex internal corrosion from within).

The paradigm of western reliance on a preponderance of air power delivered by hugely expensive airframes has been blown apart and demonstrated to be ineffective by Iran’s asymmetric missile and naval warfare using weapons costing a few hundred dollars versus U.S. defence interceptors costing tens of millions.

The entire world can see the main lessons emerging from the Iran war: Firstly, that the western defence posture is as outdated as the dodo. The Establishment fell asleep, believing that the ever more billions of dollars ploughed into the Military Industrial Complex would give the U.S. a military edge that crucially would also provide the underpinning to its dollar hegemony to print more money for more weapons.

In practice however, it yielded massive corporate corruption and functionally poor, yet hugely expensive, armaments.

Of course, it is horses for courses — but up against more revolutionary adversaries, it is the latter who are out-innovating and out-manoeuvring western powers. All can see it, and are already adjusting.

China can see how small, fleeter Iranian naval assets ran rings around the large lumbering naval vessels of the U.S. Navy. The lessons naturally will be applied to Taiwan, should the U.S. seek to exert naval pressure on China in the Taiwan context.

Russia too will have noticed how a carefully graduated and selectively targeted missile offensive provided Iran with deterrence vis-à-vis Israel. Moscow likely will be thinking in these terms in respect to missiles of British, French and German origin that have been striking deep into Russia, whilst using NATO airspace and intelligence facilitation.

The accelerating global perception of the U.S.’ decline however, rests on more than just its failure to adapt to Iran’s asymmetrical war. More significant even than the sense of cognitive dissonance reigning in the White House is the perception that Trump is a full partner to Israel’s predations across the region.

The U.S. bequeathed Israel the same doctrine of air war dominance, underpinned by ultra expensive U.S. air frames that were intended to give Israel a ‘qualitative edge’ in maintaining its regional primacy. Israel’s failure in Iran, of its flailing conflict with Hizbullah, and of the unfinished war in Gaza, are the evidence of the failure of the approach — not of success.

It is worth noting that before the Israeli shift toward the U.S. ‘way of war’, the founder of the Israeli state and its first PM, Ben Gurion’s defence doctrine for Israel was different.

Ben Gurion emphasised that Israel was geographically a small state; with a small population and limited economic resources. In such circumstances, it would not be able to afford a large standing professional army. It would need a small professional army, supported when necessary by a large cadre of reservists.

Ben Gurion grounded his argument on the need for Israel to have, as well as a defence force, a strong economy to provide for the community and the state — all of which reinforced the need for a small army. He also assumed the Clausewitzian stance that ‘war is the continuation of politics by other means’ and not an end in itself, but a part of the political game.

A U.S. carrier no longer induces fear as once it might have; It now radiates vulnerability.

Although the Iran war largely has been viewed through the lens of conventional western warfare, its lessons are anything but conventional. They are in fact insurrectionary.

The post-war western approach (especially in the Cold War context) relied on the ability to outspend any military adversary through the acquisition of high-end, over-engineered and costly manned aircraft and munitions. Dominance of airspace and heavy reliance on aerial bombardment, i.e. air-war, was the doctrinal end.

The expenditure overmatch (as well as an imputed technical innovation) was viewed as the crucial element in the confrontation with the USSR.

Similarly, the impulse in naval warfare was toward investment in ever bigger carriers and their associated tiers of naval support vessels.

In ground warfare, the weighting in the Iraq War’s ‘Desert Storm’ was on tanks ‘punching’ and thrusting through the adversaries’ defence lines – though this approach was dropped by the West in Ukraine following the turn to 21^st century drone-led ‘trench warfare’ on the front line.

The high-end outspend-approach both favoured the U.S.’ Military Industrial Complex, and together with U.S. dollar hegemony, provided America with the unique advantage of allowing the U.S. effectively to ‘print’ those high-end overmatch supplementary expenses.

Then came the Iran war of 2026, whose asymmetric model upended conventional doctrines.

Instead of dominance of the air space, Iran pursued not aerial supremacy, but rather advanced missile dominance of air space.

Instead of surface-situated military infrastructure, missile armouries, launch facilities and much missile production were dispersed across Iran’s huge geographic areas and buried deep within underground missile cities and mountain ranges.

The key transformation to the asymmetric approach, however, was the advent of easily available cheap tech components. Whilst the West was spending millions of dollars for each interceptor, Iran and allies were spending hundreds.

The advantage of dollar hegemony has thus slipped away and turned instead to liability – the inflated cost of U.S. munitions and their high-end engineering has resulted in sclerotic supply-lines, long production cycles and minimal weapon inventories.

The supposed tech superiority of U.S. weapons is being surpassed too, by ‘garage’ and ‘workshop’ gigs using cheap tech components. They generate innovation which is then picked-up and scaled after informal testing by ‘military authorities’.

This trend is particularly evident in the Russian army, where initial ‘garage’ tech has been trialled and then implemented across the military structures. This applies to both tech hardware and to internet AI innovation.

In the same vein, Hezbollah’s innovation of its fibre-optic controlled drones has transformed the war in south Lebanon – imposing severe losses on Israeli tanks and troops, to the point to which the IDF may be compelled to withdraw from the south.

Likewise, asymmetry and innovation in the seaways are upending the traditional western reliance on large heavy naval vessels and carriers. The latter have become ‘white elephants’ of the Persian Gulf ‘war’ as they are driven so far off from Iranian coastline by drone swarms and threats of anti-ship missiles that their deck-based strike-aircraft are limited in their attack capabilities by the requirement to re-fuel from tankers over target.

To see a literal ‘swarm’ of many tens of armed fast speedboats approaching a lumbering conventional naval vessel only serves to underline their vulnerabilities. In any event, Iran has other anti-ship weapons at its disposal.

In short, a U.S. carrier no longer induces fear as once it might have; It now radiates vulnerability.

Iran’s new sea warfare, however, also includes loitering high-speed submersible drones (or torpedoes) that can loiter for up to four days and which are equipped with AI targeting capabilities. These drones can be launched from underwater tunnels running beneath the Hormuz surface.

Iranian innovation admittedly has been long-planned and developed. Its’ effectiveness has been demonstrated during the conflict with Israel and the U.S. Iran has withstood the Israeli and American carpet-bombing (albeit whilst incurring heavy damage and casualties), yet Iran continues to have control of the Strait, plentiful missile inventories, and destroyed,unusable U.S. military bases in the Gulf.

That is the Iran war experience. But the wider strategic point is that it has demonstrated that the western ‘way of war’ has been eclipsed by cheap innovative tech and careful asymmetrical planning.

The western model can provide devastating damage – of that there is no doubt – but its lack of surgical application is also counter-productive in an age of mass media and smartphone photography that testify to civilian death, destruction and suffering.

The second point is that the West remains a cumbersome giant that has failed to understand – let alone anticipate – the new asymmetric war. Innovation has been stymied by the consolidation of the Military Industrial Complex into a few bureaucratic monopolies.

The western way of war is a bust model when ranged against a sophisticated asymmetric opponent.

But others have indeed noticed the lessons from the Iran war. Russia is one; China is another. There will be more. The West can expect to see the lessons surface in different garbs in the West’s other wars.

The European élites may find that their facilitation of Ukrainian drone attacks deep into Russia may draw a different (kinetic) response in the near future. The warnings have been issued. Will they be heard?

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Trump today seems torn between the prospect of ‘heavy’ military escalation and an extended Hormuz blockade.

Putting two sides together — let alone three — who have wildly diverse chronicles of their histories and even less commonality in charting their future national trajectory was innately unlikely to reach an agreed settlement. More likely in such ill-prepared encounters is often an ill-tempered recapitulation of the general lack of congruence.

This was the case in last month’s Islamabad ‘talks’ between the U.S. and Iran — with Israel acting as third-party proxy for ‘collective forces’ trying to ‘force the end’ (a Greater Israel regional hegemony) — by demanding effectively massive (and unrestricted) regional territorial control for Israel.

For such talks to serve a purpose, they would have to concretise an underlying level of agreement between the parties — if such can be found. Otherwise, the best that may emerge will be informal arrangements that are never formalised, but may, in the instant, suit the interests of the parties involved. Such understandings last as long as they last. That’s it.

Esmail Baqaei, spokesman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, noted that over these 47 years, deep distrust and suspicion have accumulated with the U.S.:

“You should not expect that within a short period of time, after an extraordinarily bloody war, in which … Iran, having fought two regimes armed with nuclear weapons, two exceptionally ruthless regimes, whose brutality we witnessed over the past two and a half years in the crimes of Gaza and Lebanon, would quickly reach a settlement [with us]”.

Aurelien succinctly outlines the impasse:

“The U.S. (present) and Israel (present by proxy) want to damage and if possible, destroy Iran as a functioning state. For the U.S., this is revenge for nearly fifty years of humiliation, dating from the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the disastrous failure of the subsequent rescue mission – as well as for Iranian attempts to frustrate U.S. policies in the Levant. For Israel, the objective is to destroy the only country standing between them and their domination of the region. (The U.S. also represents this objective vicariously). The Iranians obviously want to prevent all this, but they also want an end to sanctions and isolation”.

Esmail Baqaei adds:

“Our central concern is that we reach a point as soon as possible where we can say with confidence that the threat of war [against Iran] no longer exists”.

The new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, expands on the Iranian objectives by stating explicitly:

‘A new era has begun in the Strait of Hormuz, and American hegemony has come to an end’.

In short, Iran is determined to achieve a ‘breakout’ from the ‘cage’ of 74 years of U.S. military encirclement — sanctions, siege and political isolation — and by so doing, as the Supreme Leader noted, to radically change the geopolitical complexion of the entire region.

Israeli military sociologist Yagil Levy, writing in Haaretz however, argues that Israel’s behaviour notably altered in the wake of the 7 October attacks, and in its aftermath is defined by the

“adoption of a ‘hard’ version of Permanent Security … The latter was [in fact], perceived as already having been achieved [through] military superiority and of international tolerance”.

“Relative permanent security, the ‘soft’ version, was [contrasted] to a remnant of the security concept that made the [7 Oct] Hamas attack possible – even if the attack was caused by an Israeli omission and did not constitute a new real threat”.

“Permanent Security” — a concept originally coined by historian Professor Dirk Moses — was seen in Israel, post-7 October, as not only offering the the elimination of immediate threats, but also future ones:

“Striving for a permanent solution does not allow for compromise, whether political or deterrent, but rather involves the extermination, expulsion, or control of a population perceived as a threat to the security of the state”.

(Professor Dirk Moses has outlined that the term ‘permanent security’ in fact originates from Otto Ohlendorf,

“a Nazi war criminal, who before being hanged … at Nuremberg by the Americans, [said that] … Jewish children would have grown up to become partisan enemies … [and that we] had to understand that the Germans didn’t just want regular security but permanent security: they were building a thousand-year Reich”).

Meron Rapoport and Ameer Fakhoury outline how the latest war on Iran,

“elevated the concept of “permanent security” to yet another level. It was no longer enough to strike hard at leaders, nuclear facilities, and military targets, as Israel did in June 2025. This time the objective was regime change— not merely neutralizing a perceived threat, but reshaping the political environment itself”.

Jewish historian and scholar, Gershom Scholem, we know had already predicted that religious Zionism operates as a “militant,” “apocalyptic” and “radical” messianic movement that tries to “force the end” [i.e. Redemption] by demanding the State engage in, for example massive territorial control.

In short, Scholem, widely regarded as a leading expert on Messianic Judaism, was predicting in effect Israel’s turn toward Permanent Security, not as a security measure alone, but as a tool of militant Zionist messianism.

At the present time, by any standards, Iran, America and Israel’s ‘deeper interests’ are about as distant from each other as one can imagine. Both Israel and Iran seek to transform fundamentally the political complexion of the Middle East. All that is in the realm of possibility with talks therefore is short-term, limited measures that might temporarily suit the U.S. and Iran, but almost certainly will not be acceptable to Israel (nor to its lobbyists and mega-donors in the U.S.).

The U.S. desperately needs an exit-ramp — and negotiations would seem to be the normal mechanism for this. But negotiations in the traditional sense would lead effectively to a perceived U.S. surrender, and if protracted, to a catastrophic economic disaster resulting from the consequences of Iranian control of the Hormuz.

Trump today seems torn between the prospect of ‘heavy’ military escalation (advocated by the Israeli-First faction) in the hope of securing an Iranian capitulation, and an extended Hormuz blockade (albeit porous), advocated by Secretary Bessent, speaks to the notion of yet another ‘forever war’. Neither option is without profound consequences.

Washington will not be able to think straight about Iran, and will opt for the wrong tactics.

Some fifteen years ago I wrote that western reliance on its lens of secular rationality was no longer adequate as a means to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was becoming obvious — even then — that the future of the region would be one of wars increasingly defined by religious symbols: i.e. Al-Aqsa versus the Third Temple.

Since then, things have moved on: In Israel, national elections in November 2022 brought a new leadership committed to founding Israel on the ‘Land of (Greater) Israel’; displacing the non-Jewish population and implementing Halachic law.

The new government’s platform was an expression of an eschatological and messianic purpose with a teleology of pursuing a path toward messianic Redemption. It was not secular, nor couched in Enlightenment tones.

My point then — and still is — that Western secular mechanistic ways of thinking will misunderstand these fundamental shifts. The West insists to apply its westernised conceptual precepts to something — Messianism and the pursuit of Redemption — that lies outside the frame of today’s post-modern western consciousness. We understand well enough power politics, but eschatology largely is a closed-book to most western seculars.

The bottom line is that no purpose is served in trying to convince those absorbed by a messianic vision that their solution consists of a two-state political structure in historic Palestine. The former actually welcome Armageddon and the defeat it would portend for non-Jews.

Nor can this be viewed as a passing phase, or a whim. Messianism has been a prominent, yet fluctuating, impulse in Judaism since Sabbatai Zevi (1660s) and Jacob Franks (18th century). (Some of its thinking filtered into European notions too, during the later Enlightenment period).

Jewish historian and scholar, Gershom Scholem, correctly predicted that religious Zionism — which in recent decades has aligned with Likud and the settler movement — operates as a “militant,” “apocalyptic,” and “radical” messianic movement that tries to “force the end” by demanding that the state engage in, for example, massive territorial control — i.e. they demand territorial conquest for end-of-times reasons.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, western mechanistic rationality however, has proved to be as much at a loss in its grasp of what motivates Iran as it is in understanding today’s Israel. The literal approach simply amputates any awareness of Iran’s deeper resistance and revolutionary anima.

Rather, we choose to project onto Iran our image of the 19^th century nation-state – – the concept of a state ruled by top-down, centralised government as the dominant, sometimes autocratic, vehicle of rule over which wider polities once were governed through other principles of legitimacy.

In an interview in 1979 with Richard Falk, Ayatollah Khomeinei said plainly that the Revolution was a civilizational rather than a national triumph. He stressed that he felt that the basic community for all people in the Islamic world was civilizational and religious – – and not national and territorial. Khomeini explained that territorial sovereign states built around national identity did not form a natural community in the Middle East in the way they did in Europe.

His insistent theme was to express the view that a government consistent with Islamic values could not be reliably established on democratic principles without it being subject to unelected religious guidance from top Islamic clerical scholars as the source of highest political authority.

The repression of Islam (forced secularisation) and the destruction of the Caliphate pursued by Mustafa Kamal in the early 1900s had led Seyyed Qutub to preach revolutionary vanguardism until his execution in 1966. Qutb’s writings, but more particularly his Social Justice in Islam — coinciding with mass protests throughout the Muslim world at the partition of Palestine in 1947 — laid the principal groundwork for the revolutionary thinking that would emerge in Iran.

For Iranians, this was a call to a return to an earlier way-of-being, with a storied lineage, reaching far back — one that reflects a more spiritual and inward transformation of the human: A world of hierarchical modes of consciousness and a disposition to fight against oppression, and to care for the dispossessed.

Thus, to view Iran through the nation-state lens is to misread Iran. The limits of mechanistic thinking make it impossible for outsiders to grasp or predict the way ahead for Iran. Today, young Iranians are returning enthusiastically to the ethos encompassed in the 1979 Revolution. There is a new energy apparent in Iran — and it is radical. And its reverberations are spreading well beyond the borders of Iran.

If we in the West want to hear and understand, then it would be wise to first hold up a mirror to ourselves. Are we truly so secular and rationally strategic as we believe?

U.S. military historian Michael Vlahos, in a long essay — America is a Religion — points out that the U.S. itself is far from unaffected by the currents of messianic idealism, millenarianism and Manichaeism – – “This is an enduring theme whose deep current flows into Christianity”:

“Since its founding, the United States has pursued, with burning religious fervour, a higher calling to redeem humanity, punish the wicked, and christen a golden millennium on earth. America has steadfastly hewed to its unique vision of divine mission as “God’s New Israel”.

Of course, American ‘Civil Religion’ is inextricably linked with the Reformation, Calvinist Christianity, and Protestantism. “Although its scriptural reading became secular in the Progressive era, the American religion still remained tethered to its formative roots”, Vlahos argues.

“Hence, America is not only “messianic” in character — as in, “possessed by passion and zeal” — but manifests an implicitly biblical vision proclaiming its faith in the predestined nature of its passage. A “chosen nation” divinely elected to act in the name of Providence as the world’s Redeemer”.

However, as Vlahos tells it — like with the Zionists in Israel, in the last election — the U.S. had its moment of metamorphosis: It was triggered by 60 years (1963-2023) of repeated and unrequited battlefield débâcles:

Trump’s tariff war will be seen in retrospect to be peanuts to the threatened strike on China’s supply lines.

We are entering upon a new stage to this war on Iran. It may not be what many expect (especially in financial markets). Yesterday Trump said inter alia that Hormuz was open and that Iran had agreed never to close Hormuz again; that Iran, with the help of the U.S., has removed, or is removing, all sea mines, and that U.S. and Iran would work together to extract Iran’s highly enriched uranium (HEU). Trump wrote:

“We’re going to get ⁠it together. We’re going to go in with Iran, at a nice leisurely pace, and go down and start excavating with big machinery … We’ll bring it back to the United States very soon”.

The President said earlier on Friday that Iran had agreed to hand over Iran’s HEU stockpile.

None of these claims were true. Either Trump was confabulating (holding to fantasies, albeit believing them to be true); or he was manipulating markets. If the latter – it was a success. Oil fell and markets soared. Reportedly, 20 minutes before the claim that the Strait of Hormuz was open and would never close again, a $760 million short on oil was placed… Someone ‘made a pile’.

All this turbulence created much confusion. Trump also said a new round of talks and an likely agreement with Iran would happen very soon — even during this weekend. The likelihood of talks is false. Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reports that “the American side has been informed via the Pakistani mediator that we [Iran] do not agree to a second round [of talks]”.

From the beginning of the mooted Pakistani-mediated ceasefire, Iran was supposed to allow the daily passage of a limited number of ships. However, this was always subject to Iranian conditions for transit passage.

The net result of Trump’s manipulations has been to make Iran re-assert its existing conditions on Hormuz, on its stocks of HEU, and on its ‘right to enrich’ in tighter, less flexible definition.

The Islamabad talks had already showed Iran that its 10-point framework — initially affirmed by Trump to form a “workable basis” for beginning of direct negotiations with Iran — was no such thing. The Iranian framework was brushed aside towards the end of the day, as the U.S. pivoted to its key touchstones for its intended victory roll: Iran abandoning uranium enrichment in perpetuity; relinquishing to the U.S. its stock of 430kg of 60% enriched uranium, and the opening of Hormuz — free of tolls.

In short, the U.S. position was simply a continuation of Israel’s long-established demands. This added experience of Friday’s U.S. deceit will only have served to confirm Iran’s conviction to be continually on their guard and to view the contrived confusion as a possible U.S. diversion from planned military escalation.

Iran, in refusing these key demands, triggered the U.S.’ sudden, end of day, pulling of the plug on Islamabad, and thus pointed up the pivotal context behind the U.S. ‘walk out’: Netanyahu was frustrated. Very frustrated. “As [Netanyahu] tells it, ‘the media’, that convenient all-purpose ‘villain’, has managed to cement the narrative that Israel lost the [Iran] war”, Ravit Hecht has written in Haaretz:

“Not many people understand the power of short, sharp and unequivocal messaging – better than Netanyahu … With time running short and his international standing eroding – Netanyahu is desperate to deliver at least one unequivocal success story from the ambitious goals he proclaimed in the first week of the war – when hubris and adrenaline still seeped into every government briefing”.

“Regime change in Tehran? No longer on the table. The vague goal of “creating conditions” for such a change has evaporated. Ending Iran’s ballistic missile program now seems wildly unrealistic; Netanyahu’s ministers acknowledge that as well. As for Iran’s network of regional proxies, its influence may become subtler, but few believe it can be dismantled altogether”.

“That leaves one card still in play: uranium”.

“Netanyahu’s circle hopes that, as in past crises, mounting pressure might compel Iran to export its enriched uranium stockpile. Netanyahu is staking everything on that outcome – or, on the possibility that renewed war could still destabilise the regime”.

This is why Vice-President Vance — who was almost hourly taking instruction from the White House or Tel Aviv— wound up the talks prematurely. A short sharp victory messaging on which Netanyahu’s future depends clearly was not about to emerge from the talks.

U.S. Constitutional U.S. lawyer, Robert Barnes (who is a friend of Vance), reports in an interview that:

“Trump began exhibiting signs of early dementia in September 2025 … He frequently confabulates, he routinely loses his temper and unleashes screaming rants and he is incapable of doing critical thinking. And – according to Barnes, in this state – Trump genuinely believes that the U.S. has vanquished Iran and does not comprehend the massive economic damage that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is doing to the global economy”.

In short, Barnes says that Trump’s delirium that Iran is at the point of capitulation reflects his impaired mental state — an impairment of understanding ‘reality’ (a panglossian interpretation that Secretary Pete Hegseth does his best to reinforce).

Like Netanyahu, Trump likely believes too, that pressure and more pressure on Iran could yield the triumphantVictory trophy of (figuratively) waving aloft 430 Kg of enriched uranium — either compelled to be given up by economic pressure, or alternatively dramatically seized on the ground by U.S. forces.

In the face of this crisis at the heart of the White House, Vice-President Vance reportedly (Barnes again) has been working feverishly behind the scenes to arrange a new meeting with Iran in Islamabad – despite the political process being deliberately impaired through massive Israeli air and ground attacks in Lebanon killing and injuring up to 1,000 persons (almost all civilians) during the ceasefire negotiations, as well as continued attacks since Trumpsupposedly “prohibited” Israel from attacking Lebanon at the start of the Lebanon ceasefire two days ago.