Some Real Talk About the Iran Deal
It’s time to take a hard look at the memorandum of understanding (MOU) and to think about it objectively. On one hand, it is not the utter catastrophe that a lot of people – people who largely agree with my position that we should be actively destroying these goat-molesting, pagan semi-humans – think it is. On the other hand, it’s a crap sandwich, and there’s no need to take a bite and announce that it’s “Yummy.” It is not yummy, but it might be the best we can hope for today.
The adult world is full of bad choices. If there were some sort of easy solution to this conflict, it would’ve likely been solved long ago. But there isn’t. There are no optimal courses of action. There are only various levels of suboptimal courses of action. Once we, like adults, accept that, we can move forward. First, let’s examine what the MOU is. It’s more of a pause, an interregnum, or even a halftime (as my friend Hugh Hewitt calls it). This isn’t going to be the end of the 50-year war with the Iranian mullahs. Nobody thinks that, including Donald Trump, no matter what he says. Like every experienced negotiator, Donald Trump is never going to publicly say what he actually thinks, and anyone expecting him to is a child and unworthy of your attention. This agreement will not end the war because the war is rooted in an irresolvable dispute. These 17th-century savages are religious fanatics who believe that their fake Mahdi is going to crawl out of a well or something and blah blah blah blah blah. The bottom line is they can’t tolerate the existence of the Jewish state, or the West, or anybody whose culture isn’t run by people who shouldn’t be allowed within 1,000 feet of a school. The only way this war is going to end is when one side is fully and completely defeated. So this is not peace. This is a hudna, a temporary truce that both sides exploit to prepare to resume fighting.
If you can’t accept that we are at war with Islamic fanatics, I can’t help you. To those of you with your eyes tightly shut and your hands pressed against your ears, yelling, “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!” I know you don’t want to be in a forever war. I know that it’s inconvenient for you, and you don’t like it. And I also know that what you want doesn’t matter. It doesn’t take two to be in a war. It only takes one. If one guy isn't in a war, the war doesn’t last long because the guy who doesn’t fight back loses. I propose we not only fight back, but we defeat this enemy that’s been trying to destroy the West for 1,500 years.
Yes, you can put me down as a hawk. My preferred way to fulfill our strategy – which must be regime change, even though nobody can say “regime change” aloud – is kinetic. I propose we blow the living snot out of them, to use the technical term. But here’s the problem. Most Americans don’t agree with me. If you look at the polls, it’s very clear that people would prefer not to be in a kinetic fight with the Iranians at this time. I have the luxury of not having any responsibility. I wasn’t elected president. I’m not in command of anything. But Donald Trump was elected and is in command, and he’s got a lot of moving parts to consider. He chose to go forward with the MOU not because he’s weak or stupid or cowardly or a bad negotiator – that’s a cope – but because he’s got other priorities at present that this lame MOU supports.
Here’s one key fact – for various reasons, including the perfidy of allegedly allied governments, oil is not moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Part of that has to do with insurance, and a big part has to do with alleged allies leaning on insurance companies not to cover ships that would otherwise transit the Strait. The idea that somehow the Iranians just discovered, like a month ago, that they had hundreds of miles of coastline along the Strait and could interdict it with military force is so stupid it’s not even worth addressing. Of course, they knew about that. And of course, we knew about that. We’ve wargamed it for decades. It was a risk of war, and war is in large part about managing risk.
What Trump did was make a deal to open the Straits so the American economy could recover. You can already see gas prices going down. Now, this was important to him for a couple of reasons. First, we didn’t need a worldwide recession. There is talk out there, and I’m no expert on the oil industry, so take it for what it’s worth, but apparently, Trump believes that world oil stocks were going to be depleted, and the price was going to go through the roof. That would have sent the Western economy into a tailspin, and there would’ve been follow-on effects from that. Yeah, war is expensive and disruptive to the economy. Who knew? And while I would’ve happily borne the increased price per gallon in order to destroy the Iranian mullahs, the fact is, most people wouldn’t. I don’t have to like that fact. But that’s a fact. And Donald Trump is forced to deal with facts, not just theory on X.
So Donald Trump kicked the can down the road, although it’s not clear how far. Threatening the Strait of Hormuz is viable right now, but the mullahs’ now- acknowledged ability to interdict traffic through the Strait is what we call a depreciating asset. It’s not going to be there, at least to the same extent, forever. The other Gulf States have figured out what’s happening, and they’re not just going to sit there and not do something about it. There are already massive oil pipelines heading west – those of us in Desert Storm drove by the major one in northern Saudi Arabia as we went out to the desert along scenic Tapline Road (Who else remembers beautiful Hafir al-Batin, which makes Deming, New Mexico, look like Paris?). They will build a lot more. It’s going to take time, but eventually, the Gulf States are going to work around the ability of Iran to completely cut off their oil exports. Time is on our side, but you have to think of time not in terms of months but years. Americans are notoriously bad at that.
It’s going to be years until we resolve this war. We have to think in the long term, and the long-term goal is getting rid of these mullahs and installing somebody who’s not going to be a problem. This war was an opportunity for the Iranian people to rise up and get rid of their fanatic masters. They didn’t do that, for various reasons. We can thank the Kurds for stealing the weapons Trump tried to send them – yeah, the Middle East is wonderful. But what’s clear is that we’re not going to do it for them. There’s literally no one who wants to physically invade Iran and take it over and govern it. That gives the mullahs an advantage: all they have to do is not die. I would make them die, but that’s just me.
But we’ve got a long way to go to neutering them. And while we’ve utterly gutted their military capabilities, including their nuclear program – anybody who ignores that and starts telling you that this MOU is worse than the JCPOA is unworthy of your attention because that’s just stupid – they still have a bunch of guys with small arms who can oppress their own people. These thugs have to be eliminated in detail, and the only ones who can do that are the Iranians themselves.
Again, the mullahs have been largely defanged. Most of their current threats are hypothetical – it’s not clear they can actually sink a ship going through the Strait of Hormuz, but the shippers don’t want to take that chance, so the threat is sufficient. The mullahs have other moves to make, too. Remember that the enemy gets a vote. They are desperately trying to keep Israel from annihilating their primitive pederast proxy Hezbollah, whose members have a ton of American blood on their paws. Israel can’t live with these creeps firing missiles into its land and essentially making northern Israel uninhabitable. It’s got to drain this abscess, but the Iranians are trying to use that as a wedge to drive the United States and Israel apart. The predictably moronic collection of podcasters, libertarians, traitors, and drooling idiots is going along with the information operation, demanding that America abandon Israel.
At the moment, it would be more convenient for the United States if Israel weren’t publicly wiping out Hezbollah – I don’t think anyone who’s not a clown sheds any sincere tears for these monsters. JD Vance is taking the lead in telling Israel to essentially chill out, and a lot of pro-Israel Americans are upset about that. That’s overwrought – America and Israel do have different interests, and he’s just saying that truth out loud. What we should be doing is giving Israel a behind-the-scenes go-ahead to do what it needs to do. Every time it kills a Hezbollah or Hamas terrorist, an angel gets its wings. And here’s the tough news for the pro-Israel crowd, of which I am one – you’ve got no place else to go. All the Democrats hate you and want all the Jews to die. Let’s get the cards out there – they would be happy for Israel’s enemies to butcher everybody from the river to the sea. The Republicans are largely aligned with Israel on security concerns, but the Venn diagram is not a perfect circle. A 90 percent friend is not a 10 percent enemy.
And here’s some more real talk, which I don’t necessarily love. The American people like this MOU deal. A majority supports it. They want the current kinetic phase over. They don’t love Iran. They don’t hate Israel. They just want this fighting to stop. I don’t agree with them, but I don’t get to tell them what to think. Trump’s the guy who has to deal with that. And Trump understands the stakes. If the Democrats take the House (which is not entirely assured, as recent polls show the Democrats losing ground) and/or the Senate, that would be really bad. He’s got to consider that. And he is considering that. He wants the economy kicking. He wants the shooting to stop. He thinks that’s the best way to survive the midterms, and he’s got pretty good instincts.
There are complaints that the Iranians are going to be able to sell their oil again, but any deal was going to allow them to do so. They were selling their oil before the conflict started, and their country's economy was still in ruins. It will still be in ruins after it starts selling oil again.
As for sanctions relief and this $300 billion rehabilitation fund, we will see. That is only supposed to happen if the mullahs cooperate. But, of course, the mullahs aren’t going to cooperate. They are going to be a continual pain in the tush. We need to see whether President Trump will reward them for their misbehavior. He will, if he thinks it’s to his advantage. Now, there’s an idea out there that Donald Trump actually believes and trusts these guys, and that’s either unbelievably stupid or pure wishcasting. He knows exactly who these people are, and he’s got to know that they will screw with him from now until November. But that’s OK. A bunch of these savages getting on Twitter and making their announcements is not the same as actual fighting.
Trump is going to try to drag this out past the midterms. That 60-day nuclear negotiation? Of course, that’s going to get extended. There’s precisely zero chance that’s going to be resolved. But understand that their nuclear program has been blown to smithereens. We are not back in a worse position than we were before we entered this righteous conflict. We’re in a much better position. And in the long term, the correlation of forces is in our favor. Israel is wiping out its proxies. The Gulf states are strengthening their defenses, so Iran can’t do again what it just did. We are rebuilding, rearming, and retargeting. And Iran’s regime? It’s still impoverished and teetering on the edge of collapse.
You wouldn’t know it from all the whining online and the self-serving crap of the Democrats, who seemed just as mad about us not shooting as they were at us shooting, but we’re in a good position for the future. All the Iranian mullahs are just crying like the little b****s that they are. They accepted the MOU because they need the MOU as much as Trump does, maybe more. So, at the end of the day, crying like a little b***h is all they can do.
