Will it be Fire or Ice?????

 Robert Frost wrote a poem called "Fire and Ice", and the version I found on-line had a copyright of 1923, after WWI was "The War to End All Wars" (but wasn't).

The poem is short enough:

Fire and Ice

By Robert Frost

 

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

 

Now, of course, we've had Russia against NATO since the end of the USSR (but Russia didn't know it until 2022, they figured, now that Communism was gone, they could be part of NATO, silly Russians).

But Russia (the world's largest holder of nukes, if they all still work, but with top NATO military analysts saying we have nothing to worry about, they're all inoperative and Russia have no one who knows how to fix them) against NATO has been overtaken by Pakistan against India (both holders of only a few nukes, but a few actually used by two nuclear powers against each other would bring us to a place the world has never been before).

And the US and Israel seem determined to destroy Iran, and no one has a clue about how such a war will turn out (but the US and Israel both figure it will be an easy victory with no bad effects for the US or Israel, just the total destruction of Iran by an overwhelmingly more powerful pair, returning all Iranian oil to the rightful owners of that oil before Iranians stole it--three times--from the rightful owners, the US oiligarchs and maybe the Israeli government for helping).

Others figure Iran has enough unstoppable missiles to totally destroy Israel, the West Asian US military bases, the West Asian oil fields, and block the Strait of Hormuz for many years, making oil prohibitively expensive for the US/UK/EU.

And the US/UK/EU have decided they must destroy Russia to keep Europe safe, which is why the UK and France let Germany rearm in 1933, since they were sure the USSR would try to take all of Europe, and that Hitler fellow was a lot more reasonable than that Stalin fellow and Hitler's futile fight against the USSR would give the UK and France time to prepare for the real battle against the USSR, and they figured that Germany's total destruction by the USSR would buy them the time they needed.

 

Today, Russia try very hard to downplay the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 (for which the US hanged Ribbentrop) that freed Germany to overwhelm Poland, France, and the UK. And the USSR figured the pact meant they didn't need to worry about Germany, which was true until 1941 when Germany got serious about their plan to eradicate all the Slavs in the European part of the USSR (i.e., just about everyone in the European part of the USSR).

The disagreements between Pakistan and India are about 80 years old, but the last big one in the '70s was before they had nukes. So what's going to happen now? No one has a clue.

The disagreement between the US and Iran started about 70 years ago when Mosaddegh nationalised Iranian oil, then cooled down for about 20 years when the Shah agreed that all Iranian oil belonged to the US, then heated up when the Shah nationalised Iranian oil (again) so the US got rid of him and replaced him with an Iranian cleric living in France who was only supposed to care about making Iranian women wear Islamic dress and would be happy to let the US have all their oil back, only he had most of the staff in the US Embassy in Iran taken hostage and kept all the oil. So the US put a total blockade on Iran from about 1980 until 2021 when a fleet of oil tankers protected by a fleet of heavy naval ships broke the US blockade without having to fire a shot (the naval fleet was so strong the US blockading fleet fled). Iran doesn't have any nukes and probably can't get any (but is portrayed by the US as just days away from a massive nuclear arsenal they'll use to destroy the world if the US don't stop them).

Iran say to the world that they don't want any help, but we don't know what they say to the two countries that want to help them if the US and Israel attack.

So the world is in a place they've never been before, with the war between the two nuclear-armed powers Pakistan and India getting hotter and hotter, the war between the nuclear armed US/UK/EU and Russia getting hotter and hotter, and the war between the US/Israel (who both have nukes) and Iran (who don't have nukes, but who might have weapons that can destroy everything they want to destroy) getting hotter and hotter.

So which disaster will come first? And will it be Fire or Ice? 

 

(I have no idea.)

Can Iran Save the World?????

Both Presidents Trump and Biden showed us all that the US president is not the person running the US government, but is supposed to be an actor who reads the TelePrompter with elan and whatever else makes the message on that TelePrompter irresistibly appealing to a majority of the American voters and acceptable to all the US neo-colonies (of which the most important are now the UK and EU).

Trump was given the order to attack Syria on the TelePrompter, but ordered all US troops out of Syria. Twice. And not one troop left: they went in, stole the oil that was supporting the Assad government, which fell six years later, and then the US establishment gave Biden all the credit when he probably didn't even know that Syria had fallen and was now a US/Israeli neo-colony.

Biden managed to read the TelePrompter, with a lot of unrevealed practice sessions in advance, but then couldn't find his way off the stage, and obviously didn't know where he was or what he had just read.

Trump took full credit for killing General Suleimani, but most of the credit goes to Mohammed bin Salman who invited the General to a peace conference in Baghdad, then told the US military when and where the general would be an easy target.

Of course, that's changed, a lot, since the PRC told Saudi and Iran they'd better be friends. Or else.

For years, the US was the biggest buyer of oil, so Saudi did whatever the US wanted. Iran stole America's oil sitting in Iran, twice, so the US set up a naval blockade that prevented Iran from selling oil for 40 years and caused the Iranian economy to shrink by 50%. That was then.

Today, fracking means the US are a net exporter of petroleum products, not the world's biggest importer. Meanwhile, the oil-poor PRC has twice as many cars as the US, most of them needing petrol (a few run on electricity generated by coal, of which the PRC has plenty), so the PRC have become, by far, the biggest buyer of petrol. So when the PRC told Saudi and Iran they had to be BFF, both said, "是的，先生。您说什么都行，先生."

So the people really running the US are determined to see that the US remains not just global Hegemon, but unquestioned, absolute global Hegemon with no nation that can possibly challenge that hegemony. Which means subjugating Iran, the DPRK, Russia, and the PRC. 

The USSR had the most nukes in the world, and Russia got all of them. Do they still work? No one knows for sure. The DPRK has done public tests, so yes, they definitely have nukes that work, but maybe they can't get any of them anywhere near the US, so no real threat after we nuke them? The PRC? Best plan is to take out Iran and then Russia and then cut the PRC off from all energy resources so their economy will collapse. Will that go well? The US Naval blockade on Iran could not stand up to the PRC Navy, but the US did not put all it had into cutting off the PRC, and, anyway, Russia are supplying the PRC with lots of oil, so  just cutting Iran off won't be enough.

So the people running the US want to start with the easiest target, always the best strategy, and that target is Iran since Iran has no nukes.

Raising the Big Question: Is Iran really an easy target???

I was reading a bunch of neocons posting on a discussion group, and they figure, "No problem. Biden was weak, but Trump can and will easily destroy Iran."

I figure the US military all figure the same; Iran will be a very easy target for the US, no effective defences, so the US can easily manage the total destruction of all Iranian nuclear development, offensive and defensive weapons, with nothing left of Tehran, Qom, or the Ayatollahs, with the US the total hegemon over whatever is left of Iran and the unquestioned owner of all Iranian oil. And, as a bonus, Israel will be safe from Iran.

But I've read people who say they know Iran, and, if attacked, Iran can destroy Israel, all the US military bases in West Asia, and all the oilfields in West Asia. Plus, closure of the Straits of Hormuz for many years, in which case Americans will be paying $100s of dollars for a liter of petrol, the UK and EU will be paying a lot more, the Western economies will be destroyed, and the rest of the world will be safe. The US won't be in a position to attack or nuke anyone.

And this felicitous outcome will be all up to Iran, who seem to be all alone.

And seem to like it that way, with no other nation protecting them from the US and Israel.

So Iran may be, single-handedly, the end of US global Hegemony.

Or an easy target, totally destroyed by the US (maybe with a little help from Israel), with no damage to Israel, US military bases, West Asian oil fields, or the Straits of Hormuz, and all Iranian oil going to the rightful owners, the US oiligarchs. 

Of course, since that's what the US military experts all agree is certain to be true, that makes it somewhat likely to be false.

In any case, it looks like we'll find out very soon now.

Must we bring back that old Tom Lehrer song???

Tom Lehrer wrote what he called A Song For WWIII, a song we seem to need now.

On 19 January 2025, president-elect Trump said that the US had to get out of the Ukraine. On 21 January 2025, President Trump said that Russia had to get out of the Ukraine or Russia would be destroyed.

Obviously, most people who get to be president start as teenagers, doing whatever their party asks, learning all the Rules of the Road, and a very few get to be candidates, and one of the two major party candidates goes on to win the election (with a very, very few exceptions like Sanders).

Trump just used his own money to run for and win the presidential election in 2016, and then had no idea that his job was to read the TelePrompter, no ad-libbing allowed. When the TelePrompter said, in 2018, "I order the US military into Syria to bring freedom and democracy," Trump said, "I order all US troops out of Syria."

So they explained things to him and gave him a second chance, and again, he ordered all US troops out of Syria. And some thought the US troops would actually leave Syria, showing how little they understand about how the US works.

Finally, they told Trump this was not going to cost the US taxpayers 1¢, the troops were really going into Syria to steal all the oil and would make a good profit, so Trump gave the order and it was carried out: the troops went in, stole the oil, and a bankrupt President Assad of Syria fled the country in 2024, handing Syria over to former members of al-Qaeda and ISIS who promised to work closely with the US and Israel, and gladly proclaimed they were giving Israel all the water in Syria south of Damascus. A total success for the US military!

They had wanted Trump to order the troops in to bring freedom and democracy, but at least he gave the order sending them in to steal the oil and bankrupt Assad, which was always the real purpose of the mission. And the people who really run the US could live without the 'freedom and democracy' lie.

And now Trump plans to fight Russia over the minerals in the Ukraine, a much weaker, easier adversary than Assad, so Trump should have a quick and easy victory. Of course, he also wants a quick and easy victory over Iran. Not clear, yet, which one will be first, maybe both at the same time.

Reading all the US/UK/EU media, the US military are much stronger than the next ten militaries put together, so, just as the US easily defeated Vietnam…

Well, let's think about Iraq and Libya and Syria where the US got all the oil that Saddam and Gaddafi and Assad were stealing from the US, since it is the US who are the rightful owners of just about all the oil on the planet, and after defeating Russia and Iran, the US will demand that all Russian and Iranian energy resources go to US oiligarchs as war reparations.

Another success was the US getting rid of Mohammad Mosaddegh after he stole (by nationalising) Iranian oil, and then got rid of the Shah after he stole the oil by nationalising it (again), but then the Ayatollahs kept the oil, so the US ordered that no one could buy any Iranian oil and put up a naval blockade that stopped all Iranian oil sales until 2021 when a fleet of oil tankers, accompanied by a strong naval fleet, came and bought all the Iranian oil, so the weak President Biden ordered the US blockade on Iran lifted, since the US could no longer enforce it.

President Trump plans to do something about Iran and Russia, but it's not clear just what, yet. Or in what order.

The Soviet Union once had the world's largest nuclear arsenal,  but Russia are not the Soviet Union, and all those nukes are almost certainly in disrepair and useless, and in any case, Putin wouldn't dare use nukes against the US, since US anti-missile missiles and lasers would stop all those Russian nukes then the US would totally destroy Russia, no doubt about it, at least in the minds of the US military who are the world's top experts in all things military.

So it's time to start practicing that old Tom Lehrer song, since we'll be needing it, probably pretty pronto.

Richard D Wolff Responds: "Winners & 'Likely' Losers: China vs USA Trade War"??? (Dated April 30, 2025)

It is worth watching Professor Wolff's YouTube video that he calls the 'Likely' Trade War between China and the US. He gets a lot right, but not all.

For one, it's not a 'Likely' trade war, the trade war is already happening, with the US attacking and the PRC defending.

As Professor Wolff correctly says, the PRC have all the advantages in the Trade War, and as he worries, also correctly, Trade Wars often turn into actual military wars.

Professor Wolff was going along very well in his video: First, the Chinese Communist Party exercises overall control of everything in the PRC and is making very intelligent decisions (obviously 110% TRVE: the decisions of those running the PRC have been as close to perfect as possible).

And then he notes that the US have not managed to make such intelligent decisions, also obviously true, but his explanation is somewhat lacking: he says that in the US, since production is in the hands of private companies, each with different chief executives who cannot coordinate under anti-trust law, such intelligent control is impossible in the US.

However, Professor Wolff misses that, over the Chief Executives of US corporations are the Governing Boards of those corporations, and a small group of people sit on the boards governing all the major corporations, and those people move easily and frequently between senior government jobs and senior private jobs, often holding both simultaneously, US laws notwithstanding.

In the 19th century, the US built the world's largest rail network, linking just about all of the US. By 19th century standards (slow though they were), it was a high-speed rail network.

In Europe, the British had a rail system, the French had a rail system, the Germans had a rail system, etc., etc., and one could buy a ticket on the Orient Express and make one's way from Liverpool to the near Orient, using British and European rail networks (and a boat to cross the English Channel), but only by coordinating different national railroads. (And one can read novels and watch movies about the Orient Express, even if one couldn't travel on it.)

But now, the PRC have a large network of high-speed rail (part of a rail network that is much larger than the US rail network ever was) adding to the overall success of the PRC economy while the US have no high-speed rail network (and many problems in the existing US rail network). Wolff says this is only because the Chinese Communist Party have overall control of the PRC economy and so can make decisions that are very unprofitable while the US do not have such a network because there is no US Party having such overall control, so a totally unprofitable network cannot be built.

That's where Wolff's economics break down: if that high-speed rail network is really so unprofitable, it must be hurting the PRC economy, but the PRC economy is booming. The US economic system would be greatly helped by such a system, but it can't be built because it would be very unprofitable. This makes no economic sense. What it means is that the US economy has serious flaws that make it impossible to complete a project the completion of which would add greatly to the US economy (the project has been started several times, but little progress was made because the US economic flaws, not to mention US leadership flaws, have made all such starts so incredibly expensive that none have even come close to completion).

The real conclusion is that a very small group of people who have all the intelligence (and connections) to rise to the top of the US power system have made a lot of decisions which have been very profitable for the decision makers but not very good for the overall US economy or for ordinary Americans, while the small group of people who managed to rise to the top of the PRC power system have made a lot of very intelligent decisions that benefitted everyone in the PRC.

And no one has a clue how to change the way the US works, so the US uses wars to destroy and pillage, taking Iraqi and Libyan and Syrian oil, and doing all they can to get the Iranian, Venezuelan and Russian oil into the hands of US oiligarchs (the Venezuelan and Iranian and Russian projects do not seem to be going nearly as well as the Iraqi and Libyan and Syrian projects went, while the Russian project seems certain to go horribly wrong--sorry, as Hamlet said, ' “Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.” ').

Trump: Peace Candidate, but ...

I heard 'President' Trump say, twice, 'I order all US troops out of Syria.'

Of course, the DNC and RNC each put up one candidate, each, every four years, and the Electoral College picks one of them to be the actor who plays the part of US president. But, when 'President Trump' failed to read his line on the Teleprompter, i.e., 'I order the US military into Syria to bring peace and democracy,' and instead ordered all US troops out of Syria, not one troop left. So orders the actor gives that are not on the Teleprompter do not get followed. The orders given by the person who authored the speech on the Teleprompter are the orders that are actually followed.

And, on 19 January 2025, I heard 'President-elect' Trump say, 'The US must withdraw from the Ukraine or the US economy will be destroyed,' and on 21 January 2025, I heard 'President' Trump say, 'Russia must withdraw from the Ukraine or Russia will be destroyed.' Quite the difference. But at least Trump learned to read the Teleprompter without (or at least with less) ad-libbing between 2021 and 2025.

The real president is a well-kept secret, at least from me, and if anyone knows, they refuse to tell me who it is. Obama has been suggested as the real president from 2009 to 2025, but I, at least, can't know for certain, and I don't know who does.

 ******

I tried to listen to two Tucker Carlson shows: one show, 'FORTRESS AMERICA' with George Friedman, was about how the US rules the world, and will continue to rule the world for the foreseeable future: Russia tried to conquer the Ukraine, and, after three years, have only a tiny sliver, have lost most of their military, and will soon have to sell off all Russian assets to US oiligarchs to pay for the war. The PRC is in slightly better shape than Russia, but are totally hemmed in by US Naval assets and those assets make it impossible for the PRC to project any power at all, they could not possibly even attack Taiwan, let alone annex that American asset. And most of the rest of the world already acknowledges and gratefully accepts absolute US hegemony. Or at least the UK and EU accept it and try to look grateful.

The second show was "Embedded with Russian Troops"  where Tucker interviewed Patrick Lancaster who has been an embedded reporter with the Russians fighting the Ukrainians, and he notes that their job is to protect ethnic Russians in the Ukraine and in Russia from the Ukrainian forces who are determined to cleanse the Ukraine (and as much of Russia as possible) of ethnic Russians. Some say this is a Slav v. Slav fight, but the Western Ukrainians consider themselves Aryans, not Slavs, and are in general agreement with the book, My Struggle written in the 1920s by a future Chancellor of Germany. that all Slavs must be exterminated or at least enslaved by Aryans. Mr Lancaster is sympathetic to the ethnic Russian position in this war, and, as he notes, his pro-Russian viewpoint is soundly rejected by all the mainstream US/UK/EU media who agree that the book, My Struggle, while wrong in its anti-Semitism, was absolutely right about the Slavs.

As the US/UK/EU all said after Germany lost WWII, Hitler's killing 6 million Jews was the absolute worst crime in all history. Some ask, 'But what about Hitler also killing 27 million Slavs?' and the US/UK/EU answer is 'That just shows there's a little good in the worst of men.'

This raises the question: Where is the war in the Ukraine going?

As George Friedman says, that's obvious: Russia will lose the war and all their assets and end up an impuissant, impoverished country or, more likely, 20 small impuissant, impoverished countries.

But I fear Mr Lancaster might very well be correct that Russia will manage to survive, economy intact, and with all the ethnic Russians under Russian protection, with whatever is necessary to keep them safe from the good Aryans in the Western Ukraine, US, UK, and EU.

Where with Iran? (War?)

 I just watched "Life, Liberty, and Levin" on Fox News. Mr. Levin started with 9/11, how just 19 terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, struck the Pentagon, and crashed a plane in Pennsylvania. Then he showed the old films taken of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and noted that those 19 terrorists could have done a lot more damage with nukes, and Iran are preparing nukes and are very close to giving them to terrorists, but Levin is sure Trump can stop them unless the Left manage to stop Trump's prophylaxis.

The US started by saying all the nuclear bombs were based on U₂₃₅ (U235 if subscripts don't display). My physics professor in high school said he worked on the project: they formed uranium fluoride gas and centrifuged it, so the lighter U₂₃₅(U235) rose to the top and the heavier U₂₃₈(U238) sank to the bottom, but it took many, many cycles to get pure enough U₂₃₅(U235) to make a bomb.

I read a Disney comic where Prof. Ludvig von Drake explained that U₂₃₅(U235) was the most powerful explosive in the world.

Later, the US admitted that one of the three nukes they set off in 1945 was plutonium. Then some said it was two plutonium bombs, and I read one author who wrote that all three bombs were plutonium. The US executed two Jews for giving the USSR the secret of the U₂₃₅(U235) nuclear bomb, with all the details that had pretty much become common knowledge. J. Edgar Hoover rounded up leftists, charged them with treason for giving the USSR the secret of the nuclear bomb, had them sentenced to death, then offered to commute their sentence if they'd name more spies. The Rosenbergs were the first (and last) accused 'spies' who refused to name anyone else, so both were executed in 1953 (there is still a debate about the FBI's 'evidence' of their guilt).

But Levin figures Iran are just weeks away from having a bunch of nukes and giving them to terrorists. 

Fortunately, we have two versions of recent history.

First, the US killed an Iranian general, Suleimani. Iran said when and which US military base they'd attack, and attacked right on schedule, but the US had removed all planes and troops, so no materiel or troops lost. Net: Iran failed to do the slightest damage to the US base, so are they quite incapable of damaging a US base with the sophisticated defences protecting each and every US base, or did they prove they could do a lot of damage if they attacked without first warning the US?

Then Israel killed just about everyone in the Iranian Embassy in Syria, so Iran named their targets in Israel and sent a bunch of drones and missiles, but none got past the massive defensive shield put up by Israel, the US, Jordan, France, the UK, and maybe a few more. That's the Western version.

Or maybe four missiles did get past all the defences and hit empty military targets, doing little damage. That's the Iranian version, and they say that they didn't have to announce when and where they were going to hit, so they could have done major damage, and will do if Israel do another attack on an Iranian Embassy.

Israel want a joint US/Israel attack on Iran. Actually, the last Israeli attack on Iran was when President Assad was still president of Syria, and Syria had antiaircraft weapons, so the US provided hundreds of US planes forming a protective floor and ceiling between which the Israeli planes flew in safety (President Assad ordered the antiaircraft to make sure no US plane was threatened). Assad is gone now, and so are all Syrian defences against Israel, so Israeli planes can fly to and bomb Iran whenever they feel like it, and President Jolani of Syria says he fully supports the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) and would not do anything to threaten it, even if he had any antiaircraft weapons, which he doesn't since the IOF have destroyed them all.

This raises the question: if Israel attacks Iran, how much support will they get from the US, and can Iran retaliate in any way, or are Israel totally protected by their air defence system called Iron Dome???

Levin and Fox are sure an Iranian atomic attack is imminent, but if Israel and the US act now, they can destroy all the nuclear resources in Iran and keep Israel safe, but if they keep pithering, Israel and the US will soon be hit by hundreds of nukes, and there will be no way to stop them.

Iran say that, if the US and Israel attack Iran, they have plenty of non-nuclear missiles that will do major damage to Israel and all the West Asian US military bases, plus much of the world's oil supply will be under attack and the price of oil will be prohibitively high, stopping much of western industrial activity.

President Trump wants a new and Greatly Improved JCPOA. The trouble with the old one was that Obama and Hillary did the work and got the credit, so President Trump withdrew in spite of a UN Security Council resolution (turns out, the UN membership pledge to be bound by UN regulations aside, the US are not bound by UN Security Council resolutions the way other members of the UN are bound). But President Trump intends to take 110% of the credit for the new and greatly improved JCPOA (that probably will not be allowed a single J, C, P, O, or A in the acronym).

And no matter what the new and improved JCPOA treaty says, the US might decide to assist Israel in their attack on Iran. We'll just have to wait and see.

The JCPOA

For anyone who might have forgotten, the JCPOA was The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which started as a US agreement with Iran and was passed as a UN Security Council Resolution, so it should have been binding on all member states of the UN.

However, it was a plan concocted by Obama and Hillary, so Trump declared that he was taking the US out of the agreement after he won the 2016 election.

And now some say his negotiations with Iran are just a return to JCPOA

Before President Trump ordered all US troops out of Syria, and none left, and before we saw that President Biden wasn't sure where he was or who he was, many of us thought the person called President of the US was the executive running the US government. Now all we know is that we don't know.

Whoever was really running the US government under Clinton imposed a blockade on Iraq, and at least half a million died from lack of food and medicines. Clinton's Secretary of State, Albright, said the deaths were well worth it for what they achieved. Clinton promised Iraq an end to sanctions if they had UN inspectors verify that Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). And, as soon as those inspectors verified that Iraq had no WMD, Bush, Jr and associates like Powell said they had irrefutable proof that Iraq had WMD and were planting some in the US, planning to kill millions of Americans, so the US War on Iraq started, killing many more Iraqis and executing all the senior members of the Iraqi government.

Then whoever was running the government under Bush, Jr imposed sanctions on Libya, and, when those UN inspectors verified no WMD, whoever was really running the government had Obama and Hillary order that Gaddafi be killed, the Libyan government dismantled, and all the US oil that Libya had been stealing went back to the US (but the US shared 10% with the UK and 10% with France for helping recover that stolen US oil). Many think Obama really was the one running the US government when he was president, and that he continues to run things, that it was Obama who chose Biden to wander about and fall down for four years. But we cannot know for certain. All we know for certain is that Obama signed the JCPOA and had the US delegate to the UN vote to make it a Security Council Resolution.

But the JCPOA appeared to be an Obama-Hillary plan, where, as soon as those UN inspectors said that Iran had no WMD, Hillary would be the one to announce that she'd found those WMD and then she'd  order the attack that would have liberated all the US oil located in Iran, stolen first by Mosaddegh, then returned to the US by the Shah, then stolen by that same Shah, so the US had him replaced by Khomeini who not only failed to return the oil, he also allowed his supporters to take the staff of the US Embassy in Tehran hostage and would not release the oil or the hostages (but then Reagan paid him enough to get all the hostages released, but not the oil).

In the latter days of the Obama presidency, when it looked like Hillary would succeed him, it looked like Obama and Hillary had worked out a way to get all that oil back from Iran, but Trump was having nothing to do with an Obama-Hillary plan, so he pulled out.

So now what? There isn't time for years of sanctions that kill off millions of Iranians. Oops, the US has had the harshest sanctions on Iran since 1980, but Iran can still grow enough food and make enough medicine to prevent mass deaths. The sanctions did shrink the Iranian economy to less than half what it was in '79 before the blockade, but they still had enough food and medicine to prevent mass deaths like we saw in Iraq.

But then, in 2021, a huge fleet of oil tankers showed up in Iran. From 1980 until 2020, every year or so we read about an oil tanker that tried to sneak out of Iran full of oil, and all were stopped by the US Navy patrol that stopped all Iranian oil traffic. Only the 2021 fleet was accompanied by a huge naval fleet, much more powerful than the tiny fleet enforcing the US blockade, so the US Navy could do nothing but pull away and watch as the oil tankers all filled up and left Iran (and left behind payment in full, so the Iranian economy has more than doubled from what it was in 2020).

And now Trump wants to reclaim all that Iranian oil, and hopes to do it with threats of military action on Iran rather than actual military action on Iran. Trump is bombing the Yemen, and claims Iran are providing AnsarAllah in the Yemen with all the ordinance they have used to stop all Red Sea traffic.

AnsarAllah have also been shelling (without any noticeable effect) the US Aircraft Carrier that is launching all the planes bombing the Yemen and many of the drones targeting the Yemen.

Iran have launched several attacks on Israel, and Israel have launched several attacks on Iran. But reports of results are contradictory: one version is that all the Iranian bombs were shot down by Israel and Israel's allies, doing absolutely no damage to Israel, while Israeli bombs have done major damage to legitimate Iranian war targets; the other version is pretty much the opposite: most of the Iranian rockets and drones fired at Israel were decoys, all the real ones got through and did severe damage, while the Israeli attacks on Iranian military targets accomplished nothing (but one attack did kill many of the mourners at a memorial service for General Suleimani).

So we have no idea what Trump will do about Iran (if it is Trump making the decisions, or what the persons actually in charge will do).

But we're pretty sure Trump won't let anyone call anything he does a JCPOA. New acronym, anyone? One Trump can live with?