Government of Carelessness

 

So we may be on the brink of fighting our second war with Iran in eight months. Or maybe not, who can say? "We'll see what happens," as the commander-in-chief always says. I think he generally means he'll see it on TV and he won't be sure until then, and find out what his decision was at the same time as the rest of us do.

I mean this more or less literally: that his more gnomic utterances, especially the social media posts when he writes them himself, should be understood as oracular, like the words of a Sibyl, possibly drug-induced, but in need of interpretation. They represent Trump's hopes, the thing he wants done, but in a way that can't be understood directly, and that indeed he can't understand himself. His lieutenants have to divine it for him, and put it into action, and then he'll know.

In a way that's not even particularly weird. It's really nothing more than the familiar figure of the psychopath CEO, like Dilbert's boss in the old comic strip when it was good (may its memory be a blessing!). It's not so hard to interpret what he's saying if you just remember that (a) it has a context, and (b) he's a psychopath. 

There was a delicious example in yesterday's news, with the melodramatic AI image of the US hospital ship being sent posthaste to rescue all the suffering Greenlanders from their ailments (Greenland runs its extremely good single-payer healthcare on Danish lines with Danish assistance, of course). WTH was that about?

Trump Unleashing His Inner Nixon

Filing Cabinet of Dr. Lewis Fielding, with markings where Hunt, Liddy, Martinez. and the others broke into it in the hopes of finding out something nasty about Daniel Ellsberg, a patient of Dr. Fielding's, in 1971; Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, via Wikipedia.

Progressives who'd rather we stop talking about Russia Russia Russia and Trump's criminality might take a look at this story, just out in The Guardian, which has nothing to do with Russia: It seems that a year ago, just after Trump's visit to Tel Aviv (when he promised Netanyahu that he would ensure "Iran would never have nuclear weapons"), his people hired a private Israeli intelligence agency to "get dirt" on the personal and political lives of Ben Rhodes, President Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and Colin Kahl, former national security adviser to Vice President Biden, which they hoped "would discredit those who were pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull out of it."

Among other things they were looking at personal relationships, any involvement with Iran-friendly lobbyists, and if they had benefited personally or politically from the peace deal.

Investigators were also apparently told to contact prominent Iranian Americans as well as pro-deal journalists – from the New York Times, MSNBC television, the Atlantic, Vox website and Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper among others – who had frequent contact with Rhodes and Kahl in an attempt to establish whether they had violated any protocols by sharing sensitive intelligence. They are believed to have looked at comments made by Rhodes in a 2016 New York Times profile in which he admitted relying on inexperienced reporters to create an “echo chamber” that helped sway public opinion to secure the deal. It is also understood that the smear campaign wanted to establish if Rhodes was among those who backed a request by Susan Rice, Obama’s final national security adviser, to unmask the identities of Trump transition officials caught up in the surveillance of foreign targets.

This is pretty clearly Nixon-level skullduggery, reminiscent of the original Plumbers burglary when they attacked Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, with the added weirdness of using a foreign agency, and similar to what the Trump people are alleged to have done with Russian agents and a British firm trying to "get dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the campaign period. It's also similar in the tie-in of allowing foreign leaders to dictate US policy—Netanyahu for the Iran deal, Putin for the Ukrainian and Syrian issues, not to mention old Flynn offering US cooperation to the Turkish authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

President Trump is Not Authorized to Speak for the Trump Administration, Part 418

Via.

Via TPM, following up on this morning's post, h/t Jordan:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley on Sunday insisted that the United States will remain in the Iran nuclear deal.

President Donald Trump on Friday said he would likely pull the U.S. out of the deal unless Congress and the other nations in the seven-country accord made a handful of adjustments he demanded.

“Let’s see if we cannot address the flaws in the agreement by staying within the agreement, working with the other signatories, working with our European friends and allies within the agreement,” Tillerson said on CNN’s “State of the Union”....

“Before the Senate not long ago, your counterpart at the Pentagon, Secretary Mattis, was asked if he thought staying in the agreement was in the best interests of the United States,” Jake Tapper said, referring to Secretary of Defense James Mattis. “It sounds like you agree with that as well.”

“I do agree with that,” Tillerson said. “And I think the President does as well.”

On the same day on which President Trump has skipped the deadline, as he announced Friday he would, for sending the congressionally mandated letter to Congress certifying that Iran is in compliance with the JCPA and that the agreement is in the national security interests of the United States, on the grounds, we're told, that he does not think it is in the national security interests of the United States, not at all.

But then as usual, how would Trump even find out what he thinks? It's not like Fox News covers that in any depth.

Decertification

Interior of the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of the Holy Savior (completed 1664) in Isfahan, Islamic Republic of Iran, via Wikipedia. 

Shorter Bret Stephens, "Donald Trump Takes a Hostage", October 14 2017:

Some people think Trump should have certified that Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA simply because Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA. What kind of dubious argument is that, for heaven's sake?

When the Republican legislators stuck that provision in the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) of 2015 requiring the president to certify every three months that the Iranian government was in compliance with the agreement, they meant it for the specific purpose of torturing President Hillary Clinton, presumably; every 90 days she'd have to come out and say the Iranians hadn't started building a bomb yet and the whole Republican noise machine would come out to gin up a scandal about Iranian cheating, including your figures of respect like, ah, Mr. Bret Stephens, who was working the beat for his WSJ readers in July 2016, with the most elegant and arcane information sources, and Marc Thiessen picking it up for the American Enterprise Institute for those of us who don't go behind WSJ's paywall:

A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Something

Portrait of Don DeLillo learning that he has fans in the corridors of power. Just kidding. But it's a nice picture. Via Alchetron.

This deeply annoying David Samuels profile of Obama's youthful deputy national security advisor for strategic communications in the Times Magazine—

The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru

How Ben Rhodes rewrote the rules of diplomacy for the digital age.

—has been arousing a lot of comment in my Twitter timeline, though very little to none here in our quarter of Left Blogistan, and I feel as if I ought to be reporting on it, even though I'm not quite sure why it's worth noting. Fact is, I'm not quite sure what it's attempting to accomplish, because it seems to be doing two different stories, somewhat overlapping, one about what a gigantic crush Samuels has on Rhodes (they both love the novelist Don DeLillo! It's Kismet!) and the other about how he thinks Rhodes has led some kind of Benghazi-like conspiracy to hide the Truth About the Iran Deal, which is that Obama started negotiating it with Ayatollah Khamenei before the election of President Rouhani, as evidenced by

the letters that Obama covertly sent to Khamenei, in 2009 and in 2012, which were only reported on by the press weeks later.

OK, a conspiracy, if there was one, to delay the truth about the Iran deal for several weeks on two separate occasions in the years before it was negotiated, because I don't know but it looks to Samuels like proof that Rouhani and Republican Guard factions in Iran aren't really at war with each other and thus the Iran deal is really a huge trick being played on somebody by somebody else. Perhaps. Or I may be reading it wrong, because frankly the prose is so simultaneously purple and clichéd, from its first DeLillo name-check—

Support for Israel is critical

Because if it's not critical, it's just codependent enabling.

One thing the two Jennifer Rubins have in common: an association with screaming. Bad Jennifer Rubin makes me scream with rage, Good Jennifer Rubin starred in Screamers (1995).

Jennifer, Jennifer...

The Iran deal is as big a threat to Israel as any event since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Well, good, I guess that's not much of a threat. I mean the Yom Kippur War took 19 days, took place almost entirely off Israeli soil and brought no civilian casualties, was an overwhelming Israeli victory, and brought Egypt to the negotiating table for Israel's first peace agreement with an Arab country just three years later. Is that the threat, that peace might break out?

The American people as a whole by a large majority oppose it

Unless you ask the question a different way, in which case they support it—as I can't believe you don't know; that's an out-and-out lie.

"This is not rocket science, at the front end"

As the Maine goes... No, wait.

Correction, in its entirety (August 28 2015) on the story about Parchin:

VIENNA (AP) — In a story Aug. 19 about an arrangement over alleged past nuclear weapons work between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, The Associated Press erroneously referred to Parchin as a "nuclear site. In fact, it's a military site where some believe nuclear work occurred.

A corrected version of the story is below:

An unusual secret agreement with a U.N. agency will allow Iran to use its own experts to inspect a site allegedly used to develop nuclear arms, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.

The revelation is sure to roil critics who argue the deal is built on trust of the Iranians.

The investigation of the Parchin military site by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency is linked to a broader probe of nuclear weapons allegations.

Interesting that they—or author George Jahn—evidently didn't allow a copy editor to look at the text long enough to close the quotation marks in the first paragraph, or uncontract the "it's", which I don't think is AP style (though their style guide seems not to be too specific on that score). You suppose it's (I use contractions freely, as you know) because inside every copy editor is a fact checker screaming to be let out?

It is a somewhat unsatisfactory correction for a couple of reasons:

Grammar as Propaganda

"Building this tower is working! Why would you stop?" Pieter Bruegel the elder, 1563, via Wikipedia.

National Review night manager Jim Geraghty doing some sweeping while the TV's on:

Notice Sanders talks about the awesome power of sanctions, and then applauds a deal that takes away sanctions on Iran. The sanctions were working. 

They're very fond of saying this, and it's an interesting case of a bit of English grammar being used to smear grease all over the window so we can't see what they're doing in there.

What does it mean to say "the sanctions were working"? The link they provide, to an article by Suzanne Maloney at Markaz, the Brookings Institution Middle East blog,  March 2014 and about how sanctions against Russia over the Crimea seizure might not "work", is pretty clear:

West of Eden: Trolling from the Times

Image via All Hat No Cattle.

The good news is that the more educated Iran trolls, such as the New York Times's David Sanger and Michael Gordon (remember him?), have finally pretty much acknowledged that the JCPOA deal will prevent Iran from building a nuclear device over the next 15 years; they don't quite come out and say it, but they've pretty much stopped suggesting it won't. The bad news is that they're doubling down on the "problem" of what might happen in 2031:

the flip side is that after 15 years, Iran would be allowed to produce reactor-grade fuel on an industrial scale using far more advanced centrifuges. That may mean that the warning time if Iran decided to race for a bomb would shrink to weeks, according to a recent Brookings Institution analysis by Robert J. Einhorn, a former member of the American negotiating team.

Critics say that by that time, Iran’s economy would be stronger, as would its ability to withstand economic sanctions, and its nuclear installations probably would be better protected by air defense systems, which Iran is expected to buy from Russia.

Critics are wrong:

West of Eden: Note

Kosher pizzeria in the Jewish compound of Isfahan. Photo by Larry Cohler-Esses.

Not feeling snarky or clever for the last day or two, sorry. Very pleased, though, about my congresscritter.

Jerrold Nadler, New York Congressman, to Endorse Iran Nuclear Deal http://t.co/X6JU8VGCeU So proud Jerry Nadler is my congressman

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) August 21, 2015

If you want to communicate with your representative on the subject of Iran, in a large-scale physical way, MoveOn.org is organizing a series of encounters  on Wednesday. Check it out here.

Meanwhile, if you haven't been reading the extraordinary reporting by Larry Cohler-Esses in the Forward, "A Jewish Journalist's Exclusive Look Inside Iran", you should be. Even more the latest installment, on the lives of the 9000 Jews still living in the Islamic Republic:

Jews’ place in Iranian society is perhaps vouchsafed most by the Jewish community’s own willingness to fight for its right to that place. Its leaders do so while avoiding any challenge to the fundamental legitimacy of Iran’s regime. But it is not a quiet or quiescent Jewish leadership.

Also in the Forward, in the editorial pages, a remarkable piece on "How Anti-Obama Zealots Have Gone Off the Rails on Iran Deal" including a little snark at the expense of war criminal Elliott Abrams:

Abrams was perturbed at Obama’s claim at [American University] that “many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal.” Obama warned that if there’s no deal, they’ll soon be calling for war against Iran. Abrams was incensed. He had every right to be. He was one of the most prominent people arguing for war in 2003 and opposing the Iran deal now. Who better than he to deny the charges?

And Juan Cole for the horrifying story of the three times Netanyahu and his then defense minister Ehud Barak almost went to war against Iran in 2010-12, fortunately blocked by the cabinet. (When people wonder how not signing the Iran nuclear deal could lead to war, you could point out how many times it almost did already.)

Parchin

Updated 8/22/2015

These people know what they're doing. Image via Nima Shirazi.

Just a quicky backgrounder on the Iran scandale du jour—

#IsraeltheRegion #Iran #Parchin #Irannucleardeal UN to let Iran inspect its own alleged nuclear activity site http://t.co/6JUEhpWHUn

— Israel News (@IsraelNewsNow) August 19, 2015

—based on information posted last Sunday at the Arms Control Law blog from Dr. Yousaf Butt, nuclear physicist and senior scientific advisor to the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) in London:

1. The alleged research IAEA wants to check out at the Parchin site, involving the testing of conventional, not nuclear, explosives, was done if it was done at all before 2005; so the fear that the Iranians are suddenly hustling to clean it up is not quite realistic, and if it's about nuclear research that would be nuclear research that they gave up 12 or 13 years ago, not any active program.

Losers

Louis Wohlheim in Sam Taylor's Tempest (1928). Via MoviesSilently.

Here's world-famous military historian David Brooks with his analysis of the agreement between Iran and the P5 + 1 powers, as a defeat for the allies on a par with the worst US defeats of the past half century:

The purpose of war, military or economic, is to get your enemy to do something it would rather not do. Over the past several years the United States and other Western powers have engaged in an economic, clandestine and political war against Iran to force it to give up its nuclear program....

There have now been three big U.S. strategic defeats over the past several decades: Vietnam, Iraq and now Iran.

Well, now, for starters, I think we can recognize that definition, as coming from Major-General von Clausewitz: war is "an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will", and I think we need to note very clearly that this applies to the aggressor, not to those who oppose an aggressor. And I can assure Mr. Brooks that if the governments of Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China had understood that they were supposed to be carrying on a Clausewitzian war against Iran they would have objected very strongly and let it be known, because it's, um, illegal, according to chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

West of Eden: Eight Heritage fails—OK, seven and a half

The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C. (Nah, it's a set design for The Fall of the House of Usher. by Mluisa Paci at Béhance).

Oh dear Flying Spaghetti Monster, here's a clickbait listicle from the Heritage Foundation,

8 Things Obama Got Wrong on the Iran Deal

bylined Michaela Dodge, "specializes in missile defense, nuclear weapons modernization and arms control as policy analyst for defense and strategic policy in The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies". I'll bet she does, and what you got, Michaela?

1. The president stated that, “Between now and the congressional vote in September, you are going to hear a lot of arguments against this deal, backed by tens of millions of dollars in advertising.”

This assertion is flat out wrong.

White House Fool Report: The People vs. Elliott Abrams, and conversely

Hilarious Seth McFarlane character Col. Oliver North. Via Americans Against the Tea Party.

War criminal Elliott Abrams shows up in the Weekly Standard with a hook:

Would George W. Bush have negotiated and signed the JCPOA with Iran? 

Of course not. That would have been a little too much work. Exterminate the brutes! That's what a Leader would do.

Or maybe make a calmer, quieter deal with the Iranian ayatollahs the way Abrams's old boss did. Ronald Reagan didn't mind negotiating with them at all, when a Lebanese group with connections to the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution was holding some American hostages in the summer of 1985.