What Trump Can Learn from Trump

Dealing in the Middle East

As the real estate and deal maker par excellence President Trump has something to learn from himself when dealing – pun intended – in the middle east. There are those renters who will get you the money even if they are late this time and there are those who will take advantage and send it as late as can be even if they have the money. There are those who you can take a handshake as gold and proceed and those who after you have signed the contract, make your lawyer go over a few more times to see where the signee will take advantage of you.

My guess is that in his previous life Donald Trump knew the former from the latter with a glance but only after years of experience. The middle east is a different game than New York or Atlantic City real estate and the Islamic Republic of Iran is different even than the rest of the middle east because their fanaticism comes not from the ruggedness and immorality of the desert but from their idiosyncratic interpretation of Shia Islam. Compare the Iranian Shiite theology with that of Iraq’s al-Sistani and Iran’s Khomeini (the first Islamic Republic leader – the current one is, apparently an intellectual and theological lightweight) where the former concentrates on law and social welfare and the latter on religious control of the political sphere. For Al-Sistani antisemitism is not a central focus while for Khomeini Jews are by their existence, enemies of Islam.

President Trump called earlier for unconditional surrender as the end goal of the war and has now settled on a cease fire that lasted less than 5 minutes. The deal worked out is one where the foreign minister says one thing while those with the guns say another. The FM understands that his audience needs to hear and those with the guns understand that if they stop the war they will become targets of their own people. The Revolutionary Guards have setup checkpoints throughout Teheran and around the country as their paranoia has gone into full swing (not that I can blame them). They have executed hundreds in the past week on suspicion of spying.

Satellite photos show the Iranians already starting to rebuild Natnaz. The Iranians are insisting they will continue to enrich uranium and they have another secret enrichment plant that is still working. There is no clear answer if the 425 kg of enriched uranium was buried in Fordow or was removed before the attack.

Reports vary if the Iranian nuclear program has been pushed back months, years or totally destroyed. The long range missile program was degraded but is still alive and that has to worry Israel, the Arabs and the West almost as much as a nuclear bomb. We have thought all along that without regime change – meaning without a change in the goals of the Iranian government from genocide against the Jews, destruction of the West and surrender of the Sunni Arabs to them, they will scratch back and always be a threat.

The main lesson to be learned by Trump from Trump is that with certain people an agreement is not an agreement but a chance to delay. Defeat for one is a signal for others to keep on fighting. By any rational look, Hamas would have had mercy on their people and surrendered. However, Hamas – and by some accounts most Gazans – don’t look at destruction, death and the rubble around them as defeat but instead look at whatever they have that is still standing - above or below ground – as an opportunity to fight. In the business world this is admirable, although Trump understands that at some point you declare bankruptcy and go on to the next thing. The world of war he is now learning is cruel.

What is interesting in this administration is that they don’t seem to care who does things that they find “irrational” they will call them out forcefully. Therefore, neither Israel nor Iran knows what they are doing and actual violations of cease fires have to be treated Biden-like, as nothing. However, just as the New York real estate market plays by rules that don’t exist in Schenectady, Des Moines or Fargo, the middle east plays by rules that don’t exist in the Western hemisphere or western Europe. As Israel learned on October 7, those who play by other rules will get burned.

So where do we stand now with Iran? There is no doubt in anyone’s mind in the middle east that this Iranian government will try to develop a nuclear weapon and will continue to build long range ballistic missiles of ever more lethality. Israel knows it, Qatar knows it, Saudi Arabia knows it every Iranian knows it. The American administration can deny it at its own peril. But that doesn’t mean that they will be able to do much in the near future. If Israel has really destroyed the knowledge base of the nuclear program and the various facilities necessary for weaponization as it believes it did and if Fordow has now been destroyed totally as the President claims and if the 425 kg of enriched uranium has really been buried forever in Fordow then the nuclear program has been destroyed and will have to be re-started almost from scratch.

Contra John “never been right” Kerry, you can destroy the knowledge gathered to build an atom bomb.

The missile program on the other hand is very much alive. At a minimum there are about 200 launchers and 1,000 missiles left in the Iranian arsenal and there is no way that Israel or the United States can be sure that China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan or whomever is not sending them raw materials or even new missiles to replenish their supply. The Iranian defense minister just made a trip to China and an oil for missile deal is certainly on the table.

It is the regime that is the problem, and the regime is the problem because, as we and others have stated ad nauseum – it exists for the purpose of committing genocide against the Jews. This is not paranoia – this is what the Islamic Republic has been saying for decades and continues to repeat.

The United States, as a superpower always has many balls in the air at the same time and therefore can’t hold onto one for very long before it has to catch another. The middle east has been taken care of for now even if the B2’s might have to do a return trip in a few months or years. It has shown China that it will use force when it feels it can solve the problem at hand and China will now have to wonder if there is a situation where Taiwan will be that problem America feels it can solve after diplomacy has failed. President Trump truly does not understand how people can walk away from a good deal but if they do , he will use overwhelming force and then move on.

It seems he has told Israel to wait for the US to come to a diplomatic solution and has told Iran not to miss the opportunity to save what they can before he moves on to the next problem. If President Trump feels he has to move on again I think he will give Israel free reign if it feels it needs to finish up the job.

For Israel, the issue of Iran will not go away unless the theocracy is dismantled. Assuming it won’t, Israel will probably need to continue its Mossad penetration of the Islamic Republic’s institutions and do what it can to delay Iran’s recovery of their air defense systems – all while observing the “cease fire”. Sitting on its hands is not an option.

For Iran, if the destruction that Israel and then the United States is as bad as both contend then it will be forced to abandon its nuclear project even if it tells its people otherwise. They may in fact decide to concentrate on their – nearly as dangerous – ballistic missile program. With this they will certainly get help from China and North Korea and neither Israel nor the United States will be able to do much about it. There is still hope that the Iranian military and opposition will get together and create a new regime. President Trump’s recent pronouncement against regime change in order to prevent chaos misunderstands the nature of the current regime. As he certainly knows, there are just people you can’t do business with and seeming to encourage deals with rogues, just delays deals with those that one can do business with.