Are Donald and Bibi Doing the Texas Two-Step?

“It appears to be a classic feign operation that the two leaders pulled off without a flaw. If not, it was a grand coincidence.”

Like many Americans decades ago, I began educating myself on Islam, Sharia law, and various adjuncts and factions, like the now-infamous pan-Islamic Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and ISIS, among others.

To study the faith at any depth other than superficially is to be alarmed. Islamic law, derived from the Quran and the Hadith, regulates public life and instructs private life in minute detail, rendering it, at the extreme, an intractable enemy of the civilizational values of the Western world and the concept of human freedom.

Radical Islam loves death like most people love life.   

So, when Iran’s on-and-off-again nuclear program picked up steam in the 1990s and early 2000s, with the announced intention to build a nuclear weapon, it seemed obvious that the West would learn of Iran’s success when a mushroom cloud rose over Israel. Iran has publicly stated its goal to annihilate both the state of Israel and the US – the lesser and greater Satan. It’s not an oddity of the faith, merely the working out of its premise, the quest for Islamic worldwide supremacy by its most ardent believers.

On Friday, the 13th, Israel was forced to take Iran at its word when Israeli intelligence, augmented by intelligence from the US and France, among others, reported that Iran was within weeks, or perhaps only days, of achieving the critical mass required in its uranium enrichment program to arm multiple nuclear weapons.

That evening, secret Israeli military operations that had previously infiltrated Iran commenced an armed drone attack on Iranian anti-aircraft installations. They also used clandestinely smuggled truck-mounted missiles against other Iranian military targets. These attacks were followed by what The Times of Israel reported was over 200 Israeli Air Force warplanes, specialized variants of F-16s, F-18s, and F-35s, attacking over 100 targets using 330 precision-guided munitions.

Israeli spokesmen also confirmed the raids killed several top Iranian officials, including Iran’s “military commander Mohammad Bagheri, IRGC chief Hossein Salami, and head of the Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters, Gholam Ali Rashid.” Since Friday, the Israeli Air Force has been conducting concentrated attacks on Iranian military assets and nuclear facilities.

While the US, through Secretary of State Marco Rubio, stated that the “US had no involvement” in the raids, it seemed clear then that perhaps all was not as it appeared. President Trump, unlike his predecessors, has had corporate business relationships in the Middle East that provide him with a broader perspective on the Arab world and its people, one that differs from a purely diplomatic view.

The President has had highly controversial “talks” with the Iranian mullahs for two months – exactly 60 days – that has been 1) ridiculed for not producing an Iranian agreement to abandon its nuclear ambitions or 2) as an indication that the vacillating, weak President was throwing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under the proverbial bus. Either way, they cast Donald J. Trump as a problem, not a solution.

Yet, President Trump’s bona fides on the subject of Israel are very clear. Trump has been 100% consistent in the negotiations with Iran – he has constantly stated that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuke. Period. There is no dispute on that fact.

He has already had Bibi in the White House this new term (and the Prime Minister wasn’t humiliated, unlike with former President Obama). Nor has the President recanted his derailing of former President Obama’s Iranian Nuclear deal – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – that sent plane loads of cash to the world’s largest terrorist network. The President has done everything possible to back Israel, including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, unlike the conga line of previous presidents who were all talk and no action. The Abraham Accords, which our so-called foreign policy establishment largely downplayed, have proven to be the first bridge between Israel and its neighbors. Again, no recent president has done anything but talk.

Besides the positive steps President Trump has taken for Israel, there are core issues on which he has been consistent. First, he does not want to repeat the Middle East wars, in which US boots on the ground pay in blood and treasure, and where American interests are limited at best. Secondly, the President has also been trying to stir the Iranians to revolution against the ruling mullahs. And finally, he has been trying to find a way to solve the Hamas and Palestine issue while expanding the Accords. It is a complicated chessboard, and there are no easy answers to further US interests while backing our ally Israel – and they are our democratic ally in the region. 

If you examine both President Trump’s comments and the Prime Minister’s comments, there seems to be a pattern. The US knew exactly what was going on, and unlike two weeks ago when the White House let it be known, supposedly, that the President asked for a delay in any attack. Yet last week he winked his approval – because the Mullahs gave President Trump the cold shoulder, and started the rapid last stages of enhancing uranium to weapons grade.  

Reading between the lines, the Iranians, accustomed to dealing with flighty and unserious people in the US establishment, thought that Donald Trump was eager to make a deal, and that meant any deal. It also seems Mr. Netanyahu clearly understood all of this. So, the two men, while maybe not best of mates, understand that politics, power, and purpose must be aligned just so. They made chicken salad out of chicken droppings.

Saturday and Sunday, President Trump stated that he tried to make a deal, and now the principals “are dead.” He also deliberately reminded the press that he had given “negotiations sixty days” and that Friday was the “sixty-first day.” He then urged the mullahs to come back to the table – “before it’s too late” – and make a deal while they still had a “functioning” country. He did this while extolling the Israeli strikes made possible with US aircraft and precision munitions and US intel coordination (so much for us not being involved). Additionally, he stated that more US equipment was being sent to Israel. (And note that “Arab countries joined Israel in shooting down drones” headed towards Israel.)  

All of this, of course, has all the earmarks of the famous Texas Two-Step. For two months, the President of the United States all but begged Iran to end their quest for a nuke to use against Israel, and the US would give them a helping hand back into modernity. All the while, the Israelis were busy planning and stage-managing an intricate ending to the Iranian quest for a nuclear bomb. Today, President Trump offered an exclamation point to the last 60-plus days, when he reminded any anxious Republicans that America would never” know peace with a nuclear-armed Iran.” It’s not improbable, it’s impossible, he said.

While more work will need to be done to destroy the Fordo nuclear enrichment facility, buried deep in a mountainside, all in all, this is a good beginning and bodes well for a successful conclusion. No American boots are on the ground, and the Middle East is not in ruins. It appears to be a classic feign operation that the two leaders pulled off without a flaw. If not, it was a grand coincidence. The media, unknowingly, as usual, did their part by the 24/7 hate fest against not only President Trump but the Prime Minister as well. The media and the establishment’s raging hate for both men blinded them to what was happening right in front of them.

Nor did they notice that we may well be witnessing a new era in US foreign policy and a total realignment of the Middle East, and the expansion of the Accords. If Iran falls, a new corridor of trade from India is opened across the Gulf states, Israel, Egypt, and Turkey, and the Chinese and Russians will lose their tentative foothold in the Middle East.