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Bob Dreyfuss, Going to Hell in a Handbasket in Iran

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Let me offer my deep thanks to those of you who came through for TD in response to my recent plea for donations. It couldn’t have been more appreciated! Still, as always, it wasn’t enough and I urge any of you preparing to read TD‘s latest piece by Bob Dreyfuss to consider visiting our donation page and helping ensure that we keep doing what we’ve done these last 23 years. Think of it this way: you’ll also be helping ensure that Dreyfuss’s series of pieces — the first today on Iran — comparing the potential policies of Joe Biden and Donald Trump on Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and China in the coming months will be a reality. And many, many thanks in advance for your generosity! Tom]

What is it about Iranian generals when it comes to the U.S. and Israel? While president, Donald Trump (who once implicitly suggested that, were his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 election campaign, she might be taken out by one of his gun-rights supporters) ordered the drone assassination of Iran’s most important general, Qasem Soleimani, as his plane landed in Baghdad, Iraq.

That was in January 2020. Recently, the Israelis topped him by killing two key Iranian generals in a missile attack on that country’s consulate in Syria. The Iranians responded by sending more than 300 missiles and drones toward Israel in an operation that seemed “designed to fail” (the “only” casualty being a young Arab Bedouin girl). Trump’s reaction? He reposted a tweet of his from 2018. It caught the Trumpian spirit of that moment and this one perfectly: “To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!”

By comparison, Joe Biden, whose record on Gaza has been anything but thrilling, while congratulating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on largely stopping the Iranian attack (with much help from American forces in the region), also urged him to “slow things down and think through” how to respond. More important yet, he reportedly insisted “that the U.S. won’t support any Israeli counterattack against Iran.”

Today, in the first of a series of pieces over the coming months on key foreign policy issues and the 2024 election, TomDispatch regular Bob Dreyfuss considers the two aging men running for president this year and what to make of them when it comes to Iran. Tom

Handling — and Mishandling — the Iran Nuclear Program

Trump Blew Up the Deal, Can Biden Still Fix It?

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One, erratic and often unhinged, blew up the U.S.-Iran accord that was the landmark foreign policy achievement of President Obama’s second term. He then ordered the assassination of a top Iranian general visiting Iraq, dramatically raising tensions in the region. The other is a traditional advocate of American exceptionalism, a supporter of the U.S.-Iran agreement who promised to restore it upon taking office, only to ham-handedly bungle the job, while placating Israel.

In November, of course, American voters get to choose which of the two they’d trust with handling ongoing explosive tensions with Tehran across a Middle East now in crisis. The war in Gaza has already intensified the danger of an Iran-Israel conflict -- with the recent devastating Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate in Syria and the Iranian response of drones and missiles dispatched against Israel only upping the odds. In addition, Iran’s “axis of resistance” -- including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and militias in Iraq and Syria -- has been challenging American hegemony throughout the Middle East, while drawing lethal U.S. counterstrikes in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

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Engelhardt, A Story of the Decline and Fall of It All

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Yes, I invariably bother you for $$$ in these notes above my own TD pieces. And in all these years, I’ve been amazed at how the readers of this site have helped keep it going. But it’s gotten harder. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s a tough time for independent journalism. Some of TD‘s outside support is simply gone, which means I rely on you readers to do everything you can and, over the years, you certainly have. Still, this is a moment when it would be wonderful if you visited the TomDispatch donation page and contributed something. I’d be deeply appreciative. I always see the names of those of you who do so and say a silent thank you. (I wish I could thank you personally, but no such luck.). Anyway, my deepest appreciation for anything you now do to keep this site and me going a little longer on an increasingly unnerving planet. Tom]

Old Man World

Leftovers of the American Century

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Let one old man deal with two others.

I turn 80 in July, which makes me just over a year-and-a-half younger than Joe Biden and almost two years older than Donald Trump. And, honestly, I know my limits. Yes, I still walk -- no small thing -- six miles a day. And I work constantly. But I'm also aware that, on my second walk of the day and then as night approaches, I feel significantly more tired than I once did. I'm also aware that my brain, still active indeed, does forget more than it once did. And all of this is painfully normal. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing whatsoever.

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Tomgram

John Feffer, The Gang’s All Here

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As TomDispatch regular John Feffer suggests today, Donald Trump has a distinct affinity for the kinds of gang leaders we’ve been hearing about in ever more disastrously chaotic Haiti. Were Americans to reelect him, we could be putting the equivalent of a gang leader in the White House. Today, in fact, Feffer vividly describes just what sort of gang world he might, if not lead (which isn’t even a word for You Know Who), then preside over all too chaotically. Let me just add one gang-related note to his piece. Among the crews Donald Trump does help lead, or rather (dis)organize for his own benefit, no one should forget the Aging Billionaires Gang, which is already forking over tens of millions of dollars to ensure that he’ll once again be their man in Washington in 2025.

Only the other day, he addressed that gang at a fundraising event in Palm Beach, Florida, billed as “the Inaugural Leadership Dinner.” There, they were fed “endive and frisee salad, filet au poivre, and pavlova with fresh berries” and listened to the former president lament that people from the “nice countries” of our world (like Denmark) weren’t migrating to America anymore. He did, however, reassure some of the richest people on the planet that they shouldn’t fear undocumented immigrants in nearby West Palm Beach from countries “where they’re blowing each other up all over the place,” who “make the Hells Angels look like extremely nice people.” They were, he told them, safe with him, proudly adding that “the most successful people in the whole country are in this room.” He then warned them that “this could very well be the last election this country ever has.”

That Aging Billionaires Gang reportedly included: “Activist food industry investor Nelson Peltz, 81; Entertainment mogul Isaac Perlmutter, 81; Sugar baron José Fanjul, 80; Hotel owner and aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, 79; Oil tycoon Harold Hamm, 78; Big-data billionaire (and funder of the 2016 anti-Hillary psy ops campaign) Robert Mercer, 77; N[ew] Y[ork] supermarket king John Catsimatidis, 75; and casino tycoon Steve Wynn, 82.” And the Trump campaign then claimed — who knows whether it’s a faintly accurate figure or not — that the crew there contributed $50.5 million for their endive and frisee salads, which would be “a new single-event fundraising record.”

With that gang in mind, let Feffer take you from Florida to Haiti to consider some gang-related matters. Tom

Haiti Today, America Tomorrow?

When Democracies Die, Mobs Take Over

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Haiti has descended into chaos. It's had no president or parliament -- and no elections either --for eight long years. Its unelected prime minister Ariel Henry resigned recently when gang violence at the airport in Port-au-Prince made it impossible for him to return to the country after a trip to Guyana.

Haiti is the poorest country in the region, its riches leached out by colonial overlords, American occupying forces, corporate predators, and home-grown autocrats. As if that weren’t enough, it's also suffered an almost Biblical succession of plagues in recent years. A coup deposed its first democratically elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, not once but twice -- in 1991 and again in 2004. An earthquake in 2010 killed hundreds of thousands, leaving 1.5 million Haitians homeless, out of a population of less than 10 million. In the wake of that earthquake, nearly a million people contracted cholera, the worst outbreak in history, courtesy of a contingent of U.N. peacekeepers. To round out the catastrophes, in 2016, Hurricane Matthew made landfall, pushing Haiti back even further.

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