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To sort of echo Daste's recent post, it's remarkable the lack of threads for the ongoing conflict given its historic implications for Culture War, but I'll keep the ball rolling for another update/call to register your predictions:
It's very possible the next few days will be a turning point in history. I guess I will register the prediction of Trump TACO given any other alternative is too bad for the world to fathom. Yesterday Iran did enormous damage to the towns in Southern Israel hosting Israeli nuclear infrastructure (which actually does not fall under the oversight of the IEA in contrast with Iran's program to this point). The notion that Iran is incapable of following through with its avowed retaliation is bunk, given the recent strikes on Qatar gas facilities that will have long-term impacts on global supply of natural gas.
So what's going to happen tomorrow? All of the public signals point to Trump making the decision to totally destroy Iranian infrastructure in order to destroy the country. But Iran won't back down because it would be the end of the regime. So who's going to blink?
Trump could actually do something pretty hilarious here which is blame the whole thing on Israel. Say that the over-escalation is their fault. They were completely unhinged (killing Iranian moderates, targeting energy infrastructure) and that the US was trying to get them to pull back. Say they're fed up and if Israel won't follow orders they can fight on their own. Just pull out of the war and say it's Israel's war if they want to keep going - we can't support them if they are not going to do what we tell them.
Whether the Iranian's gain enough face from this to break the escalation spiral I'm not sure. It would be a pretty big win form them - driving a wedge between Israel and US - but hard to say.
Looks pretty bad at the moment. Hard for anyone to walk back without losing face.
Such an action, while hilarious, probably dooms Republicans in the midterms to such an extent that it would be unlikely for Trump to actually try it.
Everything dooms the Republicans in the midterms.
That's not analysis. It's barely even sarcastic. I feel like every month there's 1-2 things that DOOM REPUBLICANS IN THE MIDTERMS and then the actual polling needle barely budges.
Maybe everything is just fully too stupid for mere "events" to make anyone update.
A sudden face-heel turn on Israel is a significantly larger action than anything you've seen in the paper up until now.
Betrayal is the most difficult move to execute in a democracy, because the people who support the betrayal rarely trust you afterward. The anti-war caucus will not trust Trump after he flips on Israel, while the zionist contingent will be demoralized and may stay home.
It's not really possible to fully model something like this because it's basically never happened before. The closest I can think of is maybe LBJ on civil rights, or HW Bush on taxes? But even those weren't nearly as clear value betrayals as this would be.
I assume you mean the anti-war caucus of the Republican Party, seeing as the anti-war Dems have never trusted—and will never trust—Trump in the first place. In which case, why? Trump kept his promise of no forever wars in his first term, and for most of his second term. The recent Iran action is an aberration but so long as he doesn’t get bogged down in a quagmire, the America First anti-war types should be perfectly willing to turn a blind eye, as they have on Venezuela.
Homeboy, we're not even halfway through the second term, and we've committed to at least two acts of war (I'll spot you bombing Yemen).
Which is my point, betraying your base to appeal to your enemies by turning on Israel won't work, because your enemies won't trust you anyway.
And my point is that—as evidenced by the deafening silence around the Venezuela operation—the so-called anti-war Republicans are not actually anti-war tout court, they’re really just anti-quagmire, especially in the Middle East, double-especially when it comes to quagmires (that they perceive as being) in Israel’s interests rather than America’s. The recent resignation letter of the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center encapsulates this mentality nicely.
If Trump immediately pulls out of Iran and declares “mission accomplished, American interests secured, no boots on the ground, no occupation”, that portion of his base should be willing to cut him some slack, just as they did with Venezuela, regardless of the actual merits of his claims, and of the fact that this is just another instance of TACO. Bonus points if he loudly and publicly turns on Netanyahu and accuses Israel of perfidiously trying to manipulate us into another forever war (which I think is unlikely, but supposedly Trump is aware that after the Boomers, support for Israel is cratering across the political spectrum)
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