Why did President Trump launch a war against Iran? Two reasons.

First, electoral polls indicated a dramatic victory for anti-Trump Democrats in this fall’s Congressional elections. This would put a welcome end to Trump’s campaign to establish one-man rule in the United States. Losing the Senate and/or House would open Trump up to a host of criminal accusations.

The huge attack on Iran was designed to distract attention from the still festering Jeffrey Epstein scandal that might bring Trump down. The attack on Venezuela was a dress rehearsal.

Second reason: Trump and his Maga Republicans are joined at the hip to Israel and its powerful American financial supporters. They helped buy the quiescence of Congress, including $100 billion from the Adelson family of Israel. Israel’s far right has long been pushing Trump and his Republicans to launch a war against Iran, the bête noire of Israel.

This has now happened. Israel’s PM Netanyahu has his own legal problems stemming from charges of corruption. His high-profile court case has been on hold because of the War in Gaza. So, Netanyahu has kept that ugly Gaza conflict going to keep himself out of court. Trump has been giving unlimited support to Netanyahu to protect his own flank. Both leaders need a war to avoid the courts and voters.

Military pipsqueak Iran is accused of planning to attack the mighty United States. Trump’s people have dusted off most of the outrageous lies used by President G.W. Bush and Tony Blair to promote the totally illegal war against Iraq. Now we have ‘déjà entendu.’

Meanwhile, another interesting justification for the war has just surfaced. The US Ambassador to Israel, a religious crackpot and ardent Christian Zionist, Mike Huckabee, just proclaimed this week that it was God’s will that Israel occupy and annex most of the Mideast. This is a rerun from the 1920’s infamous call for a Greater Israel ‘from the Euphrates River to the Nile.’

Trump has not ordered his “Prophet” Huckabee to hush up. On an equally crazy tangent, Trump just announced he should be involved in the decision about who will be Iran’s next leader after just assassinating the last one.

I covered the 1980’s Gulf War between Iraq (backed by the US) and Iran and saw how valiant were Iran’s ‘Basij’ troops. Trump is headed right into another endless foreign war that no one wants – Israel excepted.

How would the US respond if China did exactly the same thing to Taiwan? Beijing will certainly cite Trump’ s bluster when the day comes. At least Trump may get his wish of becoming an American ‘war president.’ The very same Trump who dodged the draft in the 1960’s. Almost unbelievable.

As the White House threatens war against Cuba, I am reminded of the charming evenings my parents and I spent at Havana’s venerable ‘Floridita Bar, sipping a newly invented cocktail, the Margarita, with the renowned writer, Ernest Hemingway.

`Papa’ Hemingway, who then lived in Cuba, loved this island with a great passion and wrote about it often. I feel the same way. I’ve been visiting Cuba since before Castro took over and feel at home in this socialist nation, no matter how threadbare or destitute.

Cubans, whom I call ‘the aristocrats of the West Indies’, have managed to survive efforts by the mighty U.S. to starve, isolate, and attack them for the past five decades. I’ve even been twice in battle against Cuban troops in Angola, Africa. They were valiant and competent soldiers.

Few Americans or Canadians know that Havana is even older than my native New York City. Sadly, today once gorgeous, sultry Havana is falling into ruins after seven generations of crushing embargo by the United States. Cuba’s revolutionary strongman, Fidel Castro, refused to bow to U.S. pressure or take orders from Washington.

The U.S. sought to sabotage Cuba’s sugar-based economy, mounting an amazingly inept invasion in 1961. Cuba became a highly repressive communist regime, thanks to important help from the Soviet Union. Anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Florida kept up a half century effort to get Washington to continue efforts to overthrow the Castro regime.

This campaign continues today. The Trump administration dominates Florida’s Castro-hating Republicans who are the core of its electoral strength. Trump just took over Venezuela with the primary purpose of cutting off the essential oil aid Caracas was giving Havana. Cuba, out of oil, is now shutting down. Half of Cuba’s electricity is gone, so too factories, public transport, flights and military forces. Food shortages are everywhere. Cuba’s tourism business – its economic lifeline – is dying rapidly Major European, Canadian and US airlines have cancelled flights due to the growing fuel shortage.

This strangulation of Cuba is intended to paralyze the island, then provoke uprisings against the government. To its credit, Mexico is delivering emergency food aid by sea and says it plans to provide oil to besieged Cuba. But this modest aid won’t be enough to keep Cuba’s nine million people from starving.

Meanwhile, Florida’s exiled Cubans, led by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are gleefully watching the Communist regime flounder. Among Florida’s 400-500,000 Cuban exiles there is frantic politicking to form a government in exile or plan future waterfront developments in Havana and bring back the bad old days of prostitution and gambling. Venezuela and Cuba will return to being US colonies. Whatever Russian influence there is in the West indies will be quickly kicked out.

The Trump forces will get all those Cuban votes in Florida, thus winning one of the most important electoral states. Havana will come to look like Ft. Lauderdale, likely redeveloped the same way that the current White House plans for another annoying people, the Palestinians.

Vladimir Lenin observed that the fastest way to crush a nation was to debauch its currency. His famous quote was made in reference to Germany’s floundering Weimar Republic, but it is just as appropriate to today’s besieged Iran.

Right now, a US fleet is steaming toward Iran, led by the powerful aircraft carrier ‘Abraham Lincoln’. Scores of US bases in the Mideast are on high alert. The US treasury wages war on Iran’s demolished currency.

I went to sea aboard the ‘Lincoln’ CVN 72 in 1994. As a former member of the US Army, I was a bit skeptical about the military efficiency of the US Navy, but once at sea I was hugely impressed by the efficiency, skill and esprit du corps of the Navy. This even though I had to sleep for many nights underneath the extremely noisy catapults that operated around the clock.

The Navy had turned 5,000 unruly teenage men and women into serious, efficient grown-ups who ran the ‘Lincoln’ like a Swiss watch. I was most impressed.

During the Vietnam War, I had tried to enlist as a naval officer but was brusquely turned down because of my poor eyesight. That’s how this would-be Lord Nelson ended up in the US army.

The ‘Lincoln’ now awaits orders from a ‘no new wars president’ to attack Iran. Such a mass attack has been in the works for decades. I learned that the US Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force planned at least 3,000 initial air attacks on Iran, plus heavy air and missile assaults from Israel, which is closely integrated with US Mideast operations. Key targets would include Iran’s obsolete air force and navy, all ports, telecommunications, air defense systems, airports, oil and gas installation, Revolutionary Guards, Government HQ, offices of the Supreme Leader, Intelligence and police HQ, and attacks by anti-government forces in other restive ethnic parts of Iran stirred up by CIA agents and the US dominated parts of the internet.

As a prelude, the current waves of riots across Iran have been artfully manipulated by CIA which has learned a lot of useful subversion techniques over the past seventy years. Meanwhile, the US has been hard at work since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the opera bouffe Shah, a puppet of Washington, trying to undermine and then overthrow its Islamic government. I’ve interviewed the late Shah’s son who is a faint shadow of his father but pretends to the peacock throne.

The US and its allies have waged a virtual economic and intelligence war against Iran, fearing its nationalist revolution might spread to other of Washington’s Mideast colonies, notably oil-rich Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

The powerful Israel lobby in the US has long been beating the war drums against Iran. Israel has repeatedly attacked Iran’s senior officials and its scientists. Iran’s top general, Kassem Suleimani, was assassinated by US drones in 2020. The leadership of Iran’s Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, was similarly assassinated by Israel strikes, vectored into targets by US satellites.

The US and partner Israel want to restore the Pahlavi dynasty to power. Under the late Shah, Iran’s military was run by the Pentagon and its dreaded secret police, Savak, trained by Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad. Israel has never accepted the loss of Iran and is determined to get back in with US help.

Trump, a noted advocate of Israel’s far right, is bitterly anti-Iranian, anti-Muslim and deeply influenced by Israel and its wealthy American supporters. America’s Mideast allies, all military dictatorships or feudal monarchies, are petrified of Iran’s calls to non-corrupt government and shared oil wealth among Muslim nations.

Iran is the last Mideast nation to stand up to Washington’s neo-colonialism. Iraq, and Syria were crushed. Egypt is a US-dominated police state. Lebanon has been smashed. Morocco is a feudal monarchy. Algeria is quiet. Libya is broken to pieces. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are US protectorates.

In short, the Mideast, except for Iran, has reverted to 19th century colonialism and Israeli expansionism. Iran stands alone in refusing US dictates – but for how long? The mighty US can ravage Iran from the air but even would-be war lord Trump will hesitate to launch any serious ground invasions of this nation of 92.4 million people. ‘America will break its teeth on Iran,’ and Iranian militant told me.’ Maybe, But a very big maybe.

What ever happened to the Epstein scandal? Gone. Out of sight. Hey presto, vanished by the wave of a magic wand. It seems that Master Illusionist Donald Trump has dodged this lethal bullet – at least for the time being.

Trump’s Invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping its president Maduro, a former bus driver, removed Epstein from the news. Now Trump and his henchmen are beating the drums over his claim to world greatness launched at Davos, Switzerland. This rather ugly alpine resort – which is not great for reliable skiing – was the perfect venue for showman Trump. The annual Davos jamboree is the world stage for big egos, conmen and show-offs.

Chief among them was former British prime minister, Tony Blair, a politician of unparallel slipperiness and the ability to sugar-coat lies and half-truths. Blair has just agreed to join Trump’s so-called Board of Peace, a collection of louche politicians. The entry fee is $1 billion, a typical Trump fund-raiser.

Blair acted as a US mouthpiece during the invasion of Iraq, standing in for the inarticulate George W. Bush to sell the US invasion to the world that may have resulted in close to one million casualties. Today, oil-rich Iraq remains a US occupied state.

Europe, except for two members, refused to play along with the so-called Board of Peace charade. Canada, normally obedient to Washington’s demands, refused to join marking an important step forward in its independence from US tutelage. Mark Carney, Canada’s new prime minister, stood firm against Trump’s blandishments and threats to invade while many other US allies shivered in their boots or longed for the placid says of dotty old President Joe Biden. We applaud Carney’s courage.

But this is all so crazy. Trump’s claims that armadas of Red Chinese and Russian warships threaten the high Arctic are either outrageous lies formulated by the neocon propagandists at Fox News or else fever dreams by an aging brain. One must ask if Trump really believes any of this Arctic nonsense or if he is using manufactured crises to enlarge and intensify the scope of his power. Will Canada be next?

At the same time, each day brings increased influence over Washington by Israel’s far right government. At this time, it’s hard to figure out whether it’s Israel’s Netanyahu or Trump who is calling the shots. The whole Board of Peace is a ruse created to fatally undermine the UN, which is hated by both Trump and Netanyahu, because it helps defend the marginalized Palestinian people.

Trump clearly seems himself as chairman of the Board of Peace and the world’s premier political leader or monarch. This is certainly ambitious for a former habitue of New York’s Studio 54 and seller of run-down hotels. Many Americans enjoy Trump because he has brought entertainment to politics. Comedian Paul Begala put it well when he quipped that `politics is Hollywood for ugly people.’

Trump also gained prominence by figuring out how to monopolize the TV news at a time when print news was dying out. Every night, every morning there was Trump, creating a new daily crisis, hogging the screen. Trump’s alarms over foreign invasions, Chinese threats, black criminals, liberal communists, and drugs worked like magic with poorly educated older voters. He was right about some things but dead wrong about many others.

Over the fake Arctic crisis and Venezuela, he has often appeared like a schoolboy thrilled by Christmas gift time. For the man who said he hoped to be a war leader (after evading the military draft) what more exciting a gift than the Pentagon, loaded with military toys.

Trump has a serious problem. He wants to be the `stupor mundi’ i.e. the master of the world, but he is running out of things to conquer.

Alexander the Great ran into a similar problem when his vanguard reached today’s Afghanistan: ‘oh Zeus! Not another damned desert. Will they never end?’

Trump has won the US presidency twice despite scandals and impeachment. Now, he speaks of an illegal third ‘term’ to be engineered by his battalions of lawyers and louche political advisors. He just overthrew Venezuela’s Maduro regime, long a target of US machinations. In doing so, Trump pulled off a highly competent coup and military operation that surgically decapitated the Maduro regime.

The much reviled and derided Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, formerly of Fox TV, deserves kudos for this complex military-political operation. Ditto CIA which prepared the groundwork for this successful operation. The late President Jimmy Carter had no such good luck when trying to free American hostages held in Iran after its revolution.

There seems little doubt America’s big oil firms were in on this game. Could they have been surprised by Trump’s claim that the US would henceforth take under tutelage Venezuela’s huge reserves of low-grade oil? It was only a question of time before US oil experts were sent to ‘upgrade’ Venezuela’s oil production. This is what we used to call ‘plundering.’

Ever since WWII, the US has embraced the notion that all oil, everywhere, really belongs to the USA. We all know that the wars in the Pacific and Europe were primarily won thanks to America’s absolute control of oil. How dare the crazy Japanese believe they could take on the US, other European colonial powers and the Soviet Union with at most a year’s supply of oil?

Israel has had its eyes on oil-rich Venezuela since the 1950’s. There seems little doubt that Trump and his close ally Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu collaborated closely on a new campaign to overthrow Iran’s shaky regime. Add in Syria’s Bashar Assad, Lebanon’s wobbly government, and Venezuela’s annoying Maduro regime. Israeli government spokesmen clearly stated they intended to ‘change the face of the Mideast’. Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and plunder of its oil riches means that Cuba, which ran on free Venezuela oil, appears destined for economic collapse unless Mexico steps in to supply no-charge oil to Cuba.

What can former Venezuelan allies Russia and China do about this? Probably not much but huff and puff. Who will be on Trump’s list of nations opposing the new US imperialism? Colombia and Brazil of course. Add Turkey, Serbia, Spain, South Africa, and naturally big bad boy China. Trump has it in for the Swiss and, for some reason, goody-two shoes Canada. Could all wild animals soon appear on Trump’s kill list?