When Shit Gets Real

Notes on the Iran bombing

Forget for the moment the tax bill, the deportations, Texas, the Kennedy Center and all the silly performance stuff that Trump does to feed his own narcissistic ego. That stuff is bad, really bad, especially the bill that will throw millions off their health coverage, explode the budget deficit and turn ICE into the Gestapo. I’ll get to all that later.

Let’s think for a moment about the act of bombing another country that has not attacked us.

Let’s think about the report from our own intelligence community that says Iran was NOT close to completing a nuclear weapon, let alone delivering it on a missile.

Let’s think about Gaza, where the United States is funding a planned, systematic starvation of the population with the intent of removing them from their homes with no plan for where they would go.

Let’s think about the report in the NY Times that Trump basically decided to bomb Iran when he saw on Fox news that Netanyahu was getting too much attention from the world media. Trump wanted in on the action, asking - “How is it playing?’’

He meant on TV. Trump claims to hate the media. But he watches all day. He knows reporters by name. He calls them on his cell phone and answers when they call. He tells the public they are the enemy of the people, threatening the safety of journalists. Yet he craves their attention.

So Israel and Netanyahu - funded by our tax dollars - are defanging the government of Iran, bombing strategic sites, assassinating their leadership and sending a message to the government that “We know where you live and we can kill you any time we want.’’ Fair enough.

The question remains, however. Why did we bomb Iran’s nuclear sites? What did we accomplish? How did we get here?

Remember that back in the 1950s, the British government, with help from the U.S., engineered a coup that toppled the Iranian prime minister. Why? Oil. British Petroleum wanted access to Iranian oil. When the Iranians objected, we overthrew the government and installed the Shah of Iran - our puppet.

The Shah created a government of terror, jailing intellectuals and dissidents. And by the late 1970s, the people had had enough, overthrowing the Shah and taking Americans hostage. It destroyed the presidency of Jimmy Carter and should have taught us the lesson that regime change doesn’t work.

Now remember that back in 2015, the United States signed, in concert with Iran and several other countries, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the so-called Iran nuclear deal.

The deal limited Iran’s nuclear program. They would stop building a nuclear weapon and open their program to international inspectors. In return, Iran received relief from economic sanctions that crippled their economy. And just maybe the 90 million Iranian citizens who crave some western values and democracy might become a US ally.

Trump comes to office and immediately withdraws the U.S. from the deal. In return, Iran restarts work on their weapons program.

That leads us to today, when we bomb the Iran nuclear sites that were reactivated because Trump pulled us out of the very deal that we signed to stop the program.

As the international affairs writer and commentator Fareed Zakaria says, all this comes back to Trump FOMO - Fear of Missing Out. The tired narcissism that drives the man and his desperate need to be a celebrity, the center of attention, is one thing when it sticks it to poor people and deports innocents. Those acts are immoral and awful.

But it is something else altogether when Trump and his cartoon cabinet start playing with bombs in a way that can spin dangerously out of control for the entire world.

As the patriarchal, narcissistic father Logan Roy says to his own children in the TV series Succession: “You are not serious people.’’

I guarantee you that Trump says this privately about his own people. The former weekend TV talk show host Pete Hegseth, fresh from drunken benders and sharing war plans on Signal chat with a journalist, is a cartoon character trying to play a serious government official.

Playboys like John F. Kennedy had the smarts to grow into the job that people thought him unqualified for. But Hegseth, given the chance to get serious on the international stage, picks fights with journalists and spends his time sharing tweets from Trump because he knows the boss is watching. What possesses people like Hegseth to want this job, to prostrate himself on a daily basis. The answer lies deep in his own needy soul.

So now we have unserious people, led by a president who felt left out of the action, deciding to bomb a country that our own intelligence services assess did not threaten us with nuclear weapons.

Where does this lead?

My friend Ward Wilson, a leading scholar on nuclear weapons, says bombing doesn’t really accomplish much if you look at it through history. Wars are won by troops on the battlefield the old fashioned way, taking cities and towns and killing lots of people until the other side surrenders.

“Bombing people seems like a good idea when it’s far away and the people can’t get to you,’’ he says. “But people will want revenge against you.’’

Wilson thinks there is a 75 percent chance that Iranians get the nuclear weapon they want because WE taught them that they need a nuclear umbrella.

“We forced them into this corner,’’ he says. “We are showing that we can’t be trusted; that might makes right.’’

The bombing of Iran leaves the United States in a worse position - less credible in the world, less safe, Wilson says.

Trump messing around with the Kennedy Center doesn’t get people killed. Bombing Iran to feed Trump’s ego threatens the long-term safety of millions. Instead, why not make a deal?

Two weeks ago, I sat down for eggs and bacon at a diner in Florence, MA next to an Iranian immigrant, the local dentist in town. The server asked him what he thought of the bombings.

“American murderers,’’ he said. “They murder people in my country.’’ The MAGA folks would want him deported. But his point was clear enough.

I wasn’t prepared for him to say this out loud with such vehemence. I suspect we are not prepared for how the entire country of Iran feels about the bombing either.