By the Pricking of my Thumb...

 

Things are not going well for Trump 2.0. His “little excursion” into Iran has metastasized into a full‑blown war now staggering toward its six‑month mark. Recall, Operation: Epstein Fury… er, Epic Fury was supposed to last a few days to a few weeks. Instead, we’re months deep with no resolution in sight. A “forever war,” to use the term du jour, is bad enough — but it becomes catastrophic when the commander‑in‑chief is a man who makes worse decisions the moment pressure touches him.

The old adage, often misattributed to Einstein, about doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result applies here. Trump is not, shall we say, an adroit thinker. He has a documented predilection for what Gen. Honore once called “getting stuck on stupid.” And that’s why there is growing concern that Trump, unable to stop the fighting that has choked off 20% of the world’s oil supply...again, with both the Persian Gulf and Red Sea routes now virtually, if not entirely, pinched off by Iran and its Houthi allies, is preparing to escalate the war even further.

As the New Zork Times reports, this afternoon, Trump met with top advisers to decide whether to intensify the military assault against Iran. The mere existence of a war council offers a slender thread of hope that he might stop digging the geopolitical hole that now threatens to swallow all of us. But a war council is only as good as the councilors, and the bevy of incompetents and charlatans orbiting Trump does not inspire confidence that wisdom was anywhere near the table. I mean, if he was surrounded by competence, he would not have been led by the nose into an unwinnable regional war by the Butcher of Gaza, Bibi Netanyahu, something every other US president had avoided. Still, hope springs eternal, even in a country that keeps learning the hard way that hope is not a strategy.

What was ultimately decided?  We'll have to wait and see.  If there is to be an expansion of the war, it will most certainly come tonight, after the trading markets have closed for the weekend, shielding them from the resultant volatility. The mere fact that I know this - indeed, everyone knows this - demonstrates how transparent this administration is, the precise quality one does not want from a wartime government.  In war, predictability quickly leads to checkmate.

And while America is not yet checkmated...again, we do know Trump finds himself in check. Um...again. The latest reporting — that Iran has rebuffed a U.S. offer for a ceasefire — makes that clear enough. As Tehran put it, “The problem is America’s outlook, which is illogical, greedy and controlling.” Ironically, that’s exactly how any non‑MAGA American would describe this administration as well. Regardless, the statement exposes the lie behind the bluster Trump and Lil’ Marco Rubio have been peddling for weeks, insisting that we are winning this new round of hostilities, and Iran is the one begging us for a ceasefire. Just as with the predictable market manipulation, this regime is equally predictable in its lying. They are awful at it — children who insist they didn’t break the cookie jar before anyone even asks them. Being awful, the world knew that the regime was desperately looking for a way out of the war they were losing...again, and was now spitting mad about being diplomatically rebuffed, left to resort to their favorite childish strategy of "I'm rubber, you're glue..." 

And that brings us to the world, once again, wondering what stupid thing this administration will do next. 

Trump at work

Whatever comes next, it will not be good. The best‑case scenario is that both sides return to a comprehensive ceasefire, something akin to the short‑lived Memorandum of Understanding. But that isn’t going to happen. After being twice sneak‑attacked by Trump while negotiations were underway — followed by his praising, signing, and then breaching the MoU in less than a month — only a fool or a madman would enter into yet another agreement with him.

The worst‑case scenario, of course, is the war continuing endlessly: a conflict that has already expanded far beyond anything the regime anticipated or planned for, and will almost certainly continue expanding as geopolitical oxygen feeds the flames. Trump himself hinted at this in a recent social media post warning both Russia and China to stop assisting Iran. When a president starts threatening great powers from behind the wheel of a spiraling regional war, the menu of “good options” shrinks to nothing.

I fear something wicked this way comes…