So on Sunday Trump asked Netanyahu to not strike Iran and mess up the alleged ongoing peace talks. Netanyahu agreed. Also, too,
Trump told the Financial Times that Netanyahu “won’t have any choice” but to accept any deal the U.S. secures from negotiations with Iran.
“I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots,” Trump said of Netanyahu.
Right. And then Israel struck Iran.
“Currently, the fire on this front is contained, because after the terror regime in Tehran took a blow, it ceased attacking us,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday in a video address.
What was that about calling the shots, genius? For now Iran and Israel are both saying they will behave themselves as long as the other side doesn’t strike first, or something. Sure.
Trump’s other brilliant move this weekend was to throw a tantrum at Kirsten Welker in a Meet the Press interview in which he couldn’t handle being pressed about evidence for his “rigged election” claims. He also repeatedly claimed that the poor misunderstood January 6 rioters were nearly all innocent and had been framed by “dirty cops” like James Comey. What Comey had to do with January 6 seems a tad fuzzy. Eventually Trump completely melted down and stomped off.
Regarding Iran, Max Boot at WaPo has some interesting comments. The May 23 deal came apart because of a revolt on the Right, according to Boot:
When the proposed terms, which apparently included unfreezing billions of dollars in Iranian assets, leaked out, American hawks on Iran went ballistic. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s first-term secretary of state, compared the proposed accord to the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration and exited by Trump in 2018. Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, slammed Pompeo online: “Mike Pompeo has no idea what the f— he’s talking about. He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals.
Despite the White House pushback, the criticism from the right seemed to spook Trump. He reportedly sent a tougher counteroffer to Tehran at the end of May, and now the negotiations have stalled. The Iranians are demanding the release of $12 billion of their frozen assets as part of any deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and another $12 billion during the 60 days of negotiations on their nuclear program that would follow.
Giving in to their demands would be exceedingly embarrassing for Trump, if he were capable of embarrassment. He relentlessly mocked President Barack Obama for sending “pallets of cash” worth $1.7 billion to Iran after the 2015 deal.
I don’t believe Trump can make a deal. I predict this stupid Schrödinger’s War is going to continue until someone else is President. I believe that whoever is in charge of Iran right now isn’t going to budge without a substantial amount of cash, and if that’s off the table there’s no hope. Boot:
The best Trump can hope for is that Iran will reopen the strait without tolls and accept limits on its nuclear program backed by international inspections. That would basically re-create the conditions that existed under Obama’s nuclear deal. And just to achieve that much will probably require a substantial payoff to the mullahs, with the exact price tag to be determined in bazaar-style bargaining.
Update: This was just published at the New York Times — Trump Wants to Call the Shots. But in Iran, He Keeps Hitting His Limits, by Anton Troianovski. It’s very much on point.
But the real Trump news is likely to break at tonight’s Knick’s game at Madison Square Garden. Trump is attending. the game. Because Trump is attending the game, there will be security for blocks around MSG. There had been outdoor block/watch parties planned for people who couldn’t afford tickets to be in the streets near the Garden watching the game projected on screens. And it’s a perfect night for it in the greater NYC area. Skies are clear; temperatures are mild. But the previously announced watch parties have been canceled. And people with tickets have been told to be at the Garden two hours before game time and be prepared to go through airport-style security.
New Yorkers are pissed. Massively. This may be an interesting night.
Update: I’ve learned a watch party was set up at Bryant Park, which is in midtown near Grand Central and the main Library building, and far enough from Madison Square Garden that it’s not a security issue for Trump. The space is already full, I understand. There are some other watch party venues that should still be open, but anyplace within a few blocks of Madison Square Garden is off limits.
I confess, I'm really afraid for what might happen when July rolls around, and there's no deal, and we're stuck with people bidding up the price of oil just to get any. Trump doesn't understand that he's reached strategic limits, he feels like he should be able to "bloody Iran's nose" and kill a few thousand civilians, but, that won't affect the Mullahs. I'm afraid of what he might do if oil is averaging $6 a gallon, and people keep saying he "can't" cause mass civilian casualties. To him, it's just common sense, keep hurting "your opponent," until they give up.
The problem, as Sun Tsu would point out, is, neither the civilians, nor the Iranian guard units are "the enemy." The *mullahs* are the enemy. They make the decisions; they're the ones you want to hurt so they decide, better to accept terms, than to continue to hurt. Alas, these people lives in territory that can't be held without enormous resource expenditures. So, we worry, because we should, about Trump dropping a nuke, or, attacking desalination plants or other critical infrastructure.
I used to argue with a now-deceased friend over warfare, and I said that, really, the purpose of war is to win, as per Sun Tzu, and he was a brutal factualist, "no, it can be to test out new weapons, or to ride the crest of being a wartime President, or…." And damn, I thought *I* was cynical! I maintain that I'm right: for war to be a political act, your goal is to make the enemy leadership accept your terms, and, past that, you don't care if any shots are fired or not. Otherwise, it's like, calling it "war" gives it a false nobility, for all that war doesn't ennoble anything. If you're deciding to extend fighting in, e.g., Vietnam, to see if the new weapons work as expected, and you hold up a peace treaty for that reason, you're acting in a monstrous manner. To choose war is to choose all of its crimes and consequences. But “faking” war is worse still, it’s a form of serial killing, with maybe a dollop of terrorism on top.
Alas, only Democrats have a chance of believing that last bit.
Gas prices are on the way up again here, up about 30 to 50 cents this weekend. Trump played the only federal card by opening up the strategic oil reserves. And those are going empty. Supply is going to tighten, and there's no quick way to increase production. Gas prices are at or above $4, and we're entering the summer, a period of higher demand. At the end of summer is the Fall, and the November midterms.
Bibi is playing Trump, not the other way around. The role of the US, as Bibi has planned it, is to keep Iran pinned down while Israel conducts a two-pronged attack on Lebanon and Gaza. I can't say I have a deep understanding of Israeli politics, but they have an election for the legislature at the end of October. I feel like Netanyahu has military goals he wants to meet before then because they might be thwarted by their "Congress" if objectives are delayed. But that's entirely speculation, and I'm not an expert.
I feel like Bibi is doing stuff out of desperation – a now-or-never recklessness. On that same timeline, the GOP in the US Congress knows that republicans have to be on the way out of the Iran war and gas prices have to be on the way down. So at the same time Bibi needs us in, the GOP knows we have to be getting out. I expect Israel to sabotage peace talks as soon as a settlement is near.
If the game tonight becomes an opportunity for NYC to express their true feelings for Trump, great!
@Doug asked in last post about #s relating to AI costs vs income.
I've seen no numbers, but the way I see it: huge start-up costs to build more data centers, and then just operational costs to keep them running. There will be a ton of lawsuits concerning them, forcing them to do things like generate their own power.
The hard to quantify savings lie in all the human labor that will be done by AI. In my tiny world, for example, AI is the research assistant I never had, literally saving me hours of research leg work, many days a week. The answers it provides are typically more complete and better organized than I could do after minutes or hours of labor. Literally well organized, cogent answers at my fingertips, within seconds.
In my old field, software engineering, people report being 10x more productive, but the nature of the work has changed. Formerly, there was the creative thrill of grappling with a problem, and finally creating an answer, after hours or days of struggle. This is being replaced by mostly keying in a specification, receiving the code generated by AI, and pasting it into the target application. Not only is this not creative, it's like stenography. Engineers report that their coding skills and their ability to validate the output from AI have atrophied. It's not hard to imagine the whole culture giving up on critical thinking entirely, and just trusting what comes out of the machine, come what may.
In its best light AI will provide an expanded brain for researchers. There's a famous story in AI circles, about a competition between a Go grand-master and AI (Go is a well known game in Asia). AI thought of a novel move that not even a grand-master had realized.
AI will be an amazing tool, and completely disruptive, as significant as the Industrial Revolution or even Agriculture. It's analogous to nuclear energy – incredible power for good or evil. We're in the phase where guardrails need to be created to protect people and channel this tool for good.
It's a bit moot to think about costs, IMO. Nobody thought about costs when the printing press arrived and changed the world. AI is like that, it's far too attractive and useful to go back.
Moonbat: From one software engineer to another, I pretty much agree with most of what you said, but I would be a bit more nuanced when it comes to how powerful AI can actually be. I'm retired so I haven't heard from former teammates that their coding skills have atrophied. And my work life was information engineering, not automation of routine tasks, so consider that grain of salt.
If today's "programmers" (or tomorrow's) are typing in specifications in order to get AI-produces code, then to me the "programming" job has merely shifted to a different "coding" language (the specification language). Sort of like machine-code vs assembly-code vs high-level-language (Java e.g.) code. I don't see how AI can code functionality that hasn't been specified. I'm curious what you think.
The important part with AI, which you pointed out, is the monumental change it will have on civilization, and for me, the cultures that have developed over the centuries of the industrial age will not work going forward. It is, indeed like the wheel, the movable type printing press, and the enlightenment. It's going to be a rough ride, and we are ill prepared for it because not enough movers and shakers are looking at the broader societal impacts, IMO.
More to come from me on this topic.
I agree with Doug: "Bibi is playing Trump". It's a delicate process; Trump/USA holds the upper hand, because Bibi/Israel needs us far more than we need Israel, but – as Maha noted last week – Trump can't stay focused on any one thing for long, especially when things get complicated.
OTOH, Bibi is maniacally focused on his expansionist vision for Israel. US MSM keeps describing Israel's attacks on Lebanon as retaliation against Hezbollah, but it's actually an invasion, apparently aimed at annexing a large chunk of southern Lebanon. Perversely, Iran is the only country which is actively trying to stop Israel from doing that.
Frankly, IMO, Bibi's plan to "protect" Israel by expanding it is – like the US invasion of Iraq – "worse than a crime, it is a blunder" ("C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une blague", look it up). Each chunk of territory that Israel grabs creates more permanent enemies, which Israel then "must" exterminate.
Last week, Trump finally understood that Iran is serious about keeping the Straits of Hormuz closed until Israel leaves Lebanon. Trump actually tried (?) to rein in Bibi, who agreed to stop bombing Beirut, and Trump gladly pretended that he had won that negotiation. That "deal" lasted less than a week ("I'm shocked, shocked…").
But again, the big problem with this damn war is that the people – and countries – which are going to be hurt worst have no influence over the USA, Israel, or Iran. A recent interview on NPR confirmed my worst fear: that the planting season in much of the 3rd world is done, and the lack of fertilizers (etc) during that period imply low harvests later this year. In poor countries, "low harvests" aren't just an abstract problem.
So, when we start hearing reports of food riots next fall/winter, remember how it all traces back to Bibi talking Trump into attacking Iran…
Random observation: the most surprising thing (to me) about Troianovski's NYT article was the inclusion of two links – immediately below the byline, denoted with Chinese characters – to Chinese translations of the article (one for "Simplified Chinese", one for "Traditional Chinese").
The implication is that the NYT really cares about getting their messages to China.
I don't recall seeing this in any other/previous NYT article – nor any links to translations to any other language. Does anyone here know if this is (1) new, and standard (appearing on all/most articles), or (2) used only on some articles (presumably those which NYT considers important to/for Chinese readers)?
Cindy from Virginia commented to the Anton Troianovski peice from the NYT:
And jinxes the Knicks.