Trump vs. Iran: Nuclear Deal II or World War III?

By Kevin Barrett, for American Free Press

From the moment Donald Trump descended the escalator on June 16, 2015 to announce his presidential candidacy, the self-proclaimed “America first” candidate has been verbally pummeling Iran on behalf of Netanyahu and Israeli extremism. And it isn’t just talk. For almost a decade, Trump has consistently put ultra-Zionist interests ahead of American interests. From his murder of the great Iranian hero Qassem Soleimani, to his repeated claims that American Jews ought to serve Israel not America, to his ringing endorsements of the genocide of Gaza, to his deportations of legal American residents who criticize that genocide, Trump has served not as US president, but as Netanyahu’s White House butler.

Nowhere has Trump’s abject servitude to Netanyahu been more apparent than in the cornerstone of his Middle East policy: the stunning abrogation of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran. Trump has stated that his opposition to the JCPOA was what motivated him to run for president in the first place. That is likely true, since Netanyahu and his “American” Zionist billionaire friends probably approached Trump in 2015 and offered to insert him into the White House in return for his promise to scrap the JCPOA, move the US embassy to Occupied Jerusalem, push the “Satan Accords” on US Mideast vassals, and threaten all-out war on the only remaining independent powers in the region: Iran and its friends and allies.

Netanyahu—front man for the Zionist cabal that orchestrated 9/11—blew up the World Trade Center in order to hijack the US military to destroy “seven countries in five years,” the seventh and most important being Iran. But the culmination of that plan is almost twenty years behind schedule. Pushback from realists in the US strategic establishment, who know war with Iran would be catastrophic for America, has prevented Bibi’s loyalists from drawing the US into its stupidest-ever war for Israel.

Yet Trump now stands on the precipice of that war. Caught between the proverbial rock and hard place—the strategic reality that war with Iran would destroy America and with it Trump’s political prospects, and his promises to Netanyahu to countenance such a war—the occupant of the White House is ensnared in a trap of his own making.

There is only one escape from that trap: Backtracking into the hated 2015 “Obama JCPOA” or its Trump-era equivalent. That would require Trump to essentially admit that he (and Netanyahu) have been wrong all along: The JCPOA was a perfectly good agreement, and Trump’s blowhard opposition to it has always been a political ploy designed to rake in money from Zionist oligarchs.

Netanyahu obviously won’t agree to a new JCPOA. Nor can Trump openly embrace a 180-degree turn on his signature act of foreign policy. Given those stark realities, how can the Iran nuclear deal be revived?

The same way porcupines make love: very carefully. Essentially, Trump will have to string Netanyahu along, feed him a line of Trumpian blarney, negotiate a “new” JCPOA that will really just be a barely-disguised version of the first one, and trumpet the revived agreement as a victory for both America and Israel.

To accomplish this, Trump will have to somehow neutralize Netanyahu and the Israeli hardliners. The best way to do that would be to bring down Netanyahu’s government. That could be accomplished by working in collaboration with Bibi’s political enemies, who are legion both in Israel and throughout the Jewish-oligarch-occupied West. (Not all Jewish oligarchs are Bibi fans.)

Trump could help engineer regime change in Israel, timed to coincide with an agreement ending the genocide of Gaza and freeing all remaining prisoners, in accord with the plan presented by Egypt and supported by the entire world (including much of the Israeli establishment and public). That would give Iran the political cover it needs to make “concessions” that would dress up the new Trump-negotiated JCPOA as “better than Obama’s.”

Does that scenario sound too good to be true? Perhaps it is. But there are signs that Trump is listening to the majority opinion of the US strategic establishment, which resolutely opposes a US war on Iran. Throughout Easter week (April 14-20) Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff engaged in what both sides termed “productive” indirect negotiations with Iran in Muscat, Oman. According to reports, Witkoff pointedly avoided threats while presenting a negotiating agenda that conspicuously lacked Bibi-inspired deal-killers like “Iran must give up all its rockets,” “Iran must completely stop enriching uranium,” “Iran must stop cooperating with its regional allies,” and most importantly “Iran must drop its commitment to defending Palestine.” In other words, Witkoff seems headed toward reviving the JCPOA.

And if Bibi doesn’t like it? Terminate Bibi’s command…with extreme prejudice if necessary.

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