This impending war with Iran is as cartoon nutty as you would expect it to be, considering that Benjamin Netanyahu is playing the master to Donald Trump’s puppet and pulling the strings. The state of play today is whether Trump will send Steve Witkoff to Iran to talk to their foreign minister, which is like sending Howdy Doody to talk to Joseph Stalin. But it may happen, because Trump needs to make “another run at coercive diplomacy” as the New York Times puts it. And what can you expect when one real estate developer sends another real estate developer to achieve world peace? (Wait a minute: Didn’t Jared Kushner play this role in Trump 1.0?)
That’s one option. The other option is pure cartoon imagery. There is a device called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which weighs as much as several African Bush elephants. The idea is to drop it on the Frodo nuclear facility and watch the mountain implode. And no I don’t know what the potential ramifications are of such an act, and I doubt that anybody in the Trump administration is even thinking to ask the question because it’s so *woke.* But it’s always nice to know the potential fall out from what you’re blowing up, especially when it’s a nuclear facility.
Mr. Trump rarely talks about Fordo by name, but he has occasionally alluded to the GBU-57, [the bunker buster] sometimes telling aides that he ordered its development. That is not correct: The United States began designing the weapon in 2004, during the George W. Bush administration, specifically to collapse the mountains protecting some of the deepest nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea. It was, however, tested during Mr. Trump’s first term, and added to the arsenal.
Mr. Netanyahu has pressed for the United States to make its bunker busters available since the Bush administration, so far to no avail. But people who have spoken to Mr. Trump in recent months say the topic has come up repeatedly in his conversations with the prime minister. When Mr. Trump has been asked about it, he usually avoids a direct answer.
Of course Benjy wants the bunker buster. He doesn’t have one. And if he did have it, he doesn’t have the plane (or the pilot) to deliver it. Only the United States has these things.
Now the pressure is on. The Israeli former defense minister Yoav Gallant, who resigned in a split with Mr. Netanyahu, told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga on Monday that “the job has to be done, by Israel, by the United States,” an apparent reference to the fact that the bomb would have to be dropped by an American pilot in an American airplane. He said that Mr. Trump had “the option to change the Middle East and influence the world.”
And Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina who often speaks for the traditional, hawkish members of his party, said on CBS on Sunday that “if diplomacy is not successful” he will “urge President Trump to go all in to make sure that, when this operation is over, there’s nothing left standing in Iran regarding their nuclear program.”
“If that means providing bombs, provide bombs,” he said, adding, in a clear reference to the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, “whatever bombs. If it means flying with Israel, fly with Israel.”
But Republicans are hardly united in that view. And the split in the party over the decision of whether to make use of one of the Pentagon’s most powerful conventional weapons to help one of America’s closest allies has highlighted a far deeper divide. It is not only about crippling the centrifuges of Fordo; it is also about MAGA’s view of what kinds of wars the United States should avoid at all costs.
And this of course leads to the MAGA infighting, with Tucker Carlson opposing Trump’s intervention in the Middle East (imagine that?) and Marjorie Taylor Greene defending Carlson. (I told you this was a cartoon.) And if we weren’t talking about going to war and Trump’s cavalier demand to the eight million citizens of Tehran to “evacuate” this could be amusing. But it is not. It’s chaotic, terrifying and on the verge of spinning out of control — which means it’s vintage Trump. So who is dictating foreign policy? Trump? Marco Rubio? Netanyahu?
Classic body language on display.
Netanyahu laughing at his chair being pushed in by Trump, then Trump realizing that it made him look weak.
Trump is weak. He knows it. He knows Netanyahu knows it, and he hates it.— Paul the other one… (@paulcshipley) June 17, 2025
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Netanyahu is going to go for broke. Will Trump go along with him and give him what he wants? Or keep the MAGA base happy? And if he keeps the base happy, then will Iran develop the bomb? And then what happens? Lots of questions and the guy who should have the answers has none and wants to go out and play golf.
Two criminals carrying out a plan for WW3. We should remember there WAS an agreement to rein in Iran’s nuclear program…orangebob shitpants shitcanned it for his political gain. They are both shielded by their office from prosecution or accountability. The genocides continue. Time for a change that stops this madness, before the planet becomes uninhabitable through either radioactive poisoning or climate change.
I’ve never understood how Trumpler navigates this conflict within his political and personal world, ie his avowed support of Israel no matter what it does, versus MAGAt’s barely-suppressed anti-Semitism which outs itself occasionally at a neo-Nazi rally. Add in Trump’s family ties to Judaism, via Kushner and Ivanka, and there would appear to be unresolvable issues. Must be tough for your average retarded MAGAt, who hates Jews but fears Islamists even more.
No mention of Putin for whom Iran is a supplier of weaponry. T appears beholden to 2 puppeteers and the signs are that Putin has the stronger pull. Add TACO and we will see bluster but no follow through on the big bang. Netanyahu will press on picking off key personnel to bring about regime collapse. But then we had collapse of the Iraqi regime and the echoes of that helped bring us to where we are today in the Middle east and more widely. Karma and the Law of Unintended Consequences. Can T hold even the immediate this or that outcome in his impulsive brain cell?
What’s funny/disturbing is that the Arab World which definitely does NOT want the prospect of Iran having *the* bomb is they can’t possibly be eager to see Israel get any more armament, especially something so powerful (which itself could be as horrific a weapon as any nuclear bomb). The Saudis especially will be demanding that the US supply them with their own “bunker buster” (for purely defensive purposes, of course).
I just hope the Iranians (if they actually are willing to engage in “peace talks” involving a Drumpf-designated delegate or group) make any talks REALLY tough, demanding that the US force Israel to let in UN nuclear inspectors to all the suspected Israeli nuclear facilities WITHOUT any Israeli preconditions; it’s interesting (suspicious) that Israel–when it’s allowed IAEA inspectors to tour the facilities–has managed to limit those inspections to sites the Israelis choose, rather than the same completely random inspections that Iran, and previously Iraq under Saddam Hussein, have been subjected to over the past quarter-century. And Iran could pull a real wild card by tying ANY limits on their nuclear aims to Israeli treatment of Palestinians, not just in Gaza and the ongoing holocaust/genocide there but also the West Bank. Israel has been told repeatedly for the last 60 years to stop settlements on the West Bank and Israel has thumbed its nose (largely because the US has backed them at every turn in the UN).