I realize that’s a “wow” thought to throw out there. Crazy at it sounds I hope you’ll bear with me. Given the cozy relationship between Iran and Russia, combined with Trump’s subservience to Putin I’ve wondered why Putin hasn’t strongly condemned our bombing Iran’s nuclear sites. It’s been gnawing at me and I think I might have an answer.
Let’s face it, Trump doesn’t have the intellect to conceive of a multi-step process that would lead to him having an ‘excuse’ to invoke Article 5 only to have NATO say ‘No.’ Then leveraging that into forcing the Senate to alter our treaty. No one in Trump’s inner circle is capable of this level of “chess” either. Putin on the other hand is like most Russians a chess player. No, not an actual “Master” (there’s a grading system) but skilled. Destroying NATO is key to his dream of recreating the USSR and crippling it by having the U.S. refuse to honor Article 5 is key to his ambitious goal.
Trump has said on the record more than once he’s not sure the U.S. would honor its Article V obligation, and looking at the big picture it’s why Putin invaded Ukraine. Had he gotten his quick win Russia would have if Trump managed to get elected again ‘pushed out’ over other borders, most likely starting with Poland. Pootie would have called it a ‘defensive measure’ but Article 5 would have been invoked nonetheless and Trump didn’t have the political juice to keep us out of the fight. Still, I believe Putin felt it was a gamble worth taking as the debate alone would have weakened NATO.
Things didn’t work out how Putin planned as you know. Worse (for him) NATO didn’t dissolve into infighting about whether/how much to support Ukraine, it expanded with the addition to Sweden and Finland joining! Worse still, while Trump has managed to weaken GOP support for Ukraine the other NATO members have accepted they are going to have to plan for the U.S. not stepping up if needed. Or at least to the degree they once could have counted on. Still, Europe isn’t yet where it needs to be to make up for a loss of U.S. involvement so Putin has a window of opportunity to sow the seeds of destruction.
That’s where the bombing of Iran comes in. There was speculation here on Politizoom and lots of places about whether Putin would allow Trump to carry out a U.S. attack on Iran. Clearly Trump got the greenlight from his puppet master. Word that Iran got enough warning to move assets from the targets indicates the whole thing was a helluva show, but despite the skill and bravery of those who drove home the attacks still pretty much a half-billion dollar episode of the reality Trump TV show.
We could have credibly boasted about doing major damage because we freaking did. What we also did but shouldn’t have is boast about “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear capability. When that preliminary assessment got leaked saying it wouldn’t set Iran back all that much the response SHOULD have been simply ‘It’s only a preliminary assessment. Much of what we targeted was deep underground and it will take a lot of time to see how far back Iran’s nuclear program was set, but we’re confident they won’t be making any nuclear bombs in the foreseeable future.’Â
Had the administration taken that position we wouldn’t be talking much about the strike by now. But NOOOOOO! Trumpty had to make a BFD about how he’d “destroyed” Iran’s capability. He just wouldn’t STFU and then made his bragging even worse with some taunting about how Iran’s Supreme Leader should be thanking him. For not bombing HIS location. And through all of this we’ve heard not all that much from Russia and Putin. But I’ll bet privately Putin has egged Trump on!
That gets me to the thesis I’ve laid out. Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism with decades of experience. They are masters of what’s known as “Asymmetrical Warfare” and because Trump won’t shut up to save face they will be forced to hit us back. It’s just a question of where and when. The “where” is the most important thing to look for. Why? When it comes to NATO’s famous Article 5 everyone knows the boiled down ‘An attack on one is an attack on all’ version. It’s actually more complicated than that. Take a look at the actual text from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization site:
The parties agree an attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security .
Take note of that part about “in Europe or North America.” Iran can, just as the old USSR did during the Cold War hit us in different ways. Hell, more recently Russia has done it to the U.S. and NATO allies by annexing parts of Ukraine to stop Ukraine from moving into the European sphere of influence and ultimately NATO. We have bases and allies in lots of places other than Europe or North America. Iran is quite capable of pulling off a terrorist attack or starting a proxy war somewhere else that negatively affects the U.S. and/or our interests. AND in a way where everyone knows who’s responsible but no case will hold up at the U.N.
Trump would nonetheless try to invoke Article 5 and it would put NATO in a position of pointing to the actual terms of the actual treaty. And saying in effect ‘YOU created this mess so clean it up yourself. We’ve got Ukraine to take care of.’Â Trump would raise holy hell here at home and might, just might be able to browbeat enough GOP Senators into at the very least changing the terms of our NATO treaty obligations.
THAT my friends is some grand master level chess if indeed Putin is playing the game I think he’s playing. Trump is truly his useful idiot in all this. He couldn’t win a game of checkers against a first grader much less grasp high level chess strategy that requires seeing the whole board four or five moves ahead. Is it so hard to think Putin might have chatted with Iran and suggested they deal with a few serious attacks. They’d get enough warning to ensure their capability was largely if not mostly maintained.
As a sweetener Putin could have reminded Iran we only made TWENTY of those massive bunker busting bombs and hitting multiple sites with them would mean using up the lion’s share of our supply. Not to mention a bunch of smaller bunker busting ordnance that we could use or give to Israel to use. At the same time he might have been tacitly encouraging Trump to “hit Iran as hard as you can” knowing the results would be what they seem to have been. Remember the briefings. We used SIXTEEN of our twenty GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs in the strike. And lots of other stuff.
That alone would have been, in the long-term good for Iran. We “busted a nut” but only by jerking off to put it bluntly. Yes, we are going to make a ‘newer and better’ bomb than the GBU-57 but it took over ten years to develop THAT one. In the meantime we have only four left. We are shooting off hundreds of millions in other missiles to protect our ships in the Med. and middle east, and of course to help protect Israel. In other words, we or our allies (and territories like Guam or Saipan) are vulnerable in a LOT of places and getting more so all the time.
For those not old enough, the January 1968 Tet Offensive was a massive military loss for North Vietnam. General Giap knew that would be the case but most, or even many of the attacks being successful wasn’t the point. It was the scale that mattered because by then Americans were glued to the evening news and the shock to Americans was so stunning it led to peace negotiations after a while. It still took too long, but Americans didn’t CARE that all the attacks were put down. It was that so many had taken place all at once, and in a couple of places (Hue in particular) lasted so long, followed by the siege at Khe Sanh.
All Iran has to do is humiliate Trump and America in some manner to regain it’s standing with those in the part of the world who hate us. They don’t see winning/losing the same way we in the west do. Add in dictatorial indifference to the suffering of innocents and mark my words, something will wind up happening. Something crafted by Putin that specifically will cause Trump to invoke Article 5 and NATO to tell him ‘sorry, this isn’t 9/11 and it doesn’t apply in this case.’ The result? If you think think things are a mess now you ain’t seen nothing yet.
We thank all of you who have donated. You’re keeping this blog on the internet, believe me. One of the battles we fight is the inconstancy of ad revenue because politics in this country is so polarized and a lot of advertisers just seek to avoid the political. They’d rather advertise on food blogs and be safe, doughnuts before democracy. All we’re trying to do is stay in business because we believe the work is important. Thank you if you can assist. If we didn’t need it, we wouldn’t be asking. Ursula
Does sound like a conspiracy to me too. And add in Trump’s even more over the top reaction when questioned about any of his lies about it. Recall his reaction when questioned about his fake “having his ear shot off assassination attempt”. He was absolutely ballistic and almost foaming at the mouth mad dog ugly. Conspiracy!
My only issue with the Article V situation is that our NATO allies had NO reason to go along with Dubya’s invocation of Article V following 9/11 as most of them had dealt with their own instances–and incidents–of terrorism throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s without ever invoking Article V.
Italy’s Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped and murdered by members of the Red Brigades. Germany (West Germany at the time) dealt with the Baader-Meinhoff Gang and certainly had reason to invoke Article V in light of the Munich Olympics attacks. The UK saw Lord Louis Mountbatten–the Queen’s cousin–murdered by IRA terrorists in 1979 (among the many civilians and British military forces over the years) and, of course, PanAm Flight 103 blowing up over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. But, despite all the terrorism–whether it was “home-grown” or “foreign-originating”–not a single European member of NATO ever invoked Article V in response.
So why exactly did Dubya invoke it following 9/11? And, more importantly, why did NATO’s other members allow him to do it? Europeans were somewhat upset that the US had this “We’re protected by oceans” idea and a few of the more extremists (both on the left and on the right) were critical of constantly dealing with terrorism and the US acting like “it’s a Europe thing–none of our concern.” Most were rightly shocked at the events of 9/11 but invoking Article V seemed like a bit of an overreaction–even in hindsight.
My guess is that W worried the hell out of them because he was most definitely NOT his father and it was clear by summer Dick Cheney was no longer the guy they’d known for so long. Afghanistan would be a quick affair they thought. It was, but W tried to leverage it into the war he REALLY wanted which was Iraq. Plus, the 9/11 attacks were more substantial than the things you cited, awful as those were. The U.S. had screwed the pooch in that part of the world for a long time, including and especially Lebanon. To my dying day I’ll believe if Reagan had turned my generation of Marines loose after the Barracks Bombing little of what followed from Iran and Al Queeda would have happened. So, it seemed like a good chance to show the gomers NATO could kick some ass and do so quickly.
Then Baby Bush cocked it up and let Bin Laden slip away from Tora Bora. We had a team eight hundred meters away who had they been given the green light (and they asked!) killed that motherfucker dead then and there. I think Bush WANTED him to get away, to help sell the bullshit about Iraqi involvement and start his war there.