The Re-Gilded Age
I’m returning to covering news links, but in a format a little more expansive than the link roundups I’ve been sending out for the past eight months, now that I’m free to add a little more commentary. But for now, it’s only a little more, because I’ve got a lot of stuff to catch up on.
Here’s a first pass at clearing out some of the 85 open tabs on my browser and sending along the most interesting news items to my readers.
Bay of Pigs, Iran
We have a little new information about what went wrong with Donald Trump’s Iran war, in this case about the failure of Israel’s somewhat far-fetched plan to topple the Iranian regime.
There are a lot of things that can go wrong with a plan like this, but a shakeup within Israel’s Mossad points to one thing in particular.
Current Mossad Director Roman Gofman has removed the two officials most closely associated with the agency’s plan to topple the Iranian regime. One had run the Mossad’s intelligence directorate since December; the other headed the Iran division. This follows the ouster of the deputy director last month, who was similarly linked to the operation.
Their plan centered on Iran’s minority populations, built on the theory that armed pressure at the periphery would revive the mass protest movement at the center and finish the job. Removing the architects of this strategy amounts to acknowledging the obvious: the plan failed.
It appeared to start successfully. Israel conducted strikes on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps positions along Iran’s border with Iraq, timed to open a corridor for Kurdish fighters to cross into Iranian Kurdistan and push toward northwestern cities. Thousands of young Kurds were expected to join them. They were slated to advance eastward while armed militias from other minority groups struck Iranian territory from all directions, pushing toward Tehran. The US had armed these proxy forces, but the plan unraveled when Fox News reported the attack was imminent. Turkish President Erdogan phoned Trump and, in a furious call, talked him out of US backing for the operation.
This sounds like a replay of the Bay of Pigs, where a plan to overthrow the Cuban regime—also a risky, longshot attempt—failed when the US withdrew crucial support at the last minute because the president wasn’t politically prepared to back the scheme all the way.
I found out about this story by way of Claire Berlinski, who explains why the Turks were so adamant: It “validat[ed] the suspicions of everyone in the region—but especially Turks and Iranians—that Israel seeks to dismember their countries and touch off civil wars in every country with a Kurdish minority, making Syria look like a little warmup.”
I wouldn’t mind if there’s a Kurdish state someday, but I also understand that if you’re going to open that can of worms, you’re going to lose support from many countries in the region, and you have to know ahead of time whether you’re willing to take that heat.
Donald Trump is obviously not the kind of guy to game this stuff out carefully, know where he stands ahead of time, and follow a consistent course of action—and the Israelis were foolish to act as if he is.
What Did the President Think, and Did He Ever Think It?
Speaking of not planning things out ahead of time, Donald Trump is now complaining that he was never warned about something I am certain his advisors warned him about dozens of times:
