Trump's decision about joining Israel's war against Iran with a bunker busting bomb will rest on emotion rather than logic. By Hal M. Brown
Trump has lusted over being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (click Google search) for brokering a deal with Iran to assure they stopped their pursuit of nuclear weapons or for ending the war in Ukraine. This was clearly to make him feel good. He’s always wanted to stick his Nobel Peace Prize in the eyes of all of his critics. Of all the people who were awarded the world’s most prestigious prize the one who he is most resentful of has to be Barack Obama. Trump isn’t even listed as a notable omission.
Trump is a person driven by feelings. He doesn’t make decisions by first considering reason and logic. He makes them based on how they enhance his feelings of superiority and power.
I don’t know enough about international relations to opine with confidence on what will happen if Iran eventually becomes a nuclear armed power. It does seem on the face of it that unless the United States uses its Air Force to destroy the deeply buried unranium enrichment facility or faclicites eventually they will have a nuclear weapon. If this happens the balance of power in the region will change. Perhaps this would be akin to what it is like between India and Pakistan. They would join the countries where nuclear war is avoided because such a war would destroy both countries. This is the MAD scenario, mutually assured destruction.
All this should be what Trump will be considering today when he meets with his security team in the Situation Room.
First, consider the optics of using the Situation Room for this meeting. He could hold this meeting in any secure room in the White House. It will make for a better photo op to show him presiding over a meeting in this room. This is a minor point.
The major matter is what he will do and why he will do it. I think that whoever is in favor of entering the war and authorizing the use of bunker buster bombs alone with our planes to drop them will have a bang-up presentation ready for him. It will probably include graphics showing how such munitions work and possibly a video.
If he’s been watching TV he’s already seen pictures like this which I assume also are on Fox News:
Trump may have looked up bunker buster bomb on the internet, although it is unknown whether Trump ever uses the Google machine and Wikipedia. If he looked it up he’d find this post on, of all things, a mixed martial arts website.
They have this video. I can see it being shown to Trump.
If he looked up bunker buster bomb on Wikipedia and waded through the description of how they work, perhaps with someone to explain the technicalities of how they did what they can do, he’d be impressed.
He likely would think “this is no ordinary bomb.” I can see Hegseth saying “this is one big bad bomb Mr. President. You’ve got it, maybe you should use it.”
The crucial word is big. Trump loves the word when applied to anything Trump. Big and biggest. Biggest bill, biggest parade, biggest crowd, and of course biggest brain. One might speculate that there’s some unconscious inscurity Trump has about size.
You don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to interpret what the mental imagery of the bunker buster bomb penetrating a hardened uranium enrichment facility and exploding deep inside of it signifies in the unconscious mind.
Updates:
Check out this Nick Anderson cartoon. It says pretty much what this Substack is about.
Unless Trump is playing a game of chicken with Iran, this deployment suggests that before long we will be dropping those bunker busiting bombs: 'Unprecedented mass deployment' of warplanes across Atlantic fuels war fears.
Note that in the post shown below, Trump is already sounding like the United States is engaged with Israel in fighting Iran:
4) Trump actually referred to his mood (reference). I can imagine what world leaders, both with our allies and adversaries, think when they see how Trump makes vital decisions based on his mood.
President Donald Trump denied early on Tuesday having had contact with leaders in Iran, saying he hadn't reached out about a potential ceasefire and that he was "not too much in the mood" to negotiate with Iran.
"I've been negotiating. I told them to do the deal," Trump said. "They should have done the deal. The cities have been blown to pieces, lost a lot of people. They should have done the deal. I told them do the deal, so I don't know. I'm not too much in the mood to negotiate."
Recent:
https://substack.com/@reeceashdown/note/c-126741652?r=5qrbeg&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Israel--or at least Netanyahu--has tried to convince the world--or at least the US--that if Iran is allowed to have nuclear weapons (which it may already have), the end is nigh. But look at the much larger, much worse actors on the world stage who already have these: Russia, China, North Korea. If only Israel could be less bellicose (and it could, under a different leader) and end its attempt to annihilate Palestine. Accept a two-state solution.
And yes, our president's fixation on the Peace Prize reflects his obsession with Obama and wanting to outperform him. Alas DJT can never become the first Black president.