The blundering buffoon, Iran and Israel
Time for some hard truths
TAT readers,
I’ve been doing deep-dive research regarding the imminent threats to our midterm elections and which I was hoping to publish today, but today’s headlines about the US involvement in the war against Iran will preempt that essay until later, hopefully this week. I view our midterms as a “make it or break it” event in US history and so deserves my undivided attention. Today’s war news though distracted me and demands that I must once again state some critical points that dispel the false narratives about our involvement, Israel’s rights to defend herself and the disturbing commonly held beliefs about Israel being some sort of genocidal ogre. Today’s brutal critiques will greatly offend many on the so-called “both sides of the aisle” in congress and the US electorate.
For long-time readers, you will see several links to previously published essays as “background reading,” however the essay itself, will be an entirely new narrative surrounding a critically destabilized Middle East. Many would find it distressing for me to attack “both sides,” but I do not write for profit. As the name of this publication states, telling the truth about our most severe national security threats, is my sole objective. Truth is often offensive to those who’ve been seduced by false narratives and the overt lies of powermongers such as this administration, their sycophantic political party and their oligarchical enablers.
"Truth is, all known facts from credible sources, presented objectively and in context. - Cobaugh - 2023
It is not just the Republicans either. The left, especially the progressive wing, have also partially succumbed to false narratives about Israel being a genocidal actor. There is plenty of blame to go around, here’s the spoiler alert; we cannot solve for any solution in the region if we do not look at truth, rather than false beliefs about the region and its people. It’s the same as a math problem because you cannot just shove the numbers you like into an equation and expect to answer the problem correctly. If you want a solution, employing all available truth is the only effective manner of achieving one grounded in reality.
Some of the issues to be discussed in today’s essay include but are not limited to the eight points listed below.
Israel has been under assault by her neighbors and others in the region from the very minute that she became her own state in May of 1948. Israel has the same rights as any other nation to defend herself.
The claims of genocide in Gaza are laughable at best and dangerous at worst. They are perpetuated largely by powerful nations looking out for their own interests, not the Palestinian people. By my last calculations based on a variety of sources, there were between 35,000 and 90,000 Hamas and other militants in Gaza pre-war. Since no reporting entity differentiates between civilian and combatant deaths, it would be insane to believe the numbers quoted by known propaganda entities like the Hamas Health Ministry. Add to this Hamas’ use of innocent Palestinians as human shields, bait etc. and a far more accurate picture comes into view. War is hell and while I don’t agree with every tactic employed by Israel, professionally speaking the IDF has operated far more in accordance with international law, than not. As they say, “the devil is in the details.”
The Arab Gulf oil States are to my mind, deeply invested in sponsoring and sustaining these false genocide narratives. I’ve explained the general antisemitism from mainstream media reporting on casualties until I’m blue in the face. No one in the mainstream western press wants to solve the problem of accounting for the ratio between combatants killed and civilians killed. Most western reporting has been borderline antisemitic in their reporting on the plight of Palestinians for decades.
Palestinians also have a right to exist, but are far more oppressed by surrounding Arab states and Iran, who continue to use them as pawns in their pressure campaign to paint Israel as the only bad actor. Most Israelis and Palestinians have long been amenable to a two-state solution and there are ample examples of collective Israeli and Palestinian efforts for peace. Where is this reporting?
Iran has been oppressing her citizens for decades and this also includes the period under the Shah, as much as under the Extremist, theocratic regime in power since the 1979 revolution. Iran has also been the most dangerous global, state sponsor of terrorism for decades.
The Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East is no different to their approach to domestic policy, as that it is transactional, in support their favorite oligarchs, which in this case is, “big oil” and designed to afford geo-strategic realignment more favorable to Russia, China and India than US and allied interests.
US political interests by both parties are in fact undermining any potential opportunity for peace between Israel and the Palestinian people. This is due to overreliance on the false narratives being wielded by both parties for their own political pursuits.
The absence of any credible historical understanding about Israel and her neighbors by most Americans, has led to the acceptance of false political narratives disseminated by political partisans.
Another significant false narrative complicating the situation revolves around the false narrative that US Christian Nationalists actually care about Israel’s Jewish population. Christian Nationalists care only about the role that the land of Israel plays in their Book of Revelations and “End of Times” prophecies.
Below is a link to a Special Edition of TAT about the war in Gaza and links to many of the twenty or so reports I wrote on the war in Gaza and that provide not only my sources, but my professional insights based on a career in Counterterrorism and deep experience in the region.
The truthful narrative of what is occurring in the Middle East. First up, a short history of Israel’s battle for survival.
As we move into the narrative portion of this essay, I would like to remind everyone that I’ve written often and deeply about Israel, her enemies, the war in Gaza and just within the past two weeks, a four part series on the war in Iran and the region. These are well over twenty essays and which I will link to in this essay. The region is so far past any normalized definition of “complex” that I have spent over fifty years researching, traveling in and operating in the region. Even the immense amount of words produced in the aforementioned essays, are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Today’s essay is me telling the story in a more succinct manner, in order to make it more palatable for those who don’t want to read all of the background in the linked essays.
As is commonly said, the best place to start, is at the beginning. The Jewish calendar year is now, 5,786. Christianity is estimated to be 2,026 years by a modern calendar and Islam, 1,416 years, also by our modern calendar. Scholars will debate all of this but that is immaterial to today’s discussion. There is no doubt that Judaism came first and that both Christianity and Islam unapologetically share much of what is included in Jewish religious texts. All three of these major religious belief systems have had their descendants living in the region collectively, for at least 1,416 years and on the land now known as Israel. All three religions plus several others still live in modern Israel and mostly at peace with each other. So let’s stop the willful divisiveness, most often stirred into violent passions by outsiders.
Islam, controls roughly 99% of the land in the region, plus Iran, a different type of Islam than all of the other Muslim states. Quite literally, those Arab neighbors went to war with the new state of Israel, within minutes of her declaring her independence as the British Mandate expired on May 14th, 1948. The Jewish state is tolerant of all other religions within her borders, and with very few exceptions. Unfortunately, the “Bibi” Netanyahu government is one of those exceptions and is best defined as an Israeli version of MAGA. This means, extreme racism and xenophobia within the far-right political parties making up Bibi’s coalition government.
Israel’s democracy has it’s own distinct flavor and requires a coalition-styled government where many different perspectives of Israeli interests are represented. Bibi is no different than Trump other than being intelligent, an accomplished statesman, intensely military savvy and yes, corrupt as the day is long. Still when it comes to Israel’s defense, he and all Israelis know what it takes just to survive the endless Arab wars and terrorism since May of 1948. It’s part of growing up in Israel that all Israelis are well trained when it comes to protecting themselves and the state. There have been a couple of tragic modern events where national defense failed and those are the October 7th, 2023 Hamas and Iranian massacre. The other was the 1973 war that Israel eventually won, but at great cost to the nation.
What most don’t understand is that the Arab states in 1948 had asked what today we call Palestinians, were asked to leave by the attacking Arab neighboring nations until they had eliminated the Jews and then they could come home. The problem is that those Arab states lost the war. They would try again over and over again for the next 75 years. When outright war didn’t work, terrorism became the tactic de jour and which continues to this very day. Yasser Arafat of PLO infamy was along with his proxies were primary terrorist organizations assaulting Israel during this time period. Iran like most other Muslim states at the time of Israel’s statehood had large numbers of Jewish residents, but after 1948, roughly 90% of Jews living in Muslim lands were expelled, with many moving to Israel.
In my now long lifetime, terrorism has been the primary strategy to expel Jews from their nation, and is now often expressed in the genocidal saying, “from the river to the sea.” Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran and other nations still believe in either genocide for all Jews or their expulsion from all lands considered Muslim. In fact, both Hamas and Hizbollah have long maintained a call for genocide in their charters and founding documents. Israel and Egypt made peace with the Camp David Accords and Jordan has always had a reasonable relationship with Israel, even though other Arab nations have pressured Jordan on occasion to join in their wars against Israel. Palestinians that were originally resettled in Arab nations in 1948 are treated as second and third class citizens in those nations. To add to this Arab bias against their own, it has long been the West who has provided the majority of the aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
My first wife who served with me in the US Army, was an Israeli citizen with a Green Card at the time of our marriage in 1976. When first visiting Israel in 1984 to meet her extended family, some lived in the West Bank settlements. This was prior to the first Intifada and when traveling to Arab settlements with her family to do business or shop, the ease of the relationships between both “sides” was inspiring in the sense that, these old foes were working collectively towards peace and cooperation. Sadly, a Cold War Soviet Union, some of the Arab States and their terrorist proxies provoked what became the deep and violent clashes we’ve seen ever since. It wasn’t just the Soviets and Arabs either. These were years when former Israeli General and eventually Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took a hard path towards the opposition. This cost Israelis and Lebanese innocents along with combat troops on both sides horrifically.
The bottom-line to this short and admittedly simplified history of Israel’s survival, must be understood in order to understand what is now occurring in Iran and the region. In other words, Israel’s actions against Iran are far more than justified and to be commended. I wouldn’t even mind if the US supported in every possible manner except participating in actual combat operations, without sorting this out in congress and to the American people first. She is the size of New Jersey and before the 1967 war, was only 17 miles from East to West. Americans commenting without at least understanding these basic and well documented facts, simply have no idea what they are talking about, regardless of side.
The last thing I will say in this section is that I challenge any American to express whether they would be patient for 76 years, if we had neighbors constantly attacking us and terrorizing our citizens, just for existing
Tragically, this portion of the essay that deals with the US stumbling unaware and arrogantly into this war, is far easier to tell. It’s no secret that Trump and his deeply inexperienced cabinet are incompetent on a scale never seen in American history. One of the only qualified but deeply compromised officials resigned this morning, doing all possible to distance himself from this war and what comes next. Joe Kent may have had the experience but he was every bit as dishonest, racist and conspiracy theory oriented as the worst among this entire administration. He knew the lies about the intelligence and couldn’t run away fast enough. Good riddance. There is no longer any hope that someone with a moral spine and experience will sign up for his job. The entire administration, supported blindly by a spineless, Republican-led Congress refuses expertise, only cherishing blind loyalty.
Not one thing has been done to plan for protecting the Homeland from the globe’s most capable, state-sponsored terrorist organization, Iran’s Qods Forces. They and those who came before then have a long track record of heinous acts, dating back to the very beginning of the regime that came to power shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Although Trump claims publicly that we have had no terrorist attacks since the war began, this is a bald-faced lie. There have been at least three US terrorist attacks since the beginning of the war with Iran. The Michigan Synagogue attack, the Old Dominion University attack and an attack at an Austin bar are all related to the wars in the Middle East.
In the Persian Gulf and surrounding region, Iran’s attacks have been merciless and far more capable than our intelligence community recognized. This is nothing new in recent history. This was the same community that believed that Ukraine would fall in hours when faced with Putin’s genocidal invasion. Now with incompetent IC/ Intelligence Community leadership like Tulsi Gabbard at ODNI, John Ratcliffe at CIA, Kash Patel at the FBI and no one at DHS, we are for all intents and purposes, fully undefended from terrorism at home. If fully inexperienced Senator Markwayne Mullin is confirmed to head up DHS, things get far worse.
Terrorism at home is not even the worst of our current situation. The US and global economy continues to suffer the effects caused by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s energy flows. There is no hope in sight for this as that Iran’s capability to inflict paralyzing damage on any vessel attempting to transit the Strait. Markets are rocked daily in some of the world’s most important economies. China and India, powerful manufacturing economies and the second and third largest global economies, depend on a stable supply of energy to maintain their economies. Fuel prices at home here in the states, are pricing workers out of their means to get to work. Diesel, which powers the overwhelming majority of our shipping by truck has gone over $5.00 a gallon, for only the second time in our history.
Americans are suffering from coast to coast are suffering an affordability crisis, that continues to be little more than a talking point to the Trump administration. The administration’s transactional defining trait cares only about their own wealth and the power that comes from it. I once learned an old adage that power is the ultimate goal for authoritarian leaders. This was described as a four-legged stool where money, land, weapons and a willingness to employ them ruthlessly are the legs of the stool. No matter what, these factors define every one of leaders around the world that Trump prefers to our long-trusted allies, such as NATO.
Mentioning NATO is a perfect segue to the next point. Trump attempted to leave NATO during his first term. In the current term, he’s brutality treated NATO allies with rhetoric, assistance to Putin and continued off and on failure to support Ukraine’s defense. He’s abused the very alliance that provided a deterrent against Russian and the Soviet Union since its formation. He’s given Putin relief lately by making it far easier for him to sell sanctioned oil. India under Modi and China are the biggest benefactors outside Putin himself. Russia, cash poor depends on oil and is one of the only significant ways that Putin funds his war in Ukraine. Now both Putin and Trump have gone begging for assistance due to their failure when starting wars.
In today’s ISW, Institute for the Study of War, Special Report on the war with Iran, they make it clear that there are few answers to Iran’s threat to the Strait of Hormuz.
Key Takeaways "The United States and Israel are currently attempting to use force to prevent Iran from disrupting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. A weakened regime that remains in power after this war would be able to disrupt shipping whenever and for however long it pleases with little effort if its current, relatively limited, strike campaign on shipping proves sufficient to cause the US and Israel to surrender. A failure to demonstrate the will and ability to deny Iran the ability to disrupt traffic will make it enormously harder to deter Iran from future disruptions. Stopping the war in current conditions would thus represent a major strategic challenge that the United States or Israel would need to contend with in future rounds of conflict with a regime that will continue to be a committed adversary. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that it struck the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy headquarters in Tehran on March 16. It stated that commanders used the headquarters to direct IRGC Navy forces and plan operations against Israel and other regional countries. The IDF confirmed that it killed Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani, who was a long-time regime insider and had held many senior posts, in airstrikes in Tehran overnight on March 16 and 17. Larijani’s death likely weakens a key faction in competition with the Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei-IRGC nexus, but it will not end the ongoing competition. A long-time observer of drone operations in Ukraine suggested on March 17 that the drone footage posted by likely Iranian-backed Iraqi militia front group Saraya Awliya al Dam is consistent with a fiber optic first-person view (FPV) drone. The Iranian proxy group’s decision to advertise its possession of such a weapon would be an explicit threat aimed at the United States." - Iran Update Special Report, March 17, 2026 - Institute for the Study of War - Ria Reddy, Caroline Moorman, Adam Fattah, Benjamin Schmida, Avery Borens, Nidal Morrison, Samuel Shafiro, Brian Carter - March 17th, 2026
Finally, the money we are spending on this war, the deep depletion of our critical munitions, the acutely increased domestic terrorism threats, the now out of control blockade of 20% of the world’s oil and its impact on the global economy along with our ostracization from allies and friends, only serves to significantly weaken our national security, while imposing daily increasing hardship on all here in the states, can only be defined as failure on an epic scale.
Again, I support Israel’s need to put an end to Iran’s offensive capabilities and could have also supported US assistance in a supporting but non-combat role, had the slightest planning been done to mitigate the negative burdens on the American people. No effort at all was made to plan anything but the offensive military action. My support would have also required this dangerously lawless administration, to adhere to their legal requirements under the 1973 War Powers Resolution or Act, which requires them to coordinate with congress and to explain this war to the American people.
"The War Powers Resolution (WPR), first adopted in 1973 over the veto of President Richard Nixon, establishes presidential reporting requirements and parliamentary procedures intended to reaffirm the constitutional role of Congress in committing the United States into armed conflict abroad. The existence of these fast-track procedures provide an opportunity for Members of Congress to obtain a vote on—or more often in relation to—legislation that either authorizes the presidential use of U.S. Armed Forces or directs their removal from hostilities. When legislation has been introduced pursuant to the WPR, the House and Senate have often chosen to structure consideration in ways other than those prescribed by the statute. Before the President commits U.S. troops into hostilities abroad, the WPR directs that Congress first be consulted "in every possible instance." The WPR further mandates that the President report to Congress within 48 hours of deploying U.S. forces if Congress has not declared war or statutorily authorized the action. The President must continue reporting to Congress at least every six months for the duration of the engagement. Sixty days after the President first reports to Congress (or was required to do so), the use of the Armed Forces is automatically terminated unless Congress has declared war or passed legislation authorizing the action. The President may extend this 60-day period an additional 30 days by certifying in writing to Congress the need for continued use of force." - The War Powers Resolution - Congress.gov
We the American people still have no idea why the administration took this ill-advised action. As I explained in Part II of the four part series I’ve written over this past couple of weeks, I believe this war to be at least partially for oil and to position the Trump administration for further dominance over global resources. After all, Venezuela was about oil as will be Cuba next. Military strikes against targets in Nigeria is also about establishing a pretext for more aggression that leads directly to Nigeria’s oil resources. Columbia who also has oil wealth has also been threatened. We do not pay our military to secure more wealth for big oil. It’s not just oil either as that nations with mineral wealth such as Greenland are also high on Trump’s target list, as are Mexico and Canada, and for the same reasons.
This is the United States of America, not a “Banana Republic” where dictators enrich themselves via tax payer funded aggression. We are designed with checks and balances just to avoid becoming such a republic. Sadly, the Republican-led congress has turned over many of those checks and balances to the Executive Branch, rending it impotent as a check on power. This by the way, is the precise strategy of Project 2025, which is designed to empower the Executive Branch over the Legislative and Judicial. We cannot allow this administration and the Republican Party to take one more step towards their autocratic goals. History is littered with what happens to the people when they lose control of their style of government, to selfish and cruel autocrats or worse.
It will take bipartisan cooperation to rein in the madman in the White House. I hope that the GOP can finally muster up enough courage to do their job and stand up to Trump and his henchmen. It will take more that thoughts and prayers based on their behavior in the Trump era. Believe it or not, this is the short narrative of what you will not hear in much of today’s mainstream news. We all wish for innocent men, women and children to be safe throughout this and future conflicts in the region. We cannot do anything effective if we don’t stop living on false narratives and begin building solutions based on truth. It’s the only way that we can begin forging peace.
Thanks to all for your patience in reading this long essay.
Paul
Brilliant✨✨✨✨
For the most part, a well-written commentary which, when the unnecessary inflammatory rhetoric is expunged, provides a thought provoking and amazingly well balanced critique of the situation in the Middle East. I think this is the first time in living memory that you have actually publicly criticized the Progressive, neo-Bolshevik Political Left. I find this attempt at balance truly refreshing and I hope this is a harbinger of more fair and balanced analysis to come. Given that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States for the last 47 years, to say nothing of invading and occupying sovereign United States territory for that same length of time, one should be allowed to say that these kinetic actions are long, long overdue. De oppresso liber!!