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It was the same with Nixon and China.
It’s a widespread Republican problem — we assume that economic motivations animate our adversaries. We think that dangling the carrot of prosperity will alter their behaviors. We mistakenly thought that the wealth-generation brought by free trade would bring about fundamental change in China. We were half right. Free trade with China fundamentally changed one party to that trade, but it was us. The prospect of prosperity didn’t change China’s behavior. They don’t care about prosperity. They care about power. The same goes with Iran.
Trump keeps hoping that his vision of regional prosperity brought about by a de-radicalized Iran will motivate political change in Iran, along with Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. The problem is that Iran doesn’t care about prosperity. They care about power. Couple that with entrenched religious fanaticism and it’s clear why the current bombing/negotiation round robin has been fruitless. Trump is trying to buy them with a currency they don’t value. On the other hand, prosperity has teeth here in the US, and wartime inflation at home is driving public opinion against the war. The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran seems to be a “tomorrow” problem for many in the US.
Iran has to hang on for 99 days and they might get bailed out by US midterm elections. Trump had about 30 days to secure victory. Later than that and the fruits of victory will arrive too late to matter. We’ll see.
Discussion (321)
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I see he's begging them for talks again.
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He's worse than Obama when it comes to negotiating with terrorists.
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Do you? Where do you "see" that? Please share.
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That is unfair. Obama wanted a nuclear armed Iran. That was the obvious outcome of the Obama JCPA. A nuclear armed Iran would have been a counterweight to a nuclear armed Israel and the economic muscle of Saudi Arabia. Everything Trump is doing is to PREVENT Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. He's half-assing it (In my opinion) but the goal is diametrically opposed to Obama's
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Trump is using the only tool he can because, as folks can see, the "peace dividend" bought us a military that can fight only one war at a time, and only for six months. Heck, the ugly secret is we couldn't maintain the same ops tempo sinking drug boats in the Caribbean when we began this war. We can't change the nature of the enemy. We can only change the nature of the voters here at home. The incessant whining is annoying, They are asked to sacrifice very little, nothing compared to what their parents and grandparents were asked to sacrifice in WWII. Heck, have they asked states to lower state taxes on gasoline? Gas here hasn't reached Biden levels, yet. The negativity is particularly strong coming from Trump haters. I guess they just want to kick the can down the road but that is what got us here, a well-funded Iran, thanks to "pallets of cash," that has had time to stock boatloads of munitions and time to harden them deep under the surface while we were giving our munitions to Ukraine.
How about the "nattering nabobs of negativity" telling us their solution to the Iran nuclear problem.
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