Iran is not great
This is a pretty high level talk on the Iran situation by the CFR. Its pretty good to see how the power structure in the US views the Iran War. There's a lot of insight into the conflict, and even though it is the CFR I dont think the thinking and conclusions of the discussion panel are wrong here.
Key takeaways:
- Starting the war was a blunder
- Trump and his immediate circle are responsible for this war, everyone else was against it
- Trump is a bad at making deals
- Ending the war will be very challenging
- We've hurt Iran militarily but Iran is winning strategically
- We are not going to achieve our objectives
Looks like just another drain on resources whilst pretending to fulfill messianic prophecy.
Agreed.
I think we should fully consider the possibility that the Venezuela regime change was set up to lure Trump into attempting regime change in Iran.
Here are articles claiming that Maduro was set up by people within his government:
https://www.piratewireservices.com/p/was-maduro-handed-over-by-his-own
https://colombiaone.com/2026/01/03/how-maduro-fell-betrayal-military/
Is it reckless speculation to hypothesize that Russia and China used their extensive ties to set Maduro up as a fall guy so that when Netanyahu, Hegseth and Kushner went to Trump demanding he attack Iran for regime change his bloated ego and megalomania would agree?
Trump has extensive talks with Putin, one wonders what their conversations were like leading up to the Iran adventure. I somehow doubt Putin seriously tried to dissuade him. In fact all the evidence points to a rather milquetoast Russian response perhaps calculated to induce Trump to commit more to the adventure:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jzwpvz9jo
This hypothesis requires a very high level intelligence planning, and an intimate knowledge of how the target asset (Trump) would behave when given prompting, which is something that only Russia & perhaps Israel would know from their long term handling of him.
This however would not be the first time the Soviets have strategically used underestimation to their advantage. The winter war convinced Hitler that the Soviet Union would fall easily to the Wehrmacht, remarking to his generals: "The whole facade is rotten, all we have to do is kick in the door."
I guess we have a peace deal for the 100th time
What's being sold as a deal isn't one, its a Memorandum of Understanding. It's basically an email that says we won't attack Iran and will negotiate further with the understanding that in the negotiations we're going to give Iran a lot of money for not attacking anyone and not having nukes. The Roosevelt doctrine was speak softly and carry a big stick, the Trump doctrine is speak loudly and have a limp...
Anyways its still not a peace deal and Iran is going to be our enemy as long as they are run by Islamic communists. Put yourself in the shoes of Iran we murdered their leaders while they were in talks with us, we murdered their new leaders wife and kids, would you give up a nuclear weapons program if you were him? The president of the United States is publicly begging you every day to stop attacking. If you get nukes and you already have the delivery system then that's a game changer. All I can say is that we are a lot closer to the Albert Pike WW3 middle east nuke scenario that we were 6 months ago. To do the alien deception and usher in the new age Noahidism the religious war between Muslims Christians and Jews probably has to happen. Just like Vatican 2 probably wouldn't have happened without WW2, It would be hard for vast majority of Christians Muslims and Orthodox Jews to hold to their faith If Jerusalem and Mecca get nuked.