Israel, Iran and the USA
A depressing Triad of old men playing with fire
They might as well be in an older citizens’ Chinese gang together: Trump at 79, Netanyahu at 75, Khamenei at 86. Together, they are apparently more than content to fan the flames of a major Middle East conflict. And, in sending aircraft close to the edge of the fighting (in Cyprus), our pathetic attempt at a leader, one Keir Starmer, is apparently happy to help things along. He has said he’s defending Israel. Excuse me? Israel attacked Iran. This is truly the politics of the insane, an inversion of the truth even Trump might balk at. And, as for Starmer’s weasel words of ‘de-escalation’, how exactly does this one work? Sending lethal weapons into a volatile region is ‘de-escalating’? As mad as it gets.
While Netanyahu is unquestionably pleased that the world’s attention is being diverted from Gaza where his genocide is well under way, the Iranians, ever the mischief makers, are happy that they have an excuse to attack Western interests. Expect the price of fuel to rocket should they chose to sink a few tankers in the Gulf or the Straits of Hormuz. And, in Moscow, our friend Putin must be rubbing his hands in glee at the thought of European governments having to attend to the fire sale this is causing, their attention straying from Ukraine.
Trump flip-flops every hour or two. He was allegedly negotiating a ‘deal’ (treaty in the parlance of the rest of humanity) with Iran over halting its development of nuclear weapons. Could that be similar to the one he casually tore up eight years ago? The current conflict, incidentally completelyoutside the strictures of all international law by Netanyahu and his maniac Government, suits Israel in this regard too: they don’t want a deal with Iran made by the USA, under any circumstances. And so, the wheels turn, bringing the region ever closer to the brink. (Small note to self: perhaps we should rename the USA the ISA – Insane States of America. So, the ‘I’s have it: Iran, Israel, ISA.)
Back in the USA (USSR-lite?), Trump is doing his utmost to cement his so-far rickety dictatorship, invading California with US Marines (completely illegal under the US Constitution), inciting extreme political violence in place of dialogue, whenever he opens his mouth (all too frequently). The USA, I have argued before, is heading for a second civil war. Perhaps that’s what the authors of Project 2025 have wanted all along. Trump, their ‘useful idiot’ as Lenin dubbed fellow travellers of the Bolsheviks, seems oblivious to any of this, like he gives a shit in the first place. The evidence is piling up that he and his family are too busy for democracy, heavily engaged in enriching themselves at the expense of the US taxpayer.
Then, there was that parade last Saturday. Stephen Marche, the author of The Next Civil War (about the USA’s quite probable future), writes: ‘The primary effect of the parade was to demonstrate an immense weakness, in Trump and in the American people. It was a parade reminiscent of the most vacuous regimes in history. In 1977, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, the leader of the Central African Republic, declared himself emperor and indulged in a coronation that imitated the coronation of Napoleon I in immaculate detail. He even went so far as to use eight white Norman horses to pull the carriage, but the French animals were not used to the climate and several died. Trump’s parade felt like a lazier version of that.
‘The spectre of defeat hovered over the entire celebration of supposed strength. The last time the US military threw a parade was 1991, which was the last time they triumphed over an opponent, the last time their war machine produced the results they had been attempting. The US has not won a war since then. But hey, if you can’t win a war, at least you can throw a parade.
‘Except they couldn’t even throw a parade.
‘The end of the show was almost too perfect. A frail Lee Greenwood, a country singer long past his “best before” date, sang God Bless America raggedly, lousily. “Our flag still stands for freedom”, he sang. “They can’t take that away.” Oh, can’t they? Trump at the centre fidgeted like a rich kid bored with his servants and toys. The whole business was like watching some sordid fairy tale: the unloved boy who everybody hated grew up to force the American people to throw him a birthday party and give him a flag. And then almost nobody came.
‘What’s true of men is also true of countries: the more they need to show off how strong they are, the weaker they are. The weakness, rather than the strength, is terrifying. Whoever is so scared and so needy as to need that parade is capable of anything. That goes for Trump, and that goes for his country.’
As the old song has it: anything goes.
This week: Tim read The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy for at least the second time. It’s a typical tale of Hardy’s, set in his fictional-factional Wessex of thwarted desires, missed opportunities and misunderstandings, the bosky background serving as a metaphor for the entanglements humans make of their lives. Hardy trained as an architect and one of his interior church pieces was recently discovered a few hundred metres from where I am writing this. In his time, some of his subject matter was heavily criticised, notably in Jude the Obscure (working class hero, co-habitation, near incest) and in Tess of the D’Urbervilles (pregnant single abandoned mother). His real fame in his lifetime, though, was to be found in his poetry, not his fiction for, after the attacks on Jude the Obscure, he never wrote a novel again, although he lived for another 35 years.
Quote of the week: ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced’. James Baldwin. Wise words from a master of the English language and a man well ahead of his time. As true of one’s own life as that of our so-called leaders and – I’m joking – ‘statesmen’ and women.
Music of the week: Sibelius’ Violin Concerto, haunting, passionate, near impossible to play from the first chords to the astonishingly complex and fiendish finger-work and bowing required to master the finale. There is a superb version available, Kyung Wha Chung as the soloist with the LSO conducted by Andre Previn on Decca (1996). If you would like to witness just how brilliantly another soloist handles the piece, watch Hilary Hahn on YouTube with the New Zealand SO. Now, she owns the work completely and has, indeed, made it her star concert tour de force. Watch her – it’s mesmerising – handle the first movement’s cadenza and the last few dozen bars in the staggeringly difficult finale. The audience behave impeccably, not a sound between the movements. Unsurprisingly, they erupt at the end; and so they should. This performance had me jump clean out of my seat at the end, too.