Well, Trump is definitely disrupting things.\u00a0 The question is can he keep the whole machine from shaking itself apart.\u00a0 Venezuela doesn\u2019t bother me.\u00a0 That\u2019s not even a real country.\u00a0 It\u2019s a mafia neighborhood with a money-printing machine in the basement.<\/p>\n
Iran on the other hand is a much bigger and more dangerous neighborhood.\u00a0 Their economy is in tatters and the middle-class is so starved that they dared to face off in the streets against the thugs that Khamenei employs to silence all protestors, with a crow bar.\u00a0 Trump threw in a threat against the mullahs if they start murdering the protestors in the street.\u00a0 And that is his place as leader of the \u201cfree world\u201d I guess.\u00a0 But is it just an idle threat?\u00a0 And will these protests really go anywhere?<\/p>\n
The last time protests accomplished anything in Iran was 1979 when the Islamists overthrew the Shah of Iran and brought the Ayatollah Khomeini out of exile to begin the Islamic Republic.\u00a0 And that kicked off the Islamic Revolution by holding Americans hostage for over a year.\u00a0 Is it possible that enough Iranians are angry enough to risk torture and death to kick the mullahs out of power and turn Iran back into a modern country?\u00a0 I guess it\u2019s possible but why now?<\/p>\n
I read that inflation in Iran is currently at 43%.\u00a0 That is definitely getting close to some kind of breaking point.\u00a0 But standing up to men with machine guns and torture cells takes a lot of guts.\u00a0 I\u2019m far from convinced that anything will come of the Iranian protests.\u00a0 Now maybe it will soften up the regime into cutting a deal with the West.\u00a0 Maybe they\u2019ll agree to end their funding of terrorist groups and in that way begin to have economic sanctions lifted against their oil exports other commercial enterprises.<\/p>\n
Now, all of this going on at the same time that Ukraine and Russia are battling to the death may not be a coincidence.\u00a0 Both Venezuela and Iran are Russian allies and trading partners.\u00a0 These situations may be an attempt to destabilize the Russian economy.\u00a0 Sanctions against Russia have been skirted in part by using oil tankers that trade outside of the western countries and this is the same strategy that Iran and Venezuela have used.\u00a0 Perhaps Trump is ratcheting up the pressure on all of these \u201cshadow fleets\u201d to destabilize the economies of all three of these countries.<\/p>\n
And maybe it will work.\u00a0 Iran is badly hurting and Russia is beginning to suffer from the combination of sanctions and war fatigue.\u00a0 And Venezuela was a sitting duck for US military and covert attacks.\u00a0 Maybe Trump will get a trifecta of victories.\u00a0 He might even get his Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019ll have to say it\u2019s an exceedingly dangerous game he\u2019s playing.\u00a0 There must be dozens of Iranian sleeper cells that snuck in during Biden\u2019s open border policy.\u00a0 What if the mullahs grow desperate and decide to spread some chaos in the land of the \u201cGreat Satan\u201d before they lose control of their own country?\u00a0 I get so tired of these places on the map that are nothing but misery for their own people and anyone that gets involved with them.\u00a0 Donald, be careful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, Trump is definitely disrupting things.\u00a0 The question is can he keep the whole machine from shaking itself apart.\u00a0 Venezuela doesn\u2019t bother me.\u00a0 That\u2019s not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[2260,3107,16,4457,5112],"class_list":["post-35683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-trump","tag-iran","tag-russia","tag-trump","tag-us-foreign-policy-meddling","tag-venezuela"],"yoast_head":"\n