There is an old and familiar saying about difficult personal or social situations. When a weak or broken personality is faced with a difficult or dire situation the individual ignores the problem and pretends to be confident and cheerful about what is to come. Here, the individual is said to be “whistling past the graveyard.”
This article follows up from last week’s episode of Minor Issues where I reviewed the Trump administration, Chairman Warsh, and Secretary Bessent and showed them to be “playing games.” They are trying to solve massive long-term problems—that are now being realized—with short-term maneuvers, instead of addressing and solving the problem; like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound or using wallpaper to cover up the structural damage from an earthquake.
Recently Secretary Bessent announced, “Operation Economic Outcast.” This is yet another program of economic sanctioning against Iran over the last half century and now its trading partners that promises to sever the economic lifelines that sustain the Iranian regime.
Secretary Bessent called it the “economic D-Day” of our generation. He appeared confident, cheerful, and relaxed, predicting that oil prices could soon fall to $40 per barrel. He also recently proclaimed that he now had inside information about currency policy of foreign nations and dared traders to bet against him: “the house.”
But was this false bravado? It certainly appears to be an act of denial based on current and likely future conditions. His policy ignores reality and reveals his lack of courage to stand up to the facts and his boss, President Trump. Here are some objective facts:
- These sanctions are both illegal and immoral.
- Iran has suffered through and survived a half a century of US sanctions. Iran has not been materially hurt by recent attacks relative to the heavy damage Iran has inflicted on the 17 US bases circling Iran, Israel, and the Gulf States, many of which we have effectively abandoned.
- Iran has the two economic and military superpowers of Eurasia on its side while the US is struggling to maintain its show of force half a world away from its homebase. US forces are running very low on key ammunition, general supplies, military morale, and have few military options available. Iran has deployed two weapons systems for the first time in the last two weeks and has captured our brand new super-secret spy submarine.
- Iran has been the singular nation trying to undermine genocide, and—despite the assassination of its spiritual leader (who vehemently opposed Iran having nuclear weapons for religious reasons), and its political leadership who were actively engaged in negotiations in good faith, and the intentional murder of Iranian children and civilians—Iran agreed to our MOU (the memorandum of understanding) which President Trump also signed on June 17 but refuses to comply with.
- While the US (and Israel) have imposed a comprehensive information ban on war events, the basic timeline indicates that it is the US and Israel that have mostly initiated military violence which Iran then retaliates in an escalating tit-for-tat. At first, they retaliated with equal force, but they have recently warned they will begin retaliating with overcompensating force to encourage an end to conflict.
This foreign adventure in the Middle East has made our primary economic and political problems much worse at home and for innocent citizens around the world. Let’s ignore that issue and concentrate on how well the administration’s policies are doing “isolating” Iran.
For Iran’s part, they have signed a new nuclear power agreement with Russia. Iranian oil sells instantly on world markets. Standing with Iran, China has reaffirmed international law and the illegality of the new sanctions under international law.
For the US’s part things have not been going well in terms of isolating the enemy. Rather, we seem to be increasingly isolating ourselves from the rest of the world.
- On August 7, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey signed a mutual defense pact called the Mecca Defense Alliance. Just on the surface ink of the agreement, it signals a strong move away from reliance on the US defense.
- The legislation to integrate US and Israeli military and intelligence (more than they already are) remains stalled as part of the broader FY 2027 National Defense Authorization Act due to widespread voter opposition across the United States where support for the Israeli State has plummeted.
- President Trump broke off trade negotiations with Canada, imposed harmful tariff rates on Americans and Canadians, and initiated a trade war with Canada.
- President Trump also threatened to prevent all trade with countries that have a trade deficit unless the Fed cuts rates. As the ultimate in economic buffoonery, countries with an overall trade deficit are the only ones that can invest in the US economy and buy US government bonds.
- The Petrol Dollar deal has fallen apart. The deal helped prop up the value of the dollar and the price of US government securities, but now OPEC countries are accepting other currencies and not buying as many US government securities.
- Foreign purchases of our government bonds have plummeted; sales have risen (with little old Norway now planning to sell $80 billion?) despite the spike up in interest rates. Gold now makes up almost an equal share of central bank reserves compared to long-term US government bonds.
Leading experts across many different categories of knowledge consider the US position in the conflict tenuous at best, even catastrophic. Despite the US military successfully conducting multiple assignments against Iran it has failed to achieve President Trump’s four goals. Through no fault of their own, our military is now further away from victory and Iran is in a position of what experts have called “strategic dominance.”
Based on public statements and leaks, the only hope in the Trump administration for “victory” is the engineering of a successful coup against the Iranian regime, possibly with the US or Israel executing a false flag operation. A false flag is when a country’s spy organization commits a heinous act against its own citizens or other innocents, but blame falls on the enemy.
This would be yet another direct violation by the United States of international law. Ironically, it was our illegal engineering of a coup against the Iranian government in 1953 that contributed to this situation in the first place.
