| But Trump literally did those things in that order : - Ripped up the JCPOA in 2016, freezing Iranian assets while imposing maximum-pressure sanctions; not even lifting them during Covid, blocking medicines and essential supplies which causing untold number of avoidable deaths. Biden also kept most of these sanctions in place during his term. - Initiated a currency crisis to instigate "popular uprisings" in December of last year ( which immediately followed Netanyahu's sixth visit to the White House and in which Netanyahu secured Trump's go-ahead). The US Treasury secretary boasted : "We created a dollar shortage in the country. The Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded” - On cue, the CIA , Mossad coordinated and armed the "peaceful protestors" with Mossad openly tweeting in farsi : "Go out together into the streets. The time has come... We are with you in the field."
Also Mike Pompeo : "Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.". As the USS Gerald Ford was making its way over to the Middle-east from murder and kidnapping operations in the Caribbean, Trump truth-socialled to iranians to "KEEP PROTESTING -TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!" and "HELP IS ON ITS WAY," - Trump recently also admitted to Fox New that they sent lots of weapons to Iranians via the Iraqi Kurds : "We sent a lot of guns to the Iranian protesters, we sent guns through the Kurds, I think the Kurds kept them." All of this was on top of decades-worth of covert operations, assassinations, sabotage operations, and (let's be honest for once) terrorist attacks via various proxies. All garnished with agitprop laundered through the mainstream media, "independent media" , NGOs, think-tanks, human-rights and activists groups. Pretty much anything we hear about Irani s filtered through this states-funded, intelligence-directed machinery. It is when these combined efforts failed that Trump finally resorted to threatening to destroy their civilization (which regardless of the means employed or who was in charge was always the endgame because that was the only outcome satisfactory to the Israelis) If i had to guess where they failed, it would be doing all this on the back of the Genocidal war in Gaza and Israel's general invasion of the middle-east, plus the 12-day war and the countless live-streamed war-crimes not to mention the countless failed wars and "interventions" in the middle-east; There has been a mass-awakening about Israel's true nature and ambitions and how it has been the driving force for all these wars and behind the foreign policy of the US and its allies w.r.t. Iran. Also alienating, bullying and betraying your allies whether the Europeans, or the Kurds or anyone else, probably didn't help. |
The sanctions never worked against the regime, they just brought Iran closer to Russia and China. Russia and Iran have not always been best friends (even recently).
Yes, the US/Israel initiated a currency crisis to instigate "popular uprisings" but they did it at the wrong time, the whole game is knowing when the situation is ripe and they screwed it up.
I would argue that the 2025 12-day war was also a huge mistake, you only get the element of surprise once. The 12-day war and the 2026 operations should have been combined.
They took away from the 2025 strikes that Iran was weak and wouldn’t respond beyond symbolic strikes…and that was wrong.
The whole thing feels rushed and it’s probably because of the midterm elections coming up, Trump thought he could get it done and that the news cycle would move on by November.