In the largest terms, I think two things are going on.

First, Iran and Israel have been on a tripwire for a good while now—this should be news to no one. Can anyone imagine that things are otherwise than both regimes being fully-prepared to take preemptive action?

Obviously it is entirely possible that when one of them does take preemptive action, this will become nuclear very quickly, quite possibly from the very start. Indeed, the most likely scenario is that Israel makes a preemptive strike, and that strike could very well take the form of their using one of their highly-advanced military aircraft to drop a hydrogen bomb on Tehran.

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So here’s my entirely speculative tea-leaf reading: If there’s a hidden agenda behind the urgency to remove Trump, one that might actually garner the votes of Republican Senators, it is to replace him with a president who will be a more reliable and effective leader for a military attack on Iran that Israel wants to initiate before next November. Spring is the cruelest season for launching wars.”

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The Left I grew up with was the Sixties Left, and they used to be a great source of historical memory, and of anti-imperialism, civil rights, and ordinary working-people empowerment.

The current Left, and whatever array of Democratic-Party supporters, have received their marching orders, finally, from commander Pelosi (in reality, something more like a lieutenant), so the two weeks or so of “immense concern” about Iran has given way again to the extraordinarily-important and solemn work of impeachment.

But then, impeachment is about derailing the three main aspects of Trump’s agenda, so you see how that works. Indeed, perhaps the way this is working is that Trump did in fact head off, whatever one thinks of the methods, a war with Iran (at this time! – and I do think this is but a temporary respite), or more accurately, a war between Iran and Israel that the U.S. would almost certainly be sucked into immediately.

So, it’s back to Plan A for the Democrats and the “Left” that would be laughably absurd if it wasn’t so reactionary, to get the neoliberal/ neoconservative endless-war agenda back on track, so that the march toward Iran can continue sooner rather than later. For now, the more spectacular the failure of this impeachment nonsense, the better!

https://off-guardian.org/2020/01/19/iran-trump-and-the-neoliberal-neoconservative-compact/