The Class Struggle: Is the Trump Regime Pulling Away from Israel?

1). “Is Trump ABANDONING Israel? With Mouin Rabbani, Vijay Prashad & Trita Parsi”, May 13, 2025, Katie Halper interviews Mouin Rabbani, Trita Parsi & Vijay Prashad, Katie Halper Show, duration of video 1:34:58, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aVD79L2FKY >.

2). “Iran Analyst: Regional War is Coming Unless Israel Stops Its Attack”, May 18, 2025, Brian Becker interviews Professor Mohammad Marandi, The Socialist Program: Breakthrough News, duration of audio 58:28, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEMpKo06G5I >.

3). “Putin Turns on Trump as Ukraine War Enters Deadliest Phase Yet! | Andrei Martyanov & Mark Sleboda”, May 18, 2025, Nima Alkhorshid interviews Andrei Martyanov & Mark Sleboda, Dialogue Works, duration of video 47:30, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pae_RubF4_Q&t=48s >.

4). “Larry C. Johnson & Col. Larry Wilkerson: Trump’s Bold Middle East Gambit, Russia-Ukraine Collapse?”, May 16, 2025, Nima Alkhorshid interviews Larry C. Johnson & Col. Larry Wilkerson, Dialogue Works, duration of video 1:21:24, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wksOI_KEaAU >.

5). “Yemen Taught Trump THIS Brutal Truth – You Won’t Believe It | Scott Ritter and Mohammad Marandi”, May 17, 2025, Nima Alkhorshid interviews Scott Ritter and Mohammad Marandi, Dialogue Works, duration of video 30:15, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wksOI_KEaAU >.

~~ recommended by dmorista ~~

Introduction by dmorista: Item 1)., “Is Trump ABANDONING Israel? ….”, and Item 2)., “Iran Analyst: Regional War ….”, provide left-of-center analysis along with some good discussion of the domestic U.S. political situation, and how that affects the options available to the U.S. Ruling Class in contending with Iran. Item 3)., “Putin Turns on Trump ….”, includes some good commentary by Mark Sleboda who also understands and considers how internal U.S. conditions and events affect the options available to U.S. rulers. Item 4)., “Larry C. Johnson ….”, includes comments by both Larry Johnson an intelligent conservative analyst and Col. Lawrence Wilkerson who was Collin Powell's assistant for years. Item 5)., contains interesting commentary by Scott Ritter (who says he tried to give Trump the benefit of the doubt but now can no longer do so as well as by the Iranian Proffesor Marandi. Item 6)., “Larry C. Johnson on Douglas Macgregor: ….”, includes comments by Johnson and some comments by Macgregor who criticizes the Trump Regime from a right-wing perspective.

The recent visit of Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, but that tellingly did not include even a brief stop in Israel, made it obvious that there is some significant resistance, on the part of some of Trump's advisors and handlers, to the continued dominance of Israel and the Israel Lobby over U.S. foreign policy in SW Asia and the Horn of Africa. There has for a long time been major resistance, on the part of the U.S. military, to participating in an attack on Iran; resistance that has been bolstered by the bloody nose inflicted on the US Navy (USN) by the Houthi forces operating in the Red Sea against the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman. Apparently, the USN command was glad to be able to withdraw the Truman Combat Group out of the confined waters of the Red Sea and get the Nimitz Class Nuclear Powered Super Carrier, and its attendant escort vessels, out into more open and safer waters.

The campaign against the Houthis, conducted ostensibly to protect commercial shipping transiting the Suez Canal, cost the U.S. around $1 billion worth of equipment and expended most of the munitions carried by the combat group, the losses included three $70 - $80 million F-18As and about 20 drones that cost around $40 million apiece. The U.S.S. Carl Vinson, another Nimitz Class Nuclear Powered Super Carrier, that has replaced its F-18As with F-35Cs was operating in the area; and there are reports of the Houthis nearly shooting down an F-35C, which is the latest and most modern fighter-bomber in the U.S. inventory.

As I pointed out in an earlier post here, “Two Faces of Late U.S. Imperial Capitalism: ….”, posted on May 18, 2025: in his media statements Trump claimed “that the Houthis had capitulated to him when, in reality, Trump had capitulated to the Houthis who are still free to interdict shipping bound for, owned by, or flagged to Israel.” These skirmishes, and their supposed ending, took place while the buildup to a possible war with Iran continues. Trump has also stated that he does not want a war with Iran, but meanwhile his regime is posting hardline public statements, with some notably emanating from Trump's trusted negotiator Steven Charles Witkoff. These statements declare that the U.S. willl not tolerate any uranium enrichment by Iran, not even to 1%. Iran currently enriches uranium up to about 3 ½% a level at which it is useful for fission power plants that generate electricity. The Israel-lobby's toadies, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, are all loudly calling for a zero enrichment position and want to enforce it with an invasion of Iran if necessary. The Israel Lobby and the Israelis are the loudest and most successful actors when it come to military assistance and weapons procurement and gifts. They clearly want the U.S. to attack Iran along with Israeli military forces but there is tremendous resistance to this within the command structure of the U.S. military. The U.S. has limited numbers of ground troops and imposing conscription would be problematic to say the least (the U.S.,Empire, like the British Empire before it depends primarily on naval power, now augmented by aerial and space forces, and only has limited numbers of ground troops organized in “Expeditionary Forces”).

It will certainly be a major change if the U.S. actually stops allowing its foreign policy for SW Asia, and North Africa / Horn of Africa to be dictated by the farthest Right Wing factions of the Israeli political scene. But that is easier said than done, the Zionists and shills for Israel are deeply burrowed into the U.S. political, military, academic, think-tank, media and socioeconomic fabric. As I quoted before James Petras pointed out how the militarism of U.S. Imperial policy operates in an article he wrote some 10 years ago, he noted that:

“There is no fixed strategy devised by a cohesive Washington policy elite guided by a unified strategic vision of the US Empire.

“In order to understand the current, seemingly endless wars, we have to examine the shifting coalitions of elites, who make decisions in Washington but not always primarily for Washington. Some factions of the policy elite have clear conceptions of the American empire, but others improvise and rely on superior political or lobbying power to successfully push their agenda in the face of repeated failures and suffer no consequences or costs. ….

“Washington: Military Workshop of the World

“War and violent regime change are the exclusive means through which the US now advances its foreign policy. However, the various Washington war-makers among the power elite do not form a unified bloc with common priorities. Washington provides the weapons, soldiers and financing for whichever power configuration or faction among the elite is in a position, by design or default, to seize the initiative and push their own war agenda. ….

“The decision to invade Afghanistan was not opposed by any of Washington’s militarist elite factions. They all shared the idea of using a successful military blitz or cake-walk against the abysmally impoverished Afghanistan as a way to rabble rouse the American masses into accepting a long period of intense and costly global warfare throughout the world. (Emphasis added)

“Washington's militarist elites fabricated the link between the attacks on 9/11/2001 and Afghanistan's governing Taliban and the presence of the Saudi warlord Osama Bin Laden. …. destroying Afghanistan was to be the initial test to gauge the highly manipulated and frightened American public's willingness to shoulder the burden of a huge new cycle of imperial wars. This has been the only aspect of the invasion of Afghanistan that could be viewed as a policy success it made the costs of endless wars acceptable to a relentlessly propagandized public.”

U.S. military and covert forces, along with various proxies and allies, were used to attack Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Mozambique, and Yemen over the period from the 9-11 events to the present day. But always Iran remained the impregnable redoubt, attack against which the political and military institutions of the U.S. vetoed. Nonetheless as Petras points out:

“Israel has been the biggest winner with no cost for the Jewish State. The American Zionist policy elite literally handed them the services of the largest and richest armed forces in history: the US. Israel-Firsters played a decisive role among Washington policy-makers and Tel Aviv celebrated in the streets! They came, they dominated policy and they accomplished their mission: Iraq (and millions of its people) was destroyed.

“The US gained an unreliable, broken colony, with a devastated economy and systematically destroyed infrastructure and without the functioning civil service needed for a modern state. To pay for the mess, the American people faced a spiraling budget deficit, tens of thousands of American war casualties and massive cuts in their own social programs. Crowning the Washington war-makers victory was the disarticulation of American civil and constitutional rights and liberties and the construction of a enormous domestic police state. (Emphasis added)

“After the Iraq disaster, the same influential Zionist faction in Washington lost no time in demanding a new war against Israel's bigger enemy namely Iran. In the ensuing years, they failed to push the US to attack Teheran but they succeeded in imposing crippling sanctions on Iran.” (Emphasis added)

The machinations of the Zionists and Israelis directed the U.S. into the disastrous war on Iraq, and as Petras notes with the result that:

“The effect has been to transform the most advanced, secular Arab country into an Afghanistan and in less than 15 years destroying centuries of culture and community.

“The goal of the Zionist strategy was to destroy Iraq as Israel's regional rival. The cost of over a million Iraqi dead and many million refugees did not prick any conscience in Washington or Tel Aviv.

“After all, Washington's traditional militarist faction picked up the bill (costing hundreds of billions) which they passed on to the American taxpayers (well over one trillion dollars) and used the deaths and suffering of tens of thousands of American troops to provide a pretext for spreading more chaos.” (Emphasis added)

(See, “Wars: US Militarist Factions in Command”, Nov 19, 2015, James Petras, James Petras Website, at < https://petras.lahaine.org/wars-us-militarist-factions-in-command/ >)

The struggle inside the Trump Regime over whether or not the U.S. will attack Iran is certainly not yet finished.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx