Ambassador Chas Freeman: Trump read the spirit of the age as genocidal.

 

“I think Donald Trump has correctly sensed the zeitgeist, the spirit of our age, which is genocidal. Basically, he’s stating an intention to commit genocide against the people of Iran. And people sit there, and they say nothing. Why do they say nothing? First, they may regard him as a comic character, a tragicomic character who has the habit of blustering and not following through. So they may not take him seriously. But I think there is every reason to take him seriously, because I think Donald Trump is a bully who respects only two kinds of people or nations. One is the powerful, and he faces in the United States a very powerful Zionist lobby which remains committed to the destruction of Iran. And he is enthralled to that lobby, to donors from that lobby who take their cues, their direction, from the fascist government in Israel. And the second kind of person he respects is those who can blackmail him, and the Israelis apparently have the ability to do that.

"The Epstein files are one of the reasons—several reasons—that Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, prematurely adjourned the House until after the midterm elections. The other reason was that it looked very much as though Thomas Massie’s introduction of a bill of impeachment with eight counts of impeachment against the Secretary of Defense, self-styled Secretary of War, Hegseth, was going to pass. The Epstein files were part of this. So were several other issues. You can see that the Speaker of the House, who probably is the least independent such person in our history, is nonetheless aware that Trump’s control of the Republican slight majority in the House and the larger majority in the Senate is slipping away.

"We’re in an age where open genocide is not just committed but boasted about by Israel in Palestine. The same thing is now happening in Lebanon. Who’s doing anything about any of this? People aren’t even wringing their hands about it. They’re just sitting there silently tolerating it. The intolerable has become tolerable, and Donald Trump is the avatar of the intolerable.

"So what will Donald Trump do? What does he do when confronted with an intolerable reality that he chooses to deny? There’s lots of evidence that he’s capable of a volte-face and abandoning the threats that he made. But there’s also evidence that he will carry out the threats. Look at the decapitation of Venezuela, the invasion of that. Look at the two wars begun by Trump against Iran in partnership with Israel—one last year in June, one this year on February 28th. So I can’t rule out the possibility.

"What I will say is I think there will be enormous opposition to this from the US military—whether it’s sufficient to produce a sit-down strike, in effect passive resistance, or mutiny of some sort, or a stimulated coup d’état, I do not know. The US military, despite Pete Hegseth’s efforts to politicize it and turn it into an arm of white nationalism, Christian nationalism, remains deeply indoctrinated in constitutionalism and dedicated to the notion that illegal orders must be resisted. So I don’t know what would happen, but I don’t think you can rule out the possibility that Donald Trump’s threats are both sincere and intended to be implemented.”