Iran’s nuclear program was one of the most transparent in the world thanks to the nuclear deal with Obama, which Trump left. With the war, it’s difficult to know what Iran is doing as far as nuclear research and building.
The war may have strengthened the Iranian regime by giving Iran an outside enemy that is attacking them. When Trump talks about erasing civilization and shares maps of Iran breaking up, that facilitates Iranians believing that the US and Israel are after Iran, not just the current regime.
Europe used to trust the United States to store their gold. Due to Trump’s erratic and aggressive behavior and comments, some of them are moving their gold back to Europe.
Iran is hurting from the US blockade, but the Iranian government cares more about staying in power than the welfare of its own people. There is limited internal resistance to the regime, but it’s not clear how or if this will escalate to overthrow it.
Normally, if a group was taking territory to help them limit traffic in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait while also successfully striking an important Saudi pipeline, the US would intervene militarily to keep the oil flowing. That the US so far has chosen not to directly intervene, shows what hectic times we are in with the, so far, failed war in Iran.
Trump is hoping that an agreement with the Houthis where only Saudi tankers are affected will hold.
Saudi Arabia is under attack, where are its treaty allies Turkey and Pakistan?
The AfD wants Germany to distance relations with Europe and the United States while getting closer to Russia and China. This is weird for a party that claims to want Germany first and to focus on distinct German culture and values. Shouldn’t authoritarian Asiatic empires be the opposite of German values and culture? And don’t other European countries and the US have much closer values and culture? Long-term, and worst case scenarios, China and Russia are empires that would force the world under their authoritarian heel if they could. Despite America’s many flaws and self-interests, its goals are freedom, trade, and defense. True imperialism is antithetical to its ethos. When the AfD says German values, it seems to mean no immigrants and: imperial, anti-enlightenment, anti-Western, and fundamentally unChristian values.
The Jews accepted the UN partition, although some did hope to adjust the borders. The Palestinians rejected it and chose war instead. The surrounding Arab states were preparing for war the whole time, intending to take land for their countries.
The United States indirectly helped the Arabs by suspending the importation of arms into the region The UK helped by selling arms to Arab militias and blocking additional Jewish migration. Although, the US was the first to recognize Israel when they declared independence.
The different countries and groups against the Jews had different interests and different levels of commitment.
Many of the villages that the Jews forced to evacuate, were supporting Arab militias attacking Jews, so having them evacuate was a defensive strategy to not leave a population of enemy combatants scattered around the area. The combatants blended back into their villages, so it’s not like just the combatants could be arrested. Some of these combatants didn’t just fight Jewish armed forces, but attacked civilians.
Overtime, ideas of expelling all Arabs had been advocated for, but the actual expulsions were defensive military operations. Such ideas were often driven by the determination of the Arabs to expel and kill the Jews, so, the thinking was: if you can’t be peaceful and accept us here, then we will kick you out. Nevertheless, the actual expulsions were focused on villages supporting violent militias in the midst of war.
We really don’t know how many expulsions were completely unjustified and how many were battlefield necessities.
Jewish refugees, many from the holocaust, moved into the abandoned settlements.
Many Arabs fled on their own, encouraged to do so by some Arab leaders.
There was two steps to the war. First, the civil war between the Jews and local Arab militias, then, the Jews against the invading Arab states.
Some economists think tariffs never make sense. Others, think that with strategy, thinking carefully about where to apply them, to which countries, on which items, what the different impacts will be, and informing and working with your allies…then tariffs could be a net good despite the costs. That’s not what we got from Trump.
With Trump, we got hectic tariffs that require a daily chart to manage them all. It doesn’t make sense to build a factory based on a short-term tariff that could change at any moment due to a variety of reasons.
Putting tariffs on every country cuts your leverage over any particular one country.
If the goal is to get specific industries back in the US, then you want highly targeted tariffs.
Liberation day tariffs were based on a simple formula and they were absurd on their face. The administration just didn’t do their homework when coming up with tariffs.
Trump ignored free trade agreements that the US had made with countries.
Trump enacts tariffs for a variety of personal reasons that don’t make sense, like tariffing Canada for fentanyl, even though US fentanyl mostly comes through Mexico. If I’m another country watching erratic tariffs, I don’t really know what to do to avoid tariffs, and I’m going to start planning with other countries how to counter this erratic country called the Untied States of America.