How Long will US be Gaslighted by Israeli Ops? Land Blockade of Iran Floated
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Telegraph reports in the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s almost furtive visit to the White House on Tuesday that he pressed on Donald Trump the idea of a land blockade on Iran. The Telegraph is owned by Redbird IMI, an investment corporation backed by the United Arab Emirates. The UAE in turn is close to Israeli intelligence. The article even admits that the report may be a false flag, intended to misdirect Iranian authorities from actual Israeli and US plans.
But let’s assume that the report can be taken at face value. It is hilarious, and raises once again the question of how long the Trump administration will allow itself to be gaslighted by Netanyahu and his spooks.
It reminds me of the story about how, at a conference on AIDS in Africa held recently in Rio de Janeiro, the State Department presented a map of Africa generated by Open AI where every one of the countries at issue was mislabeled. They managed to teleport Nigeria away from the Atlantic. Nigeria is as big as Texas, California and West Virginia together. It isn’t a small out of the way country that non-experts might misremember.
The idea of a land blockade of Iran is even more laughable than a landlocked Nigeria. So lets consider Iran’s neighbors. You have Afghanistan, for instance, which would not be high on anyone’s list of countries eager to cooperate with Israel and the United States. So that is a non-starter. The Taliban reaction to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel was to underline the legitimate right of people in Gaza to defend their homes from foreign occupation. The Taliban also expressed “profound grief” over the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in 2024. Quite apart from ideology, the Taliban are a ruthless kleptocracy engaged in widespread smuggling of blood gemstones, timber, drugs, and the $7 billion in US arms they captured when they took over the country in 2021. Yes, this is an airtight operation for putting the screws to Iran, all right.
On the other side you have Iraq, which is majority Shiite and depends on Iran for trade and pilgrimage. Millions of Iranians come for pilgrimage to Shiite holy sites in Iraq annually. The two countries do billions of dollars worth of trade every year, on which Iraq is dependent, especially nowadays with its oil exports cut off. But it also helped smuggle out Iranian petroleum by blending it with its own. Drugs, arms and other commodities are also big smuggling items between the two. That Shiite Iraq would in any practical way ally with Israel against Iran is some sort of Netanyahuist fever dream. In fact, 90 percent of Iraqis hold that the Palestinian issue is an Arab cause.
Despite being in NATO, Turkiye has an independent foreign policy that seeks correct relations, and billions in trade, with Iran, and Turkish firms have repeatedly been targeted by the US Treasury Department for busting US sanctions on Iran.
Armenia is one of Iran’s closest allies and needs Tehran’s support in its long-term struggle with Azerbaijan.
Pakistan has good relations with Tehran and sees its recent diplomatic star turn as having allowed it to get a leg up over its rival India in world affairs. It is not going to cut off Iran officially. Unofficially, the Iran-Pakistan border at Zahedan is one of the seediest smuggling routes in the entire world.
Is there a point in going down this list? Turkmenistan? Surely you jest.
Even Azerbaijan, which is hostile to Iran, probably doesn’t want the headache of openly joining with an Israeli blockade on its direct neighbor.
Not only are none of Iran’s neighbors going to sign on to this crazy idea, but neither are the two big powers in north and east Asia. China has a rail link with Tehran, running through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and Beijing would rather mind any attempt to shut it down. That is not an ire that these countries would risk. Russia has a sea trade connection to Iran via the Caspian, which it is not shutting down for Netanyahu and Trump.
Finally, if any countries were insane enough to agree to such a proposal, they’d face Iran’s wrath in the form of drone attacks. Ask Jordan and Kuwait. There is no good defense against such attacks at the moment and Israel and the US cannot offer all these countries Iron Dome defense shields. They have run low on interceptors themselves.
If this notion is so risible, why is it even being floated? It can hardly serve as a false flag, since Iranian intelligence would not take it seriously. You have to wonder whether, since Netanyahu dragged Trump into this loser of a war, he is desperately trying to find ways of continuing to gaslight the president until the October elections in Israel. He needs the Israeli public to believe there is still a chance of victory, and that Netanyahu is their best hope in that regard, and has the best connection to Trump. If Trump decides Netanyahu is a loser and is dragging him down, he’ll throw him under the bus faster than you can say golden toilet.
So is this gaslighting exercise just for the dull and belligerent Trump? Is even he this stupid?
