Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Just Proved the ‘Apostate Right’ and the Left Dead Wrong on Iran

That's a that's absolutely true. But what this deal then hinges on, because there's no history of Iran ever keeping their word or following any agreement, explicit or implicit, is the willingness to keep maybe one carrier group in the region to ensure that the strait stays open, that the missiles are not launched against our allies, and of course, the enriched uranium is turned over. And if we're willing to do that and hit them hard every time they break it, then it might eventually work. There's a there's a lot of misconceptions though about um the deal and the war in general. I'd like to address just a few of them.

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it’s not 1979 and God is in control.

From the transcript:

A lot of the critics of this administration are saying, I think Hikim Jeff said that not long ago. Well, the strait was open and now it’s closed. So the deal didn’t accomplish anything. In fact, it made it worse. Well, the the straight was open because Iran had no reason, as it did now, to close it. And the reason they didn’t have any reason to close it was the seven prior presidents, Carter, Reagan, George HW Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden didn’t want to disarm Iran. They didn’t want to go in there and try to stop their uh proliferation agenda.

Donald Trump did. Anybody who did was going to be confronted with a desperate effort of Iran to close the straight. Now, we’ll open the straight. But the idea that we made things worse uh is ridiculous. And then second, people are saying, “Well, it’s just like the Obama deal. Why did Trump get out of the Obama deal?”

Well, they enriched uranium all through the Obama deal. We know that they wouldn’t let inspectors in during Joe Biden’s presidency. He begged them to go back into the Iran deal. They didn’t want to do it. Why? Because they we now know they had pretty much already enriched to the point 60 or more% that they could make Obama in a month should they wanted to. But here’s the big difference. In the Obama uh atmosphere of that deal of 2015-16, Iran was ascendant. Everybody was scared of it. Its military was heavily equipped with Chinese and Russian weaponry.

People were afraid of it. Israel didn’t want to attack it. The Gulf States didn’t want to attack it. Europe was advising caution. It was an appeasing deal because nobody wanted to use force.

Now, whatever your disagreement is with the current war, most people, and we don’t have boots on the ground, we don’t have journalists on the ground, but they agree that the Iranian military and its economy are devastated through 40 days of intense bombing with probably a thousand planes in the air at any one time. So, we’re dealing with a much diminished Iran that we can hit again and again because they have no air defenses. Obama was dealing with an ascended Iran that he was scared to even mention the use of force to make them comply.

There’s a third misconception. People say, “Well, now we’re isolated. We’re all isolated. We have no allies. China and Russia are ascended.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

This is the first time in all of our lifetimes that the Gulf Council, for all their double dealing over the years, basically are more attuned to an alliance, maybe unspoken, with Israel than they are with Iran. We know now that some of the 600 combat aircraft based in the Gulf were stealthily flying missions and that meant alongside the Israelis. We know that there are Israeli technicians in the Gulf helping them with missile defense.

We know the Gulf states and most of the moderate Arab countries believe that Iran, not Israel, is the existential threat. In other words, we’ve never had a closer relationship with the Gulf States visa via America. Nor has Israel. As far as Russia and China, they’re both shut out of the of the Middle East. They have
lost their client in Syria. They have lost and they’re going to lose their client in Iran. They have lost their client in Venezuela.

They have a enormous problem. Russia cannot sell weapons to Iran anymore. They may smuggle some in. And China can’t get discounted oil anymore. There’s another misconception that is the apostate right that is the Tucker Carlson Candace Owens right has said that they were going to fracture the party and maybe their influence will turn the MAGA movement against Donald Trump.

From the transcript:

Well, first of all on all the other issues maybe except the Iran war most of the conservative if not all agree with Donald Trump. Even Tucker Carlson would agree with Donald Trump’s crime policy, his border policy, the wall, the deportation policy, the green uh rejection of the green energy mania.

But on this on this question of the war, the MAGA and Republican parties still overwhelmingly 75% support Donald Trump. And the reason they do is they don’t feel this is a forever endless war as the apostate right do. They believe that we have not used ground troops and we have lost fewer soldier than the a fewer soldiers than the accident rate that the military suffers daily over that period of 38 to 40 days of kinetic operations.

Finally, everybody says we’ve lost the midterms. The midterms are 4 and 1/2 months away. If the straight is open, suddenly you’re going to have a traffic jam of two things. One, tankers leaving trying to get out full of oil and tankers waiting to get in. But there may be 200 or 250 tankers full of a million to 2 million barrels at a time when the United States and Russia and the Middle East and Venezuela are upping production. So there could be a substantial drop in prices and if you do get a deal, the left is going to be sort of flummox because they said that we had lost the war and we didn’t achieve our objectives.

But if you do get a deal and the deal is enforced by military action on the part of the United States, it wouldn’t hurt Trump, it could help him.

And then there’s a larger context of redistricting. In this redistricting war, it turns out that so far the Republican legislatures will outdo the Democratic legislatures and the Republicans may pick up anywhere three to four to five seats. and the Supreme Court that said is it is a racial obsession, a fixation to create congressional districts on the basis of race and you can’t do it may lend the Republicans another four to five. I’m not suggesting that Donald Trump uh can overturn historical precedent.

Remember that of the last 40 presidents, 95% lost their first midterm uh election. So he his history is on the wrong side. But he will not lose the Senate. And it doesn’t really matter to tell you the truth uh if they lose the House. It would be nice to get legislation through, but most of his legislation has already been through. He can still use executive orders, but most importantly, they can’t. They may impeach him as a performance or act, but the Senate will never convict him.

This is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal.

There are so many VDH videos on YouTube that you have to wonder how many are AI-generated.

“But if you do get a deal and the deal is enforced by military action on the part of the United States”

It won’t be enforced.

If POTUS won’t use the necessary force to finish the job now, why would anyone think he’d do it in the future?

And a future Democrat president won’t even consider it.

“If the straight is open, suddenly you’re going to have a traffic jam of two things. One, tankers leaving trying to get out full of oil and tankers waiting to get in.”

*****

There’s almost certainly going to be Iranians who are going to try to extort money from tanker operators.

How do I know you have the missile you claim to have?

Take a chance and watch your tanker burn!

All we ask is $2 million worth of Bitcoin.

*****

Shipping out Iranian oil is going to be the least risky thing to do. Shipping out Kuwaiti oil is going to be the riskiest thing to do. Shipping out Iranian oil will have the support of responsible Iranians to the extent they can provide it.

Insurance might not be available for Kuwaiti oil transport.

*****

Last week Iran had lots of thugs. Next month they’ll have almost as many.

Good point by VDH that most of Trump’s desired legislation has already passed. So that’s one less reason to worry about the Dims retaking the House.

“There are so many VDH videos on YouTube that you have to wonder how many are AI-generated.”

*****

This guy comes to mind:

“Sir Neville Marriner, CH, CBE (15 April 1924 – 2 October 2016) was an English conductor and violinist. Described as “one of the world’s greatest conductors”, Gramophone lists Marriner as one of the 50 greatest conductors and another compilation ranks Marriner number 14 of the 18 “Greatest and Most Famous Conductors of All Time”. He founded the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and his partnership with them is the most recorded of any orchestra and conductor.”

“Marriner made over 600 recordings covering 2,000 different works – more than any conductor except Herbert von Karajan. He recorded for various labels, including Argo, L’Oiseau Lyre, Philips and EMI Classics. His recorded repertoire ranges from the baroque era to 20th-century British music, as well as opera. He supervised the Mozart selections for the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning 1984 film Amadeus; it became one of the most popular classical music recordings of all time, selling over 6.5 million copies.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Marriner

...that you have to wonder how many are AI-generated

I only post from links to The Daily Signal and The Daily Signal and Victor Davis Hanson.

His hour long interviews are often chopped up by scammers just for clicks.

Before his surgery, there were many interviews that he did on other channels. Since the surgery, I seldom see as many.

Keep to these two, and we will only generate clicks for his team and not overseas AI channels.

“most of Trump’s desired legislation”

Trump didn’t even ask Congress to give him credit for a ceasefire towards the War Powers Resolution 60-day limit.

And then there the tariff problem. Importers got $166 billion or so in windfall profits, and higher pricing levels going forward.

The first priority in going after Iran was to neutralize them as a nuclear threat. If the deal results in Iran giving up their uranium stockpiles and not rebuilding related facilities, then it is a win. Hormuz and ‘regime change’ and such are from Trump point of view only distractions from the nuke issue. Israel sees it differently, of course, and for good reason.

“That’s a that’s absolutely true. But what this deal then hinges on, because there’s no history of Iran ever keeping their word or following any agreement, explicit or implicit, is the willingness to keep maybe one carrier group in the region to ensure that the strait stays open, that the missiles are not launched against our allies, and of course, the enriched uranium is turned over. And if we’re willing to do that and hit them hard every time they break it, then it might eventually work. There’s a there’s a lot of misconceptions though about um the deal and the war in general. I’d like to address just a few of them.”
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Of course you have no more idea of what’s in the Plan than the rest of us. Vance said today that the “MOU” is only about a page and a half long, and it covers ground rules and principles. That’s just a fancy way of weaseling out of the remaining deadlock over the nuke fuel, etc.

Face it, the only unconditional surrender is by us.