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There has also been speculation that last week’s saber-rattling was a calculated ploy, a “psy-op,” to expose Iran’s contingency plans for such an attack. We don’t know. The fog of prewar is too thick to say for sure.
One thing that is fog-dispersing, though, is the extraordinary armada that Trump is sending Iran’s way. Six B-2 bombers and assorted other aircraft are already at the Chagos Islands base of Diego Garcia, “the silent launchpad of American power in the Indian Ocean.” Four C-17 Globemasters, full of war materiel, are joining them. Last week, it was reported that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group was steaming from the South China Sea towards the Middle East. Just a day or two back, it was reported that a second aircraft carrier group, led by the USS George H. W. Bush, was en route to the Middle East. That’s more than 150 warplanes and thousands of Marines. At the same time, large amounts of military equipment, including U.S. air defense systems, are being transferred from Europe to the Middle East.
Many commentators, noting Trump’s oft-proclaimed desire for “peace on earth,” believe he has paused to see if negotiations with Iran might end the slaughter. I doubt it. Trump’s desire for peace is perfectly genuine. But I note that the last time he said he wanted “peace on earth” was when he was asked whether he had any New Year’s resolutions just a couple of weeks ago. That was mere hours before he unleashed hell against the Venezuelan tyrant Nicolás Maduro, extracting him and his wife from their heavily fortified compound in Caracas and whisking them to New York in a stunning and perfectly executed special operations raid.
No, that ticking sound you hear is not the world clock. It is the countdown to Iran’s liberation. Let us hope that it encompasses not just the obliteration of that horrible Islamist regime but also the unraveling and supersession of radical Islam itself. As the world has seen repeatedly since 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeni returned to Tehran from Paris, it is a perverted, misogynistic, and death-embracing ideology masquerading as a religion. Did you know, for example, that virgin female prisoners are raped before being executed because these deranged lunatics believe that women and girls who die as virgins go straight to paradise? Basta! The world cannot be rid of it too soon.