Who's the biggest bullshitter on the Iran non-peace treaty as the MOU threatens to unravel?

That header is of course the first thing to remember. There IS NO "peace treaty."

There is a 60-day ceasefire which now SEEMS to be OK, with a "Donald John Trump" signature on the US side Wednesday of an MOU where he clearly TACO-ed, along with the signature of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

On Shitter, and presumably on other social media, Israeli Zionist Jews, American Zionist Jews, American Zionist goys, and general neocons are all excoriating Trump, including Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ affiliated with any of those groups.

MAGAts who aren't necessarily pro-Israel or anti-Israel, but just blind suckers of Trump's micropenis are in an ongoing state of denial. Wednesday night, after posting my Substack version of the actual treaty and Trump's clear TACO-ing, I finally said explicitly: I block you unless you admit T-Rump TACOed. And I did with multiples.

The flip side? Not everybody in Iran is signed off. The opposition is no more powerful, I think, than in 2015, but they've got T-Rump 1.0 and 2.0 facts in evidence to support their case. Here's the nutgrafs:

A major factor pushing even a government heavily influenced by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to seek detente with the U.S. is the dire economic condition inside Iran after years of sanctions and the destruction of Iranian civilian infrastructure during the recent war. Several million Iranians are believed to have lost their jobs directly or indirectly as a result of the recent fighting, blockade, and internet shutdown. The International Monetary Fund now projects that Iran’s GDP will contract by 6% in 2026, with consumer prices rising nearly 70% during the same period. 

The Iranian economy is dominated by a network of semi-governmental institutions with ties to the security establishment. These firms largely control the flow of imports, exports, and energy resources, and are also tasked with navigating the complex web of sanctions the country faces when trading abroad and repatriating funds from the sale of oil and gas. 

For conservative skeptics of the MOU, who doubt the deal will bring a durable end to the war, these powerful business conglomerates are seen as the forces pressing the government hardest to move forward. Known in Persian as “khusulati”—a blend of the words for “private” and “government”—these firms stand to regain access to billions of dollars of frozen funds, as well as new business opportunities in Iran’s oligarchical economy.

That said, despite the ultra-hardliners, who may in this case get their heads thumped by Khaminei fils, Mojtaba Khamenei et al, they know they can close Hormuz again.

And, anybody who saw T-Rump's post-signing news conference knows he looked crushed, and fully 80 years old. 

(Sidebar to the link above? There ARE female journalists in Iran, contra the lying Islamophobes.) 

That said? there’s plenty of stated and unstated asterisks in that statement that are bridges to be crossed between now and June 19.

Bibi has spoken, to say he doesn’t feel bound by the agreement vis-a-vis Lebanon.

Will Trump do more fake yelling at Satanyahu? Will The Dissident, and even more, John Mearsheimer, not fall for that this time? 

In Drop Site’s first piece, various Iranian talking heads already noted that attacks on Lebanon would not go unaddressed. Will only Israel be attacked, or will the Great Satan (Greater than Satanyahu?) have Middle East military bases targeted again as well?

Quite possibly yes, according to a new piece from Drop Site. Iran has warned Trump that unless he restrains Bibi in Lebanon as forcefully as needed, it will torpedo the MOU by an unannounced attack on Israel.

That said? As noted in my Substack link, Point 1 has degrees of ambiguity about Lebanon. The Iranians know that, too. 

“Regarding Lebanon, we have warned both the mediators and the American side that if the regime fails to comply with the existing agreement, Iran will respond with substantial military measures without prior public notice,” said the Iranian official, who is not authorized to speak publicly. “Should the United States intervene, conditions particularly those related to the Strait of Hormuz could rapidly revert to a wartime environment.”

On the "not authorized to speak publicly," is this one of the ultra-hardliners mucking around? Maybe not: Those "technical talks," scheduled to start today, have been postponed. 

Technical talks that were scheduled to begin Friday in Switzerland were postponed, with Iranian officials citing the continued attacks in Lebanon. Some officials have also denounced the prospect of Iranian leaders being photographed meeting with Trump or other U.S. officials responsible for assassinating the country’s Supreme Leader. U.S. officials have acknowledged the delay, but have not confirmed the reason. Late Thursday, the White House said Vice President JD Vance—who has been put forward as the public face of the U.S. negotiations—would not be traveling to Switzerland as previously announced, saying, “The logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable.” A senior Pakistani official claimed the meeting was canceled because of religious observances related to the Islamic month of Muharram, a period of mourning for Shia Muslims.

As for the reason for cancellation? The Iranian claim of Muharram, especially important to Shi'ites? Per Scott Anderson in "King of Kings," 40-day mourning anniversaries and similar litter the Shi'a religious calendar.

The piece then goes on with lies by Bagger Vance and other things. That said, behind the lies is Vance being sent out to publicly attack Netanyahu, and his allies in both Israel and indirectly in the US. Also of note is that the IAEA-overseen process for dealing with Iran's enriched uranium is what it had proposed before the first attack. 

That said, why should we assume this is anything much more than a more intense round of performance theater? Yes, the piece is by Jeremy Scahill, and he's pretty smart and pretty connected, but John Mearsheimer, to name a name I've named before in the last month or two, has fallen for the Trump-Netanyahu schtick before and Scahill isn't otherwise perfect. (Biggest example of that is Scahill going along with Glennwald in turning over all the "unused" Snowden files to Pierre Omidyar, as noted here. ) Beyond that, Politico reports that Trump is basically pushing Vance to stick his neck out on all things Iran.

Beyond that, in the same rant, Bagger Vance said that he does not think the MOU requires Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. Due to the ambiguity of point 1, it's possible. 

And, with the Switzerland talks on hold? The Lebanon ceasefire is now off again. 

As for “Peace Deal”? Yeah, Pakistan’s prime minister called it that, as noted on The Dissident’s piece and elsewhere. And? First, it’s not true; it’s just a ceasefire. Second, he’s got reason to puff it.

Here's links from Tuesday evening, updated in light of my Substack piece up top.

First, the NYT.

• Iran says “no tolls, but fees,” at Hormuz. Per Spock, “a difference that makes no difference is no difference.” Apparently that's going away, though.

• Per Bagger Vance and my link whole thing is only about a page and a half long. That’s about right for an actual ceasefire, actually. That’s why Vladimir Vladimirovich doesn’t sign off on fake ceasefires proffered by NATO.

• Iran’s president said most the major stakeholders are cautiously on board. He's now signed, so he's on board.

• Speaking of Vlad the Impaler? Trump thanked him and Winnie the Pooh, Xi Jinping, for their help. Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, if they haven’t started asking already, being still stuck on kvetching about Trump’s surrender to Iran, will soon start asking how much Trump surrendered to one or both of them. And, what Trump said about Xi is a flat lie, as, with coordination with Iran, Chinese-bound (even if not Chinese-flagged) tankers HAVE sailed through Hormuz after Iran shut it down.

• Trump claims it’s stopped Iranian nukes. It did no such thing, and besides, you started Iran on the path to partial enrichment because you abandoned the Obama deal.

• Lebanon? Trump joins Satanyahu and claims it’s not part of the deal. Really? Then why your most recent play-acting yelling. Pakistan as well as Iran says it is.

So, right there, the prologue to a ceasefire isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Could there be deliberately ambiguous language? Possible. It happens all the time in diplomatic negotiations.

But, it almost never happens when specifics of battle are mentioned. Something is either on the table or off.

That leads us to the bottom line, not only from the NYT, but in general:

Hanging over the next round of U.S.-Iran negotiations will be “a history of broken promises, non-compliance, and even the tearing up of agreements,” Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said in comments reported by state media. “We are planning the negotiation process and the implementation of the agreement on the basis of mistrust, past breaches of commitments, and previous experiences.”

Another NYT piece speculates about what’s not in there that Satanyahu is mad isn’t in there. Nuff ced.

OK, next?

Drop Site reported that Iran used professional psychologists to craft its messages to Trump. Nice idea. May have helped in the short term. Won’t make a degree of difference in the long term.

Now, on to Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, Never Trumper Rethugs and other detritus.

The Bulwark uses poop emojis to call it a “Giant Bag of Dogshit.” That it is, but there’s a neocon or four running around there who would still like Bibi to off Iran.

Francis Fukuyama, mad that he can't lament The End of Iran™, gets a bunch of shit wrong, starting by framing a memorandum of understanding to establish a ceasefire as though it were an actual agreement.

Now, like others, he uses this as an occasion to excoriate Trump. Natch. But, Trump deserves excoriation from an anti-Zionist angle, from an anti-imperialist angle, not from Nat-Sec Nutsacks.™

Now, like others, he uses this as an occasion to excoriate Trump. Natch. But, Trump deserves excoriation from an anti-Zionist angle, from an anti-imperialist angle, not from Nat-Sec Nutsacks.™

He gives the game up here:

The MOU that Trump celebrated is a worse agreement than Obama’s 2015 deal, which Trump endlessly castigated in the past.

Shock me.

Just before that, after listing everything NOT in the MOU, Fukuyama said:

The reported “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) kicks all of the contentious issues down the road into negotiations that are to take place during the 60-day ceasefire. Trump treated all of these issues as having been conceded already, but if that were the case, why weren’t they in the MOU? It is very unlikely that Iran will budge over the next two months, since it is precisely these issues that speak to the regime’s core identity.

He does get one thing right. Trump’s bullshit is on the rise:

Trump stated that if Iran didn’t agree to these outstanding terms, he would re-commence the war and possibly make the United States “the guardian of the Middle East” in return for 20 percent of the region’s revenues. It is hard to know whether such an initiative is more ludicrous from the standpoint of countries in the Middle East, including U.S. friends like Saudi Arabia or the UAE who would now be paying explicitly for U.S. protection, or from domestic opinion in the United States, where everyone would like to be done with the region as soon as possible.

As for what I said about him above? The Persuasion Substack, in addition to him, has Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ junior member Yascha Mounk as founder, Glenn Greenwald wannabe and walking odiousness Thomas Chatterton Williams, wingnut David French, etc.

Speaking of Trump bullshit? A Tuesday evening AP story has the roundup. Lies about Obama sending cash to Iran in 2015 of course top the list. Claims that oil is already flowing and other bullshit. In reality, oil won’t get back to normal for months, even if there is a formal signing on Friday. That 60-day clock will be ticking, especially with Iran talking about “fees” for Hormuz and Bibi still running off at half-cock.

Finally, let’s turn to Mondoweiss, as always a voice of reason.

Dissident, Mearsheimer and others could stand to read it for this gimlet-eyed take on the T-Rump/Satanyahu relationship alone:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that “We will remain in the security zones for as long as required to defend our country.” Security zones, in Netanyahu-speak, mean occupied territories.

He went on to say, in Trumpian fashion, “Iran was racing toward a nuclear weapon. If we had not acted at the time we did and with the power we did…Iran would already have atomic bombs.”

That is, of course, a complete lie, one contradicted by every intelligence assessment in Israel, the U.S., Europe, and everywhere else that has assessed Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

It’s a mark of Netanyahu’s desperation that he feels the need to say it. It is also a mark of his need to pacify Trump by affirming the false narrative of an American victory.

Bingo.

Actually, not quite yet bingo.

Add this follow-up:

Tehran is surely as unimpressed as so many of us are with Trump’s public, epithet-laced scolding of Netanyahu. As I’ve noted, Netanyahu is also unimpressed with it. Words, no matter how harsh or vulgar, carry no weight here. Only the threat of real consequences will force Netanyahu to back off in Lebanon, and no one, including the Iranians, knows whether Trump will impose them on his ally.

NOW “Bingo.” What’s so hard about understanding that?

So, why did Iran sign off if the Lebanon issue isn’t decided, among other things?

Mondoweiss is good there, too.

It starts by referring to the January protests. It notes that, even if Israel played a fair role in them as instigator, the net result was that Iran killed thousands of its own people and remains an authoritarian, repressive government highly unpopular with some swaths of the populace, and at least moderately unpopular with huge segments. The Revolutionary Guards are still massive grifters, to boot.

==

Finally, Israhell and that "Samson option," especially nuclear versions.

Much of what you have heard is true. 

The Institute for Middle East Understanding has the basics.

Israel has nuclear-missile submarines as part of its weaponry. The Germans sold them the subs as "conventional" ones knowing they could be upgraded. 

Israel is believed to have stolen both bomb-grade uranium and technical know-how from the US, possibly as much as 100 kilograms on the uranium, per Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Or possibly 250 kilos, per Wiki's page. Weirdly, Sy Hersh, in his book "The Sampson Option," claims Israel did NOT steal any HEU.

See also the Guardian. 

==

That said, no, Israel did NOT whack Jack. Stop it. 

Did Bibi not take an Israeli history class in high school?

I mean, his blanket refusal to negotiate period with Hamas is, beyond being genocidal and warmongering.

It's also plain stupid.

And full of crap.

Per the rhetorical question in the header, James Dorsey gets at the details.

He mentions, as have other news and opinion outlets, Netanyahu's statement that no, Israel won't "occupy" Gaza in nine months or so (his projected date for the end of the war), won't get involved in guerilla warfare, etc.

He then mention's Bib's oft-stated plan to have some Palestinian administer Gaza after those nine months or whatever.

Really? 

What fucking planet do you live on?

Even more likely than the likelihood of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy being assassinated if he actually tried to implement the Minsk Accords (in 2019, let alone today), any Palestinian who volunteered to run Israel's toxic inferno in Gaza would be a walking dead man.

And, per the high school history class part of the rhetorical question?

It was long after he graduated high school, of course, but ...

ISRAEL FUCKING HELPED CREATE HAMAS.

I mean, as The Times of Israel reported just after Oct. 7, 2023, Bibi was involved personally with puffing up Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. This idea has that stupidity written all over it.

But, that's not new. At the Intercept, Mehdi Hasan has the full backstory in a 2018 story:

“When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake,” David Hacham, a former Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military who was based in Gaza in the 1980s, later remarked. “But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results.”

"They never do, do they?" Hasan himself said right after that as the last sentence of the story. 

I think there's one other issue. I don't know what the Israeli Hebrew phrase is for "Irish Alzheimer's," but Bibi makes #GenocideJoe look like a piker on that.

Jamie Metzl: Disingenuous on Gaza, at a minimum

"Disingenuous" is one of those words that has a clear denotative as well as connotative meaning, and in fact, in common use, the denotative often takes the lead, with insinuations of something like earned opprobrium behind it.

So, I use it reluctantly of Metzl, the Clinton Administration National Security Council staffer who was one of the early, leading, non-conspiratorial voices on COVID discussing the possibility of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, while admitting he didn't know for sure and remained open-minded toward a purely zoonotic origin.

I was nosing around his site last week, seeing if he had updated his main post on COVID, re the Fauci investigation by the House subcommittee last week Monday, when I noticed a piece that he had entitled called "Response to Gaza Open Letter."

Here's the background:

On March 17, 2024, I received an email regarding the Gaza conflict from six of my former colleagues from when I served in the White House and State Department during the Clinton administration. The people who sent the letter are among the people I respect most in the world, and so their invitation to sign on to the open letter to President Biden they had drafted was something I took with the utmost seriousness. Upon reading the letter, however, I realized I could not sign and responded with a letter outlining my reasoning.

What follows is an originally private response to them that he made public after their letter was published.

OK, we'll look at the why.

First:

While the letter focuses on the actions of Israel, it is largely silent on the responsibilities of Hamas in deliberately fomenting this crisis.

Well, maybe it primarily is about Israel, the original letter, but not totally.

Then there's this:

Hamas leaders extolled the October 7 terrorists to commit the worst possible abuses and desecrate the dead bodies to highlight Israeli outrage and undermine Israel’s deterrence.

We know that many of those claims (maybe not all, but yes, many) by Israel are nothing more than hasbara. And Metzl either does know that or should know that himself. 

Metzl then mentions the infamous tunnels, which, IIRC, were already being discussed mid-March.

Then there's the nutgraf on how Metzl said the letter should have started:

“As former U.S. foreign policy and national security officials who served several presidential administrations, we write to express our deep concerns about the situation in Gaza. We call on Hamas to release all the hostages immediately and to surrender unconditionally and for Israel to wage its justified war to defeat Hamas with the greatest care possible. We also write to encourage your administration to continue and substantially strengthen efforts to protect civilians and promote a just and durable peace.

Zionism 101.

"Surrender, Hamas and throw yourself on the tender mercies of Bibi."

What fucking planet do you live on?

The planet where the IDF gets a pass:

Third, it would be hard for any of us to declare with certainty, as the letter does, that “military tactics employed in that response have been indiscriminate, created a humanitarian catastrophe, jeopardized the potential for further progress toward regional stability, and undermined U.S. credibility and influence in the region and around the world.”

That was bad enough as of March 18. It's godawful as of now. (Speaking of which, the letter to him looks ahead to Rafah, which Metzl ignores.)

He then goes on to reject a negotiated ceasefire because:

Doing so would hand Hamas an historic victory and, in my view, give Hamas a controlling veto on any future political arrangement. If the second, Israel has already offered a negotiated temporary cease fire in exchange for the release of some hostages.

Oh, so, despite hating Bibi, he's a full-on Zionist by that point, re the first sentence. Re the second, no, news sites generally called that a "pause." It should also be noted that his blog, and his website as a whole, do not have a search function. I'll assume, based on everything up to this point, that he simply doesn't discuss the background to Oct. 7, 2023, and surely doesn't even use the word "Nakba."

Now, to show how disingenuous Metzl is, to the point of duplicitousness? Here's Reuters' piece on the letter to him.

In its letter, the group said that an Israeli military operation against Hamas was "necessary and justified."

But Israel's operations "have been marked by repeated violations" of international law banning indiscriminate killing and the use of weapons that do not permit discrimination between combatants and civilians, the group said.

You lying sack of shit. That's hardly "largely silent," contra the first pull quote from your letter.

And, that letter explicitly mentions international law. Yours does NOT.

And, on background? The Nakba, or Israeli actions that precipitated it, actually started in 1947, before any Arab League member attacked Israel.

The background in general? Mondoweiss has it for you, Metzl.

Congrats, Metzl. You totally earned the "disingenuous," both connotatively and denotatively.

Is it really "just politics" for Biden to cut blank checks to Bibi?

So says Phil Weiss, founder of Mondoweiss.

I don't totally agree. 

I do agree that all duopoly party US presidents feel some degree of beholden-ness to the Israel lobby. Weiss has the receipts, like Biden's receipts with Saim Haban.

But, I don't think it's entirely that.

One can have an emotional attachment like this as well as a political need.

Obama staffers called out Genocide Joe early this year for having too much of an attachment. That piece notes that Biden called himself a Zionist after Oct. 7. I don't recall other presidents of either major party doing that at the time of an Israel-Palestine fracas. This piece notes that when Biden was Dear Leader's Veep, they disagreed about whether or not to "hug" Israel. It's true that disagreement on that could be primarily if not purely political, whether domestically, in foreign policy, or both. But, if not purely political, it could still have an emotional sidebar.

What I think is partially at play, speaking of emotions, is a sidebar on Biden's Irish Alzheimer's. He is determined to show Obama himself, and certainly Obama staffers, that he is right.

What I also think is in play?

Whether Biden watched "Exodus" about three too many times (or read Leon Uris' book that many too many times) or what, I don't know. But, no, I think he's really into this. That's not mutually exclusive to the political angle, of course, or the grinding against Team Obama But, that political angle was developed when Biden was hobnobbing with the likes of John Lewis on Black civil rights, and many African-Americans have moved bast that era today, too. If this were purely about politics, one would think Biden has a greater degree of nimbleness than Mondoweiss' take implies.

Take environmentalism. While his first-term actions have been pretty weak tea by my point of view, they're far more than Biden would have entertained 10 years ago, let alone 20. Ditto on things like his administration's stance on antitrust issues.

Liberal Zionism and the "two state solution": Peter Beinart defects and explains why

Liberal Zionism has long held a stranglehold on Democratic Party foreign policy thinking about Israel and Palestine.

And now, the man who was long one of its best defenders and most articulate spokesmen, Peter Beinart, has defected.

As Mondoweiss noted, Beinart had hugely legit bona fides, including being a wingman to Marty Peretz when he ran the editorial ship at The New Republic.

Mondoweiss discusses the importance of Beinart jumping ship, with more here. And here is Beinart's Jewish Currents piece itself, where he lays out why he is jumping ship in general and on the two-state solution in particular. Jacobin offers up an interview of Beinart.

Basically, Beinart says the two-state idea is dead, and that current Israeli government actions are making it even more dead.

That leaves just one real alternative: A single state of Israel-Palestine, with full and equal rights, religious and otherwise, for all.

Beinart says his break was as much drift as break, with roots going back 20 years. He also says liberal Zionism in the US has gotten stale.

Beinart, per what I said up top, has other interesting observations. In the 1950s, he says Israel could have used newly arriving Mizrahi Jews as a bridge to Palestinians, but instead, Mizrahis felt compelled to abandon their own Arabness.

I am also "shocked" that a Josh Marshall has failed to even acknowledge this. I don't know if this will be a semi-coordinated strategy by many liberal Zionists, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were the case.

Given the anti-BDS cancel culture mentality of many signers of that infamous Harper's letter, and now Bari Weiss' boo-hoo resignation from the New York Times op-ed staff, Josh will probably stay silent, too.

Quick hits on the Supreme Court travel ban decision

Wrapping up several things I've said about the ruling on Twitter.

First, Merrick Garland isn't on the Supreme Court. He could have been, had President Obama responded back to Mitch McConnell's obstinance with a recess appointment. But he did not.

Is there a "Biden rule" about SCOTUS nominations in an election year? Kind of sort of, but it really should be called the Thurmond rule.

Beyond that, we don't know how Merrick Garland would have voted.

Beyond THAT, I agree with Eric Levitz that naming Garland was bad Obama strategy.

It was, per my take on Dear Leader on other things, yet one more example of him compromising away a compromise in advance in public.

Update, June 27: Anthony Kennedy is no longer on the bench as of July 31, announcing his retirement after kicking centrism to the curb. If Kennedy was trying to cement something for future courts in his concurrence comments this term, he has surely failed. Ditto for whatever version of a legacy he might have thought he established a few years ago. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Janus and National Institutes of Family Life (California pro-life clinics) cases showed a turd-polishing level of hypocrisy, especially given that Kennedy had taken just the opposite stance in 1992 on Planned Parenthood vs Casey, requiring doctors to tell people about abortion alternatives, as Justice Breyer pointed out. SCOTUSBlog, among others, has more on Kennedy's career and legacy.

Update 2, June 27: I have expanded the paragraph above into a full blog post about Tony the Pony; go here.

Speaking of, I have a new "Oh, the SCOTUS" piece up for Hillbots, or Dems in general, thinking that will convince the likes of me to rejoin the duopoly.

===

Now, to matters at hand on the travel ban.

The ban isn't racist, because religions aren't races.

Nor is it anti-religious, even if Trump has called it a "Muslim ban." It of course doesn't apply to every Muslim-majority country. In fact, Sudan was removed from the original version of the ban last September, which #TheResistance ignores.

And, this ignores that Venezuela and North Korea aren't Muslim-majority, in any case.

Why? Because the ban is actually a petro-geopolitical ban, at heart.

Per that link above, Sudan was removed at the behest of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Sudan's "help" in the war against alleged Iranian proxies in Yemen trumps all. The ban is oriented against Syria and Iran, ultimately.

As to Anthony Kennedy sending a message to Trump, yet concurring? Doing both are possible, and Kennedy faces constraints that a Jeff Flake or Bob Corker don't.

Also, this decision is nothing like the Korematsu case. Not all Muslims are being banned, and none of them that are being banned are American citizens.

On the idea that the travel ban should be judged by Trump's tweets, rather than its content? That's close to something analogous to two different First Amendment issues. One is speech vs acts; the other is prior restraint.

(If Ken White, aka Popehat, writes something on this from a quasi-First Amendment speech-vs-acts angle, I'll link it here. Until then, let's go with some Tweets of his:

/5 The rational basis test is the test your mother applies to determine whether you are a nice boy. Of course you are. The rational basis test asks only whether there is ANY plausible non-discriminatory basis whatsoever that could be articulated to support the law,

— ThisIsNotNormalHat (@Popehat) June 26, 2018

And then:

/6 Applied here, the majority finds that one could articulate legitimate non-discriminatory grounds for the law, so -- despite evidence of Trump's own words showing religious animus -- the law passes the rational basis test.

— ThisIsNotNormalHat (@Popehat) June 26, 2018

Followed by:

/8 But the upshot is this: the majority says that the President of the United states can revile Muslims and say he wants to ban them, but as long as his law is facially neutral and someone can make up a neutral argument for it, it survives. /end

— ThisIsNotNormalHat (@Popehat) June 26, 2018

I knew there was a good legal angle, and just couldn't think of the term.

Now, that said, North Korea and Venezuela may just be listed for show. But, with a better written ban than the Bannon-inked, more clearly Islamophobic first one, with both Trump and Bannon talking that way about it, the justices had a reasonable case to apply rational basis and so dodge the issue of trying to divine intent. And, in law, whether civil, criminal or constitutional, judges tend to shy away from divining intent if empirical evidence isn't highly corroborative.

Whether it truly is justifiable on national security issues? I say no. Venezuela is certainly not an exporter of terrorism, though both duopoly parties might try to have you believe otherwise. North Korea is, but Trump is undermining his own Nobel Peace Prize chances in this case. And, the court steered away from that issue.

“We express no view on the soundness of the policy,” Roberts wrote.

That's typical executive branch deference. Read into it what you will.

And, not only is it not sound, contra wingnuts, there are lies by omission as big as Mack trucks within it.

First, there are still terrorists in Saudi Arabia, even if no "training camps" exist. Second, as late as 2016, the government, the kingdom, still supported fomenters of radicalism.

I argue that Saudi Arabia has made considerable progress on counterterrorism in the last 15 years but still has a long way to go. 

In the end, policymakers would do well to remember that Saudi Arabia is a key partner but not a friend: the United States and Saudi Arabia share many common interests, but they do not share common values or a common worldview.

Though that link is 2016, the problems are still current.

Considerable problems remain. As former senior CIA official Bruce Riedel contends, “Saudi sources remain major funders of groups like the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar­e Taiba in Pakistan. Some accounts suggest Saudi money has gone to al­Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, the al­Nusra Front.” Although Riyadh opposes the Islamic State, it sees the Syrian regime, with its close ties to Iran, as a far greater danger and has focused its energies accordingly. Despite greater regime efforts to reduce the flow of fighters abroad, Saudis still have found it easy to travel and fight on behalf of the Islamic State – they are perhaps the largest source of foreign fighters for the group. ... 

Saudi Arabia considers Al Qaeda to be a mortal enemy, yet its military campaign in Yemen has indirectly assisted the group. 

There you go. Syria and Yemen.

But, the Saudis know how to massage both Trump's greed and Bibi Netanyahu.

Oh, that name.

Basically, this is what Bibi would have written.

(As for a G+ commenter telling me to "get with reality" because I didn't explicitly spell out Trump's Saudi business interests? I think that making clear the Riyadh-Tel Aviv axis speaks loudly enough. Besides, Trump didn't write this himself. It was written by neocons wanting another anti-Iran quiver in the arrow, and it wasn't primarily about Trump's business interests.)

And, if Al Jazeera spiked a video because of Qatari GCC member power, well, there you go.

At the same time, on geopolitics, though the travel ban is directed against Syria and Iran, Robert Fisk says on-the-ground signs indicate a US pullback of some sort, if not completely, in Syria. That leads to another question — whence the Islamic State, if Syria gets too hot? Would it really, per Daniel Bynum, slip back into Turkey? Try to regroup in Iraq?

Otherwise, I find the ruling against California's anti-abortion clinics' "script law" more problematic, especially since in Planned Parenthood v Casey, the Court majority, including Kennedy, voted that states COULD require doctors and PP-type clinics to provide information about alternatives.

Oh, and case it's not clear, this is one of those issues where my desire to be deliberately contrarian has easy fodder. The ban is ... ugly. But it's theoretically constitutional —

That said, if the Court had followed its own lead of a month ago in Masterpiece Cakeshop, it arguably would have rejected the travel ban based on the bias of Trump's Tweets.

Volokh thinks the court is justifying using religion as a screening element. I would disagree if that's true, but I think Volokh is misreading — badly. Plenary power may have been involved, but with caveats. It's also interesting that Volokh appears to consider this a "Muslim ban" when it's not (including Volokh ignoring the listing of Iran and North Korea) that Volokh ignored the Korematsu overturning entirely, and in general, cited relatively old case law.

Per my Kennedy retirement link, and Ken White aka Popehat, clearly and consciously blowing part of his analysis, it just shows that constitutional law lawyers are as capable of motivated reasoning as anybody else.

Marjorie Cohn at TruthOut thinks the ruling violates international law, specifically the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Not even close. First, it is applicable to nations regarding people "within its territory and under its jurisdiction." In other words, it prohibits (theoretically) the US (and other countries) from other people inside its borders, whether citizens or resident aliens. It's not about immigration.

Second, Cohn makes the elementary mistake, committed much more often by Islamophobes than others, of considering Islam a race. Uhh, even given that race as currently understood is culturally defined, religious affiliation has never been understood to be a race or even a marker thereof.

==

Finally, the "Oh the SCOTUS" and Merrick Garland, with a full post about that coming up.

As for low turnout in 2014 leading to the GOP retaking the Senate? Well, that goes back to 2010. Sure, you can blame the ruling against Holder on the Voting Rights Act for 2014 stuff. But in 2010 as well as 2014, or even more so, Obama did a piss-poor job of campaigning for Senators, Congresscritters, and also governors and state legiscritters.

Quick take on Trump-Schumer-Cardin-Bibi and Jerusalem

So, declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? Even if President Trump is not (yet?) planning on moving our embassy?

First, President 2 Corinthians has shown willingness to pander to the Religious Right — except when he palmed the Saudis' Palantir earlier this year. So, in one sense this isn't surprising. (Note: Per another piece of mine, most of the Religious Right is actually OK with his racism.)

It's also not surprising because he loves the narcissistic attention of controversy.

It's also also not surprising because anything that makes a "splash," especially if it's reaching across the political aisle at times just to confound the old guard GOP establishment.

It's also also also not surprising because he thinks this is actually going to do something diplomatically, when, short of causing a war, it won't.

But why now?

One guess.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas had been working on rapprochement for one unified government over both Gaza and the main Palestinian lands of the so-called West Bank. And it looked like something was going to happen. Some things, like the PA running Gaza border crossings, have already been done. On the other hand, within the last week, key parts of the agreement weren't agreed upon, forcing a delay in the big schmeer.

Now, Donald Duck himself is too dumb for this. But, his aides? Not at all. And certainly, Bibi Netanyahu would like to do anything he could to get American attention focused his way.

Chuck Schumer and Ben Cardin? (Where's Sen. Betty Crocker, aka Dianne Feinstein?)

Other than truly being Zionists, I'm not sure what their angle is on backing Trump right now, or even encouraging him from the get-go. With Schumer, though, I'm sure he's working some angle. He may be circling back to the DACA issue, though the House GOP has already told one of its own, Jeff Flake, that's a dead letter. There may be some bankster-related issues vis-a-vis the #TrumpTaxScam. Or it may really be existential angst over Iran, which is bogus.

At times like this, the atheist portion of me takes over.

I think, why can't Kim Jong Un lob one of his warheads at Jerusalem? Obliterate the Wailing Wall, the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre all three?

Or, if that's too bloody?

Where's Brother Maynard and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch?



Maybe it could wipe out those three religious sanctuaries and from there, we declare it a religious neutral site.

More seriously yet, where is Riyadh? Where are the Saudis? Trump played grabby with King Salman and Mohammed bin Salman's Palantir. And, the Saudis have had off-the-record business and quasi-diplomatic dealings with Israel for years, even with Bibi in power. But, surely this is way too far. MBS surely has to be saying something somewhere in private now. If he's not, his Wahhabi clerics surely are going to go ballistic soon and ruin his image of modernization. (The Old Gray Lady claims MBS has, outside of the Jerusalem issue, signed off on a Palestine peace plan that kneecaps Palestinians.)

Meanwhile, here's the history, on the US side, behind Trump's proclamation, and promises that such a proclamation would be made as soon as Congress stopped semiannual waivers.

It might also be appropriate here to link to my review of Shimon Peres' biography, just to remind people that Israel is the only state in the Middle East with nukes.

US again gives lip service to Mideast neutrality, back of hand to #Palestinians

So, Mahmoud Abbas wants the government of Palestine to join a few UN agencies?

Nope, can't do that, the US says; Dear Leader tells Secretary of State John Kerry to stop talking to the Palestinian leader.

Specific on which agencies the Palestinians want to join?

A senior Palestinian official said the 15 agencies Mr. Abbas moved to join — out of more than 60 possible — did not include the International Criminal Court or International Court of Justice, where many Palestinians hope to prosecute Israelis for what they consider war crimes, including the demolition of homes, arrests and killings of Palestinians, and the building of settlements. The 15 did include the Geneva and Vienna Conventions and agencies dealing with women’s and children’s rights, the official said.

Sounds reasonable to me. Abbas is deliberately avoiding being highly provocative.

But, we still give him the back of the hand.

And, that's why this idea that we would release Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard 18 months early to speed up the peace process is bullshit. Because, as al-Jazeera documented a couple of years ago, the "peace process" that the US envisions has always been on Israel's terms, and the Palestinian Authority has always had to dance to the puppet strings of US money, whereas, ever since Poppy Bush's one brief "hold" on foreign aid to Israel, we've never put Tel Aviv through the same hoops.

And, if anything, Obama's worse than Poppy's son Shrub, not better. From diminishing the severity of Israeli settlements in Palestine to

That said, per the link about Israeli settlements, Abbas has been a good Palestinian leader only through the soft bigotry of low expectations and comparisons to his predecessor, Yasir Arafat.

On the third hand, mainstream media have a history of misrepresenting how much, or how little, Israel is actually ready to give away on the land issue.  Also on the third hand, it's not just Abbas that's been getting the back of the hand; it's PA leadership in general.

Back to the original link, though, with this as the nut graf:

Israel and the United States have argued that Palestinian membership in these international agencies is a mistaken approach to Palestinian statehood, which should instead be negotiated directly between Israel and the Palestinians. Congress passed a law saying such membership could trigger a withdrawal of United States financial aid to the Palestinian Authority and other steps.

Uhh, I thought Palestine already was a state? So says 70 percent of UN member states; only the US and Western allies, plus a stray country here and there, disagree.

That said, the reason the US and the West reject it is because the PLO and Israel both agreed in the Oslo Accords not to act unilaterally on this issue.

On the fourth hand, this is the real world; usually a geopolitical action is part of a chess board, and a chess board that's not quite so blatantly underwritten with US dollars. And also on the fourth hand, since Bibi Netanyahu intransigently opposes Palestinian statehood, one could argue HE is the one acting unilaterally.

And, since Obama and Kerry won't lean on him to loosen up (despite Bibi's tears over various Obama alleged actions) there you go.

The Palestinian vacuousness of Obama

Well, after his first-term administration played fiscal purse bare-knuckle bruising of the Palestinian Authority, his vacuousness about the process for Palestinian statehood shouldn't be totally surprising, even if he's not up for re-election.

I mean, calling the land grab of Israeli settlements an "irritant" that should not be a precondition for resuming talks? WTF?

"If the expectation is that we can only have direct negotiations when everything is settled ahead of time, then there is no point for negotiations, so I think it is important to work through this process even if there are irritants on both sides," Obama told reporters at a joint news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

The Palestinians have, in the past under Yasir Arafat, shot themselves in the foot, tis true. And under Mahmoud Abbas during Obama's first term:

 During his first four years in office, Obama had sided with the Palestinians on the issue. He and his surrogates repeatedly demanded that all settlement activity cease. However, when Israel reluctantly declared a 10-month moratorium on construction, the Palestinians balked at returning to the table until shortly before it expired and talks foundered shortly thereafter.

But, a land grab is more than an irritant.

That said, I think the Gaza Strip should be eliminated and Palestinians given additional territory on the south of today's current "West Bank" to form a single contiguous state.

As other geographically divided countries, like East/West Pakistan and post-World War I Germany have shown, these geographically split nations have a tendency not to work out in the long run. In Germany's case, it led to a push for war. In the two Pakistans, it was a tragic mix of civil war plus war with India.

So, alternative B is, since Gaza and the West Bank are almost two separate countries anyway, make this legally real. Palestine = West Bank and Hamasland = Gaza.

Of course, that's got about zero chance of happening. Not just Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, but Israel, and Egypt, and Jordan and much of the rest of the Arab World would all oppose a Hamas state.

Meanwhile, speaking of bare knuckles with the fiscal purse? We're in the fricking sequester, right? So, why not cut off, or at least seriously cut back, foreign aid to Israel?

Prez Duke Nukem aiding #Bibi on #Iran?

Explosive indeed, per Yahoo, is the story that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu asked Dear Leader, President Obama, for "bunker buster" bombs to use against Iran -- AND GOT THEM! In exchange for which, he agreed not to attack until after 2012.

This is getting ridiculous. Dear Leader sings "Kumbaya" at home to the GOP but "Onward Bombing Soldiers" abroad.

Hell, for all we know, he and Bibi are trying to provoke Iran through such side-of-mouth negotiations.

And, dear Democrats: Santorum is NOT going to get the GOP nod, so don't harp on me for continuing to tout Dr. Jill Stein, the likely Green Party candidate.

Spot the AP error with the Netanyahu bullying

From an AP story on the U.S. trying to jump-start Middle East peace talks:

Senior U.S. diplomats have returned to the Middle East for an unannounced visit to try to find a way to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that collapsed last year and now face new challenges.


They met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday (among others) and discussed ways to renew peace talks, Israel Radio reported.

In a statement late Wednesday, Netanyahu reiterated his key demands for a resumption of talks. He said the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, accept a demilitarized Palestinian state with an Israeli security presence along its border with Jordan and drop their demand for a return of Palestinian refugees to Israel. He also said all of Jerusalem must remain in Israeli hands.
All are conditions previously rejected by the Palestinians.

Not true on the "recognition" issue. The Palestinian Authority has long recognized Israel's right to exist. Arguably, Hamas does too, with preconditions, some claim.

That said, the other three ideas are simply bullshit. A demilitarized Palestine? That's essentially what Austria-Hungary wanted to make Serbia in 1914. All of Jerusalem Israeli? Not a chance. A "security presence"? Err, that means "an Israeli right to intervene."

Zionism treads on its merry way.

Bibi's speech: Lies, damned lies, smugness, intransigence

Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was clearly playing to suckers like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, he of undercutting Obama's non-change statement on 1967 borders, during Netanyahu's speech to Congress.

Let's start with the most basic of lies: Netanyahu's demand that Palestinian President Mahmoud Aabbas recognize Israel's right to exist. Abbas' predecessor, Yasser Arafat, did that LONG ago.

Smugness? Well, when you have somebody as stupid as Harry Reid running the U.S. Senate, it's easy to be smug.

Intransigence? Starting with his statement on borders, that's clear enough.

As for his offer to make "painful compromises," that probably means "I'll stop construction on one West Bank settlement of 50 houses."

And, I love the mainstream media that says there is no "Jewish lobby" manipulating public opinion. The mainstream media that doesn't have Arab commentators, even for an issue like this, on talk shows. That said, the claim is technically tru, only if you ignore the fundamentalist Christan "Amen corner." And, given Mr. Rapture, Harold Camping, ignoring Christian millennialists is something we do at our peril.

Speaking of that Amen corner, Glenn Greenwald snorts derisively at such "American patriots."

Surprisingly, Josh Marshall, whom I have characterized in the past as a semi-Zionist on Middle East issues over his eye-closing on the al-Jazeera leaks, sees through Netanyahu.

And that gets to the crux of the issue. Just as Israel essentially "created" Hamas decades ago, Zionists like Bibi want to yoke Fatah to it all they can, then claim Fatah did this freely, rather than being backed into an Israeli-American corner.

Don't forget that, Josh. You're still a semi-Zionist until you recognize how much a role the U.S. is playing here.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Goldberg notes Bibi is becoming as bumbling as stereotypical Palestinians.

And, here's great oversight on how theocrats are gaining more power in Israel, how it's a myth that Israel is so "insecure," and more.

Admit Palestine to the UN? Sounds like a good idea

Well, why not? It is a nation. And, Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas makes a good case. But, several issues abound.

First, the U..S. will use the Fatah-Hamas rapproachment to fight against this idea.

Second, Abbas ignores that Jordan took over the West Bank in 1948. True, it relinquished its legal claims in the 1990s, but it illustrates that the Palestinians have often been the red-headed stepchild of the Arab world. And, theoretically, if Jordan hadn't acted as it did, maybe Palestine could have been (it should have been) admitted along with Israel in the first place.

Anyway, if it did happen now, it would be fun to see Bibi Netanyahu shitting a few bricks.

George Mitchell retires of U.S.-inflicted wounds

Former Sen. George Mitchell is retiring as the U.S. special envoy for Middle East issues. Anybody who's read my blogging on the al-Jazeera leaks knows why, too — Team Obama kowtowed to hardliners of ALL major Israeli parties to undercut legitimate peace chances.

Here's the truth:

“What needs to change is Israeli behavior,” said Nabil Shaath, who heads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority, in seeking to explain the stalled peace endeavor. “The man was not given any support and he failed,” he added of Mr. Mitchell, speaking by telephone. “I don’t really blame him. He found himself without any initiative or ability to move ahead. He found himself doing a futile job. I liked the man. He is honest and hard-working, with lots of experience.”

And here's the lies from Benjamin Netanyahu's staff:

Zalman Shoval, a special envoy of Mr. Netanyahu, who focuses on relations with the United States, said Mr. Mitchell “made a major effort to try to move peace between Israel and the Palestinians forward but, at the end of the day, his efforts were undermined by the Palestinians’ refusal to engage in meaningful negotiations. But he deserves the gratitude of Israel and the Palestinians for his efforts.”

With the presidential election growing larger, Obama will appoint a new envoy but won't change old administration behavior.

Israel caused this - don't just blame Hamas

The "this"? The Fatah-Hamas reconciliation that is now official.

As I blogged repeatedly when the "Al-Jazeera leaks" were released, Israel, starting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, needs to look itself in the mirror when any Israelis talk about a "mortal blow to peace."

By constantly undercutting the Palestinian Authority, they emasculated it to the point where a detente with Hamas was the only way for it to maintain political legitimacy.

Now I know Zionists and semi-Zionists (and there's plenty of them in the U.S., right, Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo) and their Amen corner will blame any slowdown in peace talks all on Hamas.

That said, why SHOULD Hamas officially recognize Israel unless it's accompanied by "linkage." Not just Bibi, but allegedly more liberal politicians in Israel like Tzipi Livni have shown themselves to be:

Simply untrustworthy on Palestinian issues.

End of story.

More proof of that?

Israel's calls in the past for a Hamas cease-fire before any talks.

With links to mainstream media stories, Wikipedia's bio of Hamas reminds us what happened when Hamas DID call a cease-fire:

In June 2008, as part of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, Hamas ceased rocket attacks on Israel and made some efforts to prevent attacks by other organizations.After a four months calm, the conflict escalated when Israel carried out a military action with the stated aim to prevent an abduction planned by Hamas, using a tunnel that had been dug under the border security fence, killing seven Hamas operatives.

So, let's talk Israeli hypocrisy.

Fatah, Hamas reach deal - an Israeli self-inflicted wound

And Bibi Netanyahu craps in pants.

Per the Times story, Netanyahu says that if this is a fait accompli, it will kill Middle East peace talks.

“You can’t have peace with both Israel and Hamas,” Haaretz quoted him as saying. “Choose peace with Israel.”

Actually, per the al Jazeera leaks, as I blogged here, here and here, Bibi plus current Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, with a significant assist from the United States, killed Middle East peace talks over the past two years and left Fatah (Palestinian Authority) leader Mahmoud Abbas no choice but to seek some sort of deal with Hamas.

That said, the "regime change" in the Middle East has to be staring over Abbas' shoulder. Per Glenn Greenwald, American popularity among Egyptians is even worse since Obama became president. That includes the fact that by a 54-36 percent margin, Egyptians favor junking the peace treaty with Israel.

With such numbers, Bibi will certainly be pushing Obama to lean on the eventual new leadership to stay in lockstep. And, much as Israel dislikes Syria, who knows what new leadership would emerge there if Bashar Assad is toppled?

Bibi could reduce Mideast tensions more

Assuming that Hamas' price for releasing Gilad Shalit isn't way out of line with similar deals Israel has made, why hasn't Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled the trigger this time? If there's enough internal public pressure, will he?

IAEA to eyeball Israel

I'll bet Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is shitting his pants at this news. It's the first time in its history the IAEA has had Israel on a meeting agenda. More than time.

That said, let's hope the IAEA doesn't get "tipped" by Arab pushing.

Bibi turns tail and runs over nukes

President Barack Obama has a nuclear terrorism summit planned. Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was going to attend personally, but instead will send a mid-level deputy after hearing several Muslim nations were going to raise questions about Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Haaretz reported that Egypt and Turkey were planning to demand that Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has never officially acknowledged it possesses nuclear weapons; the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty prevents nondeclared nuclear powers from acquiring atomic arms.

Some Muslim countries have complained of a double standard in international pressure on Iran to dismantle its nuclear program while Israel is able to maintain its reported nuclear arsenal.

Is Israel a nuclear terrorist state? No. But, what would happen if someone like Avigdor Lieberman became premier? At least Bibi is sending someone, rather than totally withdrawing his country.

That said, the refusal to sign the NPT has always left Israel open to the accusation of nuclear terrorism, especially since questions about Israel's help in apartheid-era South Africa developing its nuclear program remain unanswered.

Bibi gets more intransigent

Is that possible? I guess it is. He has officially said "no new concessions" on housing settlements. So why would we want to continue ANY serious negotiations with him? If the Obama Administration had any cojones, it would release a statement to that effect.