Trashing The Place

 As emotional toddler, Trump is going to smash as much as he can between now and January 20th. Mostly, I thought, this was going to be a series of horror-inducing regulatory and hiring moves that would hamstring Biden's "Hundred Days" to the extent McConnell lets him have any honeymoon.

There is some evidence to suggest that some of the more nihilistic member of his maladministration want to start ACTUAL fires. None more than my pick as Trump 2.0, Mike Pompeo. Iran's top nuclear scientist was assassinated today, and this is a very big deal. On the one hand, I think Iran has been trying to wait out Trump's presidency, but this might require some sort of response. Unlike the attack on Qasem Soleimani last winter, we actually don't know who assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Maybe it was us, maybe it was Israel; hell, it could have been the Saudis. 

Just as likely, it could have been a joint effort by all three countries. Israel, Saudi Arabia and Trumpistan all have a vested interest in damaging Iran. For Israel and Saudi Arabia, it's part of a large contest for national security. For the Trumpists, it's largely political/rhetorical and part of the Anti-Obama reflex that defines Trump. If Obama was for it, it must be bad. The JCPOA successfully arrested Iran's nuclear program, but Obama did it, so it was bad. The US leaving the JCPOA and assassinating Soleimani pushed Iran back into developing nuclear weapons, assassinating Fakhrizadeh is a way to stop their weapons program again. 

For Iran, there has to be a weighted decision about whether and where to strike. The where is hard, unless they have some evidence tying the assassination to a specific country. That informs whether to strike. If this was Israel or Saudi Arabia, I would expect them to retaliate. If it was the US, they might wait until January 20th to try a re-set. If it was us, I have always expected Iran to strike at Trump branded properties outside the US.

Mike Pompeo is a religious extremist who wants to bring about the rapture and maybe he thinks he can provoke Armageddon. Trump largely wants to light the world on fire because people were mean to him by not voting for him. McConnell wants to force Biden into a constant state of defense.

Again, if we are involved in this, even through the tangential work of Kushner and others working with Israel, the Gulf States and the House of Saud, this amounts to arson. They are trying to light the world on fire so that Biden has to be a fireman and not a carpenter.