From Vox Popoli

The short, fake Donald Trump really is a wholly-owned creature whose priorities are completely unrelated to American national interests:

Donald Trump told Arab leaders he will only broker a peace deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if they normalize relations with Israel, according to a leaked phone call.

The most powerful leaders in the Middle East, including those from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt, joined the President on a conference call on Saturday to discuss progress toward ending the US-Iran war and reopening the vital oil passageway.

In return, Trump pressed the leaders to normalize ties with Israel, a demand aimed at nations that have opposed the Jewish state since its founding in 1948.

Arab leaders were so stunned by the demand that they refused to respond, remaining entirely silent on the call, according to Axios.

After a prolonged silence, Trump nervously joked, ‘Are they still there?’

With the silence unbroken, Trump ended the call by announcing that his envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff would follow up on Israel normalization in the weeks ahead.

Interesting and informative priorities, to say the least. After the Gazacaust,normalization is obviously a complete political non-starter; 9x more people have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli government than were reported to have been killed by the white South African government for the totality of its rule there.

At this point, I suspect the only reason Iran hasn’t proactively resumed the war is because they know the ceasefire is to their advantage with regards to rearming.

h/t WRSA

Today’s Lavrov-Rubio call was a highly significant and alarming diplomatic communication, covering three major topics. The call took place at Lavrov’s request, with Rubio currently on a four-day trip to India attending the QUAD meeting in New Delhi. State Department Spokesperson Tommy Pigott confirmed: “Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke today with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Minister’s request. The parties exchanged views on the Russia-Ukraine war, bilateral relations, and the situation in Iran.” Here is a full account:

Message 1: Imminent Systematic Strikes on Kyiv — By Direct Order of Putin

Message 2: Evacuate US Diplomats from Kyiv

Message 3: The Anchorage Agreements Are Being Undermined

In light of the terrorist attack on the children at the school in Lughansk, and faced with the reality that this attack was facilitated by Western intelligence and technology, Russia has reached the limit of its patience and is going to put an end to Ukraine’s ability to carry out further terrorist attacks, even if it means killing US and European personnel. They have been warned. Russia is giving them time to withdraw. Any who remain in place are likely to die. That was the essence of Lavrov’s message to Rubo.

Read the details at Sonar21 …

The short version of what happened over the weekend with regards to a deal with Iran:

Trump: “WE HAVE A DEAL”
Netanyahu: “Nope”
Trump: “Deal’s off”

The longer variant: Moon of Alabama

A deal with Iran is (again) off the table. Meanwhile the severe damage of the conflict to the global and U.S. economy is accumulating  by the day.

Time is not on Trump’s side. He urgently needs a deal. But to get there he needs to get Netanyahoo off his back. How to do that is the really difficult question.

I worked as an electrical engineer constructing nuclear power plants for five years. I also attended higher level college engineering and molecular biology courses after I left the nuclear field. I worked with many Indian engineers and students in my life and have some observations.

The Indian culture is not conducive to imagination. They understand that 2 + 2 = 4. They understand that x = 2 in the following equation: 2 + x = 4 by simple inspection. But they cannot think outside the box for higher level applications. To be blunt, they had very limited to no critical thinking skills.

As most of the readers here would attest, Indians at a call center in India cannot think outside of their script.