Regime change, lawnmowers, and revolution.
Say you have a mid-sized field and a mid-sized lawnmower . Your own machine has a good blade but your good friend has a piece of equipment that puts yours to shame so you ask to borrow his.
He agrees. Your neighbor watches a bit anxiously because your field is a bit bigger and has a lot more rocks than he imagined. He doesn’t want a huge repair bill because of his generosity.
Finally he stands in front of the machine ,which is his machine, and says “ Keys please. “
And that is pretty much what is happening now between Netanyahu and His most Perfect Majesty, Donald Trump. The Iranian regime has taken some hard knocks but is still on its feet. It hasn’t even gotten a standing eight-count.
And that’s because regime change is the most difficult and most bloody change to engineer. Let’s do a rough count of countries whose form of government has actually changed.
Cuba. Chile. Vietnam. Cambodia. Iran. China. Russia .
I left out the banana republics which exchanged one dictator for another
and Germany which was kept apart by brute force.
Oh. Post war Germany and Japan
I almost forgot.
All the above countries went through bloody upheaval and a subsequent re-education program . Anyone suspected of being politically incorrect was either just not included in government ,as was the case in post WW2 countries, or exiled or worse, in the case of everyone else.
All of which is to say that in the case of Iran it ain’t happening . The country has a complex and deep system of government, a religious base and a ruthless police force. It has strategic alliances that provide it with cash and weapons.
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And it has control over local geographic choke points, The straits Hormuz directly and the Red Sea indirectly .
Plus Hezbollah in Lebanon and nuclear potential .
The USA has, as its cards, Iranian oil production which is worth half a billion dollars each day, and further destruction of Iranian assets. And diplomatic heft
Nuclear assets can be finessed by rendering them to a third party, and with verification an absolute requirement.
A grand bargain is lurking in the weeds .
The USA unfreezes the Iranian assets under its control .
It also compensates Iran to a limited degree.
The American navy ceases its blockade .
Iran pledges to never lay any claim to the Straits of Hormuz or interfere in and waterways where it has no boundaries
Iranian nuclear assets are signed over to China who in turn pledges control .
Hezbollah vacates Lebanon entirely
And one more wild card
Iran establishes full diplomatic relations with Israel.
Am Yisrael Chai
