Trump Invents Iranian Gov’t That Talks to Him; Threatens Clear War Crime

Donald Trump got a head start on his weekly manipulation of US stock markets Monday morning by making up a “NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE REGIME” in Iran that is supposedly in “serious discussions” with the US to end the war in the Middle East.

Concerned about soaring oil and gasoline prices as well as plunging stock indexes, the president is periodically (and clumsily) inventing positive developments in the floundering negotiations with Tehran to keep the economy from totally tanking… and perhaps for purposes of insider trading.

Bafflingly, the market keeps buying Trump’s lies, which makes us question whether we are sending our best and brightest to Wall Street.

In this case, the president didn’t just tease a carrot, he also threatened a big, war-criming stick.

“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched,’” he wrote in a social media post.

While there may be a bit of ambiguity as to whether the destruction of power plants constitutes a war crime, there is no doubt that targeting desalination facilities would be.

The Geneva Conventions are very clear on this subject:

It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.

We hope that the International Criminal Court in The Hague takes note.

It should be noted that, before going to bed, Trump had fired off another post in which he touted that the US had “taken out and destroyed” many targets on Sunday.

And let’s not forget that he has been saying for weeks that the war has already been won and that Iran has no means to fight back.

Like just about everything else the president says, that is turning out to be false.

Instead of leading a successful military campaign, he (and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) unnecessarily triggered an economic disaster that is causing pain and suffering both within and far beyond the Middle East.

In fact, even if this imagined new Iranian government were to magically come into existence and end the war, which Trump sheepishly calls a “military operation” (when he remembers to do so) to pretend that the attack wasn’t unconstitutional, it would take months for the economy to recover.

That is why one of our biggest concerns is that an increasingly unhinged US president (and Israel) will use progressively extreme measures, like committing clear war crimes, to force Tehran to yield.

The consequences of those actions would be devastating – not only for Iran but also the entire region and the global economy.

Unfortunately, there is nobody in this administration who can (or even wants to) talk sense into a desperate Trump who is seeing his approval ratings crater to new lows seemingly every week – at least the real ones and not those that only exist in the president’s head… like that new Iranian government.