The year 2020 began with the amazing transformation of Donald Trump, who lasted three years in the guise of a politician who preferred peaceful solutions, into the president of the war.

Of course, he had previously loved to play with muscles, rattle with weapons and scare intractable partners with US military power. But at the last moment he always took a step back. Will send an aircraft carrier connection to the shores of Korea - and in a couple of days it is already embracing with Kim Jong-un in Singapore. And he writes on Twitter about what a wonderful deal he managed to make with Pyongyang.

And last summer, when the Iranians shot down an American drone, Trump completely canceled the retaliation operation (during which attacks on three Iranian military targets were to be launched) ten minutes before it began. Not everyone noticed this, but then the US president explained his decision by saying that it would be wrong to avenge the destruction of a dear, but the machine, killing living people. But if the Iranians cross the “red line” and kill the American, then he will not hesitate.

Perhaps it was precisely because Trump preferred threats over actions for three years, the assassination of the IRGC commanding officer Kassem Sulejmani (and with him several other important Shiite commanders), carried out with surgical accuracy on the night of January 3 near the Baghdad airport, was a complete surprise for Iranians , and for Americans - regardless of whether Trump's supporters or opponents were the latter.

Meanwhile, formally, Trump just fulfilled his summer promise - an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. After all, the current US-Iranian confrontation in the Middle East entered a hot phase after a young American contractor, an Arabic translator, Navres Hamid, died as a result of the shelling of the Iraqi K-1 air force base in Kirkuk (over 30 missiles were fired at it).

The irony of fate is that Trump, whom his enemies accuse of hating immigrants, almost started the third world war because of a guy who was born in Iraq and became a U.S. citizen only in 2017.

And the war was really on the verge: after the assassination of Suleymani, who was called the second most influential person in Iran after Rahbar Khamenei, Iran promised the States "terrible revenge" and even delivered a "retaliation strike" at Ain al-Assad military base. True, there were no casualties: assuming that the answer for the American soldiers would be much worse than for the buildings and equipment, the Iranians warned the enemy about the planned attack.

Although the first time after the shelling of Ain al-Assad, versions of 80 dead Americans walked on the Internet, in fact, no one died - all the personnel from the base managed to hide in the bunkers. As a result, both sides of the conflict retained their face, and had it not been for the "black swan" in the form of a shot down Iranian air defense Ukrainian plane, everything would have ended a week ago. Unfortunately, the duty officer of the IRGC lost his nerve and took the civilian Boeing for an American cruise missile. Thus began a new round of conflict: after the command of the IRGC officially pleaded guilty to the death of the Ukrainian plane, protests began throughout Iran.

The main active force of these actions was the advanced (mainly pro-Western) youth of big cities - students, entrepreneurs, people of free professions.

The same social environment that Western political technologists and strategists have been betting on for a long time, whose goal is to transform the Iranian theocracy into a "democracy" oriented toward Washington and Brussels.

The authorities of the country, well aware that it was a question of the survival of the regime, answered. And then Donald Trump reappeared on the stage - as it should be according to the laws of the genre, all in white.

“To Iran’s leaders: DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTERS. Thousands have already been killed or thrown into jail by you, and the world is watching this. More importantly, the US is watching. Turn on your internet again and let reporters move around unhindered! Stop killing your great Iranian people! ”

This post was posted on Twitter by the American president first in Farsi. The owner of the White House himself with the noble ancient language of Firdousi and Khayyam, of course, is not familiar - for this he has at his disposal a whole staff of translators. But the fact itself is important here - Trump has never once posted non-English tweets to his favorite social network. Another Farsi entry appeared on President’s Twitter on Monday. “The National Security Advisor suggested today that the sanctions and protests that shocked Iran will force him to negotiate. In fact, it doesn’t matter to me at all whether they will negotiate or not. It is entirely up to them, but no nuclear weapons and - "Do not kill your protesters."

The fact that the USA themselves bear responsibility for a new wave of protests (and, therefore, for the death of demonstrators), if only because the new wave of sanctions hit the pockets of ordinary Iranians even more painfully, and not at all of the theocratic and military elite, - Trump, certainly not mentioned. His position even admires his cynicism: we will choke you with sanctions in order to provoke a new wave of indignation, but do not dare to resist!

And let @realdonaldtrump focus on non-military measures of coercion - the words "I don’t care at all whether they will negotiate or not" will give out the new Trump, the president of the war, and not the world.

Trump’s turn to power politics in the Middle East immediately earned the approval of conservative journalists. In the New York Post, Fox News columnist Michael Goodwin wrote: “Trump's philosophy of“ peace through power ”is exactly what America needs. John Kerry's claims (for detente with Iran. - K. B.) are not related to reality. The agreement (SVPD - K. B.) did not give America and the other countries that signed it the opportunity to oppose Iran’s malicious activities ... Until Trump destroyed Suleimani with a drone, there was no progress in this area. Simply put, Trump is not an arsonist. He’s a master of transactions, one who uses our military power as a means of intimidation, but for its intended purpose only in the most extreme case. ”

These words of Goodwin led Trump to rapture. “Thanks to the great Michael Goodwin,” he wrote on his Twitter. “I myself could not say better!”

But not everyone approves of the “new, hard Trump”. To the president’s great disappointment, among those who did not understand him, there are also his associates in the Republican Party.

The fact is that with Trump and his team, the evidence about the “sinister plans” of General Suleymani is very bad. This is a truly rare case when critics of the president have every right to blame him for voluntarism. There is no doubt that Suleimani was an enemy of the United States and Israel, but he was a serious adversary who respected the rules of the game, and not a crazy maniac who planned to blow up four US embassies around the world. Meanwhile, this is precisely what the White House representatives insist on, including Trump himself. It was precisely in order to “stop Suleymani,” while he did not begin to kill the Americans left and right, that the president of the United States gave the order to shoot his motorcade with cruise missiles.

On January 8, just before the Iranians struck retaliation against Ain al-Assad base, the White House, according to media reports, held a secret briefing for congressmen and senators on the operation to destroy Suleimani.

As the reporters managed to find out, neither the president’s representatives, nor Pompeo’s secretary of state, or even CIA director Gina Haspel, provided the congressmen with any evidence of the imminent threat posed by Suleimani. Leaving the carefully guarded hall, lawmakers from Capitol Hill were not shy in expressions.

“This was probably the worst briefing I saw (at least on military matters) in my nine years in the US Senate,” Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee told reporters. Lee (along with Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, one of Trump's staunch supporters) said he would support the Democratic resolution on military authority. True, this resolution, which limits the president’s powers in relation to the conflict with Iran, being advisory, and not binding, did not cause much harm to Trump. Rather, the apostasy of Republicans such as Lee and Paul should have worried him. True, journalists recalled that the two had voted with the Democrats last summer to prevent Trump from starting a war with Iran during the exacerbation of that time.

As for the democrats themselves, Senator Tom Cotton, who published on the pages of The New York Times (!) The real eulogy of Trump, who freed the world from the “monster specializing in the murders of Americans”, in general, does not sin much against the truth, accusing them of “ strange sympathies ”to the murdered Iranian general.

But this, of course, is not sympathy - the murdered Suleimani and Nancy Pelosi, and Bernie Sanders, and most of their Democratic Party colleagues do not give a damn. They just could not pass by such a wonderful opportunity to kick Trump once again - this time for not consulting Congress before ordering the assassination of the Al-Quds commander, and for putting the United States in danger of retaliation .

Trump is predictably angry: while he pulled in response to the assault on the American embassy in Baghdad, he was accused of lack of will and impotence, and when Suleimani was eliminated, they began to accuse him of exceeding his authority and dangerous amateur performance.

“Democrats and Fake News are trying to turn the terrorist Suleymani into a great guy just because I did what I had to do 20 years ago! He wrote in one of his last tweets. “Whatever I do, be it in the economy, the military sphere or elsewhere, it will be scorned by the Rafical (as in the original - Rafical. - K. B.), Left, Doing Nothing Democrats!”

However, for Trump, it is much more important how voters will perceive his transformation from a “president-businessman” into a “president-military leader”. Alas, it is too obvious that Kassem Suleimani was not liquidated at all for reasons of an uncompromising struggle for democracy around the world, but was sacrificed to the election campaign of Donald Trump. The president, not without reason, believes that his electorate would rather support a politician who decisively and firmly deals with the enemies of America, rather than the good-natured pacifist Bernie Sanders, who, in the spirit of the hippies who protested against the Vietnam War, unconditionally condemns the murder of Sulejmani, comparing him with ... “Putin’s murders of Russian dissidents "(Do not ask which of the Russian dissidents Vladimir Putin killed, - it is obvious to Sanders that everyone).

And I must say, Democratic voters have already responded to Sanders pacifism: according to recent polls, in Iowa he is ahead of Mayor Pete Buttigic, and in New Hampshire he is even the favorite of democratic sympathies Joe Biden. Donald Trump himself noted this unexpected jerk of the far left senator from Vermont and wrote on Twitter:

"Wow! Crazy Bernie Sanders is gaining momentum in the election and looks very good against his opponents in the Party Doing Nothing (Democrats - K. B.) So what does all this mean? Stay with us!"

“This means that you will lose," Sanders tweeted succinctly.

But, honestly, Trump can hardly wish himself another opponent. The same Joe Biden (with all his senile eccentricities) is much more dangerous for Trump, because the average Democrat will vote for him rather than for the dangerous "socialist" Sanders or for the openly gay Buttigic. And Sanders can demonstrate excellent results in the primaries (where too much depends on young activists who are prone to known extremism in their views) and fail miserably in the national elections, as recently ideologically close to him Jeremy Corbin failed in the UK.

Therefore, the more the “crazy Bernie” will pose as a pacifist, the more Trump will try on a new image of the president of the war. But will not those voters turn their backs on him, who in 2016 were attracted by the quite reasonable thoughts of the billionaire candidate that America should less intervene in foreign affairs around the world and more deal with its own problems?


The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.