President Trump’s “emotional” decision to denounce the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action involving Iran, based on known falsehoods fed to him by Bibi Netanyahu, is not making America great again in the Middle East. Who is really making the decisions on U.S. foreign policy?

By Philip Giraldi

There should be no remaining doubt over whether Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu working through their billionaire proxies in the U.S. own President Donald Trump. Last Tuesday’s [May 8, 2018] presidential full-bore denunciation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that limits Iran’s nuclear program followed a script that could have easily been written by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs or by National Security Advisor John Bolton, which amounts to the same thing. A truly American foreign policy, which is supposed to be designed to support genuine national interests, was nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps the most absurd segment in what was an emotional rather than rational call to arms was Trump’s citation of “definitive proof” that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program.

It went like this:

At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction: that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program. Today, we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie. Last week, Israel published intelligence documents—long concealed by Iran—conclusively showing the Iranian regime and its history of pursuing nuclear weapons.

Trump was referring to the previous week’s theatrical performance by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, complete with PowerPoint slides, delivered in English to reach the desired audience, which was the “decider” in the White House. It was not Netanyahu’s first attempt to employ simple graphics to make his point about the alleged Iranian threat. His famous ticking-bomb montage presented at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly is still recalled fondly in diplomatic circles.

The provenance and meaning of the documents that Netanyahu produced have been debunked almost everywhere in the media, even in outlets that are normally strongly supportive of Israel and all its works. Investigative journalist Gareth Porter has written a book entitled Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. In it he describes how many of the documents on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program were forged by Israel’s Mossad intelligence service before being placed on a laptop and delivered by the terrorist group Mujaheddin e-Khalq, which the Israelis use to carry out assassinations inside Iran. The latest batch of documents mostly date back 15 years, and many of them were already known to the International Atomic Energy Agency as forgeries. Only the president of the United States was seemingly unaware of what kind of material he was actually endorsing.

In truth, Bibi is a serial liar who has been beating on the Iran-nuclear drum since 1996 if not earlier in an attempt to get the United States involved in a program to use its own military resources to take out Iran’s government.

Netanyahu is aware that his own military does not have the capability to destroy Iran singlehandedly unless it uses its secret nukes. It has therefore taken on the task of convincing the Americans to do the heavy lifting and to also suffer the casualties and other costs.

Ironically, in spite of Bibi’s bleating, even his own intelligence chiefs have gone on record recently saying that keeping the JCPOA is good for Israel. Here in the U.S. the verdict has been somewhat the same, with Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and also then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a hardliner on Iran, both stating recently that Tehran is in compliance with all the restrictions placed on it by the agreement. Opinion polls also indicate that two out of three Americans support sticking with the JCPOA because it is clearly working and avoids American entanglement in yet another quagmire in the Middle East.

Trump, who attracted many voters due to his campaign promises to avoid unnecessary military interventions, coupled with his pledge to get out of foreign wars, has become Israel’s poodle. He has surrounded himself with Zionist Jewish advisers David Friedman, Jason Greenblatt, and his own son-in-law Jared Kushner to craft some kind of plan for the Middle East region, the details of which remain notably obscure.

The recent move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and the recognition of the city as Israel’s capital was a typical gesture to satisfy an impossible to satisfy Netanyahu. There was no gain for the United States and the American people; quite the contrary, as it will inspire numerous terrorists and make U.S. travelers targets. And Israel has inevitably taken advantage of the opportunity to make more demands, recently expanding the size of Jerusalem to include large chunks of the West Bank while also considering obtaining U.S. consent to the full annexation of the Golan Heights.

So far the game plan, if there is one, has been to allow Israel to do everything it wants in a bid to make the Palestinians so desperate that they will leave or surrender completely to become Israel’s serfs, thereby allowing the creation of a Greater Israel stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. It would be an Israel ethnically cleansed of Arabs if some of Netanyahu’s ministers have their way. Conceding all to Israel has also meant an ominous silence as Israeli war criminals continue to use army snipers to shoot dead unarmed protesting Gazans. The death toll is currently close to 50 with as many as 5,000 more injured by gunshots and tear gas.

Others who marvel at the ability of Israeli interests to preempt American interests in the White House have come to believe that it is all about money. Tying large dollops of Jewish money to political power is often cited as some kind of “libel,” but there should be no question that Jews have been the money men for the candidates of both major parties in the last electoral cycle. And their money has been provided conditionally based on what the candidates were willing to do to make Israel happy. Both Hillary Clinton and Trump understood the deal and were prepared to deliver.

In the upcoming midterm electoral cycle, control of the Senate is up for grabs and the Democrats are also eyeing major gains in the House. Key to the Republican maintenance of the status quo of control of both legislative bodies is money. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Home Depot’s Bernard Marcus, and hedge fund manager Paul Singer are all reportedly prepared to hand over whatever it will take to the party making the most promises. And it will all be for Israel.

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Other articles by Giraldi can be found on the website of the Unz Review.