Why did the Cockatoo-in-Chief renege on the Iran deal deeply prized by Russia, China, France, Germany, England, and the European Union? Why did he deliberately damage relations with Europe and cost American workers many thousands of jobs at Boeing among others? Why do all of this to hurt a country that poses no danger to the United States?

Israel.

Israel, Israel. Israel. Israel.

Always Israel.

If Iran were a threat to the existence of Israel, things would be different. If Muslims conquered the Jews, they would presumably treat them as badly as Israelis, and very likely worse. It would be ugly in the extreme. To prevent this, use of the American military would be justified.

But Iran does not threaten the existence of Israel. It does threaten Israel’s dominance in the Mid-East. Iran is far larger and more populous than Israel, strategically located, and has vast amounts of oil. It is a large market for many European products. By contrast, Israel is small and has nothing anyone needs or wants. Left to itself, Iran would become the dominant regional power. It moves fast in that direction now with burgeoning trade with Europe in, among many other things, airliners. With economic influence comes political influence.

Consequently Israel does not want Iran to prosper. If it can, Israel will use the American military to prevent this prospering. It will destroy America’s relations with the rest of the world to prevent it. It is doing so.

As thinking people know, the twaddle about the Iranian’s development of an atomic bomb is just that–twaddle. The Europeans know this, which is why they are not alarmed. The US government know it, since the intelligence agencies have repeatedly said that Iran does not have a program aimed at producing a nuclear weapon.

But: Whenever the American government, or those controlling it, wants to drive the US into a war, it invents a frightening danger and warns of it over and over and over until a poorly educated public believes it: The Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin, Iraq’s WMD, the Iranian bomb. It’s a frightening world, Washington tells us. Things go bump in the night. Boo.

Where does Trump fit into this? Although his supporters offer him as a masterly statesman, biographies, which few read, show him to be profoundly ignorant, incoherent, narcissistic, weak, and easily manipulated. He loves attention and craves praise. He is also corrupt. As a businessman he danced just this side of the law in many shady real-estate deals. All of this is documented, but few will read of it.

Some will say that this isn’t true. Go back and look at the things he said during the campaign, the positions he was going to take before he was modified. He astonished people who worked in his White House not just by his lack of knowledge but his lack of interest in learning. We are ruled by a histrionic dwarf.

But, in a country with no checks and balances on presidential power, foreign policy is what he says it is, and America attacks whoever he wants it to attack.

So why did he ditch the Iran deal? There is of course anti-Jewish posting on the web to the effect that the Jews are manipulating the government to go to destroy Iran for the benefit of Israel. This doesn’t hold water, or only a little water. Surveys have shown that American Jews favor the Iran deal more than do other Americans. This probably is because they are more attentive and better informed than the notoriously clueless US public. (e.g. JStreet and WashPost.) But while “the Jews” didn’t sink the Iran deal, a comparatively small number of Israel-firsters did. These are the Neocons, warlike and heavily Jewish, plus the Jewish lobby AIPAC plus a few Jewish billionaires. Collectively they determine American foreign policy, and not for the benefit of America–which, again, has nothing to gain and much to lose by being manipulated into a war that does not matter to America.

Members of AIPAC are often accused of dual loyalty. I don’t think so, though it is the best we can hope for. They should recuse themselves, though of course they will not.

The assertion that America should fight only wars in the America interest will be called, sigh, anti-Semitism. It is not. Yes, there exists in some quarters an obsessive, grinding hatred of Jews. Historically this hostility has been common if not universal and has led to brutal pogroms. But it has nothing to do with war against Iran. The desire for America to have an independent foreign policy hardly suggests a Cossack mentality. There is no reason to let Israel and a small set of Israeli patriots in New York force policies much to the harm of the United States.

But this is not at all unlikely. In Washington–where I worked in journalism for decades–fear of Jews is so great that no one dares say what a great many are thinking. It gets ridiculous. I remember many years back interviewing in the Pentagon the general who headed the armor command, whose name I forget. In such interviews there is usually a babysitter present, often a major from public affairs, who tries to manage spin.

The general and I were chatting about tanks, in which we both had a technical interest. He commented that the Merkava, a home-brew Israel tank, was reasonably good but not in a class with the American M1. As inflammatory comments go, this was truly lame. Yet when I left, the babysitter came charging down the corridor to assure me that the general was not insulting the Israeli tank, the general didn’t mean, and the major hoped I wouldn’t think etc. It’s that crazy.

Whether Trump believes what he says about Iran’s imaginary lunge for a Bomb is not clear. In Washington it is routine to lie about this or that dreadful danger so as to herd the deplorables toward a desired folly–but is Trump herding or herded? He is clueless about things military and appears to have no grasp of technology. Geography is not his strong suit, as witness his invention of a country called “Nambia.” Netanyahu and the Neocons outclass him by a wide margin and apparently drive him like a truck.

If Trump were an American President, he would tell the Israelis to fight their own wars with their own military. Is he? Watch.

Fred Reed is a retired news weasel and part-time sociopath living in Mexico with his wife and three useless but agreeable street dogs.