Trump’s Secret Iran Plan
We'll see what happens. Time will tell.
Now I am getting worried.
I asked AI a simple question: “What is Donald Trump’s secret plan to fix Iran?” and the answer was “Trump does not appear to have a concrete, detailed ‘secret plan’ he has publicly outlined under the slogan ‘Make Iran Great Again’; what exists is a mix of rhetoric, hints, and regime‑change signaling.”
I have been around for 50+ years longer than AI. I can recall the debate that started in 1979 about whether the mullahs were messianic and apocalyptic (meaning champing at the bit to bring the Shi’ite Mahdi) or merely aggressive, crusading, religious fanatics like Third Temple ministers of the Netanyahu government who have changed the status quo on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
The Iranians would not do anything that is irrational or that jeopardized their regime, said the camp that rejected ascribing to them messianic delusions. I am in that camp. Though no matter how sane the evil mullahs may be, there is no telling what they will do if painted into a corner with the survival of their benighted regime on the line.
Heading toward 40 days since Donald Trump told the Iranian people to “keep protesting” and that “help is on the way,” and with thousands of unarmed demonstrators killed, we may be approaching a pivotal moment.
In Geneva, Tehran said it was willing to compromise on its nuclear enrichment program, temporarily suspend it, and transfer uranium enriched to a near-bomb-making 60% to a third country like Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It stated that the IAEA can again monitor its nuclear facilities. All this sounds like the mullahs have gone as far as they can in response to Trump’s “fair and equitable deal” that requires only Iran’s total capitulation.
Marco Rubio (Secretary of State, National Security Adviser, Viceroy of Venezuela, and Good Cop) has said that for Iran’s concessions to be “meaningful,” they would have to include dismantling their ballistic missiles and ending support for regional terrorist proxies.
The supremely wicked 86-year-old Ali Khamenei takes a somewhat different view: “A sign of the decline of the corrupt, oppressive US empire is its irrationality, such as interfering in our country’s internal affairs. They say, ‘Limit your missiles to this range.’ What’s that to do with you?! Without deterrent weaponry, a country will be crushed by the enemy.”
Now, I would like to think that when the Persian rug merchants negotiated with the Jewish real estate moguls (at the behest of the Greatest Deal Maker) under the auspices of Badr Albusaidi, the Omani foreign minister, nothing was lost in translation. Absurdly, astonishingly, and inexplicably, given that so much was at stake in Geneva, the Iranians and Americans did not negotiate directly but through an intermediary.
Not being a crypto investor, a venture capitalist, or even someone who’d recognize a hedge fund if I tripped over it, and with the dogs of war barking outside my window (or is that the dog park?), I am getting apprehensive. It didn’t help that the Lufthansa Group announced it is “closely monitoring developments” and that, for the next few days, its planes will stop over in Athens on the way to Ben-Gurion Airport — to work up the courage to fly on? Poland has called on its citizens in Iran to leave immediately.
These signs make me think that maybe the US and Iran really are on the cusp of war, although my barber, Doron, is less sure, and he’s usually right. So what’s the plan? I might feel reassured if an Iranian government-in-exile were to be announced. Say, a provisional Iranian regime headed by Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah’s son, with representatives from all sectors of society.
No doubt CENTCOM will do its job. Yet, victory depends on a plainly defined mission and a strategy to implement it. I hope that the “plan” is not to go to war for a “few weeks” to “see what happens.” Please God, let my concerns be exaggerated, and I will happily eat humble pie.
Maybe the war will commence with turbaned mullahs exploding because their ammamehs were booby trapped. So that’s how Trump planned to decapitate the regime! Even if things don’t go that smoothly, I hope that at least, like in the June 2025 Twelve-Day War, most of Iran’s ballistic missiles and drones will be intercepted, and that as few innocent Israelis, Arabs, or Persians will be killed or maimed as possible.
Rosy scenario — Donald Trump, soon to be 80 years old, will get his dynamite of a Nobel Peace Prize, and everyone (in the good-guy world) will be happy.
Let it all go swimmingly. Let Trump and Netanyahu claim credit deservedly for defeating the Islamic Republic and making the Middle East a better place.
But as a misanthrope, other scenarios are rolling through my mind. What if the Iranians, God forbid, inflict heavy losses on the US forces? Suppose China or Russia (or both) exploit America’s full court press in the Middle East – its colossal concentration of air and naval power – to make mischief in the South China Sea or in Europe? In that case, what will be remembered is that Binyamin Netanyahu egged Donald Trump into starting a war that wound up costing way too much in US blood and treasure, maybe even concluded without achieving its hazy objectives, or – worse of all – became yet another “forever war.”
My apprehension, beyond the unpleasantness of war sirens and bomb shelters, stems from my lack of trust in these two key decision-makers: Trump and Netanyahu.
Trump is no deliberative, judicious, and cool-headed wartime president. He lives at least part-time in an alternative reality. Only last June, he declared, “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” Yet here we are. Besotted by Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria, he’s told America’s Kurdish allies they are on their own. Smitten by his fantastical Board of Peace, he declared the October 7 War over in October 2025 (and again at the opening session of the Board of Peace this week). Meanwhile, in reality, Israel buried Staff Sgt. Ofri Yafe, who was killed by “friendly fire” in Khan Younis. And no one in this country is so delusional as to think that Hamas is doing anything in Gaza other than reasserting its control.
As for Netanyahu, I count on him to take credit for any success in another war with Iran and to shift responsibility to Israel’s imaginary “deep state” and the “security establishment” for anything that goes wrong.
If I am unduly downbeat, so be it. In the signature Trumpian phrase: “We’ll see what happens.”