Middle East War Is Direct Result of Trump Supporting Israeli Settlement Expansion and Terminating Iran Nuclear Deal [View all]
Last edited Thu Oct 3, 2024, 09:18 PM - Edit history (1)
Trump has been running around saying the "world is on fire," and pointing to the Middle East as Israel initiates military action against several of its neighbors in the weeks before the US election as though they were on the clock. While Republicans are using the tension to blame Biden and Harris, it is pretty obvious that the current tension is due to two key decisions made by Trump that set the stage for the current conflict.
First, Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, which was opposed by Democrats, many Republicans, and most of the US's European allies. By doing so, the US lost a great deal of leverage over Iran, which gave Iran the greenlight to continue to develop nuclear weapons. This also broadcast that the US could not be trusted to abide by peace deals.
Second, and most importantly, Trump endorse the expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied territories , which the US had long opposed. This gave the greenlight for Netenyahu's supporters to begin a brutal expansion into Israeli occupied areas where they bulldozed Palestinian homes. This, of course, precipitated the terrorist actions by palestinian extremist groups, which then gave Netenyahu the justification to begin his current military expansion.
Now, as the US election approaches, Netenyahu will try to start a larger war as a means to maintain control at home while also trying to benefit Trump who he knows will support US expansion, because it will benefit his family financially. Even though this will push the US into a wider war with Iran now being unfettered to respond to attacks from Israel, particularly if Israel attacks Iranian nuclear sites, for Netenyahu and Trump it is all about creating fear, war and discord in order to capture power.
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President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday the US will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, sparking outrage from Democrats and at least some criticism from the President’s own party.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters he didn’t see a reason to withdraw from the agreement. “There are no reports that Iran has violated the agreement,” he said. “To me, the greatest worries from Iran are not right now (on) the nuclear side, but rather what they’re doing in Syria.”
Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, called the withdrawal a “mistake of historic proportions.” “The last thing America and the world need right now is a new nuclear threat. Breaking this deal increases the danger that Iran will restart its nuclear weapons program, which threatens our ally, Israel, and destabilizes the entire Middle East,” he said in a statement. “It isolates the United States from the world at a time when we need our allies to come together to address nuclear threats elsewhere, particularly in Korea. This is a mistake of historic proportions.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/ahead-of-us-election-trump-ends-a-us-restriction-applying-to-israeli-settle-idUSKBN27D23W/
ARIEL, West Bank (Reuters) - The Trump administration lifted a decades-old ban on Wednesday that had prohibited U.S. taxpayer funding for Israeli scientific research conducted in Jewish settlements in occupied territory, drawing Palestinian condemnation.
With Tuesday's U.S. election approaching, President Donald Trump's move was praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and could resonate with evangelical Christian voters who support Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
The West Bank settlement of Ariel, the site of an Israeli university, was chosen as the venue for a ceremony opening a new avenue of U.S. scientific cooperation with Israeli researchers.
Palestinians, who seek the West Bank for a future state, said the move made Washington complicit in what they termed Israel's illegal settlement enterprise.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-israel-iran-nuclear-west-bank-2f0d9f2abbb84d29bbe9f28c61a59662
EFRAT, West Bank (AP) — An aggressive Israeli settlement spree during the Trump era pushed deeper than ever into the occupied West Bank — territory the Palestinians seek for a state — with over 9,000 homes built and thousands more in the pipeline, an AP investigation showed.
If left unchallenged by the Biden administration, the construction boom could make fading hopes for an internationally backed two-state solution — Palestine alongside Israel — even more elusive.
Satellite images and data obtained by The Associated Press document for the first time the full impact of the policies of then-President Donald Trump, who abandoned decades-long U.S. opposition to the settlements and proposed a Mideast plan that would have allowed Israel to keep them all — even those deep inside the West Bank.
Although the Trump plan has been scrapped, the lasting legacy of construction will make it even harder to create a viable Palestinian state. President Joe Biden’s administration supports the two-state solution but has given no indication on how it plans to promote it.
https://apnews.com/article/jared-kushner-trump-israel-waterfront-property-901895eeafee867e69d0c4582a4deb47
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s former White House adviser and his son-in-law, praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property,” suggesting that Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the area.
“Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable, if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner said in an interview dated Feb. 15, posted earlier this month on the YouTube channel of the Middle East Initiative, a program of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and reported first on Tuesday by The Guardian. “If you think about all the money that’s gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done?”
“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner added. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”
Responding Tuesday on X to “those dishonestly using selected parts” of his remarks, Kushner posted a video of the entire interaction, saying he stood by his comments “and believe the Palestinian people’s lives will improve ONLY when the international community and their citizenry start demanding accountability from their leadership.”
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