A Geopolitical Conundrum: Only Leverage Works When All Have It

I used to want nothing more than the Iranian government to collapse. After the events of last week, I’ve changed my mind. Governments are bigger than me or anyone else. I have never met anyone from Iran, and I had no chance to speak to an Iranian government official. If I did, the CIA would probably be following me around. It turns out that, as Americans, we are not free.

This is something we should all keep in mind: what we hear and what we see as real turns out to be very different.

I am going to go with the first assessment from the experts because unlike the CIA and the Trump Administration, those first examining the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities are not political. From a military standpoint, any general knows that operations rarely if ever have the success the President claims this one had.

Our President wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize. So, when the bombs were practically still falling, he declared the total elimination of Iran’s nuclear program. But many sources, some of which I heard from the BBC, said that a large portion of enriched, military-grade uranium was moved out of these sites. I point to the BBC, because the British, historically speaking, have a very mistrusting relationship with the Iranians.

Well, duh, of course! The Iranians are not stupid. They know that the facilities may get hit, and if the world has not learned anything from Ukraine, Iraq, North Korea, and now Iran, it is in the best interest of any country to make a nuclear weapon as soon as possible.

Iran will have a nuclear weapon within a year or two, regardless of what the rest of the world wants. Our President is more than happy to play along because Trump cares only for Trump, not the world. He wants his Peace Prize, and he better get it.

Over the last year, Iran has been humiliated enough, but now the United States looks amazingly stupid as it adopts a Putin-North Korean script of continuous lying to show us a picture of what’s there when it’s clearly not there. If they say the lie enough, we all fall for it eventually. That is how communist and totalitarian governments work. The Trump administration is happy to adopt this and just call it “liberty” instead of “totalitarianism.”

Humiliating a nation is not good. We got that lesson after World War I with Germany. We kept punishing and humiliating them. The result was World War II.

Here is my main point, but in order to understand it, we have to pull away what we think is most important because, fundamentally, the issue is not the problem. It’s leverage.

Once upon a time, the Jews lived in Israel, including Jerusalem. There were wars and mean kings, and the Jewish people were thrown out of what was rightfully theirs. Then proceeding this, many other people, let’s say Palestinians, many Muslims, made homes for themselves on this land. For hundreds of years, generation after generation, they lived in the same place.

Suddenly one day, a big bad wolf named Churchill as well as some Western others helped the Jewish people take back what was rightfully theirs. But there was one problem. What about all the people already living there? Where should they go?

Can you imagine if a Native American showed up and told you that your nice house on the bay is theirs and you got to leave? Will you? Or will you fight?

But how do you fight? You are fighting against the strongest armies in the world, and you don’t even have an army; well, okay, there were the Egyptians, but Middle Eastern armies have always been weak since oil was discovered. It may have something to do with the western thrust for oil, but what do I know?

All you can do is form a resistance. Because you don’t technically have an army because you are technically not a state, then you all become terrorists.

But who is naming you? Who named the Jews when they were virtually annihilated? Those with leverage. As the saying goes, the losers of a war don’t write its history.

The only way there will be peace in the Middle East between Israel, Iran and all the “actors” is if both countries have equal leverage. Iran needs a nuclear weapon. If they have it, then people can accept that they have to share in peace sometimes.

We cannot kill off the Israelis. We tried. We cannot kill off the Arabs. We are trying. We almost killed off all Native Americans, but this failed.  We are attempting to kill off all immigrants or those who “look” like immigrants, but this will only compromise ourselves (and further plummet birthrates in the U.S.).

What I am suggesting may seem outrageous and un-American, but the truth, as it turns out, is pretty disturbing, yet true nonetheless. No, the Iranians are not going to blow us up because they will get blown up. They will not blow up the Israelis because they will get blown up, and they will not sell the technology because they will get blown up eventually.

Whether we like it or not, we are animals, very bad animals because of our enormous appetite for selfishness beyond survival. I have a little dog. She weighs in at 14 pounds. Luna, that is her name, understands this. She is a smart little dog, but she has to make noise to compensate for being small. She is very good at it, but at the end of the day, the pitbull is going to take what he wants. She will not fight him. She will let him get within four feet, and then she runs and cries like hell. She did her best.

Iran is like Luna. Ukraine is like Luna with a black belt, and Israel is like a pitbull, and the United States is a pitbull with a black belt. Iran cannot win anything. Ukraine will lose the war with Russia eventually. The only way Ukraine and Iran won’t is with nuclear weapons. Yes, both countries have to win for the sake of everyone else.

Not only does Luna have a black belt and got some good licks in on the Russian pitbull, now she is deadly, and she only needs enough nuclear weapons to destroy the pitbull once. That’s it.

Now, we can make a deal.

It’s not about issues because people always have issues. If there are no issues, then people create issues. We all can claim prior land. We all will fight for what we see as ours. We will always be different politically, religiously, ethically, sexually, etc. But what does not change is that we need leverage. If one does not have leverage, then they get abused and destroyed.

Kids do not have leverage. If the President said that the age of sexual consent for girls should be moved back to 10-years old, where it was in colonial America (we got to make America great again after all), our girls would get ravaged and destroyed. Most of those doing the harm would be regular guys because they can. They have leverage.

Law, the rule of law (hint, hint), gives your 10-year-old daughter leverage so that she is protected. The same is true for all human relationships. It’s fundamental and does not change like issues and opinions change. We gave your kid a nuclear weapon in the name of Child Protective Services.

No one wants to hear this. If you speak the truth enough, you will end up like Jesus. Unfortunately, for you, you are not the Son of God, as the Christians see it. No resurrection for you. You don’t have leverage.

If we want to have peace, people need equity and equality. However, the most powerful among us got in power doing the opposite: taking advantage, being brutal, manipulating others, and perverting what Darwin meant by survival of the fittest. It’s not about being ugly. It’s about being flexible. That is what was meant by “fittest.”

It turns out that our pitbull may need Luna. She can get him stuff he’s too big to get on his own. Luna needs some of the protection our pitbull can provide her. It’s a mutual relationship.

Maybe the United States and Israel need Iran, and maybe Iran needs us, too. But that cannot happen if there is no leverage in the first place.

I love my country, but I am angry and embarrassed to call myself American because of our administration’s selfishness, immorality, brutality, and complete lawlessness. Only the Trump administration has leverage. The rest of us are bugs, with no human rights at all.

What happened to Israel on October 7 was appalling, and such acts should be internationally condemned by every country. And if such does occur, a worldwide effort should be made to get every single individual involved. But again, how many Palestinians have died versus how many Israelis? I simply ask again, in the last year, how many Israelis have died and how many Palestinians have died? These are factual, number-based questions. How many lives equal another person’s life? That is a moral question. Such questions can make us feel guilty, a mirror reflecting on ourselves.

People are good AND evil. Good people do bad things, and bad people do good things. What keeps us balanced is leverage, little else. I have met pure evil in my work, but these individuals have brains that are wired differently than most others. Those in power scare us and manipulate our feelings, but the serial murderers you hear about have no control over it themselves. Most of our politicians have complete control over what they are doing … the most evil, really.

The answer to geopolitical problems is finding a way to give countries equal leverage while keeping vicious, egotistical, narcissistic, psychopathic individuals out of positions of power in a country. Yes, there should be mental health criteria for our world leaders.  Yet, if we think nuclear weapons are going to disappear, think again. They are here to stay, so we should probably use them as a leveraging tool against our overly selfish and self-serving natures. We do need a system of checks and balances. We used to uphold this before our courts when rogue.

If Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons, there would never have been a Putin invasion. How many Ukrainians and Russians would still be alive today?