Donald Trump's new enemy isn't Iran

It's reality and it's getting ugly

by Brian Karem

Donald Trump has a new enemy.

Nope. It’s not the Iranians. He bombed them. “Totally obliterated” three nuclear facilities inside that Middle Eastern Country on Saturday, at least according to him, so he’s moving on.

His latest enemy? A fellow Republican. Congressman Thomas Massie has drawn Trump’s ire because Massie had the audacity to disagree with Trump bombing Iran.

Massie is a Kentucky member of MAGA. Among the reasons he’s supported Trump in the past was because of Trumps vehement anti-war stance. He agreed with Trump’s statements about all wars being “stupid” so he, along with others on the Right were “appalled” to find Trump authorized bombing Iran Saturday when we were weren’t at war with Iran.

“I'll concede it was a good week for the neocons who want war all the time,” he said on NBC. “I wouldn't call my side of the MAGA base isolationists, we're exhausted, we're tired from all of these wars. This was one of the promises of his campaign. He promised we would put America first.”

He even doubled down with a post on “X”. “When two countries are bombing each other daily in a hot war, and a third country joins the bombing, that’s an act of war. I’m amazed at the mental gymnastics being undertaken by neocons in DC (and their social media bots) to say we aren’t at war … so they can make war.”

This rare criticism so unraveled Don the Con that he unloaded on Massie with a posting on his Truth Social account:

To say he’s angry with Massie might be an understatement. After all, he bombed Iran and didn’t waste that much energy on them and managed to sound less angry with that regime than a member of his own political party:

Thank you for your attention to the matter? He also sounds like a bill collector.

And Trump even had less energy on Sunday for Iran, merely saying he was cheering regime change in Iran – “Let’s Make Iran Great Again.” MIRA . . .

However some members of MAGA echoed Massie, “We’re supposed to make America great again, not Iran.”

Adding insult to injury, Trump lustfully recounted the violence he just unleashed on Iran, “No country in the world could do what we did,” he said. But, he has criticized former presidents for considering such actions in the past. Here’s a tweet that didn’t age well:

As Isaac Asimov once said, “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” I might add “sadistic” to that.

Iranian leadership, not known for its stability, apparently was surprised to find this week there’s an American leader crazier than they are. “Last week, we were in negotiations with the US when Israel decided to blow up that diplomacy. This week, we held talks with the E3/EU when the US decided to blow up that diplomacy. What conclusion would you draw?

To Britain and the EU High Rep, it is Iran which must ‘return’ to the table. But how can Iran return to something it never left, let alone blew up?” Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said, sounding confused.

It is still unclear what violence will be visited on America due to Trump’s actions, but the Iranians threatened Sunday to close the Strait of Hormuz, which is used to transport crude oil around the globe – thus at the very least almost guaranteeing a rise in prices at the gas pump.

Add that to the list of broken promises by Trump which includes, but is not limited to: No new wars, The Big Beautiful Wall, “A wall like no one has seen before,” the end of the Russian/Ukraine war and cheaper eggs.

The fear, of course, is not with the Iranian military. The Israelis apparently destroyed the Iranian air capability and according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the American military was thus able to send 125 aircraft, 14 “bunker busters” into Iran and back without a spitball being fired at them. The U.S. Navy pumped in two dozen tomahawk missiles for good measure, plus a partridge in a pear tree.

Vice President JD Vance, who stared strangely [which in his defense, is the only way he knows how] at Trump as the president announced that the U.S. military had completely “obliterated” and devastated the Iranian ability to enrich uranium.

He said on Meet the Press Sunday, “I feel confident that we've substantially delayed their development of a nuclear weapon. . . I'm not going to get into sensitive intelligence here, but I think that we have really pushed their program back by a very long time.”

What a week? Two? There’s no telling. And we simply have to wait until satellite photos and other instruments are used, including verification on the ground to be sure how badly we hobbled the Iranian effort to enrich uranium.

We certainly seem to have encouraged them at this point, a fact that Democratic Senator Adam Schiff mentioned on CNN. “We simply don't know what is going to occur— whether Iran will retaliate, whether Iran was able to evacuate some of the enriched material. There were commercial satellite images of trucks lined up at Fordo and leaving in the days preceding the strike.”

If that seems vague, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard posted on social media, “Now the war has begun for us.”

Former President Bill Clinton chimed in and said this has been Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal for a while – a war with Iran to make sure he isn’t removed from office and prosecuted for crimes. If that sounds familiar, it’s only because that’s why Trump ran for office in 2024.

Trump is simply gambling his entire presidency and our lives on his success in bombing Iran. He kind of sounds like Superfly;

“Taking all that he can take
Gambling with the odds of fate
Tryin' to get over
Tryin' to get over
Tryin' to get over
Tryin' to get over”

Trump doesn’t have that cool theme song, but he does have Bibi, and they make a “great team” perhaps the “best team ever” according to him.

But there is a real concern about what comes next. A former senior White House national security expert from the Biden administration told me Sunday, “We have to be willing to wait to see the results before jumping to conclusions. Iran without enrichment facilities is not a bad thing for the region and for us. I'm shedding no tears for the damage done to Iran's program. No one should,” the source explained.

“That said, it is clear that Trump got ‘double-dog-dared’ into this by BiBi and Fox News. And now we're in it. So, they need to define success in this conflict and what they are prepared to do should Iran retaliate.

The good news is that well before these strikes were launched, Iran was already much weaker than they had been in the past. So itis not clear if or how will be able to retaliate. My concern is that Trump rushed into this and hasn't thought that through.” Well, wouldn’t that be unusual.

Hence, that is everyone’s concern at this point. “In many ways this is the result of Trump’s walking away from the Obama accords,” former Obama State Department Official Joel Rubin explained Sunday on “Just Ask the Question”.

Terrorist attacks on the United States mainland cannot be discounted, and Rubin said that part of the reason for that is because Trump has “gutted the FBI, USAID,” and has ICE raiding Home Depots in Southern California trying to round up 3,000 undocumented workers per week. Apparently, a Stephen Miller obsession is more important than preventing an attack on the homeland.

“The FBI is our front line defenders in this battle against terrorism,” National Security expert Mark Zaid said on the same podcast. “But the priorities aren’t straight and now as we face real threats from outside of the U.S., we’ve got Stephen Miller trying to round up day laborers.”

Trump’s actions, have of course, sparked a lot of condemnation for not seeking Congressional approval, but the truth is no president has sought Congressional approval since World War II before taking isolated military action.

The bigger question is, “why now?” Why did Donald Trump give the Iranian regime two weeks to come to the table while apparently already planning to attack them before the end of those two weeks?

Speculation is running wild on that one, from presidential impatience, to Bibi or even Vladimir Putin pulling Trump’s strings (or pissing him off, as Putin and his inner circle, allies of Iran, have torn into Trump for the attack. To which, predictably, Trump responded with a Tweet (or Truth, or whatever that’s called).

But at the end of the day, members of the Trump administration said the ball is now firmly in Iran’s court. That is exactly the point.

It’s how Iran returns the ball that should have everyone concerned. Regime change is a possibility, but so is increased Iranian support for the oppressive regime for the simple fact that the country was attacked by the United States.

Thus, we could be staring at terroristic threats (a suicide church bombing in Syria on Sunday could be the opening act), higher gas prices, drone and missile strikes on American troops in Iraq and Europe or some un-wonderful combination of all of the above.

Donald Trump has been flying by the seat of his pants his whole life, rarely making plans and blustering his way through every situation he faces with an arrogant ego and the belief that he can take whatever occurs and make it work for him.

If he’s wrong, then he’s gambling on more than just an isolated bombing—and much more than the Trump Taj Mahal or Trump Ties.

He’s ultimately gambling with everyone’s life – and much of his MAGA support appears to be splintering, as some of his worshippers are only now beginning to face up to this unpleasant fact.

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Brian Karem is an award-winning reporter, columnist, and author of "Free the Press," and seven others books. He has a popular podcast and Substack, "Just Ask The Question,” as well as a related Substack "Reporter’s Notebook.” You SHOULD subscribe to BOTH

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