King Trump
Trump has won big. But has he won too big?
There is absolutely no doubt as to the magnitude of Trump’s victory in Iran. It’s immense. He’s absolutely on target in declaring that “there is not another military in the world that could have done this.” Not only did 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs target the underground nuclear facility at Fordo with pinpoint precision, but they were able to zero in on ventilation shafts that allowed them to bore through hundreds of yards of solid stone all the more smoothly. Nuclear-powered submarines fired some 30 Tomahawk missiles at Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan, causing heavy damage if not total obliteration there as well. There is talk about Iran spiriting off much of its enriched uranium stockpile to other sites prior to the assault. But it’s irrelevant since it now knows that it is vulnerable to US attack the instant it tries to get its program going again. Iranian nuclear enrichment is dead in the water.
There is also no doubt that Israel has won big. Even before it succeeded in bringing the most powerful country in the world in on its side – no small achievement – it demonstrated its ability to dominate the skies over Iran, steadily degrading its missile launch systems and terrifying its inhabitants.
As for Iran, there is no question that its government is now among the walking dead along with Hamas and Hezbollah. Providing Qatar with advance notice that it was about to strike America’s giant military base at Al Udeid, 20 miles southwest of Doha, was an especially humiliating gesture. Not only did it give US-Qatari forces plenty of time to shoot down 13 out of 14 Iranian missiles, with one going harmlessly astray, it essentially amounted to a request for US permission to engage in a meaningless show of bravado. No one was impressed for even a second. Iran’s loss was foreordained since its per-capita GDP is 93 percent less than that of Israel, its theocratic government is discredited and unpopular, and public morale is at rock bottom after decades of repression and economic decline. Many of Iran’s economic woes are due to US sanctions. But mismanagement and corruption have also played a role.
Quoting ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Marxist economist Michael Roberts recently described how just 300 people control 60 percent of Iranian national wealth, money that they use to buy up foreign real estate or sock away in secret accounts. Income distribution is severely imbalanced with one percent of Iranians owning 30 percent of national wealth, 10 percent owning nearly two-thirds, and the bottom 50 percent owning just 3.5.
Wages meanwhile average around $150 to $200 a month and have been largely stagnant since the 1980s. That’s four decades of zero growth for hard-pressed workers. As for the liberal reformers that western media outlets are always going on about, they want nothing more, to quote Roberts, than “to join the imperialist camp and seek peace with Israel on the latter’s terms, just as the Arab sheikdoms have done.”
To be fair, the Israeli economy is also a top-heavy pyramid scheme with just 18 families controlling corporations accounting for 59 percent of national revenue. But Israel is a high-tech powerhouse that Global Finance magazine recently rated the sixth most technologically advanced country in the world after South Korea, the US, Taiwan, Denmark, and Switzerland. Its politics are notoriously fractious. But when it comes to war, its parliamentary system does a good job of hammering out national consensus. And despite the influence of a bloated orthodox religious sector, Israel at least has had the good sense not to appoint a rabbi as supreme leader with veto power over all aspects of national policy. Yet that’s the ridiculous arrangement that the mullahs have foisted on the Iranian people since 1979.
So while no one knows if the Iranian regime will fall next week, next month, or next year, there’s no question that its days are numbered. Its theocratic power structure is not only at odds with a fast-growing population of 92 million, but it is completely at sea when it comes to dealing with the US. Simply put, you can’t beat modern imperialism with an ideology stemming from the seventh century – as events since Hamas’s disastrous Oct. 7 raid have shown.
Something else is clear. However remarkable “King” Trump’s triumph in Iran is turning out to be, the tendency to overshoot in such circumstances is well-nigh irresistible. After all, it’s not just mullahs whom the bunker busters were meant to impress. It’s also a long list of enemies at home and abroad, i.e. journalists, immigrants, Democrats, and NATO too. This is not to say that Trump is about to bomb the New York Times — although he’d no doubt love to. But now that he has put on such an impressive display, he expects a new level of deference from others who have been causing him such trouble.
This is where imperial overstretch comes in. What Trump wants is more, i.e. more one-man rule, more authoritarianism, more obedience. The neocon Robert Kagan - of all people - put it nicely when he warned just prior to the Fordo attack that the operation will intensify the drive for dictatorship:
“Whatever action he does or doesn’t take in Iran will likely be in furtherance of these goals. When he celebrates the bombing of Iran, he will be celebrating himself and his rule. The president ordered a military parade to honor his birthday. Imagine what he will do when he proclaims military success in Iran. The president is working to instill in our nation’s soldiers a devotion to him and him alone. Imagine how that relationship will blossom if he orders what he will portray as a successful military mission.”
Quite right. A victorious Trump means a bolder Trump. With Republicans convinced more than ever that he can walk on water, his “big beautiful budget bill” will glide all the more smoothly to passage. This means not only deep cuts to Medicaid and other welfare programs, but a national debt that will continue to surge by roughly $1.9 trillion per year. Wall Street will have a grand time buying and selling all those treasury bills and bonds, and stocks and crypto will also go wild. But interest rates will continue to climb, which means that a tipping point will eventually be reached in which speculation falters and the great Trump boom turns into an even greater Trump bust.
Not only is it likely – it’s inevitable. The way in which the Trump family is piling into the crypto markets is astonishing, but the US Treasury’s entry via the misnamed GENIUS Act is even more so. Currently sailing through Congress with bipartisan support, the bill will lead to a vast expansion in crypto that will multiply instability many times over. It’s as if the US had not only boosted trade barriers in 1930 via the Smoot-Hawley tariff act but had also used everything in its power to rev up another Wall Street boom. The combination would have been explosive enough then and is even more so now.
Then there’s China. Now that Trump has neutralized the last anti-US regime in the Persian Gulf, American-Israeli control is complete from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea. Among other things, this gives the US a monopoly over the world’s largest deposit of fossil fuels, deposits that also happen to be the source of 50 percent of China’s waterborne oil shipments. This gives the US enhanced leverage. It also sets the scene for a growing collision between an increasingly aggressive America and a China under growing economic strain. Post-Fordo, Trump is less likely than ever to back down while China is less able. The combination is not pretty.
Taking on Iran was easy. Taking on China will hard. A big win in one arena makes a confrontation in the other all the more likely. Isn’t it remarkable how a president who ran on antiwar platform is now stumbling into World War III?
Notes:
Michael Roberts’s economic writings on Iran and Israel are available at https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2025/06/21/irans-misery/ and https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2023/10/18/israel-the-shattering-of-a-dream/.
For Israel’s tech rankings, see https://gfmag.com/data/non-economic-data/most-advanced-countries-in-the-world/.
Robert Kagan’s musings on the Trump’s deepening dictatorship are available at https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/democracy-iran-israel-war-trump/683269/?utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20250622&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=The+Atlantic+Daily
For more on the GENIUS Act, see
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