Donald Trump is being drawn into the kind of proxy war with Russia that his predecessors have been trying to avoid since the Bay of Pigs.
Vladimir Putin has outthought and outfought his so-called friend since the day they met. But Wednesday’s revelation that Russia is actively helping Tehran to target American assets should strike fear into us all.
The botched 1961 invasion of Cuba was a huge embarrassment to JFK and set the stage for the missile crisis the following year that nearly pitched the United States and the Soviet Union into World War Three.
Kennedy’s attempt to hide U.S. involvement by using anti-Castro Cuban exiles was quickly exposed, and for 13 days in October of 1962, nuclear obliteration was a very real possibility.
JFK and Trump are unlikely bedfellows, but fast forward 64 years, and the 47th president is finding himself in the same kind of dangerous pickle that the 35th managed to extricate us from.
The difference is that America could trust Kennedy (even if Jackie couldn’t). The same cannot be said of Trump.
With the Bay of Pigs, JFK would argue that it was hatched by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and he was trying to make the best of it.
The Iran War is all Trump’s doing. As much as he would like to, he can’t blame Joe Biden.
And the specter of Vladimir Putin is looming larger as Tehran’s confidence grows that it has withstood the worst of America’s initial barrage, which has left it, if not untouched, then certainly unbowed.
First, we learned that Moscow was sending intelligence on American military movements and locations to Tehran. That was scary enough.
On Wednesday, CNN reported that Russia’s involvement in the war was deeper and more direct than that. They are providing vital technical information about Iran’s deadly drones that have been more effective than any other weapon in penetrating defences in the Gulf
In simple terms, the Russians are actively trying to kill Americans and their allies. It’s not just theory.
The Iranian-designed Shahed drones have been used successfully by Russia against Ukraine, sometimes raining down 1,000 at a time, and now the Kremlin is sharing its knowledge with Trump’s enemy.
It is also sending the Iranians its sophisticated satellite imagery. Putin is no longer a bystander. He is a participant.
Meanwhile, Trump’s great peacemaker Steve Witkoff, the 19th hole Henry Kissinger, says Trump should take the Russian leader at his word.
He was speaking after Putin was on a call with Trump on Monday and insisted he wasn’t sharing any military intel with Iran.
“I can tell you that yesterday on the call with the president, the Russians said they have not been sharing. That’s what they said, so you know, we can take them at their word, but they did just say that,” he said on CNBC.
Witkoff was talking to the Russians again on Wednesday with his partner-in-Crimea, Jared Kushner, and White House Senior Advisor Josh Gruenbaum. Presumably, he believed everything they told him then, as well.
Trump’s version of the phone call wasn’t any better. “We obviously talked then about the Middle East, and he wants to be helpful,” the president said. “We had a very good talk, and he wants to be very constructive.”
Really? The naivety flows down from the top. “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth insisted Russia is “not really a factor here,” and Trump’s feisty mouthpiece Karoline Leavitt said Moscow leaking intelligence to Iran “doesn’t really matter.”
But shouldn’t they be asking themselves just how six U.S. troops were so accurately targeted in an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait on March 1?
What part did Putin’s Russia play in the deaths of Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, Capt. Cody Khork, Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, and Sgt. Declan Coady?
How did one Shahed drone make it through Kuwait’s air defenses, and how did Iran know to target a makeshift operations center at a civilian port?
I’ll bet Putin can tell you how.
Not a factor. Doesn’t really matter. A good talk.
Putin must be laughing into his Radeberger Pilsner.
Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky offered Trump help countering those same drones that have rained down on Ukraine, and was turned away. It was only after the U.S. service members were killed that Trump changed his mind and asked for help, after all.
When the U.S. president was pretending to be a big boss for TV ratings in The Apprentice, Putin was playing life-and-death games in the KGB. He is many things, but trustworthy is not one of them.
Nor is he ever going to be our friend. He watched firsthand as the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States became the world’s pre-eminent power. There is nothing he would like more than to take us down.
And the weaker he becomes, the more dangerous he will be.
America would do well to get out of this war. Israel will certainly not make it easy. Neither will Putin. It is diverting the world’s attention away from his illegal invasion of Ukraine.
How can Trump complain about that now that he has attacked not one but two foreign powers, Venezuela and Iran?
His moral high ground is about the same level as the altitude of the Florida swamps that he should crawl back to once this is over.
You hear stories of the fright that gripped America in 1962 as it teetered on the brink of nuclear war. One more mistake from Trump and we could find ourselves in a similar position.
And even if Trump manages to draw lipstick on the pig of his Iranian “incursion,” he hardly inspires confidence that his war of twits with Putin is done.
Because his next target is Cuba.
