Snyder: This Is Not 1979, And Donald Trump Is Not Jimmy Carter

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Iran has just made a tragic mistake.  When Iranian proxies directly attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, it sent shockwaves across the entire planet.  Of course it immediately reminded many of us of the Iranian hostage crisis, and that episode turned out great for the Iranians.  In November 1979, a group of Iranian militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and they took 52 American citizens hostage.  For the next 444 days, the United States was absolutely humiliated by the Iranians.  President Jimmy Carter looked like a pathetic weakling in the eyes of the rest of the world, and his inability to get the hostages back helped to pave the way for the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Perhaps the Iranians were attempting to recapture that magic by having their proxies storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, but it is not 1979 anymore, and Donald Trump is not Jimmy Carter.

The Iranians appear to think that they can intimidate Trump the same way that they have intimidated other U.S. presidents, and they also seem to believe that if they put enough pressure on him that the U.S. will eventually relent and leave the region.

But anyone that knows Trump understands that he never backs down.

Throughout his life, he has had a personal rule that when someone hits him, he hits back even harder.

And even though Iran is attempting to claim that they had nothing to do with the embassy attack, everyone knows that their proxies never do anything like this without permission from Tehran, and President Trump is promising that the Iranians “will be held fully responsible”…

Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many. We strongly responded, and always will. Now Iran is orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. They will be held fully responsible. In addition, we expect Iraq to use its forces to protect the Embassy, and so notified!

In a subsequent tweet, Trump declared that Iran will pay a “very big price” for what they have done…

….Iran will be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities. They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!

So what does that mean?

It means that we should soon expect U.S. military action, and it will most likely target Iran directly.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper ordered 750 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to immediately deploy to the Middle East…

Esper said that at President Trump’s direction, “I have authorized the deployment of an infantry battalion from the Immediate Response Force (IRF) of the 82nd Airborne Division to the U.S. Central Command area of operations in response to recent events in Iraq. Approximately 750 soldiers will deploy to the region immediately, and additional forces from the IRF are prepared to deploy over the next several days. This deployment is an appropriate and precautionary action taken in response to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities, such as we witnessed in Baghdad today. The United States will protect our people and interests anywhere they are found around the world.”

And it is being reported that the total number of paratroopers being deployed from that unit could soon reach 4,000.

Of course we already have tens of thousands of troops in the region.  In fact, Fox News says that there are already “roughly 60,000 U.S. troops” deployed in the Middle East…

There are roughly 5,000 U.S. troops currently deployed to Iraq now, among the roughly 60,000 U.S. troops currently deployed to the region. According to the Pentagon, 14,000 have been added since May as the threat from Iran increased.

The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman has been in the Gulf of Oman, its strike group armed with hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles in addition to the dozens of strike aircraft aboard Truman.

But those troops will not be used against Iran right away.

Instead, I would expect to see airstrikes or cruise missiles used to send a message to Tehran.

Ultimately, I don’t think that President Trump wants a war with Iran.  A war could seriously mess up his chances of winning again in 2020, and Trump is deeply obsessed with winning next November.

But the whole world has now seen images of Shiite militants smashing their way into the U.S. embassy, vandalizing U.S. property, and setting a reception area on fire.

Trump cannot let that go without a response, because if he allows the Iranians and their proxies to get away with this, they will just be emboldened to conduct more attacks.

So Trump is going to hit Iran, and then the Iranians and their proxies will almost certainly retaliate.  And unless one side decides to back down, a series of escalations could very easily lead us into a cataclysmic war that would not benefit anyone.

This is a very tough test for Trump.

If he does nothing, he will look weak, indecisive, and the comparisons to Jimmy Carter will begin.

But if he hits Iran too hard, we could literally find ourselves in the middle of World War 3.

2020 was shaping up to be a chaotic year anyway, but this crisis threatens to start it with a real bang.

To most people, life in America seems pretty stable right now, but things are about to start changing in a major way.  Global events are already starting to accelerate significantly, and many believe that they will start to reach a crescendo during the coming year.

Let us hope and pray that a war with Iran can be avoided.  Because if the U.S. and Iran go to war, a whole bunch of others will be dragged into the conflict as well, and that includes Israel.

For the Iranians and their allies, the conflict would literally be a matter of life or death, and they would throw everything they have at us.

But how are we going to avoid such a war?

Iranian proxies invaded U.S. soil on Tuesday and they set our embassy on fire.  Are we supposed to just do nothing and allow them to intimidate us like that?

I don’t know what the solution is, but what I do know is that President Trump is fuming right now.

And Iran should not want to mess with a pissed off Trump.