Chris Woolsey

[Chris Woolsey @chriswoolsey]

True.

[AIPAC 🇺🇸🇮🇱 @AIPAC]

Land of the free and home of the brave!

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[Sara Eisen @SaraEisen]

Mamdani rewrites 250 years of history on America’s birthday - denigrating wealth and innovation and capitalism which has made America exceptional

[Brianna Wu @BriannaWu]

No porn star has ever f*cked anyone as thoroughly as the Palestinians have f*cked my party

[Dan Senor @dansenor]

No

[Frank McCormick @CBHeresy]

Wait, what?! You’re telling me that the best use of our military is killing people in neighboring countries that export drugs to America but under no circumstances should Israel be killing people in neighboring countries that shoot rockets at them?

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Welp, I think we're done here.

Trump himself is now saying he buckled under the pressure of Hormuz.

It's as bad as it could possibly be. He's saying aloud that Iran can have anything it wants because America can't afford the staring contest.

If this is his own explanation in his own words, then the fact that the sanctions relief is front-loaded...suddenly becomes important. The fact that the inspections regime that will verify compliance will be negotiated by an American side that has already admitted defeat, that needs this more than the opponent needs it...is now significant. And the fact that the proxy system is now recognized as legitimate by the United States -- is suddenly exactly the disaster you feared it might be.

And the fact that America has declared aloud that it's not actually capable of imposing its will even in the world's most vital energy chokepoints, causing its allies in the Gulf to already begin to seek a new accommodation with Iran -- makes all of this worse than Obama and worse than the JCPOA.

Remember: the great unfixable flaw of the JCPOA that none of its boosters ever had a good answer for was that it merely kicked the can down the road. It solved nothing.

Trump's deal, as of this moment, is not even close to accomplishing so much.

"Iran never won a war and never lost a negotiation," Trump famously said of Obama's deal (as a reporter reminded him at today's press conference). Ironic that the Iranians would win a negotiation most spectacularly against a man who styles himself the greatest negotiator to ever grace the White House.

So what does it all mean?

It means that in the coming years, nuclear programs will sprout like mushrooms after the rain throughout the Middle East. It means that many nations will now build out new and larger ballistic missile arsenals.

It means that the state system will give way before the march of the region's transnational ideological axes. Minorities will again be trampled, new wars will be fought by stronger states to dominate the power vacuums within weaker ones.

You're thinking of Israel in Lebanon -- but that's just a specific campaign against a specific enemy. Think Turkey, which right now occupies a region of Syria vastly larger than Israel's presence in Lebanon. Think heightened Iranian support for the Houthis in Yemen and a new influx of money and guns to the different sides in Libya.

It means, in other words, that we will have a few more wars to fight, a few more technologies to invent to deal with this new age of cheap missiles and drones -- and also of supersonic Chinese missiles bearing nuclear warheads that Iran will eventually, inevitably, be capable of deploying against us.

And it didn't have to be this bad. (And maybe, when he's heard all the criticism, it won't be.) He could have left something, anything, to concede later. He could have kept the Iranians a little bit in the dark, just a smidgen, as to just how defeated America feels.

Israel's position in all this is simple, and more or less unchanged from last week. America gave us more than we had a right to ask for. But we may be going it alone from here out.

Dust off the nukes. Maybe test one somewhere far away from anywhere. Quadruple the interceptor production lines, double the size of the Mossad and the Air Force. And no, don't let Hezbollah breathe, not for a second.

It's the 1960s again. And Israel will have to defeat a couple more enemies before it can once again eke out a few decades of peace.

[Mark Dubowitz @mdubowitz]

In 2015, we fought a bad deal rolled out with remarkable discipline by an Obama administration that proved far better at messaging and political warfare than at negotiating with Tehran. They won the short-term political debate, and the result was a deal that put Iran on a patient pathway to nuclear weapons, a missile and drone arsenal, ICBMs, massive sanctions relief, a growing terror army, and what would end up as permanent dominance over the Strait of Hormuz.

In 2026, the fight is over an MOU with serious flaws that could create even greater problems. Ironically, it comes from a Trump administration that rightly abandoned the fatally flawed JCPOA. Then, to its credit, it built enormous leverage in partnership with Israel through economic pressure, military action and covert operations that shattered Iranian capabilities which had reached their zenith on October 7, 2023.

Yet, so far, the administration has done a poor job explaining the MOU and its strategy—at times recycling the same discredited Obama-Kerry talking points—and has managed to unite both supporters and critics against the a deal that it still hasn’t released.

The real question is not just the MOU itself, though there will be intense scrutiny over what was gained and what was surrendered in this phase one deal. So far, it doesn’t look promising. The real question is what happens when President Trump fails to secure a final deal.

He will still retain significant military and economic leverage, but how much of it will erode over the next 60 days? Refueling global energy markets may strengthen America’s position, but is he merely exchanging nuclear extortion for Hormuz extortion? Will he finally empower the U.S. military to expand its effective, largely quiet effort to move tankers safely through the Strait? Does he believe that Iran will willingly surrender its Hormuz and nuclear extortion rackets?

Is he prepared to go back to Epic and Economic Fury? Will he with midterms looming? Can he wait until after midterms with economic leverage diminishing and a military force that can’t stay in position indefinitely?

But none of these instruments of power is sufficient. The missing pillar of U.S. strategy remains the same: putting American power behind the tens of millions of Iranians who despise this regime and have the potential to cripple it from within.

The regime’s greatest vulnerability is not sanctions, diplomacy, blockades, or military pressure alone. It is the Iranian people. Call it Operation People’s Fury — there’s no one who despises the regime more than the Iranian people and no one who has risked more over decades to try and bring it down.

A durable strategy should start there.

The president should instruct the relevant agencies to develop a maximum support plan. He will need it very soon when negotiations fail.

[Chris Woolsey @chriswoolsey]

This did not age well.

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion

[Chris Woolsey @chriswoolsey]

@ThisStrangePara @bariweiss @DouglasKMurray @TheFP Couldn’t agree more.

[Bari Weiss @bariweiss]

I couldn't be happier to welcome the singular @DouglasKMurray to @TheFP as a weekly columnist.

https://t.co/RREFtqoOjw

[Chris Woolsey @chriswoolsey]

I truly wish I agreed with you. Ballsistic missiles. Proxies. Enrichment. The regime. All remain. Yes, Iran took losses. All recoverable. The only difference that I see is that Iran will now collect fees in the straight and they are emboldened. The poor citizens of Iran are the real losers here.

[Chris Woolsey @chriswoolsey]

@DrEliDavid Missiles??????

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

The year is 2028.

Trump just announced that the deal with Iran is about to be signed this weekend.

Iran says it is reviewing the final text.

The U.S. says discussions are constructive.

Pakistan says a breakthrough is imminent.

Qatar says it is honored to have played a constructive role in facilitating the talks. Qatar did not facilitate the talks.

Israel says it learned about the deal from Truth Social.

Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is still getting bombed daily.

Axios reports a rift between Netanyahu and Trump. The White House denies it. Trump then posts a photo of himself and Netanyahu. Netanyahu is not in the photo.

Oil jumps 3%.

Then falls 4%.

Trump says the deal is being signed at the request of Pakistan and Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, who Trump describes as “one of the great generals, maybe the greatest, people are saying.”

A senior official says we’re “closer than ever.”

A different senior official says “significant gaps remain.”

They work in the same office.

The next round of talks is scheduled for next weekend.

It will also be described as a breakthrough.

Qatar thanks Pakistan for its important role and takes credit for the progress.

[Chris Woolsey @chriswoolsey]

@HenMazzig Let me paraphrase: “I’m sorry if my words hurt you. I love Jews. I have Jewish friends. But Jews shouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves.”

[Yaakov Katz @yaakovkatz]

Israel sent Iran a strategic message this morning: we act independently.

President Trump might have told Israel not to act in several interviews, but in the end Israel did what it believed it needed to. While this appears to defy Trump, it could just as easily have been coordinated - America stays out of this round, but Iran learns that Israel is prepared to act with or without the US.

And that message matters because Iran had been playing America for a fool. It dragged out the talks while continuing to destabilize the region - attacking the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait (remember the attack on Kuwait’s airport a few days ago?).

Then came yesterday’s missile attack on Israel. Beyond the immediate threat, it carried a message that Iran still believed it could dictate the rules of the game all over the Middle East including in Lebanon.

This was not a regime acting like it was about to make a deal or wanted to compromise. It was acting like a regime that believed it was immune and that Trump was so desperate for a deal, that he would do anything to avoid a new round of fighting.

This morning, it learned a different lesson.

[David Keyes @DavidMKeyes]

🚨🚨 Iran deal is nearly finalized. Only details left to solve are Iran's undying commitment to killing infidels, destroying Israel, killing Trump, crippling the West, sparking Armageddon to bring the Hidden Imam back, and imposing Islam on the entire world. We're so close!!