Tunnel Vision: Trump Must Eliminate the IRGC To Achieve Peace
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IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER’S MILITARY ADVISER WARNS OF A ‘DARK TUNNEL’
During an exclusive CNN interview Friday, Mohsen Rezaei, the chief military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, forewarned Washington that “the U.S. would enter into a dark tunnel should it resume fighting.”
Iran is projecting victory as indirect talks continue to agree to a framework that would end the war. Mr. Rezaei argued Tehran has already won when he boasted, “This is the first time Iran has emerged victorious in wars, while in previous wars Iran has always been defeated.”
In truth, no one has yet won or lost this war. For now, it is essentially enmired in purgatory.
Ongoing negotiations between the two countries remain on a road to nowhere. U.S. Central Command and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are trading shots in the Strait of Hormuz, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
Plus Tehran is flexing in Lebanon. Iran continues to link saving its Hezbollah proxy’s ability to fight another day against Israel as a precondition to any deal.
Nor are there outward signs the IRGC is willing to back down. Mr. Rezaei made it clear that if necessary, Iran “will drag the war” by expanding its military operations to include the Indian Ocean, Bab al-Mandab Strait, and the Red Sea.
In the balance: Iran has basically been seizing the narrative from President Trump for the last week. The IRGC has also controlled the messaging. Tehran’s attack last week on the passenger terminal at the Kuwait International Airport was designed to warn the Gulf States that the IRGC is willing to target critical infrastructure, including oil and energy facilities and water-desalination plants.
Iran’s nuclear-weapons program and existing stockpiles of enriched uranium are still the white elephants in the negotiating room. The IRGC refuses to even address them unless Mr. Trump pays Tehran $24 billion.
Curiously, Axios reported that Mr. Trump’s special envoys to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, visited the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee last week for a crash course on nuclear negotiations.
Several unnamed American and regional officials suggested it could be because the White House is getting close to a deal with Iran that would lead to the 60-day time period to negotiate an end to Tehran’s nuclear program.
Mark us down as skeptical. Iran has repeatedly said, including quoting Mr. Khamenei, that it will not agree to transfer its enriched uranium to a third country.
Decision point: There is only one way out of this dark tunnel for the White House: getting rid of the IRGC. It is the core malady preventing Mideast peace. The IRGC proved that Sunday by attacking Israel, prompting the Israel Defense Forces to retaliate by striking 15 targets in Iran with ballistic missiles.
Even Lebanese President Joseph Aoun gets it now. He told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that the IRGC is “using Lebanon for the sake of [Iran’s] own interest.”
ICYMI, KIRILL DMITRIEV ANNOUNCED RUSSIA IS PUSHING AHEAD WITH THE ‘PUTIN-TRUMP TUNNEL’
Speaking of tunnels, Kirill Dmitriev, who is often called Russian President “Vladimir Putin’s wallet,” is yet again pitching his tunnel that would connect Siberia to Alaska. He first proposed the 70-mile rail and cargo tunnel in October.
In an X post at the time, Mr. Dmitriev pegged the price tag at $65 billion or more. Then, in an obvious sop to Elon Musk, he pointed out that using the tech titan’s Boring Company technology could reduce the cost to less than $8 billion.
Evidently, it is not the first time the Kremlin has conceived a similar project to connect Russia and the United States. Purported Soviet-era archival documents revealed Moscow had considered building a “Kennedy-Khrushchev World Peace Bridge.”
Mike Eckel quoted Mr. Dmitriev on X Thursday saying that “Russian and American officials tomorrow will be signing a MOU on building a tunnel under the Bering Strait between Chukotka and Alaska.”
Mr. Dmitriev quickly responded to Mr. Eckel, stating, “I did not say the signing is with the US - probably lost in translation. Tomorrow’s signing will not be with American officials but with an engineering company for further work on the tunnel’s engineering design.”
In the balance: Mr. Putin is getting desperate and is grasping at straws. Ukraine is increasingly on offense and taking the fight to St. Petersburg and Moscow. Kyiv hit an oil terminal Wednesday near where this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum began the same day.
Mr. Dmitriev, once again Mr. Putin’s sycophant, is trying to appeal to President Trump’s ego and love of construction. Mr. Dmitriev is also playing the Russian president and his known love of Russian and Soviet history. That might work in Moscow, but it is not going to work at the White House.
Mr. Trump knows this project makes no economic sense. Shipping is cheaper and more efficient. Plus, rail and cargo would have to travel thousands of miles across largely uninhabited territory on both sides of the Bering Strait.
Chalk this up as an old Soviet-era pipe dream. In 1924, the Meyerhold Theater staged a play based in part on Bernhard Kellermann’s “The Tunnel.” It centered on “Soviet workers digging a tunnel from Leningrad to New York and, having reached it, starting a proletarian revolution in the United States.”
Mr. Dmitriev’s gambit here is obvious: undermining the United States from within. For that matter, Mr. Dmitriev’s evergreen praise of Mr. Trump is glaringly obvious too.
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