William de Berg
The predominant narrative about the current Iran conflict is that Donald Trump made one of the greatest military historical blunders of all times by attempting to destroy a government and military of a nation of almost 93 million that hosts one of the world’s greatest reserves of natural resources and perhaps the third-largest fleet of advanced missiles and low-cost drones—all with a few thousand (belated) U.S. Marines and airborne soldiers and (initially) a single aircraft carrier over 1000 kilometers off-shore. His supposed blunder resulted partly from the fact that he wasn’t even aware that Iran had the military capability to shut down the vital Strait of Hormuz indefinitely and strangle much of the world’s economies, especially those of our so-called “allies”.
The predominant narrative also argues that Donald Trump is losing his mind, is dominated by Israel, is a bloodthirsty narcissist, that he ignored competent military advice, etc. But this narrative flies in the face of what has transpired since Trump rode the escalator down to the Trump Tower lobby to announce his candidacy for president of the United States in 2015. Trump has been smeared, threatened, and sabotaged from within by almost the entire mainstream media, intelligence agencies, and the legal system—the key arms of the globalist bankers who have tried to control the world ever since the end of World War II. Senator Schumer of New York once warned Trump that if he went after the intelligence agencies they had “six ways to Sunday” to get rid of him[1]. There have actually been far more than six political, legal and physical efforts to remove Trump, but he beat back every attempt through determination, political savvy, and, in some cases, good fortune. Trump had a relatively successful first term as President until COVID struck hard and the U.S. economy went into lockdown—against his wishes. He still managed to win fairly convincingly the 2020 election, which was then denied to him by massive and unprecedented electoral fraud. He remained standing and, thanks to some gifts from the Democratic side, managed to rebound in 2024, win the presidency back, and begin to reverse the decay of the American economy and society. He closed the border, jumpstarted the deportation of hundreds of thousands of criminal undocumented aliens, reduced the trade deficit, and revived domestic manufacturing substantially with his tariffs. In world affairs, he had several legitimate successes at conflict mediation, from the Congo to Asia, and he offered a way forward out of the horrors of Gaza and Ukraine. Then, could it be that a man who had enjoyed almost unbridled success in the past decade against all odds suddenly makes a seemingly disastrous Iran move, ignoring the advice of his vice-president and many key advisers in the process[2]?
Appearances can be deceiving, however. One must start with “What Does Donald Trump Want”? Trump has clearly stated his intent to reduce our presence in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, which he considers nothing but huge financial and other drains on the United States[3], but he has repeatedly been thwarted in his efforts. During his first presidential term, his order to abandon Syrian bases and his attempt to bring peace to South Korea and remove our troops there went nowhere, and his effort to extricate the United States from NATO has been a slow-going process because of the entrenched Western-led globalist network. He believes the United States can go it alone, as long as the Western Hemisphere is secured (the “Donroe Doctrine”)[4]. He has been in close contact with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping throughout his two presidencies and, despite some occasional bluster against them, Trump is allegedly working with Putin and Xi to carve up the world into separate spheres of influence—East Asia for China, Eastern Europe and the Balkans for Russia, Central Asia split between China and Russia, and the Western Hemisphere for the United States[5]. In fact, Trump has basically ceded the Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus and would have given China the dominant role in East Asia had he pulled troops out from South Korea. Russia and China, meanwhile, have done nothing to stop Trump’s moves against Venezuela, Cuba, the Panama Canal, and even Greenland. In this new trilateral hegemony, aging Western Europe is left out in the cold, Pakistan and India will eventually have to come to terms over control of South Asia, and Africa with all of its resources will remain in play.
So where does that leave the Middle East? The British invested heavily in Israel as a colonial outpost in the event that Egypt might sometime fall out of its control (which it did under Nasser), populating it with European Zionists. The United States joined in during the 1967 War and de facto combined Israel into a shaky alliance with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Persian Gulf monarchies to further entrench Western energy and other interests in the region. But there was still “cleaning up” to do in the region. So, a plan was devised (similar to the Israeli Yinon Plan) after September 11th to topple seven recalcitrant countries in five years[6]. As of the end of 2025, six of them had already been thrown into the new “empire of chaos”[7]: Lebanon and Somalia (prior to 2000); Iraq (2003); Sudan and Libya (2011); and Syria (2024). So, that left only the big prize—Iran—with its large land mass, large and educated population, and vast oil and natural gas riches.
Many narratives assume that the efforts over the years to produce regime change in Shite Iran was to protect Israel first and the Sunni monarchies secondly. But the real goal, even before the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, has been to control the vast energy reserves of Iran, which to the Western globalist bankers are like blood was to Count Dracula.
Enter Donald Trump. Trump, with his distaste for foreign involvements, his conspiracy-theory bent, and his America First agenda, was viewed from the start as an unguided missile by the globalists. His candidacy for President was ridiculed as an impossible joke, he was sabotaged at every turn by the globalist ‘Deep State” during his first administration, and he was then seemingly put to the stake after it. But he refused to die and finally, in his second term, started to seriously implement his longstanding agenda.
Trump has restored control of southern border, control of international trade (which he has accomplished by means of tariffs, which the globalist bankers loathe because it deprives them of badly needed foreign cash infusions), and control of the social narrative by eliminating the distasteful policies spawned by the globalist media and its political allies to destroy traditional values and sow divisiveness (all helping the globalist elites to maintain control). But there is the persistent claim that Trump is held in the clutches of the Israelis due to a combination of 1) his Epstein stain (despite the fact that he threw Epstein out of a Mar-a-Lago and was cooperative with FBI investigations of Epstein)[8]; 2) his allegiance to big Jewish donors in the United States (even though he’s never going to run again for public office), and 3) his enthrallment with his cryptic son-in-law Jared Kushner[9]. Certainly, Trump has been the most vociferous defender of Israel and Israeli foreign aid of any president in our lifetime. But the key to understanding Trump is not to focus on what he says but on what he does.
And what he does has not been always in agreement with those of the right-wing Israeli government. In the case of Gaza, he (mostly) ended the slaughter of Palestinians and had the Israeli defenses forces pull back while his much-lampooned ‘Board of Peace” was set in motion to create a new Riviera on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean. If his plan actually takes off, it is hard to imagine Israel ever invading Gaza again, even though Trump has not insisted on the dismantling of Hamas as a political and security force.
Then there was the 12-day war last June. Israel started the bombing and then managed to get Trump and his aerial armada to join in. Trump with his bomber fleet supposedly obliterated most of Iran’s uranium enrichment capability, even though no one was killed on the ground. Iran retaliated by an announced shelling the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar with its thousands of American soldiers, but again no one was killed. In the meantime, Iran and Israel continued to exchange missiles, but Iran with much larger resources and superior missile technology started to ramp up the pummeling of Israel. If the 12-day war were a 12-round prize fight, Israel might have claimed the first couple of rounds but Iran swept up all the later ones. Israel then begged Trump to get Iran to stop and the war ended with the United States going home and declaring a questionable “victory”. This was all Kabuki Theater[10] … and vintage Donald Trump. Trump talks aggressively but bombs more for show, as in Syria (where only a few Syrian soldiers were accidentally killed in 2017) and Venezuela (where except for losses among his Cuban security detail Maduro was kidnapped in what appears to have been an inside job coordinated with the United States[11].)
Fast forward to February 1st. At the beginning of 2026, Trump began to assemble an actual armada in the Indian Ocean, not just an aerial one, and he supposedly overrode the advice of Vice-President Vance, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Rubio, National Intelligence Chief Gabbard, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Cain in first threatening and then following Israel in attacking Iran. The reasons for attacking Iran, besides joining in with Israel, changed almost daily, and then supposedly the Trump and the Pentagon were caught off guard by Iran’s closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz. Really? A man who was once described by Robert Kennedy, Jr. as having an “encyclopedic knowledge” of the Middle East[12] had no idea the Strait of Hormuz could be closed even though almost everyone else did?
The difference between the new Iran war and the 12-day war is that the current one is regional and several thousand people have been killed throughout the Persian Gulf states, including officially over a dozen American soldiers. But in the 12-day war Israeli bombs allegedly killed over 1000 civilians and Israel also suffered dozens of deaths[13], but these were outside the American-Iranian part of the conflict. In the current war, most civilian deaths have been caused by Israel, which has few reservations about blowing up entire apartment buildings to whack a single opposition leader. The United States has bombed mostly military targets, aside from what was a likely mistake that targeted a girls’ primary school in southern Iran. And Iranian retaliation was for real this time, hitting most of the Persian Gulf region and killing dozens in each of several nations.
This was not exactly Kabuki Theater, but neither does much of the entire conflict seem real. Trump—a master entertainer known for double-talk, exaggerating, and bloviating—has completely outdone himself this time. His use of the “F-word” (in text), and his “destroy [Iranian] civilization”, “praise be to Allah”, “Strait of Trump”, etc., statements are either lunatic ravings or intentional over-acting. His lengthy harangue about Pearl Harbor in front of the Prime Minister of Japan[14] and his dissing of NATO “allies” as cowards[15] is almost incomprehensible —unless Trump has a much larger purpose. By insulting the European and Asian allies and goading (or conspiring with?) Iran to cut off their energy supply, Trump is pushing them out of the American orbit, which he has been trying to do ever since his first term. In Trump’s view, the globalist nirvana is a mirage, bringing nothing but negatives to the United States, which would otherwise be safely guarded by two oceans and a plethora of natural resources. The dollar may suffer as an international currency, but who benefits from all the petro-dollars, sino-dollars, and other trade imbalances in the first place? The globalist bankers, of course, who have been trying to do Trump in ever since that escalator ride in 2015.
Russia, China, and Iran appear to be big winners in the current conflict, while our European and, to a lesser extent, Asian allies—now beset with major energy shortages—are some of the noteworthy losers. But the biggest loser of all may be Israel, which will now face off against a sea of enemies, led by a very powerful Iran. Trump didn’t turn on Israel, but neither he did he try to prevent the Israelis from falling into a trap of their own making. He rescued the Israelis in the 12-day war when the rusty “iron dome” could no longer defend against Iran’s hypersonic missiles, but there will be no rescue this time. Trump will pull most of American military assets from the region, probably not intending to re-establish the many bases that have been evacuated, and leave Israel on its own. It is commonly believed that Trump is being played by Israel, but in the end it may turn out that all along Trump with his uber-pro Israel lingo was actually playing Israel.
And Trump? He will probably suffer politically as the media and his political opponents hammer home the message that Trump is a deceitful, delusional, destructive, and deranged old man who oversaw the most colossal military debacle of the 21st Century. But, in the end, he in his genius may very well have blown apart the once-powerful globalist empire and its “New World Order”, which could make his Iran “blunder” one of the true masterstrokes in history.
William de Berg is the pen name of an American scientist and author of four conspiracy/truther fiction novels: Serpent and Savior, White Spiritual Boy, Divided We Stand, and Shield Down.
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References:
[1] https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/do-us-politicians-need-fear-our-intelligence
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/21/politics/trump-foreign-policy-interview
[4] https://fpif.org/the-donroe-doctrine-and-the-cost-of-foreign-policy-by-spectacle/
[5] https://www.newsweek.com/trump-putin-map-china-xi-2058157
[7] https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Chaos-Roving-Eye-Collection/dp/1608882314
[10] https://jameshfetzer.org/2025/06/william-de-berg-trump-kabuki-theater-and-the-defeat-of-israel/
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Twelve-Day_War
[14] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8dlpr074q3o
[15] https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-calls-nato-cowards-over-lack-support-iran-war-2026-03-20/
