In which the Major outlines his Zionist war hawk credentials, but gets let down by mad King Donald ...

The pond regrets that this day it must get up at 5am, and head up to the big smoke.

The pond regrets even more that it selected Major Mitchell as the stale lump of reptile stew it would reheat and serve up as a standby until business can be resumed tomorrow.

One of the problems is that the Iran folly changes by the minute, the hour and the day, as King Donald desperately tries to escape and struggles to rein in Benji's desire for a greater Israel.

‘Why Did Bibi Have to Do a F*cking Attack?!’ Trump Rages at Netanyahu Over Israel Strikes On Beirut — Says He’s ‘So Pissed Off’

President Donald Trump said he was “pissed off” at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s strikes on Beirut Sunday.
In an interview with Axios’s Barak Ravid on Sunday, the president lashed out at Netanyahu following the Israel strike on a Hezbollah target on the outskirts of Beirut — a response to Hezbollah launching drones toward Galilee.
In a separate interview, Trump told Fox News’s Trey Yingst he called Netanyahu and said “What the f*ck are you doing?”

The president told Ravid that the signing of a peace deal with Iran was “delayed” as a result of the Israeli strikes, but said the deal remains on track.
“It shook it up,” Trump said. “It delayed the signing by a few hours. It was supposed to be now. Now it is scheduled for a few hours from now.”

“Why did Bibi have to do a f*cking attack?” Trump said. “I was so pissed off. I let him know. He has no f*cking judgement. I let him know that.”

It was diplomacy by tweet and Truth social post ...

That showed how desperate the mad King was to do a deal so he could celebrate as a UFC-loving birthday boy. Always a vulgarian at heart and always in search of sybaritic pleasures, and is there anything more comforting and sensuous than watching two men pummel each other in a cage?

Meanwhile, the Iranians kept playing the hapless glitter-gold and big Mac loving orange whale like an out of tune fiddle.

And now here we are, and here's the day-old, already wildly out of date Major:

The header: Media pressure for a ceasefire harms Donald Trump’s Iran mission; More than 100 days after the first strike, the stock and oil markets are even more skittish. A great victory may have been better than a great deal.

The caption for the snap of the decidedly aged warlord: President Donald Trump speaks before signing a proclamation in the Oval Office of the White House last week. Having taken out the top 40 Iranian leaders in the first strike on February 28, Trump might have been better advised to continue until Tehran’s surrender. Picture: AP

There must be a 'toon to hand to set the tone for what follows.

That'll do, that'll do ...

First up the pond just has to celebrate the way that the Major tries to blame "media pressure" for mad King Donald's ongoing folly.

If anyone wanted to talk about pressure, they'd talk about the pressure being exerted by Benji, king of ethnic cleansing, with his desire to keep on bombing his neighbours into oblivion, but as a Zionist of the first water, the Major can't go there.

Apparently it's all this talk in the lamestream media of putting a stop to the killing fields that's ruining things, as if the Major cared about the odd schoolgirl or three (or maybe 170 odd):

Media and diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire fed into Donald Trump’s love of a “powerful deal’’, but more than 80 days of a stop-start truce suggest a clear victory over Iran would have been better.
Trump’s social media assessments have played down the damage done to US allies in the Gulf and Israel since the April 7 ceasefire. He’s probably right in the short term but in the long term, US allies have been given cause to doubt Washington’s resolve, and that could be more damaging than any Iranian drones.
As far as Middle East wars go, the destruction wrought by US and Israeli attacks on Iran between February 28 and the ceasefire was insignificant compared with the damage Israel did in Gaza after October 7, 2023. Even that pales into insignificance compared with, say, the million deaths in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
The death toll in this year’s attacks on Iran is estimated to be between 2000 and 6000. Compare that with the regime’s execution of up to 40,000 of its own protesters between January and May.
Having taken out the top 40 Iranian leaders in the first strike on February 28, Trump might have been better advised to allow his Operation Epic Fury and Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion to continue until Tehran’s surrender.
Instead, Trump feared rising oil prices and a skittish sharemarket in the run-up to the US midterm elections.

Yes, and if the Major had his way, and the mad King had the balls, they'd probably be blathering about nuking Tehran.

That would have put the mad mullahs in their place, and what an inspiration for Vlad the sociopath to nuke Kyiv, or perhaps London or Paris, as that Russian state TV Lord Haw-Haw Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov keeps suggesting.

Sorry, the pond really must stop channeling these crazies, but it's what happens when the pond's in the Major's company ... or is reminded of mad King Donald ... Donald Trump last week. He has again announced an imminent deal and claimed all the region’s governments had accepted the terms. Picture: AP

That's got to be worth a 'toon ...

That talk of "imminent deals" became something of a running joke beloved of late night comics looking for an easy collage... CNN: Trump claims at least 38 times peace deal with Iran near.

What's the chance of him delivering? What's the chance he can keep Benji on side, given the way that Benji, and apparently the Major, seem eager to keep on with the carnage and the killing fields ...

The trouble is that more than 100 days after the first strike – and after what CNN last Tuesday reported to have been 38 separate claims by Trump of an imminent peace deal – the stock and oil markets are even more skittish and the President’s personal polling is down.
A great victory may have been better than a great deal.
Trump again announced an imminent deal last Friday (AEST) and claimed all the region’s governments had accepted the terms. We shall see.
A military victory would have silenced our own government, the UK and the EU. It would have ended the carping of the left-wing US media, which would prefer a Trump humiliation to the defeat of the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terrorism.
Trump’s inconsistency in dealing with Tehran was on display last week when the US launched a series of strikes in retaliation for the shooting down of a US Apache helicopter.
Only three days earlier Trump had warned Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel would be on its own if it did not stop its retaliation against strikes first launched by Iran on Israel.
Iran’s motivation – protecting its Hezbollah client terror group in Lebanon – shows how emboldened the Iranian “B Team” leadership is. Dismantling Iran’s proxies was one of the initial war aims, yet Iran openly broke its ceasefire to protect a militia group the Lebanese government has publicly said should leave Lebanon.
This is a test for the media, often unable to report accurately on the reasons for Israel’s strikes in Lebanon. Most reporters have not given enough weight to calls by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun for Tehran to rid his country of Hezbollah.

Spoken like a Zionist of the first water, what with the Major never shows any signs of caring for the civilians being slaughtered in the carnage - if they happen to be in an Islamic country, or even in Lebanon - as the reptiles dragged in a snap, and used it to blame the ABC ... Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun, who has called for Tehran to rid his country of Hezbollah. ABC reporters are quick with tragic tales of the deaths of innocents in Israel’s bombardments in southern Lebanon. Yet the ABC seldom interviews the Israeli victims of Hezbollah strikes in northern Israel. Picture: AFP

It doesn't seem to occur to the Major that his ongoing war with the ABC is just a hill of beans up against what's going on in the middle east, but the Major is always willing to be outraged when he perceives a slight to Israel...

Lebanon wants peace with Israel as surely as Israel’s northern inhabitants do, after years of Hezbollah rocket fire over the border. Yet the ABC says little about Hezbollah’s refusal to sign on to the Washington-backed June 4 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire plan.
ABC reporters are quick with tragic tales of the deaths of innocents in Israel’s bombardments in southern Lebanon. Yet the ABC seldom interviews the Israeli victims of Hezbollah strikes in northern Israel.
It hardly mentioned 60,000 Israelis became internal refugees after October 7 when Hezbollah intensified rocket attacks in the north in support of Hamas in Gaza, and locals had to flee their homes to head south.
Many Western reporters took too long to realise Israel was correct when it said Hamas was using civilians as human shields and was hiding weapons under hospitals and schools.
Now journalists seldom acknowledge Hezbollah also hides behind civilians. It, too, has built a network of tunnels.
The Jerusalem Post on March 27 published photos of Hezbollah weapons in tunnels near a Christian church in the southern Lebanese village of El-Khiam. On March 31, it reported Hezbollah had taken over the Christian village of Qawzah to launch attacks on Israel. Viewers in Australia seldom see footage of such revelations.
The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday pointed out Iran, usually keen to let its proxies do the fighting, was now taking risks to support those proxies.
London based pro-Palestinian think tank Middle East Monitor summarised Tehran’s thinking about the ceasefire on April 30: “A pause that leaves Iran under maritime pressure in the Strait of Hormuz, under nuclear verification pressure from the International Atomic Energy Agency … and under regional pressure through Lebanon is not a neutral diplomatic interval. It is an attempt to convert military shock into political extraction.”
The regime has no qualms about sacrificing the lives of its own citizens so why not continue to test the ceasefire’s terms by attacking Israel and US bases in the Gulf, as it did last week? Especially after Trump’s demands that Israel not respond.

That last par is designed to establish that the Major's the sort of warhawk that produced the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan follies.

Then the Major turned to a plea-deal felon to make his case...

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton was right on June 7 in the WSJ when he warned Trump’s hesitancy “may have laid the groundwork for more nuclear proliferation in the Middle East”.
Bolton wrote: “Gulf Arabs and other regional states have long contemplated whether to acquire nuclear capabilities to hedge against a fickle Washington.”

The reptiles flung in snap of the moustachioed one ... Former national security adviser John Bolton before a media interview at the White House in 2019. Recently he warned Donald Trump’s hesitancy ‘may have laid the groundwork for more nuclear proliferation in the Middle East’. Picture: AP

That's a 'stache that would make The Rest is History mob stop short and gasp in wonder.

What's happening with that lad?

Ouch, seems like he found himself under fire ... and now back to the war mongering with the Major...

Gulf allies that had not been consulted by the US before its attack on Tehran then found themselves under fire. They urged Trump to finish the terror regime, only to see him hesitate.
Many Trump critics claim this war will be like president George W. Bush’s Iraq war quagmire. They are wrong. There have been few US casualties because it has not sent ground troops.
Michael Rubin, of the US based Middle East Forum, says Trump could take a lesson from Bush’s surge in Iraq.
Rubin wrote on June 4: “An Iran surge would … not involve ground troops. Rather it would require demanding peace and continuing to target Iranian leaders until they agree.”
While Iran might think Trump is paralysed as a lame duck president, Trump “should flick the script” and embrace the idea that “never having to face another election can be liberating”.

The pond doesn't usually bother with links in the Major's pieces - they almost invariably stay within the hive mind - but this one should be noted because he drags the lesser member of the Kelly gang, a certain Joe, into his argument ...

The President should not pressure Netanyahu  “but rather tell Tehran if you have a problem with Israel, negotiate with them”.

The Major thought that a return to full-blown hostilities might be a jolly good thing, eh wot?

“A diplomatic bargain that allows the Islamic Republic to rebuild will be as bad as a loss. There can be only one choice: win or lose. Trump’s best way forward is to realise there is no middle way,” Rubin wrote.
Iranian journalist Mardo Soghom, writing for the Middle East Forum on June 8, cited several media reports from inside Tehran suggesting Iran “has decided to escalate its conflict with Israel and, in doing so, place President Trump in an awkward position”.
“Escalation … may represent an attempt to alter the strategic equation, increase pressure on Washington and secure concessions that diplomacy has failed to deliver,” he wrote.
The strategy rested on the assumption that Washington “remains more interested in avoiding a wider war than … responding forcefully to renewed Iranian pressure”.

What a mess, which would only get worse if the Major's advice to respond forcefully was followed.

Thank the long absent lord that the Major has zero influence on events, or thinking, or policies, or pretty much anything else ... and we can keep on enjoying the brawl room, unless you happen to be a civilian in the way of deadly force ...

UPDATE:

The pond left it late in the day to check out mad King Donald's later clown car cavortings.

No doubt the Major, together with the likes of Mark Levin and Miss Lindsey, was left bitterly disappointed.

The desperately pathetic and needy King Donald folded like a tent and stole into the night, leaving Iran holding all the cards. 

Oh for the long lost days when he demanded total surrender, only to offer his own.

It sounded grand, in the way that the pompous blowhard always does, but as Tim Miller said, the "herewith" provided echoes of the Book of Mormon, where if you have nothing real to say, you could always revert to a "herewith". (The real winner is "and it came to pass", which, with variations, by some counts makes up 2.5% of the total words. Okay, it's a Reddit, so for what it's worth).

What was actually announced?

Merely an MOU, which is a plan to turn the plan for a deal into an actual deal in the sweet bye and bye, peace achieved by way of murky time payments and endless haggling.

The alleged reason for the war, the nukes, has been tossed aside, except in the rich couch-molesting fantasy life of J.D. Vance. 

The Strait of Homuz will allegedly be opened, but if that's what it was all about, there was no need for a war.

Oil will eventually flow, but it'll take months for the markets to adjust.

No doubt the market manipulations provoked by King Donald have handsomely rewarded some players.

And who's to say how much King Donald will slip the Iranians by way of compensation for giving him a birthday gift he can crow about, while keeping his cult oblivious to the details?

And how will Benji take to being forced to the sideline, while the mad mullahs are empowered and the shimmering hope of regime change disappears over the hills?

What could possibly go wrong? Per Haaretz,  (*intermittent archive link):

And when it comes to negotiating the details, are either side capable of sticking a landing?

King Donald is being attacked from the left and the centre ...

‘Accomplished Nothing’: Critics Trash Trump’s Boasting About ‘Great’ Iran Deal

Inter alia ...

Oh dear ...

Trump Celebrates While America Capitulates (*intermittent archive link)
The peace deal with Tehran is an Iranian victory.
By Tom Nichols

...Trump has for weeks talked about getting rid of Iran’s “Nuclear Dust”—his odd term for the uranium now lying under the rubble produced by U.S. bombings—and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed on Sunday morning that the United States has multiple plans for removing this material. The Iranians, however, are busily planting booby-traps around the uranium to ensure it stays where it is, and despite Hegseth’s blustering, America is not going to march into Iran and dig it out without Tehran’s  consent. If anything, the Iranians now have every incentive to sprint to a bomb, and can do so with far less transparency than they had to endure under the JCPOA.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz will “open,” but it was already open, at least to those the Iranians allowed to pass. In his celebratory message, Trump said: “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz.” That’s terrific, but such a statement has about as much effect as if I or my wife or my cat declared the Strait open; only Iran can make that decision. Trump also declared the U.S. Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports is over, something that is indeed within his power, but that only means that America will withdraw while Iran remains.
Meanwhile—and again, these are the terms that so far have been leaked to the press, mostly from the Iranians—Iran claims that it will not only get some $12 billion up front, but another $12 billion within 60 days. Down the line, the Iranians are claiming they will get a $300 billion fund for reconstruction. (U.S. officials have insisted to reporters that any release of funds will be performance-based, a fuzzy condition that raises more questions and could invite the Iranians to dig in and haggle if the Americans balk at delivering the money.) The war leaves Iran battered, but more powerful and with more cash at its disposal, while it leaves America weaker, with important stocks of weapons depleted, and with its consumers paying the price for the war at the gas pump.

And then there's the barking mad war mongers on the far, ethnic cleansing, right ...

It's Hamas that's brutalising Gaza? What joy to live in a bizarro land of alternative reality.

What will happen to the ethnic cleansing, the genocide, or perhaps worst of all the Gwynocide? (Haaretz, *intermittent archive link)

And just like his boss, Miss Lindsey folded like a pack of cards in Alice in Wonderland...

As bravely spoken as Susan Collins at her best, what with Miss Lindsey being "somewhat concerned".

It's past time for the Zionist Major to give the middle east a rest, and hand the job of sorting it all out to the bromancer, who will surely work wonders so he can bung on his war with China by Xmas ...

Already out of date, and entirely lacking in a rosy, or even golden, hue...