Tea at Trianon: Trump Took Iran at Its Word

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, September 17, 2026

Trump Took Iran at Its Word — History Will Reward Him

From Tierney's Real News:

The leaking and finger-pointing on Iran by MAGA disloyalists have begun. The Wall Street Journal reports that in February, then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned President Donald Trump that if he attacked, “Tehran would rush to close the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the global energy market.” Her admonition “echoed warnings Trump was receiving from all corners,” the Journal wrote, including from top military leaders who expressed “concerns about the weapons stockpile and readiness problems for an overstretched force” and from Vice President JD Vance, who “promoted a more cautious approach” focused on negotiations that would be “less costly than a war with unwieldy consequences.”
The message of the leakers is clear: Had Trump only listened to us, we would not be in this mess.
In fact, these self-serving leaks actually show the opposite — by demonstrating what a courageous decision Trump made. Virtually alone, surrounded by naysayers, Trump acted to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
Indeed, Trump not only ignored the words of the naysayers; he did something few presidents before him have ever done: He listened to the words of the enemy.
The most tragic mistake that world leaders made over the past century was the failure to take the words of the monsters of history seriously. These tyrants repeatedly stated precisely what they intended to do, but their ideas were assumed to be too foolish, or too fantastic, to be serious.
In the early 1900s, Vladimir Lenin published a pamphlet called “What Is To Be Done?,” in which he laid out his plans to overthrow the Russian czar and establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The world didn’t take his words seriously, and the totalitarian empire he founded spawned communist revolution across the globe that killed an estimated 100 million people and brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.
In the 1920s, Adolf Hitler published “Mein Kampf,” in which he laid out his plan to establish a thousand-year Reich in Germany and eradicate the Jews. The world didn’t take his words seriously, and his Nazi regime built gas chambers, set the world aflame and killed 17 million people.
In the late 1990s, Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war on the West, calling on all Muslims to wage “jihad against the enemies of God, your enemies the Israelis and Americans.” The world didn’t take his words seriously, and on Sept. 11, 2001, his followers flew airplanes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
In 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin published a 7,000 word manifesto explaining that Ukraine had been stolen from Russia, its “historical motherland,” and promising to reunite them. The world didn’t take his words seriously, and a few months later he launched the largest land invasion in Europe since World War II — a war that has resulted in more than 2 million dead and wounded among military personnel and civilians so far. (Read more.)