Acid Test

There is a clear acid test to differentiate the foreign policies of Obama and Trump ... and that is now occurring in Iran. There, demonstrations are getting more deadly every day. What started as economic protests have blossomed into full-throated anti-mullah uprisings. The Iran government is a very repressive anti-American and anti-Israel theocracy ... trying to establish Shiite hegemony throughout the Sunni Middle East. However, Trump-style populism is even creeping into Tehran ... causing distrust of its leadership. The Persian government there is even forced now to augment its police and special forces with Gaza and Hezbollah Arabs.

When the Green Revolution took place after disputed elections in Iran back in 2009, President Obama turned his back on this infant insurrection ... and it died as did many of its supporters. Obama then went on to suck up to Iran's despotic mullahs by negotiating a horrible one-sided nuclear pact that gave Iran back $150  billion in frozen assets and an easy path to atomic weaponry ... as well as some other goodies ... Obama's $1.7 billion cash ransoming of American prisoners, his secret letters to the mullahs, his allowing the humiliation of U.S. sailors and his calling off the drug-enforcement dogs from Iran-backed Hezbollah ... all to placate, for some mysterious reason, a major sponsor of Islamic terrorism.

In opposition to what many consider to be capitulation on Obama's part, Trump is vigorously supporting these recent protests by the Iranian populus ... a populus that generally supports America. Trump has tweeted his enthusiastic endorsement of these mew Iranian insurgents ... saying the 'time has come' for these thuggish mullahs to be overthrown. Hopefully other nations will fall in line behind Trump.

So, the acid test now presents itself ... is Trump right to go with the Iranian populus ... or was Obama's mullah boot-licking the right policy? We should know the answer within Trump's first term in office.

Enigma

Just when I thought I could tell the opposing Muslim teams without a scorecard, I am thrown a curve ball. Saudi Arabia has just captured 400 ISIS militants who had already attacked and were planning further targets inside Saudi Arabia ... see: AP News Story? Now, as I understand it, Saudi Arabia is predominantly composed of Sunni Arabs ... as is ISIS ... so why would they be at each others' throats?

Sunni ISIS has generally been attacking the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government and Bashar al-Assad's Shi'ite government in Syria ... both Iran funded. Even though Iran is not an Arab state, it, as Persian, has been the prominent Shi'ite force and has, for over a thousand years, been a deadly foe of Sunni Arabs ... yet ISIS is now strangely acting as its proxy against Saudi Arabia ... while at the same time attacking the Syrian government. Weird!.

I guess I will never fully decipher the Middle East enigma (or, for that matter, our Shi'ite-tropic president and his Svengali adviser, Valarie Jarrett.)