Trump holds all the cards — yet he just got played

The U.S. Massive Ordnance Penetrator (“MOP”), weighing in at 30,000 pounds, was designed to destroy weapons of mass destruction buried in mountains or deep below the earth’s surface. The MOP is so heavy it can only be lifted by a B-2 bomber, which can perform attack missions at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet.

Israel does not own an MOP bomb or the B-2 bombers needed to carry it — both were developed and are owned exclusively by the United States Air Force. Although Trump claims credit for it, the MOP was developed in 2004 under the Bush administration, and U.S. weapons engineers have tested and refined it ever since.

Israel has been asking the U.S. for an Ordnance Penetrator for years, and lobbied for it hard in 2004. Until now, no administration would commit. But this week, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — either seeking to prolong his own rule, or because he found evidence of an “imminent” threat, depending on what media sources you consume, forced Trump’s hand by unilaterally attacking the sites of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities.

Ending Iran’s nuclear program

Without the MOP, Israel’s laudable goal of ending Iran’s nuclear weapons proliferation — if, indeed, that is what Iran is up to —cannot succeed. There is no disagreement among military experts about the necessity of the bomber. It’s use is the only way to effectuate Israel’s goal of disabling Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities.

Netanyahu, however, started the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities without consulting, conferring or strategizing with Trump, while Trump was still trying to get Iran to negotiate an end to its uranium enrichment.

In March, Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence, testified before Congress that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khameini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” Just last week, Trump was still trying to negotiate an agreement with Iran, and “remained hopeful that his Middle East peace negotiator, Steve Witkoff, who had been scheduled to conduct another round of peace talks in the region Sunday, could soon get an agreement over the line.”

But earlier this week, lacking any hint of strategy, and without any evidence to support an about-face, Trump posted that everyone in Tehran, a city of 10 million, should “immediately evacuate,” and demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender.”

So much for Trump’s oft-repeated promise to pull America out of endless wars.

Bibi played Trump’s hand

The Fordow enrichment lab, under the control of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, is a uranium enrichment facility buried deep in the mountains outside the Iranian city of Qom. It’s size, secrecy, and location led analysts to doubt Iran’s proffered non-military purpose of the facility, despite Gabbard’s assessment. Many experts agree that Iran built the Fordow lab for the covert production of weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium (HEU), making it a key target in Israel’s strikes.

Brett McGurk, who worked under four American presidents of both parties on Middle East issues, told the New York Times that Fordow has “been the crux” of Iran’s weapons development all along. McGurk, along with other weapons experts, agree that if Israel’s newest bombing campaign against Iran ends with Fordow still enriching uranium, Israel’s campaign will have failed.

U.S. military strategists have been testing the MOP bomb in simulation labs enough to know that one bomb won’t do it. To successfully wreck Fordow, the attack will have to come in waves, with B-2s firing one bomb after another down the same hole into the mountain. The operation can only be executed by an American pilot and crew.

A reality TV president

The timing, in terms of U.S. national security, could not be worse. Trump is fresh off the heels of a globally embarrassing military parade that cost taxpayers $45 million. Hundreds of thousands of spectators were expected to attend but most media outlets, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal,reported sparse attendance, extremely low energy, and mostly empty bleachers. The optics were painful. Trump’s Kim Jong-un style parade quickly became an international joke, with the most viral social media clip showing a tank rolling by empty spectator benches accompanied only by the lonely sound of creaking metal.

Fox News, of course, fawned over tanks in the street, and praised the parade with uninterrupted coverage. But the rest of the world saw the real spectacle happening at the same time: over 5 million people turned out to protest against Trump in over 2,100 cities across the nation. The anti-Trump No Kings Day demonstration was hailed as the largest protest in U.S. history.

Following this embarrassing split screen, publicized around the world, Trump likely appreciates that Israel, by bombing Iran and pulling the U.S. into its war, changed the channel.

Trump brought us here

It can’t be forgotten that Trump led us to this precarious path when he withdrew from the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2018, after it had been painstakingly hammered out among several nations including the U.S., Iran, France, Germany, Great Britain, China and Russia.

At the time he withdrew from the agreement, Trump’s move was expected to embolden hard-line forces in Iran, supercharging a Middle East arms race. If Netanyahu is to be believed, that is exactly what happened. President Barack Obama, whose team negotiated the agreement, predicted that Trump’s withdrawal would “leave the world less safe,” and confronted with “a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East.”

And that losing choice is exactly where we are.

As of this writing, nothing is certain, but my money is on Trump deploying the MOP.

For one thing, Trump’s parade flop denied him the spectacle of military lethality he so desperately craves. Deploying the bomber will allow 24/7 Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax coverage of Trump beating his chest. For another thing, Trump is demanding a $1 trillion dollar defense budget while purporting to keep the U.S. out of foreign entanglements. It’s only a matter of time before senators put two and two together and figure out that Trump wants that $1 trillion to morph the military into a domestic attack force to be deployed on American soil, against American citizens who live in Democratic-run cities.

Deploying the MOP against Iran will help delay that moment of realization and provide Republicans with some diverting optics — cue Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in aviator glasses, manning a fighter jet. It could even help Trump’s budget negotiations.

It's too much to expect an effective Israel strategy from Trump, given that Netanyahu and his advisors are operating well above the second-grade level of intellect parading in the White House. Afghanistan should have taught us — even Trump — that it is far easier to topple a hostile foreign regime than it is to replace it with a functioning government acceptable to its people. Israel, if it topples the Khamenei regime, could end up leaving Iran in the hands of violent factions even more dangerous than they are now.

Netanyahu will likely get his way with Trump and the MOP, and he knows it. Fox News will re-write the narrative and sell it as proof of Trump’s genius, which 45% of the country will buy, and the U.S. will find itself in another Neanderthal war that will never end.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story,Salon,Smart News, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.