did the trump make iran great again;

 

I awoke this morning with trepidation. Had Trump tried to follow through with his unhinged threats to “bomb Iran back to the Stone Age” and ensure that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”—or had he even significantly escalated his terrorist bombings of Iranian infrastructure—things might have gotten seriously crazy, as in “way beyond Cuban Missile Crisis crazy, way beyond drunken Nixon having his nuclear codes taken away crazy, way beyond Great Depression crazy.”

Unlike North Americans, I went to bed here in Morocco before Trump’s 8 pm Eastern deadline expired. 8 pm Eastern is 1 a.m. Morocco time, and I didn’t feel like staying up late just to find out whether the world had ended.

When I awoke, it seemed like a nice Mediterranean spring morning. The birds were singing, celebrating the T-shirt weather and faintly redolent sea breeze. I ascended to the rooftop terrace, turned on the radio, watered the plants, and exercised while listening to مغربيات العالم (Moroccan Women of the World). It celebrates women who, like my wife, have pursued their dreams abroad, often returning to their home country after raising families, earning advanced degrees, or building successful business or professional practices, in Europe, North America, China, Australia, or the Middle East.

The interviewee was a Rabat woman who had moved with family members to Dubai to start a business. Given the lighthearted, optimistic way she was talking about Dubai, it didn’t sound like the Iranian military had just basically scrubbed it from the face of the Earth…which is what would have happened if Trump had mounted his apocalyptic attack on Iran’s infrastructure. (Dubai without desalinization plants is not a place where anybody but a few camel-herders and fishermen could live.)..........more..........