Gerry Arthurs

It's not a simple one-issue problem.

I mean, there is the temptation to look at them like Ukraine, you know, the big bully Russia tormenting Ukraine, Ukraine slowly getting the upper hand perhaps at the moment.

To think of the plucky little Iranians, it's a huge country.

And, you know, standing up to the bully that is the current American administration.

But then you see headlines like the Iranian singer Parastu Ahmadi being sentenced to 74 lashes.

Why?

Because she sang a popular patriotic song without wearing a hijab at the time.

Now, what will happen?

Do you think the agreement will hold because it has to hold for the Republicans to keep gas prices low in the run-up to the midterms?

Or will the hawks, the Republican hawks, who are, it seems, enthralled to the Israeli lobby...

that they will hold sway and they will kibosh this agreement?

Events, dear boy, events.

Going back to where we started with J.D.

Vance, and I mean, the people who are behind Vance would probably like to see him being president before Trump

Trump's term expires, they would hope that something will happen to Trump, be ill or his demise or whatever, because an incumbent vice president who becomes president would have a better chance of re-election if the wind is against him.

But going back to that statement by Vance and the threat to the Israelis, I mean, has that forever pact between the United States and Israel now being irrevocably damaged?

I suspect in this case it could be true.

It could be true that it might be a soft or tiny island, impoverished after years of dependence on the Soviets, and then they collapsed, and then their friend Maduro was taken.

They had no friends left.

Exactly.