Zen and the Art of Trumpology

By Roger L Simon

Sometimes Trump is as inscrutable as the most gnomic Zen Koan—but with a radically different style.

We could ask… What is the sound of an Iran Deal clapping?

Whatever it proves to be, whatever we imagine it to be, we should remain calm like a Zen master, because it is likely to blow up within weeks.

If you believe that, and I tend to, you have support from this Axios report late Monday:

“CIA Director John Ratcliffe told President Trump and other senior officials that evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies raises serious doubts about Iran‘s willingness to make the nuclear concessions the U.S. is seeking in any final deal, according to three sources familiar with those discussions.

Friction point: Ratcliffe isn’t the only skeptic in Trump‘s top team. In internal discussions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth both expressed concerns and raised questions about the memorandum of understanding (MOU) announced Sunday, while Vice President Vance and U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner advocated for it, according to two of the sources.”

That anyone can think, after past performance, Iran will adhere to an agreement—particularly one regarding nuclear weapons— is hard to fathom. (Here is one version late Tuesday before Saturday’s signing. Who knows how accurate it is? But then, “If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.”… okay, I’ll stop.)

I’m not going into Mr. Vance’s eye-rolling remarks, in which the vice president seemed to have conflated the Iran Deal with the conclusion of World War II, which ended with the surrender of Germany and Japan (in essence, regime change). He’s already been bombarded sufficiently on X. (He did a good job with the ladies of The View, though.)

I’m also not going to comment on the rumor (there are a lot of those going around) that Trump has made clear to Rubio and Hegseth that they’d better get behind the deal if they want to keep their jobs.

I am trying to hold the good thought that this is all some game of 3D (or 4 or 5D) chess that will soon be revealed, Trump’s Art of the Deal raised to the Nth power.

But I’d be lying to say I wasn’t taken aback that the man who once said Iran had never won a war or lost a negotiation could well be hoisted on his own petard.

Whether this happened from midterm worries, stock market concerns, the influence of the wrong people, or a combination of those and other motivations is unknown, but it is more or less immaterial now that it seems to have a life of its own. Trump has made his bed.

Forgotten in all this are the people of Iran, at least those portions of the people, sure to be in the many millions, who were assured by our president just a few months ago to “hang on…help is on the way.” They are the biggest losers.

Man, do I hate to be writing this, not Zen at all, as I had pretended. I was looking for a way to lighten something that can’t be lightened.

You could say I was feeling this way because of Israel, and you would be partially correct. Our president has suddenly turned his former partner into a fall guy, or thrown Netanyahu & Co. under the bus, in what passes for modern parlance, while assuring us two or three sentences later that they are somehow joined at the hip and great buddies.

If the president has done so to counter those who claimed he was being led around by the Israeli PM, he certainly accomplished that. In the process, he has anointed Syria (and its former ISIS leader president) as the defense against Hezbollah, because Israel has been overzealous. (In the process, Donald has forgotten or ignored that for several years now, the IDF has been secretly operating inside Syria—with the quiet acquiescence of the Syrian government—to prevent Hezbollah incursions on their land.)

Meanwhile, it turns out the massive terror attack that had been planned for the mixed martial arts event at the White House, and was fortunately stopped in time, was aimed, at least in part, at taking down politicians thought to be friends of Israel. One of them happened to be someone I know well from my time in Nashville, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, bringing this insane behavior, as they say, close to home.

Although obviously unintended, I fear the president’s sporadic chastisements of Israel only encourage these lunatics in this time of rising global antisemitism. And only five of the suspects are behind bars, with many others out there with drone and sniper capabilities.

Finally, Trump assures us that the $300bn coming to Iran is not from the American taxpayer. My reaction is similar to General Jack Keane’s: “Who cares where the money comes from?”

In the end, with this deal, it’s coming. And likely soon. The operative question is what the leadership of the Islamic theocracy will do with it. If past performance is any indication, it won’t be for cancer research.

What we are dealing with here is the old problem of democracy. Trump says he’s in no hurry—and he shouldn’t be. But at base, he really is. He will be out of the office in a couple of years. The Iranian religious autocrats know that. They are the ones who can wait, as they have in the 47 years since their Islamic evolution. They intend to stay in power until the Shiite Mahdi’s return, and then go on to rule the world, as decreed by Allah.

They obviously can (and will) wait to see who the next American president will be. And the one after that.

Maybe my problem is that I have read Amir Taheri’s biography of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and have an idea of the imperialistic end-times theology that has governed Iran since 1979. I often wonder to what extent President Trump knows about these things and, if he does, whether he really takes them seriously. He may be a great dealmaker, and he certainly has made some shrewd ones, but he is used to dealing with adversaries whose primary, virtually sole, interest is dollars and cents. For many Iranians in leadership positions, that’s just not so.

I admit there are others more optimistic about this—like K. T. McFarland, whom I respect, who just said on Fox that the “buy-in” by the Gulf States changes the equation and Iran must comply this time. As someone who believes firmly in the power of positivity, I hope she’s right. But as someone with an active mind and memory, I am skeptical.

As the Zen Buddhists say, “Thought instant to thought instant, Heaven to Hell.”

That’s always been accurate, but here’s hoping for a more consistent Heaven side.

First published in  American Refugees