BREAKING: Iran pulls out of the nuclear agreement

So, I was off doing stuff, as I do on a Sunday, and was away from the computer for a blessed two hours. Then I return to this:

Iran announces it is suspending all commitments to the 2015 nuclear deal https://t.co/y2ZYDrVxUJ

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 5, 2020

I don't have anything snarky to say about this. Nothing snarky can be said.

President Barack Obama and other world powers negotiated a deal with Iran to inhibit its nuclear ambitions, and it was working. Donald Trump's only goal in office is to scupper anything achieved by Pres. Obama. Therefore, he pulled out of the agreement. But Iran continued to abide by it, until this regime decided to assassinate Qassem Soleimani. At this point I'm not even going to give the usual caveat that he was a bad man whom no one should mourn. It's beside the point. What he was was a top figure in the Iranian government, a sovereign nation-state, and states don't assassinate the leaders of other states precisely because what's happening now was bound to happen. If leaders can't be secure in their persons, then international relations break down completely. We shouldn't mourn Soleimani's death because he loved puppies; we should mourn it because of everything which is now occurring.

Other reports have been coming out that military planners put the option of killing Soleimani in the list of particulars only to make the other, less drastic and world-ending options more feasible. That was probably the most stupid thing ever done in US military planning. Trump doesn't go for the most proportionate response, at least not when his back is up against the wall and he faces ruination. As I've been tweeting, he knows he's not going to survive this. He won't win re-election. He will be arrested after his term. So, like Hitler, he's going to scorch the earth so that no one survives him. He has gone from being merely a sociopath to a full-fledged psychopath. He no longer has any restraints. He's threatening war crimes against Iran if it so much as kills one American soldier.

This country has had bad leaders before. But it's never had someone in power like Donald Trump. He has gone completely unhinged, and there is no one around him who is reining him in. They're all feeding his paranoia and hatred and fragile ego.

At some point the decision has to be taken: it's either Trump, or world peace. And I'm not sanguine that even now, with the threat of a deadly war looming, that Trump's party will pull him back.

America will have to be taught a harsh lesson for allowing this to continue. All those who voted for this monster will be damned to perdition. They are no different than the Germans who gave Adolf Hitler power. They latched onto someone as fearful and hateful as themselves, and will now make all of us reap the whirlwind.

I wish I could offer more words of comfort. But it seems things will get worse before the fever breaks. Hopefully, the fever won't break the world instead.