Iran's Doomsday Clock Is So Close To Midnight, the Ball Is Dropping

<![CDATA[On Tuesday of this week, atomic scientists readjusted the Doomsday clock to 11:58:35, or 85 seconds to Midnight, the narrowest window pointing to mankind's purported annihilation ever. Now keep in mind, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost was the actual annihilation of humans if Russia and the U.S. started exchanging nuclear warheads, the clock was set to 11:53. It's a silly metric, and wholly unserious when considering the geopolitics of all that's going on, past and present. But if we're looking at the longetivity of the Iranian theocracy that's had a deadly iron grip on Persia for nearly 47 years, all indications are the mullahs' time is just about up. President Donald Trump threatened to hit the world's largest state sponsor of terror with a strike unlike anything they'd ever seen if they carried out the public executions of 800 detained protesters from the freedom rallies in the streets. For a week between January 16th through January 23, Trump said that carnage would be something we and the world would not tolerate, and we'd do something about it. Trump gave the protesters in Iran the message to keep at it, help is on the way. Although with Iran's internet blackout, it's doubtful how much penetration into the movement that message from the President had. Nevertheless, the President seemed to hedge his bet a bit after allegedly being asked by Sunni Arab states to give diplomacy another try in order to stave off a massive wave of instability in the Middle East, and Israel also asking to buy time in order to get prepared offensively and defensively in case of Iranian counterattacks. Trump signaled that Iran had promised to halt the executions, which gave him, at least rhetorically, an off-ramp to put things on hold. The killings in the streets never stopped, but the hangings were put on hold. In the meantime, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln carrier group, the most lethal combination of vessels afloat in the world, pulled up anchor from the South China Sea and made haste to the Strait of Hormuz. Dozens of other elements of what is turning out to be one mother of an armada have now assembled, and a strike looks absolutely imminent. The final decision to go or not go, and the timing of when hostilities commence, are known to Donald Trump and Donald Trump alone. But with the help of a wide array of open source intel online, it's not hard to read the tea leaves that you're about to see some serious excrement hit the proberbial fan very, very soon. As to the "if" question, we'll get to the "when" part later, Donald Trump subtly changed his ultimatum this week. Instead of making the red line about continued assassinations and slaughter of Iranian citizens, the President went back to the original premise for the strikes on Iran's nuclear sites last summer - if you try to rebuild your nuclear program again, we'll come back and hit you even harder. ]]>