Can Russia Halt Trump’s War?

Can Russia Halt Trump’s War?

OK, so Donald Trump did not formally enter the Israel-Iran war on the side of Israel yesterday. It’s looking more like this weekend.

When we left you on Wednesday ahead of the Juneteenth holiday, we anticipated a high risk that U.S. airstrikes would begin while the markets were closed. That’s how it’s gone several times in the last couple of years with U.S. military action in the Middle East.

Instead, the president made headlines yesterday with a prepared statement saying, “Based on the fact that there is a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place in the near future, I will make my decision of whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”

A lot of people misinterpreted the statement and said there’s now a two-week pause.

Not so: “Within the next two weeks” means anytime inside that two-week span. He could give up on the prospect of negotiations… today.

Around the same time the White House released that statement, the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported a U.S. attack will come “as early as this weekend.”

“I have been told that the White House has signed off on an all-out bombing campaign in Iran,” he wrote, “but the ultimate targets, the centrifuges buried at least 80 meters below the surface at Fordow, will, as of this writing, not be struck until the weekend.

“The delay has come at Trump’s insistence because the president wants the shock of the bombing to be diminished as much as possible by the opening of Wall Street trading on Monday.”

If there’s any chance of heading off U.S. entry into the war at this late stage, it’s up to Moscow.

You read that right: “The key to settling the war in Iran lies in Ukraine,” Jim Rickards wrote his Strategic Intelligence readers this week.

“Russian President Putin spoke with President Trump last Saturday. Putin offered Trump a kind of off-ramp for U.S. involvement in Iran. If the U.S. and Russia can reach a rapprochement on Ukraine that satisfies Putin, then Russia would be able exert pressure on Iran to satisfy the U.S. (and, by extension, Israel). That approach opens the door to stopping two wars at once — Ukraine and Iran.”

This proposition isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. Earlier this month, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov offered his country’s help “through the export of excess nuclear material produced by Iran and its subsequent adaptation to the production of fuel for reactors.”

In other words, Iran’s uranium would be shipped to Russia, enriched in Russia to levels far below that required for a weapon, and shipped back to Iran. Actually, Russia has extended this offer from time to time as far back as 2009.

Too, Russia is one of the few countries on mostly friendly terms with both Iran and Israel.

But the odds of success are admittedly slim — and the window of opportunity is closing fast.

“Trump is smart but he’s surrounded by neocon warmongers,” says Jim. “If Trump takes the Russian off-ramp, two wars may be resolved quickly. If not, both wars will continue indefinitely with a material risk of escalation to the point of a nuclear war that would end human life on Earth.

“Putin opened the door. The next move is up to Trump.”

Talks? What Talks?

As was the case Wednesday, markets are on tenterhooks waiting for whatever’s the next shoe to drop.

We’ll get to the numbers shortly — but first, more on the state of play going into the weekend.

We’re not sure what the president considers a “substantial chance” of new talks — but it sure seems as if he’s already given up on them.

After all, the previous round of negotiations turned out to be a ruse engineered in Washington and Tel Aviv — designed to keep Tehran off-guard while the Israeli military prepared its attack.

And once the attack was underway last Friday, one of the first Israeli targets was Ali Shamkhani — a senior adviser to the ayatollah and perhaps the Iranian official most eager to come to terms with Washington.

Put yourself in the mullahs’ shoes for a moment: How likely would you be to start new talks under those circumstances?

Oh, and just for old times’ sake…

Whatever happens, it’s now clear the president has no compunctions about throwing the non-interventionist wing of MAGA under the bus.

It’s not just labeling Tucker Carlson as “kooky” the other day. There’s also this…

If the name isn’t familiar, Marc Thiessen was the speechwriter for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the time of the Iraq War — and later the speechwriter for George W. Bush.

In other words, he was one of the worst propagandists for the “forever wars” Trump denounced on the campaign trail.

This is the guy Trump is citing favorably now, even invoking the “isolationist” smear.

A week ago today I quoted Mollie Hemingway from The Federalist: Escalation against Iran, she said, “would be seen as an unforgivable betrayal by millions of American voters. It would cost him real polling support that would be permanent.”

And yet, Trump just dissed them in a way that’s even more insulting than calling Tucker Carlson “kooky.”

The reaction on social media has been equally savage…

Speaking of historical parallels…

“I’m so old, I remember when Germany gave the U.S. ‘airtight’ intel from a source named Curveball that Saddam Hussein had WMD and was moving it around Iraq in mobile units,” tweets the aforementioned Mollie Hemingway.

“Let’s be very clear,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt yesterday: “Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon. All they need is a decision from the supreme leader to do that and it would take a couple weeks to complete the production of that weapon.”

As The New York Times points out (yeah, I know, just hang with me here), “Some American officials said those new assessments echoed material provided by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, which believes that Iran can achieve a nuclear weapon in 15 days.”

It seems the White House puts more stock in the assessment of Mossad than of its own intelligence community.

“The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate committee in March.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One this week. “I think they were very close to having one.”

“What they had all along is a latent nuclear deterrent,” explained the Libertarian Institute’s Scott Horton in a recent interview on the NewsNation network.

“It’s the same as Germany, Japan or Brazil, where they had shown they perfected the fuel cycle, they know how to make nuclear weapons fuel, but they’re not making it.”

Of course, now that Iran is under attack from Israel, “they’re actually more likely to pursue nuclear weapons now, whereas before they actually were not pursuing them.”

Yep — and not to launch against anyone, but rather as the ultimate insurance against regime change (which the Israelis are already clear is their objective).

Hey, it’s worked for the Kim family in North Korea. They’ve had nukes for 20 years now — not an ideal situation, for sure, but we’re all still here.

More important from their standpoint, they’re still here.

Silver Smacked

All that said, if U.S. entry into the war is imminent, the precious metals markets weren’t sniffing it out last night…

Silver posted a weekly close last Friday over $36 for the first time since 2012. Then it sailed past $37 earlier this week.

But this morning the bid is down 51 cents or 1.4% — back below $36.

This is one of those Fridays when options on the precious metals expire. Beat-downs on these days are not unusual. That said, gold is holding up better than silver today — down less than five bucks at $3,367.

As for stocks, it’s a “quadruple witching” day. That’s when four types of derivatives expire all at once — stock options, stock futures, index options and index futures.

Strange things can happen on these days, but there’s nothing showing up in the major averages so far today. The S&P 500 is down less than a quarter-percent at 5,970.

That means there’s still time to act on our Mason Sexton’s guidance ahead of what he sees as a 30–40% drop in the market in the months ahead. Based on the techniques he’s refined over a 40-plus-year career, he believes today is the first day of the window in which that drop can begin.

Not surprisingly amid the war drums, crude is set to end the week over $75 for the first time since January.

Bitcoin is stuck in neutral, a little over $104,000.

This Is Getting Ridiculous (Social Security)

Social Security is fixable — assuming there’s any will in Washington to fix it.

This week the trustees of the Social Security system issued their annual update about how much time remains before the Social Security trust fund is depleted.

They say the portion of the fund devoted to retirement benefits will likely run out in 2033. The combined trust fund including disability insurance would be exhausted in 2034. Beyond that point, the system would be funded only by incoming FICA taxes — and benefits would have to be cut by up to 23%.

For anyone paying attention to these matters, this drop-dead date isn’t alarming. It’s oscillated between 2033–2035 for over a decade.

And yet, the politicians have taken no action since 2015.

As I’ve said for several years now, there’s nothing about Social Security that can’t be fixed with some combination of higher taxes and a higher retirement age.

It would still be a Ponzi scheme in the sense that revenue coming in the door from working-age folks goes out the door instantly to retirement-age folks — and that’s problematic on any number of levels — but it could be made a sustainable Ponzi scheme for another 50–75 years.

Major Social Security reforms tend to come when there’s a president of one party and the House of Representatives is controlled by the other party — so that no single party takes the political heat.

A huge overhaul came in 1983 under President Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill. Smaller tweaks also occurred under “divided government” in 2000 and 2015.

But there’s been nothing since. We had divided government again in 2019–2020 and 2023–2024… but no progress on Social Security. The atmosphere in Washington has become too toxic. And there’s no way the Republicans are going to take it all upon themselves this year or next.

But none of that alters the fact the clock’s still ticking…

➢ Worth noting: The parlous state of the Social Security trust fund is one reason that Social Security benefits are still subject to income tax under the “Big Beautiful Bill” in Washington — Donald Trump’s campaign promises notwithstanding. Instead, the bill features a senior tax credit — which would expire after Trump’s term is over.

A Final Thought

Deadline approaches and there’s only time to pull up an oldie but a goodie — albeit with new relevance…