POTUS Goes Full Stone Age Retard

 

 by David Stockman | Apr 6, 2026 | 2 Comments

It’s pretty clear what the TV screen caption should have read as the Donald expectorated a veritable shower of bully boy phlegm and sputum at the White House cameras last night:

Attention JD Vance – activate the 25th Amendment now, POTUS has gone full retard into veritable delusionary madness.

That’s right. There was hardly a sentence in the speech that accords with reality in any way shape or form. Not even remotely.

And that’s to say nothing of the hooligan rhetoric about the number of former Iranian leaders he has killed and bombing Iran back to the stone age. And yes, he told the world that’s exactly what America intends to do unless what’s left of the Iranian government gets down on its knees and kisses his ample posterior:

“We’re going to hit [Iran] extremely hard over the next 2 to 3 weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong.“

The yawning disconnect with reality, however, was probably best revealed by Trump’s utterly ludicrous contention that that if he had not cancelled Obama’s JCPOA in May 2018 Iran would have nuked the entire middle east and Israel into oblivion by now.

Well, for crying out loud. That is barking nonsense, balderdash, bilge and rubbish wrapped into giant Big Lie confected from whole cloth. It flows from an absurdly demonized Evil Regime narrative about Iran that essentially gives license to its propagators to indulge in every manner of unhinged bellicose speech and belligerent action.

Except, except. Iran is unfortunately run by a posse of religious medievalists and IRGC ruffians we would not wish upon anyone. But it’s not a malefic netherworld of unmitigated evil. It’s just another authoritarian, statist regime of the type that the Mideast has sired with alacrity over the last century.

In that capacity the regime has brought untold misery and tyranny to its 90 million citizens, but since 1979 it has invaded no neighboring country nor bombed any city outside its borders nor sent missiles flying outward unless attacked first.

And, yes, there have been attacks galore. These include Saddam’s Hussein’s Washington enabled invasion of Iran in the 1980s; Israel’s endless assassinations and sabotage since Iran was designated as the “Far Enemy” by Bibi Netanyahu in the mid-1990s; and the past two decades of brutal economic sanctions and embargoes that the Sunday afternoon neocon warriors have imposed upon its people from the safety of their perches on the banks of the Potomac.

And, no, it’s not because the “proxies”, either. Hezbollah was created and strengthened by Israel’s invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon in the early 1980s and its frequent “lawn mowing” exercises ever since. Assad’s Syria was aligned with Tehran based on confessional ties (Alawites and Shiites are Islamic cousins) and the post-Arab spring campaign by Washington and Israel to overthrow its government.

Likewise, the Houthis in Yemen are Shiite co-religionists, who have been at war with Sunni-dominated sections of the country since the 1960s. That is, Yemen’s Sunni tribes have linked arms with Saudi Arabia, which spent 7 years bombing the bejesus out of Houthi areas, while the latter have turned to Iran for aid and weapons. For better or worse, that’s more in the nature of conventional Iranian foreign policy alliance with the Houthi-controlled government of Yemen, not state sponsored terrorism for the sake of evil.

And, of course, there’s Hamas and October 7th. But for crying out loud, Hamas only thrived in the outdoor prison of Gaza because Bibi Netanyahu abetted it via suitcases of cash from Qatar. That was supposedly “realpolitik” designed to kill the Oslo Accords, weaken the Palestinian Authority and thwart a two state solution.

Moreover, just to make sure that Hamas stayed in its lane, the Israeli’s periodically brought fire and brimstone down upon millions of Gaza residents via so-called “lawn-mowing” exercises. And besides, Hamas is Sunni and took limited amounts of aid from the Shiite regime in Tehran only because it desperately needed it – not because it had volunteered to be a tool of Iranian sponsored terrorism.

At the end of the day, the neocons’ ritualistic chants about Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism don’t have a leg to stand on. The truth is, Sunni jihadists, not Iran-aligned Shiites, have driven the overwhelming majority of Islamist terrorism’s death toll and attacks over the past three decades. Worldwide data from independent trackers confirm this pattern with stark clarity.

For instance, the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) reports for 2025 list the deadliest organizations every year this century and all of them were explicitly Sunni Salafi-jihadists:

• Islamic State (ISIS) and affiliates.
• al-Shabaab.
• Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).
• Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
• Boko Haram.
• the Taliban.

In 2025 these groups alone accounted for 70% of attributed terrorism deaths worldwide. ISIS has held the top spot as the world’s deadliest terrorist group for most of the past decade.

Likewise, a comprehensive Fondapol study of found that post-2013, 56,413 terrorists attacks and 204,937 deaths were overwhelmingly by Sunni factions. ISIS branches alone killed 69,641; the Taliban 71,965; Boko Haram 26,081; al-Shabaab 21,784; al-Qaeda 14,856. These five Sunni entities caused over 81% of all recorded Islamist terrorism fatalities in this period.

Moreover, when it comes to terrorist attacks outside the Mideast region the story is the same. From 9/11 when al-Qaeda brought 2,996 deaths to American soil, to the 2015 Paris attacks, the 2004 Madrid bombings, the 2008 Mumbai siege, the 2014–2017 ISIS caliphate massacres, African beheadings by Boko Haram and al-Shabaab, and endless Sahel slaughter, Sunni networks have executed high-casualty, ideologically driven strikes across continents. They treat violence against “apostates,” Shiites, and Western civilians as perpetual duty.

By contrast, Iran has conducted a sovereign state foreign policy through alliances and affiliates that had one common characteristic: They all represented religious and tribal factions in war-torn states and territories under sustained attacks by Washington and Israel.

To be sure, much of what resulted from these alliances was far from benign. But it wasn’t jihadist terrorism in the 9/11 sense. It also never resulted in any attacks on American soil. And, as we documented at length last week, it resulted in American deaths only in instances were Washington had placed US military forces unnecessarily and stupidly in harms’ way in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.

So given the objective reality of the past three decades or more, where did the State Department’s designation of Iran as the “leading state sponsor of terrorism” actually come from? Along with the endless chant to that effect by neocons and MIC-feed politicians on the banks of the Potomac?

In a word, it was imported by AIPAC and its fellow travelers from Bibi Netanyahu’s playbook for winning power in Israeli’s fragmented politics. To wit, his game plan from the beginning in the mid-1990s was to demonize the Far Enemy after Israel’s historic Near Enemy of Egypt, Syria and Jordan has been taken out of play. Indeed, Bibi Netanyahu’s entire 30-year reign at the top of the heap in Israel politics has been anchored in endless, shameless, bellicose demonization of Iran and the false proposition that it posed an existential threat to Israel’s survival.

But self-evidently, Iran never had the remotest capacity to militarily threaten Israel via conventional attack – since the latter was armed to the teeth with the best and most advanced weapons Washington had to offer.

So Netanyahu and the neocons invented the utterly false canard that Iran was plunging dead-ahead in a no holds barred quest for nuclear weapons, albeit not on the basis of empirical fact or evidence because there was none. To the contrary, the claim was invented out of logical necessity.

To wit, Iran would be an existential threat if it had a nuke. So, ipso facto, under the Netanyahu narrative it was always and everywhere within weeks of having a nuke at virtually every point for the last thirty years. The facts be damned.

And we do mean f*ck the facts. In 50 years of being up close and personal with Washington politics and policy we have never, ever encountered an action-driving narrative that was so utterly contradicted by the known and available facts and truths, circulating right out in the open on the banks of the Potomac.

We have documented in chapter and verse elsewhere the whole history of Iran’s lack of pursuit of a nuclear weaponization program or capacity, going back to the 2007 NIEs that stopped cold George Dubya Bush’s neocon fostered plan to frontally attack Iran with the same game plan as Trump ignited on February 28th.

But the fact is, the whole intelligence and 17-agency spy apparatus of Washington knows they weren’t pursuing a bomb, and that there is a world of difference between separating U-235 and U-238 isotopes of uranium in an enrichment plant, on the one hand, and engineering, fabricating, testing and proving out at functional nuke, on the other.

So, at the end of the day, the relentless, groundless and malefic Bibi Netanyahu Big Lie that Iran is weeks from a nuke finally found a sucker on the banks of the Potomac. That is, one stupid and mentally disturbed enough to buy the Big Lie wholesale; and, owing to his domicile in the Oval Office, have the power to unleash the massive lethality of America’s $1 trillion per year War Machine on a country that had no capacity or even intent to militarily harm that American Homeland whatsoever.

And we do mean none, nichts, nada, nugatory, nyet and no frickin’ way. Again, they had no blue water navy, no aircraft carriers or air- and sea-lift and no long-range bombers. They also had no missiles with a range beyond 2,000 kilometers (not withstanding the false flag at Diego Garcia last week) and therefore capable of even remotely inflicting harm on US citizens on American soil 10,000 kilometers away on the far side of the great Atlantic and Pacific moats.

The threat of such a military attack, however, is the only conceivable reason for a peaceful Republic to preemptively launch a military attack on another country, as Donald Trump did on February 28th—at the end of Bibi’s leash or otherwise.

So what we really have, then, is a double whammy of lies:

Lie #1:Washington didn’t need to attack Iran because it doesn’t have a nuke, doesn’t have an active weaponization program and wasn’t remotely close to being within weeks or months, or even years, of getting one.

Lie #2: Iran was in no way shape or form is, was or likely ever would be a military threat to the United States. Full stop.

As we said, the Donald’s speech last night was utterly unhinged, bombastic and a tissue of lies from start to finish. Yet in large part it was based on the simple misplaced refrain that “Iran can’t have a nuke”.

So in that context we return to the Donald’s opening point that had he not cancelled the Obama nuclear deal, the middle east and Israel would be a nuclear wasteland already.

In fact, the very opposite was true. Iran was in full compliance with the JCPOA deal when Trump cancelled it in May 2018 and had already destroyed 98% of its enriched uranium stockpile and dismantled a considerable share of its enrichment capacity.

And that’s not based on our say so. The IAEA repeatedly verified Iran’s compliance with the multiplicity of JCPOA requirements and milestones through quarterly reports up to and including the one finalized in late May 2018 just before Trump’s May 8, 2018 withdrawal announcement.

Here is a brief summary of what the JCPOA required and what had actually been done.

1. Reduced enriched uranium stockpile by about 98% — Capped at no more than 300 kg of UF6 enriched up to 3.67% U-235 (or equivalent in other forms) for 15 years. Excess was shipped out, diluted, or down-blended under IAEA oversight.
2. Limited uranium enrichment level — JCPOA restricted enrichment to a maximum of 3.67%U-235 for 15 years (far, far below weapons-grade levels). IAEA confirmed no enrichment above this threshold.
3. Capped operating centrifuges at Natanz — Limited to no more than 5,060 first-generation IR-1 centrifuges in 30 cascades for 10 years. The excess centrifuges numbering over 13,000 were dismantled and stored under continuous IAEA monitoring.
4. Converted Fordow facility — Repurposed the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant into a nuclear physics, technology and science center for stable isotope production, including no uranium enrichment or nuclear material for 15 years.
5. Modified Arak heavy water reactor (IR-40) — Removed and rendered inoperable the original calandria (core) and redesigned and rebuilt the reactor (with international assistance) to a lower-power configuration that could not produce weapons-grade plutonium. Full compliance happened when the original core was filed with cement.
6. Limited heavy water stockpile — Capped at 130 metric tons for 15 years; excess was exported or otherwise removed; IAEA verified stocks remained below the limit (e.g., ~120 tons in mid-2018).
7. Halted reprocessing activities — Iran committed not to engage in spent fuel reprocessing or related R&D for 15 years. In compliance, here were no such activities at the Tehran Research Reactor, MIX facility, or elsewhere, as verified by IAEA.
8. Restricted centrifuge types and production — Used only old and slow IR-1 centrifuges for enrichment. This included no advanced models for production-scale work for 10 years and limited R&D on advanced centrifuges (IR-4, IR-6, etc.).
9. Accepted enhanced IAEA monitoring and verification — Provisionally applied the Additional Protocol to its safeguards agreement and allowed JCPOA-specific transparency measures, including continuous monitoring of centrifuge production/storage, uranium mines/mills, and other facilities and granted IAEA access for verification of all commitments.
10. No new enrichment or heavy water facilities — Committed not to build any new uranium enrichment facilities or additional heavy water reactors for 15 years, with all enrichment activities confined to Natanz. This was confirmed by the IAEA through May 2018, as well.

In short, the Donald’s whole case against both the JCPOA and his justification for his insane attack of February 28 is based on pure rubbish and a demonization of the Iranian regime that does not remotely accord with reality.

And yet, here we are conducting a savage war against a nation that is no threat to the Homeland Security of America and because why? Well, because Bibi Netanyahu finally found a sucker in the Oval Office who believes his utterly risible Big Lie.

David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, and the recently released Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself From The Coming Inflation Storm. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.

https://original.antiwar.com/david_stockman/2026/04/05/potus-goes-full-stone-age-retard/