NORTH CAROLINA - Any watcher of the international scene, and especially the Mideast, has to be dismayed, bewildered and even, for that matter, a bit frightened. Growing complications and threats abound.

At the top of the threat list of late is Donald Trump himself, who seems to have abandoned entirely the promises he made during his election campaign in 2016 to reduce U.S. belligerence overseas and the nasty games of regime change overseas, successful or not. And meanwhile, truths are emerging.

To cite just one, a Ukrainian member of Parliament, one Nadezhda Savchenko, has come out and stated that the current Speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament and other current officials in Ukraine led snipers to a hotel overlooking the Maidan in Kiev to fire on and kill their own citizens and virtually ensure the overthrow of the elected government in 2014, escalating mass protests into an armed coup. The entire violent coup was thus, apparently, a “false flag” event, staged with U.S. support, not to mention the “false flag” chemical weapon attacks in Syria by terrorists trying to topple the Assad government.

But worse must be Trump’s recent sacking of Rex Tillerson as U.S. Secretary of State and his replacement by former CIA chief Mike Pompeo. Pompeo was replaced as CIA chief by a known criminal, the three decade plus veteran CIA operative Gina Haspel who once managed a CIA torture site in Thailand after 9/11 and later, when called upon to cough up records of U.S. torture activities, destroyed them, another felony for which she was not called to account. They have long called her “Bloody Gina” inside the CIA.

Tillerson has been called a “realist”, whatever that actually means, but we know what Pompeo is: an ideologue and friend of the largely Zionist Neocons who ought to have been entirely discredited after the Iraq debacle. Pompeo’s elevation to America’s top diplomatic post is a win for those who want to destroy the Iran nuclear deal.

 Tillerson wanted to maintain the JCPOA, Pompeo does not. Neocons, against any logic, practical or moral, are back in the saddle. (At least junior U.S. Senator Tom Cotton did not get the CIA post, as earlier it was suggested he might someday, but now John Bolton, former perennially warmongering ambassador at the UN, may be in the running to become Trump’s National Security Advisor, a post for which any Congressional confirmation is unnecessary.) Says Joseph Cirincione, head of an NGO trying to halt the spread of nuclear weapons: Trump is destroying the moderate camp in his Administration…. Tillerson’s firing…weakens American credibility…. It’s almost as if someone is paying Trump to do it.” And meanwhile, the mainstream media refuses to look at the ways the Israeli lobbies such as AIPAC have corrupted BOTH political parties. Israel is the ONLY country in the entire world trying to smash the JCPOA, and the question has to be: Why? There is no good answer to this question, except that “because they, the Zionists, can” through its corrupted control of U.S. policymakers. And because the Zionists want a different government in Iran. Nothing new here. But let’s shift gears.

I was recently at my doctor’s office for a check up and checking in at the front desk. To verify my identity the lady behind the desk checked my driver’s license. She asked me a few questions. One question was: “Are you employed?” I told her “sometimes” and that I was occasionally editing copy for a foreign newspaper. Curious, she asked where? I told her in Iran. She frowned. I could tell she did not have a good opinion of Iran, no doubt influenced by U.S. criticisms in the mainstream U.S. media. I shot back: “Iran is quite a wonderful country that hasn’t attacked anyone on offense for over 200 years.”  That was not what she was thinking about, and she said: “The way they treat women, making them wear head scarves.” This, in fact, was virtually all she knew about Iran and the sole reason she had frowned. I explained the utility of the hijab for many women, Muslim or not, even in the U.S. among some Muslim females. She shrugged with disinterest. And this exchange got me to thinking.

I don’t think there is any question that Trump and minions will abrogate the JCPOA in May. What happens next, I don’t know, but of course I would hope the other signatories to the deal will try to continue to uphold it and split from the U.S., and not just on the matter of the nuclear deal. This is quite possible. The world is getting fed up with U.S. diktat in most every respect. Trump looks increasingly like the loose cannon he is, along with the U.S. Congress.

And there are hopeful signs, even inside the U.S. This week, for example, a young, fresh Democratic Party candidate in Pennsylvania in a heavily Republican district that voted for Trump won a special election for the U.S. Congress touting views and policy positions inimical to Republicans. This suggests, if it does not guarantee, that the Democrats may capture both houses of Congress later this year. Americans are getting fed up, too, with Washington and Trump.