Sorting out the Tillerson-trump tango seems obligatory. I doubt many people will read the whole NY Times piece on which this article is based. It is yours for nothing at the embed below But we are not playing beanbags, regardless of how juvenile the president is. It turns out that he and Tillerson agree on little day-to-day. That is no small matter. Here is the piece.

I have previously suggested that ruptured US leadership is exacerbating the climate change crisis.

Tillerson opposed the Trump exit from the Paris accords. There is some agreement that the economic impact of our departure will be negative. Let's dig into the Times article.

Ominous

It takes hardly any time to conclude that the history the Times recounts at the start of this long article is discouraging. The basic problem is that two headstrong CEOs with differing perceptions have trouble operating as a team. If one is the captain with absolute power over the other, all bets are off. Tillerson does not have the aspect of a happy camper,

Trumped

There is the matter of the Middle East where Tillerson's diplomatic efforts have been consistently Trumped -- meaning he president has tweeted to the contrary.

Tillerson's even-handed efforts to stabilize the Qatar crisis were met by Trump placing Qatar in the dog house he has reserved for Iran.

Let me cut to the chase. Shia is a Muslim tribe that has been, almost from the start one-half of a schism. The other half is the Sunni tribe. But you have to forget about halves.

Donald's agenda

Shia composes a mere 10 percent of the world's Muslims. Iran is 90 percent, Shia, Trump has clearly if implicitly wed himself to the Sunnis, Scope out the maps on this BBC explanation of the Sunni-Shia split and you will be enlightened.

Bullying Iran

Trump does not care about the schism, he wants power and oil and my guess is that if he has his druthers he would dump Tillerson and install Steve Bannon and Pam Geller in the State Department and proceed with his unstated but almost transparent effort to bully Shia Iran into a war.

This is a mouthful but it is unquestionable that the drift of Trump's hatred of Islam moves toward the minority Shia as his intended victims. If you want to shudder live with the scenario of three ideologues -- Trump, Geller, and Bannon -- running US foreign policy, Then ask yourself whether this isn't already what is happening?

Close, but ...

The funny thing is Tillerson and Trump are sort of on the same page. They are both America First oil crazy guys. It's just that Trump can rarely suppress what his weird heart really desires. If Iran is what he is after, he may need more of an ally than Rex Tillerson.
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