So apparently he says Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire. Iran denies it. Why are we even taking a known liar's word for it? Even if it's true. Wait for others to confirm. Or at least put in "allegedly"
So apparently he says Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire. Iran denies it. Why are we even taking a known liars word for it? Even if it's true. Wait for others to confirm. Or at least put in "allegedly"
why is trump the one announcing this anyway? it's not his responsibility to speak on behalf of either of those countries.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
So apparently he says Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire. Iran denies it. Why are we even taking a known liars word for it? Even if it's true. Wait for others to confirm. Or at least put in "allegedly"
why is trump the one announcing this anyway? it's not his responsibility to speak on behalf of either of those countries.
it must be trump's way of saying he is worthy of the nobel peace prize.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
So apparently he says Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire. Iran denies it. Why are we even taking a known liars word for it? Even if it's true. Wait for others to confirm. Or at least put in "allegedly"
why is trump the one announcing this anyway? it's not his responsibility to speak on behalf of either of those countries.
it must be trump's way of saying he is worthy of the nobel peace prize.
Because he was nominated by Pakistan. You know, the same Pakistan that harboured Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda for decades.
So apparently he says Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire. Iran denies it. Why are we even taking a known liars word for it? Even if it's true. Wait for others to confirm. Or at least put in "allegedly"
It's all distraction. "My birthday party tanked so I'll bomb the shit out of someone so y'all will forget about that."
"It's a sad and beautiful world"
-Roberto Benigni
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,554
From Dan Rather. (If you have been or well know someone who has been to war, you will know Rather's last statement is very true.)
"Steady is free, but to support my team’s efforts to protect our
democracy through the power of independent journalism, we’d appreciate
it if you would consider joining as a paid subscriber. It keeps Steady
sustainable and accessible for all. If you are not able to upgrade, we
understand."
Watching
Donald Trump deliver the news of an American attack on Iran Saturday
night, I wondered how many viewers had the same reaction I did: How can
the United States be going to war — and that’s exactly what it is — with
advisers whose collective experience managing international conflict is
see-through thin?
There
was Trump, a draft dodger who has long derided the military, surrounded
by his war cabinet of second-rate choices, who owe their professional
and political souls to him. Will any of them ever question Trump’s
decisions? We know the answer to that.
Trump
did not have solid evidence Iran was building a nuclear bomb. Nearing
the time when they might be able to build one is the best that can be
said. Similar, although not identical, to the situation when George W.
Bush didn’t have hard evidence that Iraq was building weapons of mass
destruction. Bad intel back then led to a war that lasted eight years
and killed nearly 5,000 Americans and reportedly 200,000 Iraqis. No WMDs
were ever found.
Lessons learned? Hardly. Bombing Iran was easy enough. Did anyone at the White House think about what would happen on Day 2?
Forty-eight
hours after the United States launched bunker-busting bombs and dozens
of cruise missiles at Iran, the Iranian regime retaliated. Iran launched
missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military base
in the Middle East. The Defense Department said there were no injuries
because Qatari air defenses were able to intercept the Iranian attack.
Also, the Iranians gave advance warning to minimize casualties.
No
one should be surprised by this escalation. And no one should think
this is the end of hostilities. Forty thousand U.S. troops are stationed
in the region.
It
is a consequence of going to war, which is exactly what Donald Trump
did when he called for strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites. Even if
Vice President JD Vance says otherwise. “We’re not at war with Iran.
We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program,” he said on “Meet the Press”
Sunday. The Iranian people likely quibble with Vance’s semantics.
Iran has other retaliatory options from which to choose.
In an internal FBI email obtained by The New York Times,
American officials warn that Iran and its allies have “historically
targeted U.S. interests in response to geopolitical events, and they are
likely to increase their efforts in the near term.”
The
Strait of Hormuz, a narrow strip of water between the Persian Gulf and
the Gulf of Oman, is one of the world’s most important strategic choke
points. And Iran controls the north side of it. The 20 million barrels
of oil produced daily in the region — a fifth of global output — must
travel through the strait.
Some
influential Iranians are calling for Hormuz to be closed, including
Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of a popular hard-line
Iranian newspaper, who has the ear of the supreme leader.
“It
is now our turn to act without delay. As a first step, we must launch a
missile strike on the US naval fleet in Bahrain and simultaneously
close the Strait of Hormuz to American, British, German, and French
ships,” Shariatmadari wrote in his newspaper.
Mohammad
Ali Shabani, an expert on Iran, told CNN that Iran’s control of global
shipping lanes gives the government the “capacity to cause a shock in
oil markets, drive up oil prices, drive inflation, [and] collapse
Trump’s economic agenda.”
If
Hormuz is closed, oil prices will skyrocket. But perhaps the ayatollah
will put his pocketbook before payback. China is the No. 1 buyer of
Iranian oil. The money Iran earns from Chinese oil sales accounts for
50% of government spending, according to The Times. It has allowed the Iranian regime to fund terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
By
the way, need we remind ourselves that China, not Iran, is the most
potent foreign threat to American security? Also that Iran, along with
China and Russia, has the ability to launch destructive cyber attacks.
But
now back to the strikes themselves. Trump claimed victory, saying the
U.S. bombings “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear
program. No evidence has been given, and a bomb damage assessment has
yet to be released. This administration is not known for truth-telling,
so a wait-and-see approach is justified.
Using
satellite imagery, the Israeli military’s initial assessment is that
Fordo, the main nuclear site, where the U.S. dropped at least six bunker
busters, was damaged but not destroyed. Israeli intelligence believes
Iran moved equipment and uranium from the site prior to the bombing.
All
this means that Saturday’s attack was not a one-and-done as the
president would have us believe. Add to that Trump’s changing tune on
regime change. Initially he said the goal of the bombing was
“destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity.”
Vance,
Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio were reading from the same script as they
made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows. The administration’s view
“has been very clear that we don’t want a regime change,” Vance said.
Perhaps
the president didn’t get a copy of the talking points. Not four hours
later, Trump took to social media. “It’s not politically correct to use
the term, ‘Regime Change’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to
MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!”
he posted.
No
one thinks the Iranian government is made up of good guys. It has an
abysmal human rights record and is the poster child for state-sponsored
terrorism. These leaders have a long record of hating America and all
for which we stand. They have been known to subvert our Arab allies in
the region. But regime change seldom if ever works out the way the
changers intend. See: Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
But
calling for regime change versus seeking to destroy a country’s nuclear
capabilities — no matter how spurious the intelligence — are very
different goals with very different long-term prospects.
It’s been widely reported that the U.S. defense secretary was not
included in planning the Iran mission. Perhaps Hegseth’s Signalgate
scandal has finally caught up with him. At least he was by Trump’s side
as the president delivered his version of the war news.
Meanwhile,
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has been put on ice by
Trump for testifying to Congress — in March — that the intelligence
community did not believe Iran was close to building a nuclear weapon.
So
Trump needs advisers who will guide him by telling him the truth,
rather than what he wants to hear; because they are beholden to him for
jobs they aren’t qualified for, they never will. Trump learned from his
first administration: Don’t hire the smart people, elevate the
sycophants.
A few closing notes from your reporter, who has spent a fair portion of his life covering wars:
Truth IS the first casualty of war.
The first things you hear often are untrue, and so are many of the things you hear later.
Wars
are by their very nature chaotic and unpredictable. What you most
expect frequently does not happen; what you least expect often does.
Up
close and personal, wars are almost unbelievably savage. The television
screen and the printed word do not come close to conveying their harsh
realities.
There are few differences between the lies told to ignite the war with Iraq and the lies told to ignite a war with Iran. The assessments of our intelligence agencies and international bodies are, as they were during the calls to invade Iraq, airily dismissed for hallucinations.
All the old tropes have been resurrected to entice us into another military fiasco. A country that poses no threat to us, or to its neighbors, is on the verge of acquiring a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) that imperils our existence. The country and its leaders embody pure evil. Freedom and democracy are at stake. If we do not act now the next smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud. Our military superiority assures victory. We are the saviors of the world. Massive bombing, an updated version of Shock and Awe, will bring peace and harmony.
We heard these canards leading up to the 2003 war in Iraq. Twenty-two years later they have been resurrected. Anyone who advocates for negotiations, for diplomacy and peace, is a stooge for terrorists.
Did we learn any lessons from the fiascos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, not to mention Ukraine?
All the ghouls who sold us these past wars on false pretenses, such as conservative talk show host Mark Levin, Max Boot — who writes, “that strategic imperative argues for bombing Fordow,” where Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is buried underground — David Frum, John Bolton, Gen. Jack Keane, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity and Thomas Friedman, have returned to saturate the airwaves with breathless fearmongering.
Never mind that their grand plan to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and then invade and replace the regimes in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia — and finally in Iran — blew up in their faces. Never mind that their lust for war left hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions dead and drained trillions from the U.S. Treasury. Never mind the sheer idiocy of their arguments. Their megaphones are secure. They are dutiful shills for the war industry, brain dead neoconservatives and genocidal Zionists, who believe in the magical regeneration of the world through violence, ignoring catastrophe after catstrophe.
Forget the intelligence community’s Annual Threat Assessment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” something reiterated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi this week. Forget that Benjamin Netanyahu, for almost three decades, has been breathlessly warning that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Forget that the preemptive attack on Iran by Israel is a war crime, not to mention the bombings of a hospital, ambulance and journalists. Forget the hundreds of Iranian civilians Israel has slaughtered in its waves of airstrikes. Forget that Israel launched its attack on Iran as the sixth round of negotiations on nuclear enrichment between the U.S. and Iran were set to take place in Oman. Forget that it is the Israeli Prime Minister, not the leader of Iran, who is subject to an arrest warrant, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Forget that Israel, in the midst of carrying out a campaign of genocide against the Palestinians, possesses at least 90 nuclear weapons — built in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — and blocks inspections by the IAEA. Forget that Donald Trump ripped up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, which Iran was abiding by. Forget that Washington and London orchestrated the1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the region, and installed the compliant Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into power. Forget that the U.S., along with Israel, trained and equipped the SAVAK, the Shah’s savage secret police.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq, which led to the deaths of over 4,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, resulted in widespread destruction, regional instability and gave birth to a range of fanatical extremist groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The airy promises — that our invasion would implant democracy in Baghdad, which would emanate outwards across the Middle East, that we would be greeted as liberators and that the oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction — were a fantasy dreamed up by the George W. Bush administration and Washington think tanks. These shills for endless war do not grasp the mechanism or the consequences of war. They are culturally, historically, and linguistically illiterate about the countries they attack. Iraq. Afghanistan, Libya. Syria. Iran. I doubt they can tell the difference.
These cheerleaders of war, once they are proven wrong, are adept as issuing mea culpas. They assure us of their good intentions. They did not mean to peddle disinformation. They only wanted to keep the world safe from “evildoers” and protect our national security. No one, even those within the Bush and now Trump administrations, are intentionally dishonest. It is not their fault if they act on flawed intelligence. The problem is one of judgment, not virtue. They are good people.
But this, perhaps, is the biggest lie. The intelligence assessments used to justify the war against Iraq were cooked up by a cabal of lunatic neoconservatives and rabid Zionists because they did not like the assessments of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other intelligence agencies. Now another cabal, dominated by Israel-firsters, is concocting bogus intelligence assessments to justify a war with Iran. These wars are not prosecuted in good faith. They are not based on a careful and rational assessment of verifiable intelligence. They are utopian visions severed from reality where our own intelligence agencies are ignored along with international bodies such as the United Nations, WMD inspectors or the IAEA.
The history of modern Iran is the history of a people battling tyrants propped up and funded by Western powers. The brutal crushing of legitimate democratic movements over the decades resulted in the 1979 revolution that brought the Iranian clerics to power. The new Islamic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini championed Islam and argued for standing up to “arrogant” world powers and their regional allies, who would oppress others – including Palestinians – to serve their own interests.
“The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country,” Stephen Kinzer, the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” told me. “For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship.”
“Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians,” Kinzer said. “Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.”
You can see an interview I did with Kinzer about Iran here.
How would we react if Iran orchestrated a coup in the U.S. to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator, who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists? How would we react if Iran armed and funded a neighboring state, as we did during the eight year war with Iraq, to wage war against us? How would we react if Iran shot down one of our passenger jets as did the USS Vincennes (CG49) — caustically nicknamed the “Robocruiser” by the crews of other American vessels — when in July 1988 it fired missiles at a commerical aircraft filled with Iranian civilians, killing all 290 passengers, including 66 children? How would we react if Iranian intelligence services sponsored terrorism within the U.S., as our and Israel’s intelligence services do in Iran? How would we react if these state-sponsored terrorist attacks included suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and “targeted assassinations,” of government officials, scientists and other Iranian leaders? How would we react if, like Israel, a country attacked us based on a hypothesis, an attack that is illegal under the U.N. charter, which forbids preemptive war?
So Gabbard was lying to Congress? Nothing but the best people, folks, nothing but the best.
In her March testimony to lawmakers, Gabbard said the intelligence community "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."
She also said the U.S. was closely monitoring Iran's nuclear program, noting that the country's "enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons."
CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE! It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED! Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World. During each CEASEFIRE, the other side will remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL. On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR.” This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!
DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Scio me nihil scire
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,554
^^^ Great article. Hedges nails it.
And in his own inimitable style, here's our good buddy Jello Biafra chiming in on the insanity:
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE! It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED! Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World. During each CEASEFIRE, the other side will remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL. On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR.” This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!
DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
What is he? In sixth grade? Sorry, he ain’t no Winston Churchill, FDR or Obama. Good lord.
Reading that deal it was crap. After 10 years they could do whatever they wanted. When we pulled out they ramped up everything and wouldn't let the watchdogs in anywhere.
If we do a new deal it has to not have a time expiration.
No, after 10 years you re-negotiate. In what world do geopolitical deals have evergreen clauses?
Japan, Germany both off the top of my head.
surrender agreements to end declared wars are a whole different animal, especially in light of germany being the cause of borh world wars in the span of 20 years.
not a worthy comparison.
The question was when has it ever happened and this is when.
ending a war is not a diplomatic endeavor. jcpoa was just that.
the comparison does not fit.
What? I can't think of what Japan and Germany agreed to anything other than diplomacy. Signing a treaty is diplomacy, no?
when its conducted between the leading figures of the respective militaries , no it most certainly is not.
Reading that deal it was crap. After 10 years they could do whatever they wanted. When we pulled out they ramped up everything and wouldn't let the watchdogs in anywhere.
If we do a new deal it has to not have a time expiration.
No, after 10 years you re-negotiate. In what world do geopolitical deals have evergreen clauses?
Japan, Germany both off the top of my head.
surrender agreements to end declared wars are a whole different animal, especially in light of germany being the cause of borh world wars in the span of 20 years.
not a worthy comparison.
The question was when has it ever happened and this is when.
ending a war is not a diplomatic endeavor. jcpoa was just that.
the comparison does not fit.
What? I can't think of what Japan and Germany agreed to anything other than diplomacy. Signing a treaty is diplomacy, no?
when its conducted between the leading figures of the respective militaries , no it most certainly is not.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Known liars? Is that a reference to those who told us Biden was healthy?
Keep on ignoring this, and watch the Rs rub the floor with Dems next GE.
lol...at what point would you be satisfied that it isn't being ignored? Do we all have to go live on facebook and proclaim that Biden wasn't/isn't healthy, post it here, then you will stop saying this over and over again in posts that have nothing to do with Biden?
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018) The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
Comments
he said nothing of any other country.
i'd laugh if north korea gave some to iran.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
It's all distraction. "My birthday party tanked so I'll bomb the shit out of someone so y'all will forget about that."
When Incompetence Goes to War
Bombing was the easy part
Watching Donald Trump deliver the news of an American attack on Iran Saturday night, I wondered how many viewers had the same reaction I did: How can the United States be going to war — and that’s exactly what it is — with advisers whose collective experience managing international conflict is see-through thin?
There was Trump, a draft dodger who has long derided the military, surrounded by his war cabinet of second-rate choices, who owe their professional and political souls to him. Will any of them ever question Trump’s decisions? We know the answer to that.
Trump did not have solid evidence Iran was building a nuclear bomb. Nearing the time when they might be able to build one is the best that can be said. Similar, although not identical, to the situation when George W. Bush didn’t have hard evidence that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction. Bad intel back then led to a war that lasted eight years and killed nearly 5,000 Americans and reportedly 200,000 Iraqis. No WMDs were ever found.
Lessons learned? Hardly. Bombing Iran was easy enough. Did anyone at the White House think about what would happen on Day 2?
Forty-eight hours after the United States launched bunker-busting bombs and dozens of cruise missiles at Iran, the Iranian regime retaliated. Iran launched missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. The Defense Department said there were no injuries because Qatari air defenses were able to intercept the Iranian attack. Also, the Iranians gave advance warning to minimize casualties.
No one should be surprised by this escalation. And no one should think this is the end of hostilities. Forty thousand U.S. troops are stationed in the region.
It is a consequence of going to war, which is exactly what Donald Trump did when he called for strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites. Even if Vice President JD Vance says otherwise. “We’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program,” he said on “Meet the Press” Sunday. The Iranian people likely quibble with Vance’s semantics.
Iran has other retaliatory options from which to choose.
In an internal FBI email obtained by The New York Times, American officials warn that Iran and its allies have “historically targeted U.S. interests in response to geopolitical events, and they are likely to increase their efforts in the near term.”
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow strip of water between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, is one of the world’s most important strategic choke points. And Iran controls the north side of it. The 20 million barrels of oil produced daily in the region — a fifth of global output — must travel through the strait.
Some influential Iranians are calling for Hormuz to be closed, including Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of a popular hard-line Iranian newspaper, who has the ear of the supreme leader.
“It is now our turn to act without delay. As a first step, we must launch a missile strike on the US naval fleet in Bahrain and simultaneously close the Strait of Hormuz to American, British, German, and French ships,” Shariatmadari wrote in his newspaper.
Mohammad Ali Shabani, an expert on Iran, told CNN that Iran’s control of global shipping lanes gives the government the “capacity to cause a shock in oil markets, drive up oil prices, drive inflation, [and] collapse Trump’s economic agenda.”
If Hormuz is closed, oil prices will skyrocket. But perhaps the ayatollah will put his pocketbook before payback. China is the No. 1 buyer of Iranian oil. The money Iran earns from Chinese oil sales accounts for 50% of government spending, according to The Times. It has allowed the Iranian regime to fund terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
By the way, need we remind ourselves that China, not Iran, is the most potent foreign threat to American security? Also that Iran, along with China and Russia, has the ability to launch destructive cyber attacks.
But now back to the strikes themselves. Trump claimed victory, saying the U.S. bombings “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. No evidence has been given, and a bomb damage assessment has yet to be released. This administration is not known for truth-telling, so a wait-and-see approach is justified.
Using satellite imagery, the Israeli military’s initial assessment is that Fordo, the main nuclear site, where the U.S. dropped at least six bunker busters, was damaged but not destroyed. Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved equipment and uranium from the site prior to the bombing.
All this means that Saturday’s attack was not a one-and-done as the president would have us believe. Add to that Trump’s changing tune on regime change. Initially he said the goal of the bombing was “destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity.”
Vance, Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio were reading from the same script as they made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows. The administration’s view “has been very clear that we don’t want a regime change,” Vance said.
Perhaps the president didn’t get a copy of the talking points. Not four hours later, Trump took to social media. “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!” he posted.
No one thinks the Iranian government is made up of good guys. It has an abysmal human rights record and is the poster child for state-sponsored terrorism. These leaders have a long record of hating America and all for which we stand. They have been known to subvert our Arab allies in the region. But regime change seldom if ever works out the way the changers intend. See: Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
But calling for regime change versus seeking to destroy a country’s nuclear capabilities — no matter how spurious the intelligence — are very different goals with very different long-term prospects.
It’s been widely reported that the U.S. defense secretary was not included in planning the Iran mission. Perhaps Hegseth’s Signalgate scandal has finally caught up with him. At least he was by Trump’s side as the president delivered his version of the war news.
Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has been put on ice by Trump for testifying to Congress — in March — that the intelligence community did not believe Iran was close to building a nuclear weapon.
So Trump needs advisers who will guide him by telling him the truth, rather than what he wants to hear; because they are beholden to him for jobs they aren’t qualified for, they never will. Trump learned from his first administration: Don’t hire the smart people, elevate the sycophants.
A few closing notes from your reporter, who has spent a fair portion of his life covering wars:
Truth IS the first casualty of war.
The first things you hear often are untrue, and so are many of the things you hear later.
Wars are by their very nature chaotic and unpredictable. What you most expect frequently does not happen; what you least expect often does.
Up close and personal, wars are almost unbelievably savage. The television screen and the printed word do not come close to conveying their harsh realities.
War Deja VU
There are few differences between the lies told to ignite the war with Iraq and the lies told to ignite a war with Iran. The assessments of our intelligence agencies and international bodies are, as they were during the calls to invade Iraq, airily dismissed for hallucinations.
All the old tropes have been resurrected to entice us into another military fiasco. A country that poses no threat to us, or to its neighbors, is on the verge of acquiring a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) that imperils our existence. The country and its leaders embody pure evil. Freedom and democracy are at stake. If we do not act now the next smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud. Our military superiority assures victory. We are the saviors of the world. Massive bombing, an updated version of Shock and Awe, will bring peace and harmony.
We heard these canards leading up to the 2003 war in Iraq. Twenty-two years later they have been resurrected. Anyone who advocates for negotiations, for diplomacy and peace, is a stooge for terrorists.
Did we learn any lessons from the fiascos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, not to mention Ukraine?
All the ghouls who sold us these past wars on false pretenses, such as conservative talk show host Mark Levin, Max Boot — who writes, “that strategic imperative argues for bombing Fordow,” where Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is buried underground — David Frum, John Bolton, Gen. Jack Keane, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity and Thomas Friedman, have returned to saturate the airwaves with breathless fearmongering.
Never mind that their grand plan to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and then invade and replace the regimes in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia — and finally in Iran — blew up in their faces. Never mind that their lust for war left hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions dead and drained trillions from the U.S. Treasury. Never mind the sheer idiocy of their arguments. Their megaphones are secure. They are dutiful shills for the war industry, brain dead neoconservatives and genocidal Zionists, who believe in the magical regeneration of the world through violence, ignoring catastrophe after catstrophe.
Forget the intelligence community’s Annual Threat Assessment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” something reiterated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi this week. Forget that Benjamin Netanyahu, for almost three decades, has been breathlessly warning that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Forget that the preemptive attack on Iran by Israel is a war crime, not to mention the bombings of a hospital, ambulance and journalists. Forget the hundreds of Iranian civilians Israel has slaughtered in its waves of airstrikes. Forget that Israel launched its attack on Iran as the sixth round of negotiations on nuclear enrichment between the U.S. and Iran were set to take place in Oman. Forget that it is the Israeli Prime Minister, not the leader of Iran, who is subject to an arrest warrant, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Forget that Israel, in the midst of carrying out a campaign of genocide against the Palestinians, possesses at least 90 nuclear weapons — built in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — and blocks inspections by the IAEA. Forget that Donald Trump ripped up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, which Iran was abiding by. Forget that Washington and London orchestrated the1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the region, and installed the compliant Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into power. Forget that the U.S., along with Israel, trained and equipped the SAVAK, the Shah’s savage secret police.
Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!
(Continued in next post)
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Iran’s purported nuclear weapons program is the evidence-free equivalent of Saddam Hussein’s mythical WMDs and alliance with Al-Qaeda.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq, which led to the deaths of over 4,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, resulted in widespread destruction, regional instability and gave birth to a range of fanatical extremist groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The airy promises — that our invasion would implant democracy in Baghdad, which would emanate outwards across the Middle East, that we would be greeted as liberators and that the oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction — were a fantasy dreamed up by the George W. Bush administration and Washington think tanks. These shills for endless war do not grasp the mechanism or the consequences of war. They are culturally, historically, and linguistically illiterate about the countries they attack. Iraq. Afghanistan, Libya. Syria. Iran. I doubt they can tell the difference.
These cheerleaders of war, once they are proven wrong, are adept as issuing mea culpas. They assure us of their good intentions. They did not mean to peddle disinformation. They only wanted to keep the world safe from “evildoers” and protect our national security. No one, even those within the Bush and now Trump administrations, are intentionally dishonest. It is not their fault if they act on flawed intelligence. The problem is one of judgment, not virtue. They are good people.
But this, perhaps, is the biggest lie. The intelligence assessments used to justify the war against Iraq were cooked up by a cabal of lunatic neoconservatives and rabid Zionists because they did not like the assessments of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other intelligence agencies. Now another cabal, dominated by Israel-firsters, is concocting bogus intelligence assessments to justify a war with Iran. These wars are not prosecuted in good faith. They are not based on a careful and rational assessment of verifiable intelligence. They are utopian visions severed from reality where our own intelligence agencies are ignored along with international bodies such as the United Nations, WMD inspectors or the IAEA.
The history of modern Iran is the history of a people battling tyrants propped up and funded by Western powers. The brutal crushing of legitimate democratic movements over the decades resulted in the 1979 revolution that brought the Iranian clerics to power. The new Islamic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini championed Islam and argued for standing up to “arrogant” world powers and their regional allies, who would oppress others – including Palestinians – to serve their own interests.
“The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country,” Stephen Kinzer, the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” told me. “For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship.”
“Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians,” Kinzer said. “Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.”
You can see an interview I did with Kinzer about Iran here.
How would we react if Iran orchestrated a coup in the U.S. to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator, who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists? How would we react if Iran armed and funded a neighboring state, as we did during the eight year war with Iraq, to wage war against us? How would we react if Iran shot down one of our passenger jets as did the USS Vincennes (CG49) — caustically nicknamed the “Robocruiser” by the crews of other American vessels — when in July 1988 it fired missiles at a commerical aircraft filled with Iranian civilians, killing all 290 passengers, including 66 children? How would we react if Iranian intelligence services sponsored terrorism within the U.S., as our and Israel’s intelligence services do in Iran? How would we react if these state-sponsored terrorist attacks included suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and “targeted assassinations,” of government officials, scientists and other Iranian leaders? How would we react if, like Israel, a country attacked us based on a hypothesis, an attack that is illegal under the U.N. charter, which forbids preemptive war?
The pimps of war who orchestrate these military fiascos have risen once again from the crypt. They migrate like zombies from administration to administration. They are ensconced in think tanks — Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Research Initiative, The Atlantic Council and The Brookings Institution — funded by corporations, the Israel lobby and the war industry. They are puppets jerked up and down by their masters, given megaphones by a bankrupt media, urging us forward from one quagmire to the next.
The old faces and the old lies are back, exhorting us into another nightmare.
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
In her March testimony to lawmakers, Gabbard said the intelligence community "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."
She also said the U.S. was closely monitoring Iran's nuclear program, noting that the country's "enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/americas-spies-say-iran-wasnt-building-a-nuclear-weapon-trump-dismisses-that-assessment
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Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE! It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED! Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World. During each CEASEFIRE, the other side will remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL. On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR.” This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!
DONALD J. TRUMP,
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
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Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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does this mean there is no ceasefire like dumbfuck said?
color me shocked.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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