Iraq Was DejaVu, Trump’s Circus Could Lead US to War With Iran
Last month, trump said the U.S. was close to signing a deal that would preclude Iran from developing nuclear weapons, leading trump to dream of winning the Nobel Peace Prize, just like his nemesis, President Barack Obama.
Things aren’t looking good for a trip to Oslo. Apparently the deal by the great art of the deal maker fell through. Now TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) trump is giving Iran two weeks to abandon any designs on nuclear weapons before he decides whether the U.S. will bomb Iran. After that, stay tuned for another final, final TACO delay.
Maybe trump is just waiting for guidance from Laura Loomer, the wacko, far right conspiracy theorist who has become one of the president’s close advisors. In April, Loomer accused Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh, then head of the U.S. Cyber Command, of being disloyal to trump. Not long after, trump fired Haugh. Loomer has called 9/11 an “inside job” and posted racist attacks against former vice president Kamala Harris during the 2024 election.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered air strikes last week after claiming that Iran was “marching very quickly” toward a nuclear weapon. In agreeing with Netanyahu, Trump blew off the advice of his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who said Iran is nowhere near developing a nuclear bomb.
Trump called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and suggested that the U.S. could assassinate its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He also wrote on social media that “we” — not Israel — now had “total control” of Iranian airspace. The macho man is going wild.
It is the oxymoron of the year, talking about trump and intelligence. There is a terrible parallel with the U.S. war in Iraq where President George W. Bush claimed Iraq had to be defeated because it had weapons of mass destruction. It was a historic moment of miscalculation as no such weapons were ever discovered and the lie was the basis for the invasion. By the time the United States withdrew nearly nine years later, more than 4,000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis had died.
Trump said he wanted to allow diplomatic efforts to proceed before making a final decision on U.S. military action. He is relying on the wisdom of his long term friend, huge campaign donor and real estate mogul Steve Witkoff.
Witkoff has been the face of the U.S. in talks with Russia over the Ukraine War. At last glance, the bombs were still falling over Kiev. Witkoff, who has no experience in diplomacy, once described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “not a bad guy.”
In January, Witkoff led a U.S. contingent which convinced Israel and Hamas to agree to a one month cease fire. Three months later, Israel quit the cease fire and since then 4,603 people have been killed in the Israeli assault, for a total of 54,880 killed and 127,394 injuries, as of June 8 out of the total Gaza population of 2.1 million people. Witkoff might want to keep that off his resume.
Now, Witkoff is primed to begin new talks with Iran and if Witkoff’s track record is any guide, nobody should hold their breath for a breakthrough.
Trump has never held the national intelligence apparatus in very high regard. He famously belittled the U.S. intelligence community ever since reports starting coming of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
As of May, in his second term in office, trump has sat for just 12 presentations from intelligence officials of the President’s Daily Brief. That is significantly fewer than past presidents.
Iran’s progress toward building a nuclear weapon is laid right at the feet of trump and his huge ego, who in 2018 cancelled the historic U.S. brokered agreement by Obama, trump’s favorite foe. Trump’s reasons for quitting the agreement were disputed by U.S. and foreign intelligence sources.
Under the agreement, signed in 2015, Iran agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons and to allow continuous monitoring in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. The agreement was signed by the United States and Iran as well as China, Russia, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Over the 28 months the deal was in effect, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it found Iran committed no violations, aside from some minor infractions that were addressed.
But trump killed the agreement, ostensibly because he was convinced it would not stop Iran from building a bomb. In reality, trump could not stomach such a monumental success by Obama.
“This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” trump said. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”
So trump ordered the U.S. to place economic sanctions on Iran because of its nuclear program. Iran, in turn, reduced its compliance with the Obama deal and stopped complying with international inspectors, bringing the country closer to producing a bomb.
Since his second election, trump has fired many of the experienced intelligence employees, claiming they were disloyal to trump. He has hired a slew of underqualified advisors whose main qualification is their level of sycophancy.
Top advisors include the highly underqualified, former Fox personality, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. During recent hearings, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D- Ill., called Hegseth an “unqualified yes man” and questioned Hegseth’s anti-Muslim tattoos which are religious symbols referring to the Crusades.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has faced heat, including a call last week for her resignation by Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill. Ramirez accused Noem of illegally impounding funds, closing civil rights offices, and corruptly benefiting private prison donors.
Another close advisor is Gabbard, who once met with and had favorable words for former Syrian mass murderer and dictator, Bashar al-Assad. She also had praised Putin.
In March, Gabbard told lawmakers that the intelligence community assessed that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
“I don’t care what she said.” trump told reporters. “I think they (Iran) were very close to having one.”
Gabbard also angered the razor thin skinned president when she posted a video on social media after she visited Hiroshima, Japan, the scene of the first atomic bomb which ended World War II.
“As we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” Gabbard said in a video.
In May, trump fired national security adviser Mike Waltz because he had inadvertently added the editor of The Atlantic to a Signal group chat among top officials who discussed secret US strikes in Yemen targeting Houthi militia before they were publicly known.
Trump might be hoping that Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, was right when he said recently invading Iraq would be “biblical” and that trump should be allowed to attack without getting congressional approval.
“I’m one of those — it’s biblical. We support Israel. Israel is our friend. We need to be with them,” Williams said.
Williams said the time is right for a U.S. attack.
“He (trump) has got us to a point where these guys need to take a hard look at their selves and surrender, and if they don’t surrender it may be that we have to end it. We got the best friend we got in Israel, they’re doing a fantastic job, they’re controlling the airspace now, so we just need to see,” said Williams.
Williams, 75, a Protestant member of Congress since 2013, owns an automobile dealership that he inherited, garnering him a net worth of $27.7 million. Williams has shaken the hand of every president since Harry S. Truman.
Bottom Dwellers
Now even the MAGA superstars, Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson, are demanding that trump not bomb Iran and drag the U.S. into war.
Bannon bashed trump and further accused Fox News of pushing “the exact propaganda you had in the Iraq War. There’s no difference between the pitch they’re making here and the pitch they made on Iraq.”
“The Israelis have to finish what they started … There’s no rush for the United States” to intervene, Bannon said. “This is one of the most ancient civilizations in the world, okay, with 92 million people. This is not something you play around with. You have to think this through at this level, and the American people have to be on board. You can’t just dump this on them.”
Carlson and the equally borderline human, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., had similar advice.
“Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA,” Greene posted on social media. “We are sick and tired of foreign wars. All of them.”