Posted on 06/25/2019 3:42:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Visualizing 150 Iranian dead from a missile strike that he had ordered, President Donald Trump recoiled and canceled the strike, a brave decision and defining moment for his presidency.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence had signed off on the strike on Iran as the right response to Tehran's shootdown of a U.S. Global Hawk spy plane over the Gulf of Oman.
The U.S. claims the drone was over international waters. Tehran says it was in Iranian territory. But while the loss of a $100 million drone is no small matter, no American pilot was lost, and retaliating by killing 150 Iranians would appear to be a disproportionate response.
Good for Trump. Yet, all weekend, he was berated for chickening out and imitating President Barack Obama. U.S. credibility, it was said, has taken a big hit and must be restored with military action.
By canceling the strike, the president also sent a message to Iran: We're ready to negotiate. Yet, given the irreconcilable character of our clashing demands, it is hard to see how the U.S. and Iran get off this road we are on, at the end of which a military collision seems almost certain.
Consider the respective demands.
Monday, the president tweeted: "The U.S. request for Iran is very simple -- No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror!"
But Iran has no nuclear weapons, has never had nuclear weapons, and has never even produced bomb-grade uranium.
According to our own intelligence agencies in 2007 and 2011, Tehran did not even have a nuclear weapons program.
Under the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA, the only way Iran could have a nuclear weapons program would be in secret, outside its known nuclear facilities, all of which are under constant U.N. inspection.
Where is the evidence that any such secret program exists?
And if it does, why does America not tell the world where Iran's secret nuclear facilities are located and demand immediate inspections?
"No further sponsoring of terror," Trump says.
But what does that mean?
As the major Shiite power in a Middle East divided between Sunni and Shiite, Iran backs the Houthi rebels in Yemen's civil war, Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon, Alawite Bashar Assad in Syria, and the Shiite militias in Iraq who helped us stop ISIS's drive to Baghdad.
In his 12 demands, Pompeo virtually insisted that Iran abandon these allies and capitulate to their Sunni adversaries and rivals.
Not going to happen. Yet, if these demands are nonnegotiable, to be backed up by sanctions severe enough to choke Iran's economy to death, we will be headed for war.
No more than North Korea is Iran going to yield to U.S. demands that it abandon what Iran sees as vital national interests.
As for the U.S. charge that Iran is "destabilizing" the Middle East, it was not Iran that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, overthrew the Gadhafi regime in Libya, armed rebels to overthrow Assad in Syria, or aided and abetted the Saudis' intervention in Yemen's civil war.
Iran, pushed to the wall, its economy shrinking as inflation and unemployment are rising, is approaching the limits of its tolerance.
And as Iran suffers pain, it is saying, other nations in the Gulf will endure similar pain, as will the USA. At some point, collisions will produce casualties and we will be on the up escalator to war.
Yet, what vital interest of ours does Iran today threaten?
Trump, with his order to stand down on the missile strike on Iran, signaled that he wanted a pause in the confrontation.
Still, it needs to be said: The president himself authorized the steps that have brought us to this peril point.
Trump pulled out of and trashed Obama's nuclear deal. He imposed the sanctions that are now inflicting something close to unacceptable if not intolerable pain on Iran. He had the Islamic Revolutionary Guard declared a terrorist organization. He sent the Abraham Lincoln carrier task force and B-52s to the Gulf region.
If war is to be avoided, either Iran is going to have to capitulate, or the U.S. is going to have to walk back its maximalist position.
And who would Trump name to negotiate with Tehran for the United States?
The longer the sanctions remain in place and the deeper they bite, the greater the likelihood Iran will respond to our economic warfare with its own asymmetric warfare. Has the president decided to take that risk?
We appear to be at a turning point in the Trump presidency.
Does he want to run in 2020 as the president who led us into war with Iran, or as the anti-interventionist president who began to bring U.S. troops home from that region that has produced so many wars?
Perhaps Congress, the branch of government designated by the Constitution to decide on war, should instruct President Trump as to the conditions under which he is authorized to take us to war with Iran.
Unexpected Philosopher King.
I agree with calling it off and the military people that signed off on the strike are under suspicion as far as I am concerned. Shooting down a piece of unmanned surveillance equipment sounds reasonable to me if I am an Iranian. Killing 150 civilians in response sounds murderous by any measure.
Cyber attack on Iran in response sounds reasonable. Sanctions until Iran’s government is pushed out by its citizens also reasonable. Problem is the replacement government might be worse. These things are always a gamble.
The entire fault of the situation belongs to the peanut farmer from Georgia
Oof...DJT is surrounded by Swamp.
Bull shit....... 1935 Republican bull shit
It is as clear as glass that Iran seeks to overwhelm the Sunni governments around them, to destroy Israel, and to attack us in the process. How many more of our troops have to die to convince us that Iran is an active enemy?
Buchanan never served five minutes in uniform - so any military assessments he makes are suspect.
I believe that President Trump did the right thing in holding off on a retaliatory strike against Iran this weekend - but if they persist in attacking shipping in the Straits of Hormuz and shooting at us and our assets, we must strike. If I were advising the President, my target set would be the nuclear design facilities and storage areas, preferably while they are occupied.
The author of this piece speaks, it seems, with absolute certainty that Iran doesn’t have weapons grade uranium, as well as how it will react to sanctions and a multitude of other situations it finds itself in due to the sanctions.
It also is evident this author is convinced Trump walking away from the agreement of Obama/Kerry is one of the major causes of heightened tensions. He says these things with certainty yet cites not a shred of evidence. Trump of course was correct in his abrogation of the agreement if only because there were no allowances for assurance of Irans compliance to the agreement.
Perhaps the strategy here is to provoke Iran into a first strike by way of sanctions. If the strike by Iran causes a loss of American lives then a like response will become acceptable.
I don’t believe the author of this piece knows any more than we do and yet he writes as if he has been informed by high level insiders.
It is nothing more than an opinion piece disguised as a news story.
President Trump knows how learn about people without a need for guesswork.
You for letting them continue this - with nukes in the near future?
But isn’t that exactly what happened in 1979?
It is Pat Buchanan who knows nothing about anything. He is an archaic has been
No. Ayatollah Homeine in effect executed a sucessful Islamic coup.
> The entire fault of the situation belongs to the peanut farmer from Georgia <
I half-agree. Carter removed the Shah of Iran. And then he stood by and watched as the radicals took over.
But Iran was still held (somewhat) in check by Saddam Hussein next door in Iraq. Then Bush II came along and did the radicals a big favor by removing Saddam.
So I’d assign blame to both Carter and Bush II. Who was worse? Carter got the ball rolling. But Bush II got lots and lots of people killed. And there’s still not a single captured MED on display in any of our military museums.
So my vote as worse goes to Bush II.
I know who wrote this, I didn’t want to give him any credit.
The author of this article and I see the world very differently.
He presumes that Iran is not trying to build a nuclear device. Yet, evidence for the last 40 years has clearly been that they are attempting to acquire bomb making ability and materials. He states that Iran has no secret bomb making sites, yet they have been caught destroying implosion experimental sites and nuclear test facilities. Further, they do not allow free inspections of all their nuclear facilities. Then there is a problem with the underground sites, now contaminated by explosions set off by the Israeli’s that can’t even be investigated. The only logical conclusion is that the Iranian government has been on a direct path to build a nuclear device for 40 years.
The Iranian support for worldwide terrorism is undeniable. The assumption that it’s terrorist efforts are directed at Sunni Muslims is true, and unrelated to it’s efforts to attack non-muslims with terror every chance they can. The Iranians produced and help place so many of the IED that killed and maimed US soldiers for the last 18 years that ‘they got it coming to them’. The constant attacks of peaceful places like ‘barracks, embassies, discos, dance halls’ along with ‘torture, murder’ all by Iran’s ‘government’.
I noted that the author doesn’t talk much about the isotope signatures of fission nuclear warheads and how they can point to the uranium sources used for it’s creation. I wonder if he knows that Uranium One will give access to Iran of US mined isotopes for bomb creation, so it can’t be traced to the Iranians.
Trump didn’t cause any of these problems. He didn’t create Iran’s government, Jimmy Carter did. Trump didn’t allow said government to continue with acts of terror, Clinton and Bush(s) did that. Reagan probably had his chance to retaliate and did not as well. When you speak about Obama, remember that he illegally gave 150+billion in Cash and Gold to a terrorist state that, with the help of Uranium one, is headlong into building nuclear bombs for terrorism purposes.
I have a problem with ‘proportionate’ military response. You can do sanctions, cyberattacks, and all kinds of non-lethal ‘proportionate’ attacks. However, once you start using the ‘Military’ DON’T MAKE IT PROPORTIONAL! Kill and keep killing until Iran (who declared war on us 40 years ago) signs and unconditional peace treaty.
> But isn’t that exactly what happened in 1979?
No, what happened in 1979 was the reversal of the previous overthrow of their government.
The reason it’s an Islamic government is because the puppet we installed destroyed their civil society and the mosques were the only place where any resistance to the imposed despotism could congeal.
Domestic overthrow of the mullahs would ideally restore what MI6 and the CIA screwed up back in 1953 - representative, legitimate, secular government.
And there’s still not a single captured WMD on display in any of our military museums.
A successful Islamic coup against a leader who had come to power through a coup in the 1950s against an elected government ... carried out by the British and U.S. governments on behalf of British Petroleum. Right?
I know but I wanted him exposed
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