Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford has revealed that it was he who was driving recent US military deployments into the Middle East, saying he recommended them based on intelligence with respect to Iran.
Dunford claimed that “malign activity and threats to our forces by the
Iranians were not new,” but that what he saw was a synchronized series
of efforts that looked more like a formal campaign against the US.
Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan confirmed that Dunford told him of an
“anomaly” in Iranian behavior. At the same time, Shanahan says that President Trump has made clear he does not seek a war over the matter.
Shanahan has expressed regret that he wasn’t able to share more
information with the public on the intelligence involved. Shanahan has
been put in a difficult position by this, pressured by Congress for
specifics while other officials, notably John Bolton and Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo talk up a potential military conflict while treating
evidence as virtually beside the point.
“We have really, really good and solid evidence, but we haven’t quite finished manufacturing it yet”.
Heh, they gotta polish that turd…
Leave the region and you won’t have to worry about a “mounting campaign”. Or maybe try and imagine if Iran was on our boarders and Iran was bitching about a mounting campaign on their forces or “interests”.
Forward deployed paranoia.
“boarders”, lol.
Tool.
Meanwhile,
Russian bombing the snot out of Turkish positions in Iblib, Syria.
While Bolton sulks in timeout for not understanding Trump calls the shots.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-30/russian-jets-unleash-hell-idlib-after-ceasefire-talks-turkey-fail
It is a stretch to call the rebels holding Idlib hostage “Turkish positions”, they are not Turkish troops.
OK, Turkish “rebel allies”.
Turkey like everybody else uses surrogates.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/skeptics/questionable-alliances-why-america-needs-reexamine-its-international-relationships
Yeah, what eve’s,
the US isn’t fighting in the ME,
Russia and Turkey through their proxies.
Bolton a barking dog, on Trump’s leash. Smart.
I think you’ve got that the wrong way round, it’s more a matter of who’s going to get who as far as Bolton goes and we are fighting in the ME haven’t you heard?
Where are US troops fighting in the ME?
Droning jihado’s doesn’t count
as that is not fighting with another nation.
PS: Afghanistan isn’t in the ME.
Dropping bombs and using drones is fighting.
Bolton is your man. You said you respect him. Stop backtracking.
We are at war with AQ and ISIS, and it’s legit.
No ground troops, just targeted suppression.
“Fighting” would be putting our troops in the line of fire.
“We are at war” but we aren’t fighting. Precious.
Define “fighting”.
My point, which you choose to ignore, is we do not have ground troops in harms way.
Fighting as it pertains to eliminating terrorists with drones, missiles or bombs is fighting,
but not the type of fighting you condemned in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria.
“We are at war with AQ and ISIS”. Your words. War is fighting. Even neocons can’t deny that. But you continue to try. How quaint.
It’s fighting, but not at risk to our ground troops, the point.
Yes, it’s your point. But it’s only legit if you want to change the definition of fighting. War is fighting. Doing it exclusively in the air is still fighting. You sound like Obama concerning Libya and how it wasn’t a war since we had no ground troops doing our killing.
Correct, like using the Kurds to destroy ISIS,
we supply the air and artillery,
they supply the ground troops.
It’s ‘fighting” alright but only with a marginal risk vs,
the Bush styled invasions.
Just like the U.S., too cowardly to fight their own wars unless it involves drones from thousands of miles away.
As if—-Iran isn’t the prime example for your condemnation.
Talk about “cowardly”!
The Iranians are using drones from thousands of miles away? Iran’s actions are regional, ours are globally.
It ain’t the miles, it’s the actions.
Oil isn’t “regional” it’s global.
And our actions dwarf anything Iran does, cowardly wise.
And oil is sold globally. Iran has no economy without their oil revenue. The only threat to oil not flowing freely is from the US.
Wrong, Iran has hyper-regional goals that would destabilize world oil supplies, like Saddam had re. Kuwait.
If Iran wanted peace and stability in the region,
dropping their nuke program and ending proxy wars would do it.
But they don’t.
Well, they dropped their nuke program at least 15 years ago. So you can check that one off anyway.
You can’t verify that, so I’ll leave it on, thanks.
https://news.antiwar.com/2019/05/31/iaea-iran-continues-to-comply-with-nuclear-deal-limits/
More paranoid neocon jibberish. And Iran doesn’t have a nuke program.
https://news.antiwar.com/2019/05/31/iaea-iran-continues-to-comply-with-nuclear-deal-limits
Pleez, hey, have a great day, adios.
Poor Dunford. Forced to say something.
The problem turned out to be stupid natives. It was expected that after the neat, coordinated sabotage of ships, a war trumpets would be blazing acriss Gukf, and then we would have to defend our allies. Instead, most they heard was “bad Iran” but let us investigate. And that is only from Saudi press and leader. But it is not one notch higher then it was all these years. We are desparate to get a coalition going, but without Egypt and Sudan — most populous nations, nothing will happen.
So, it remains to be seen if US has enough leverage to push them into demanding war, or at least be accomplices. But whatever can US do to them pales in comparison with what China and Russia can do to them economically.
Syria was a test red line, Iran was a well known red line. Russia was not affected by multi-latered sanctions, nor by vitriolic, motiveless hate campaign. Efforts to find vulnerable, soft spots in China’s exposure to Western “ free trade” trap, are under way, and are now pushing into territory where US is getting hurt. And as US has only vinegar to offer, no honey, efforts to force China to cave in on any front, look feeble. As recently learned — all the Western licensed technology built into Chinese products were more of an incentive to those companies to share profits through Chinese-made products — not a necessity. China has their iwn products. This is bad news for US chip makers, as Chinese are cheaper and mire advanced, and will take higher market share. This will hurt I-phone and may other ptoducts that make sizeable profit on Chinese market. China has eclipsed our 5G technology, and if we did not have quite this big mouth, could have learned that we are walking into trap. Two traps. Food and high tech. US, Canada and Australia will suffer permanently in food exports to China. As they already did in exports to Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. There is a shortage of pork glibally as China tapoed all markets to punish US producers. Russia has already ramped up production of grain products to top world’s expirt numbers, and us ramping up in priduction if neet, fish, dairy, and processed food. Thus alliwed many to switch to non-GMO grain products from Russia. As the world diversifies in food production, and Eurasian continental linjs of oil and gas piowlines growes, control of seas and straights will become kess relevant. This is why Iran is the geographic key to linking Eurasia to Middle East, from Mediterranean to Indian Ocean. The stubborn obsession to control — separating Turkey from Syria, Syria from Iraq — have failed. Kurds are not any mire able to accomplish this. Now, the bigger folly — separating Iraq from Iran, is under way. In fact, to vitaly damage Russia and China.
If the objective is to ramp up milutary presence in the Middle East — it will be slow goung. If the purpose is to push Arab workd into military action against Iran — it depends on the size if our stick. Because anything ither then danger to themselves would push them into such alliance, even verbally. So far, US has a brand new military deal with Bahrain.
This is a region where the battle for influence has started a while ago, and US decided it cannot win without flexibg military.
But getting to the point of a direct military action against Iran — carries many risks. Furst to Trump, as there is no chance of swift triumph. And there is every chance of misculculation. Because this neans challenging China and Russia. Bith will have to maje move on military chessboard, move they anticipated long time ago. We are nit too subtle — and catching subtle clues is not our forte. Pompeo did not catch half of what was said in Sochi. Ir just dismissed it, as irrelevant. Putin did not make announcement of new weapons technoligy last year just to hear himself talk. It was a warning to us to avoid muscalculation. Heads up, of sorts.
We are testing the waters, hoping all is bluff.
Just like Ukraine has proven to be a loss to the West, loss of reputation and image, loss if belief in our economuc institutions, there us a bigger loss in the making in the Middle East.
What will be our reply? Just kidding?
Sure – Iran is supposed to remain defenseless when we have our forces arrayed around them. How come so many people are so gullible to the obvious propaganda?
Who tf believes anything the US government says?
We get it, we get it. Trump “doesn’t want” to annihilate Iran and cease its existence, but his hires Bolton and Pompeo are all for it. I can see in the not-too-distant future, Trump sanctimoniously wringing his hands at a podium as he announces that we’re starting aerial assaults on Iran, because they forced our hand.
There’s a remedy for that, Mork .. DJT must dump both Pompous Pompass and Bonkers Bolton and replace them with reasonable, stable individuals who’ll ensure he pulls ALL US troops out of the Mideast and treat Iran with respect.
Iran’s a peaceful country that hasn’t attacked its neighbors in nearly 500 years; so, why all this bluster on Pompass’ and Bonkers’ part? Pompass is still CIA, despite his move to the State Dept as Secretary of State .. and Bonkers is still a freaking maniac, ranting and raving about Iran. The Islamic Republic’s an obsession with him.
What does the US need evidence for? US elites control major narratives in the heads of Americans with zero evidence. The US thinks whatever it says is reality like a patient inside an asylum.
Congress better open their eyes and get involved…its their job to declare a war not Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, or Shanahan. We need to watch this closely and not let them get away will another illegal forever war.
“We have to declare war to find out why we declared war” Is this a foreign policy worthy of the United States? I sincerely hope not- but if it is, we have a lot of deep-seated problems that need addressed pronto. It’s a pretty sad day when I trust the word of Iran’s President over ours. I think this is John Bolton’s doing, though, and he won’t rest until he has American blood on his hands.
” Look, Eye-Ran…jus’ do what we tell ya’ to do, when we tell ya’ ta’ do it. An when ya’ do, we’ll move th’ damn goal post! “
Dumbford and Shanahan belong on Comedy Central (or the loony bin).
So they decided Israel’s “intelligence” – which we know is what they were relying on – wasn’t quite as good a fraud as Israel hoped, so they couldn’t reveal it because they knew independent analysis would reveal it as a fraud (which is pretty much what happened based on what we do know about it.)
So what? My guess is the plan is for Israel to foment an incident with Hezbollah to justify another Israel attack on Lebanon this summer or next summer. The US will join in. All this “Iran threat” propaganda is just going to be used to justify that attack, while distracting everyone now from the real target – Hezbollah.
Also remember: any time a Pentagon official opens his mouth, he’s lying.
Dumbford is a warmonger like all of the “Chiefs of Staff”-lies are his business.
with the US continuously threatening Iran, it only makes sense that Iran would make preparations for such an event.. which the US military morons see as potential hostile actions.. smh
From WAY over on the other side of the planet, and without any intercontinental missiles or any Navy to speak of…boy, those Iranians are good. We should surrender now and avoid the humiliation.