In comments Wednesday, President Trump emphasized that he believes the
US has “many options” for what to do with Iran after allegations Iran
had attacked Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure with drones.
Trump told reporters “we’ll see what happens,” while emphasizing that he
has “many options.” He described a full-scale war against Iran as the
“ultimate option,” and said that “there are options that are a lot less than that.“
While giving war a position of primacy among his options doesn’t exactly
fit with his comments the last couple of days saying he doesn’t want to
start a war, the comments still suggest war is unlikely.
In the course of his comments, President Trump also talked of imposing a number of new sanctions against Iran. He was not specific about what that would mean, beyond it being “substantial.”
What a funny joke that the two flashpoints where WWIII could possibly begin –Iran and the Persian Gulf and India/Pakistan– are right next to each other. Hilarious!
One option is stop carrying water for Saudi Arabia & Israel.
Absolutely. In addition, only Congress has the authority to declare war, not the President. DJT should know this by now.
As far as Pompous Pompeo’s concerned, he’s just as much a pathological liar as is Bonkers Bolton.
I fully agree with you that one option is to stop carrying water for Saudi Arabia and Israel, and that’s the option to take.
Here is an article that looks at the close economic connections between China and Iran:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/08/chinas-infrastructure-investment-in.html
Washington would be seriously mistaken if it thought that China would stand aside and let the United States destroy its massive investments in Iran and its infrastructure.
Good point. I don’t see China or Russia directly involving themselves militarily (unless something happens in Syria, which is possible), But I do see both of them supplying Iran with any weapons Iran can pay for. And Russia will probably supply Iran covertly with intelligence from its regional surveillance based in Syria.
If Russia supplied Iran with some of its lesser ECM gear, Iran could defend pretty well against US drones and cruise missiles. Iran’s own locally developed systems might already do well. Iran had an S-300 “clone” developed locally before Russia delivered the real thing.
One option is to get in my car and purposely run over a bunch of pedestrians, I don’t want to do that, we’ll see what happens…..
LOL Well said.
So can I borrow your car for four years ? I know more about driving than anyone, people are saying…
LOL Keep ’em coming!
Sure, got a million of em,….the real joke is on the ballot in 2020…
Trump still has Pompeo telling him that “Iran did it” and Likudniks like Jared and Bibi pressuring him to attack. Hope he understands that attacking Iran will be the end of his presidency either through impeachment or loss at the polls. Maybe his new NSA will have the presence of mind to actually assess the situation and conclude that Iran has already developed close ties to Russia and China through the New Silk Road initiative and there is no way that they will fold through sanctions, intimidation, and bluster.
Time to talk, Donald. Call off the illegal sanctions and negotiate a new nuke deal with Iran that will look a lot like what Obama came up with. The rest of the world will thank you for it.
Depends Thomas. He might lose at the polls unless he starts it around a month before the election. At first it would be a jingoistic orgy until reality set in and the sheep realize we are in the ultimate of quagmires. But I can’t imagine a sitting president getting impeached for acting “presidential” and bombing the sh*t out of some country that can’t touch our mainland while Brian Williams masturbates.
Yikes, that vision should make most war fans go antiwar right away….
Acting “presidential” probably wouldn’t include putting the aircraft carrier USS Sitting Duck in the sights of a Russian hypersonic missile or having 30,000 Hezbollah missiles rain down on Israel. That could happen within hours of an attack on Iran. I bet there would be an immediate call in the MSM for his impeachment.
Oops, someone forgot shrubs’ approval rating after 9/11, and the unanimous (-1) vote for the war on terror…..never underestimate the stupidity of an American…DeToquvile….
9/11 resulted in numerous wars against folks who couldn’t fight back. I’m thinking Iran, Russia, and China can. Trump would hand the USA a war that almost no one alive has experienced.
And ninety percent of the US electorate has no clue about that. They think Iran is just another “Third World” country. Most of them probably can’t find Iran on a map, just like they couldn’t find Iraq in 2002-3.
And according to a poll during Obama’s time, over seventy percent of them think Iran actually *has* nuclear weapons – not just a weapons program. It won’t be hard to convince them that attacking Iran isn’t a bad thing even if they don’t like “unnecessary wars.”
“Unnecessary” is a fluid term.
Precisely.
Under those conditions, sure. But all assumptions aside, war does turn our population into nationalistic maniacs. It just would probably be much more short lived in this case.
I could see trump going with the Bill Clinton models in the Balkans, and Iraq….claim to be hitting military targets in a “limited strike”, then take out some key infrastructure targets, ie, water, power, bridges, etc. Short campaign, with a prior exit of US possible targets, except the USS Sitting Duck of course. With US withdrawal, Iranian response would be limited to US “allies”. This is consistent with CS US military doctrine. With no “boots on the ground”, trump’s base will stay with him since it’s not a real “new war”, just a defensive response to uppity brown people, (ignoring most Iranians aren’t brown actually). Russia and China, tho supporting Iran, post attack, would be hard pressed to bring about a long range, non nuclear response. That’s how I would do it, if I was a psychopathic US militancy leader.
Trump already almost ordered a strike on Iran. But he backed down when he asked Iran for permission and Iran told him that even an attack on a single beach would result in a total response. That media bit about not wanting to kill 150 Iranians was just an excuse to make him look good.
So he knows he can’t get away with a “limited strike” – although I wouldn’t be surprised if the neocons could convince him to do it anyway.
The problem is, Iran won’t let the US hit and then withdraw. If I were Iran and took minimal damage from a single strike, I would allow it just to be on the right side of things.
But I’m not Iran – and Iran has good reasons not to allow *any* strike. It would just encourage the neocons and Israel and Saudi Arabia to continue escalating.
So it’s an all or nothing response – and Trump knows it. There may not be boots on the ground – initially – but there will have to be a sustained air campaign.
And there the problem is that initially the government and the media will be spinning the war as “winning” all the time – just like Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s only later that things will turn sour. By then it will too late to stop it – and we’ll get a war lasting longer than the 18 years of Afghanistan.
Plus, how do we know what Trump knows as far as what the neocons and the Pentagon and Israel and Saudi Arabia and his Zionist supporters are telling him what should be done? He’s surrounded by people who want a war. He personally has zero clue about foreign policy.
Anyone who thinks this guy has the ability to stand up to that and prevent a war is deluding themselves.
We don’t even know if he really believes *anything* he’s said about not wanting “unnecessary wars.”
And if he waits 14 months until after the election, he won’t care about that any more.
We need to stop thinking about just the election cycle and 24 hour news cycle and ask the next question.
No chance. The media will cheer any war even if they think it might result in impeachment. They can’t afford to look “anti-American” (even when they are.) Look at how they behaved over Iraq and even over Trump’s cruise missile strikes at Syria.
Trump got an approval rating boost over those lame, failed strikes at Syria, even though they did almost zero damage and had no effect on anything.
You can be sure Trump, the ultimate narcissist, noticed that face and will be considering whether going to war with Iran might be a good thing.
And you can be sure someone is whispering in his ear that no sitting President during war time has ever lost an election.
No wartime President has ever lost an election – although his party has.
So basically he said nothing. He believes the US has many options, “we’ll see what happens,” like he’s only a passive observer. Great.
He’s got executive time, drumpf rallies, and golf, he’s swamped, so to speak.
So once again all Trump can do is blather without actually saying anything.
He doesn’t have any *real* options. New sanctions will be a waste of time. Doing nothing makes him look lame – and eventually that may catch up to him in the election and approval polls. It also puts him at odds with his entire administration.
And *any* attack he makes on Iran, no matter how minor, like that alleged response he considered last time, will start the war.
And what does he do when the Houthis hit Saudi Arabia *again*? No one ever asks the next question about what happens during the next 24 hour news cycle? It’s always “well, he didn’t start the war today”, so we’re safe.
Yes, any day you’re above ground is a good day, but that’s hardly the way to insure that for the next day.
So what does anything he says about it mean? Nothing. Only what he actually does matters. As I’ve said over and over here, talking about what Trump is talking about is just, to quote Blazing Saddles, “jacking off.”