Re: [Salon] Trump Again Threatens Attack on Iran, Suggests Israel Could Lead It



Quote from below: "On Wednesday, President Trump again threatened the possibility of the US taking military action against Iran and suggested Israel might “lead” the attack.

“If it requires military, we’re going to have military,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked if the US would attack if a nuclear deal isn’t reached with Iran.

“Israel will obviously be very much involved in that — it’ll be the leader of that. But nobody leads us. We do what we want to do,” he added."

One friend here (former?), a former intell analyst of a group I resigned from for this reason, in part, gets positively giddy when talking about what DJT is doing with Iran and Russia, gushing over claims of "diplomacy" being turned to by Witkoff (fresh off his "success" of getting Israel to briefly redirect their fire from Gaza, to the West Bank) and his boss. He, and a lot of the so-called "Peace Movement" on the Left, so-called "Realists" on the Right, and Ron Paul libertarians,  have so compartmentalized our Global War for Total Military Control of the World (as laid out first by Conservative Dick Cheney in 1992, and made official with the 2002 NSS of the US), placing each "theatre" into their own silo, that they refuse to see that all our individual wars (Yemen, Iran, Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, . . . ) are all part of the whole, interconnected with each other, under our Global Military Command covering the entire globe, with the sole exception of Antarctica (if I'm not mistaken about the latter).

That began to become clear to the rest of the world with the Iraq War, with our intent to not stop there, with Conservatives like Jesse Helms and Jeff Sessions each even more, or at least as bad, radically militarist than even the worst NeoCon (with Helms and Sessions leading the fight against the ICC, which is not a defense of the NeoCons, but simply stated as a historian and political theorist) , as each individual "Enemy" came to realize that, in B. Franklin's words, "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." 

That was already clear in the 1990s when Gingrich and the Republicans pushed through as law the requirement to expand NATO, and thereby won much of the 1994 election, leading to the Democrats adopting more and more of the Hawkish Republican Party's ultra-militaristic foreign policy. With the Bush administration then accelerating the assaults upon all of Russia, Iran, and China immediately upon GWB and Cheney taking office, and Russia in particular as Bush/Cheney began to withdraw from the ABM Treaty: https://inss.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/casestudies/CSWMD_CaseStudy-2.pdf (with all other Treaties to follow except for the INF Treaty and Open Skies Treaty, left for 45 to take care of, with New START having been set to expire but for the 2020 election, and the election of a Democrat). 

But one journalist whom I'd lost track of until seeing the article at the link below, always saw the big picture, even while intelligence officers, past or present, are incapable of that (as are journalists, with rare exceptions)

"And that brings us to the Big Picture.

"The Circus Ringmaster—at least until he changes his mind again—is essentially working on a triangulation deal, allegedly offering Russia a transportation framework, access to grain exports in the Black Sea, and Russian banks off the sanction list of SWIFT so he may execute his “pivot” to then attack Iran (deadline to Tehran included).

"And if Russia defends Iran, no deal.

"That’s as mendacious as Mafia-style “offer you can’t refuse” maximum pressure can get. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov—an exceptionally able diplomat—destroyed the whole rationale: “Russia cannot accept U.S. proposals to end the war in Ukraine in their current form because they do not solve the problems Moscow considers the cause of the conflict.” Even as Moscow “takes the models and solutions proposed by the Americans very seriously.”



On Apr 9, 2025, at 6:20 PM, @listserve.com> wrote:


Trump Again Threatens Attack on Iran, Suggests Israel Could Lead It
Iran's president reaffirmed on Wednesday that Tehran does not seek a nuclear weapon and said Khamenei wasn't opposed to US investment
by Dave DeCamp

On Wednesday, President Trump again threatened the possibility of the US taking military action against Iran and suggested Israel might “lead” the attack.

“If it requires military, we’re going to have military,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked if the US would attack if a nuclear deal isn’t reached with Iran.

“Israel will obviously be very much involved in that — it’ll be the leader of that. But nobody leads us. We do what we want to do,” he added.

Trump’s latest threat comes ahead of negotiations between the US and Iran that will be held in Oman this Saturday. The talks will be attended by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff.

Trump has insisted the talks will be direct negotiations, while Aragchi has said they will be indirect, meaning Omani mediators will pass messages between the two sides. Reports have said that Iran would need a goodwill gesture from the US to hold direct talks, such as the removal of some sanctions. But the Trump administration continues to impose sanctions and added new ones on Wednesday.

Trump has been increasing sanctions on Iran and threatening the country over its nuclear program even though US intelligence agencies recently reaffirmed that there’s no evidence Tehran is building a bomb.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian restated Iran’s long-standing pledge in comments on Wednesday. “We are not after a nuclear bomb,” Pezeshkian added. “You have verified it 100 times. Do it 1,000 times again,” he said.

Pezeshkian also said that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was not opposed to US investment in Iran. “His excellency has no opposition to investment by American investors in Iran,” he said. “American investors: Come and invest.”

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