Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #535 Death Trap, Part III – Italian Fascism, Bogus Intelligence and the Iraq War

Record­ed Novem­ber 20, 2005

Lis­ten: MP3  One 30-minute seg­ment

REALAUDIO
NB: This stream con­tains both FTR # 535 and an old­er pro­gram, FTR #514 Con­ver­sa­tion with John Lof­tus About the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, orig­i­nal­ly aired and blogged on June 21, 2005. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast. See also FTR #527 Death Trap Part II &
FTR #471 Death Trap.

Intro­duc­tion: In a sup­ple­ment to FTR#’s 471, 502, 527, this pro­gram presents infor­ma­tion about the bogus intel­li­gence used by the Unit­ed States to jus­ti­fy the inva­sion of Iraq. This broad­cast high­lights the role of the fas­cist-influ­enced Ital­ian intel­li­gence agency SISMI in the gen­er­a­tion of the Niger yel­low-cake ura­ni­um canard that gen­er­at­ed the Valerie Plame case. As not­ed, dur­ing the run-up to the Iraq war, Ital­ian for­eign min­is­ter Gian­fran­co Fini—the head of Italy’s fas­cist polit­i­cal par­ty (the Allean­za Nationale) and a coali­tion part­ner of prime min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlusconi—met in Switzer­land with lead­ers of Euro­pean fas­cist polit­i­cal par­ties, includ­ing Achmed Huber, a direc­tor of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Bank Al Taqwa. The broad­cast asks the hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion: Did Fini and his cohorts work to delib­er­ate­ly lure the US into a trap in Iraq, using the SISMI to help plant the bait? In that con­text, the pro­gram also reviews numer­ous oth­er con­nec­tions between the milieu of the Allean­za Nationale, Berlus­coni and the P‑2 Lodge and the Al Qaeda/Al Taqwa/Muslim Broth­er­hood nexus. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at an Al Qae­da defec­tor who was believed to be delib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing his Amer­i­can inter­roga­tors with infor­ma­tion point­ing in the direc­tion of Iraq. All of this infor­ma­tion is viewed against the back­ground of Mr. Emory’s work­ing hypoth­e­sis that the Al Qaeda/Al Taqwa/Muslim broth­er­hood milieu and the allied Under­ground Reich was lur­ing the US into a trap that would enmesh the US in a cost­ly, drain­ing war with the world’s Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion. Note that this pop­u­la­tion will have access to WMD tech­nol­o­gy as a result of the inva­sion of Iraq (see FTR#527.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the “dooms­day” arrange­ment between Al Qae­da and Sad­dam, in which Iraq would give tech­ni­cal know-how about WMD’s to bin Laden’s forces, which would then act as a “back-up” unit in the event of an Amer­i­can over­throw of Sad­dam; review of the numer­ous con­nec­tions between the Al Taqwa nexus and the milieu of the P‑2 Lodge, Sil­vio Berlus­coni and the Allean­za Nationale.

1. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, both the pro-war and anti-war sides have got­ten it wrong with regard to Saddam’s rela­tion­ship with Al Qae­da. Although there is no indi­ca­tion that Iraq or Sad­dam were involved with 9/11, the two enti­ties did have a “dooms­day back-up” arrange­ment. Sad­dam and bin Laden worked out an arrange­ment in which Iraq—in order to pro­vide for a pay­back capa­bil­i­ty if the U.S. oust­ed him—gave infor­ma­tion about WMD’s to bin Laden’s peo­ple. Al Qae­da, in turn, was to act as a back-up unit for Saddam’s Iraq, strik­ing at the Unit­ed States if it knocked out Sad­dam. Of course, pre­cise­ly that sce­nario has tran­spired. The Unit­ed States has walked into this “Death Trap,” and a dis­turbing­ly large per­cent­age of the Mus­lim and Arab com­mu­ni­ties appear ready to join the con­flict.

“It appears, how­ev­er, that this ver­sion is the pub­licly admis­si­ble one, the one that can pass polit­i­cal muster. Accord­ing to the same sources, there was anoth­er sce­nario more. In keep­ing with the cal­cu­lat­ing men­tal­i­ty of Sad­dam Hus­sein and his secret ser­vices. In 1998, after declin­ing all offers that had been made to them through offi­cial diplo­mat­ic chan­nels, those ser­vices are report­ed to have estab­lished a secret oper­a­tional ‘con­nec­tion’ with bin Laden in Mani­la and in Kash­mir. It was indeed dif­fi­cult for Iraq to ignore an Arab like Osama bin Laden who so effec­tive­ly humil­i­at­ed the Amer­i­cans.’ Colonel Khairal­lah al Takir­i­ti, the broth­er of the head of Mukkhabarat, the intel­li­gence ser­vices, is report­ed to have been named case offi­cer for the con­nec­tion. The arrest of two Mor­roc­can asso­ciates of bin Laden in Rabat on Novem­ber 11, 1998, made it pos­si­ble to estab­lish to estab­lish the link with cer­tain­ty. Accord­ing to West­ern sources, the Iraqi ser­vices have sought to secure the assis­tance of bin Laden’s net­works, in case Iraq were again to be attacked by the Unit­ed States, in order to car­ry out attacks against Amer­i­can tar­gets in Arab coun­tries.”

(In the Name of Osama Bin Laden; by Roland Jacquard; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN 0–8223-2991–3; pp. 112–113.)

2. “Accord­ing to Arab sources, in antic­i­pa­tion of a fore­see­able rever­sal of alliances in Kab­ul, bin Laden had been in dis­creet con­tact since Sep­tem­ber 2000 with asso­ciates of Oudai Hus­sein, anoth­er of Saddam’s sons; the ground for agree­ment was the anti-Israeli and anti-Amer­i­can bat­tle. Bin Laden and the Iraqis are said to have exchanged infor­ma­tion about chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, despite the oppo­si­tion of some of the Bagh­dad lead­er­ship, includ­ing Tarik Aziz”

(Ibid.;p. 113.)

3. Much of the pro­gram focus­es on an Ital­ian media report that the SISMI intel­li­gence agency in that coun­try was the source of the bogus claim that Sad­dam Hus­sein was seek­ing yel­low-cake ura­ni­um from Niger in order to pur­sue the devel­op­ment of nuclear weapons. This spu­ri­ous claim was one of the main pieces of false intel­li­gence used to jus­ti­fy the move into Iraq. Much of the broad­cast exam­ines the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Ital­ian fas­cist ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the P‑2/Alleanza Nationale milieu may have delib­er­ate­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the decep­tion. Note that this milieu is direct­ly descend­ed from Mussolini’s fas­cists. For more about the P‑2 Lodge and the AN Par­ty of Gian­fran­co Fini, use the search func­tion. As will be seen below, Fini, Prime Min­is­ter Berlus­coni (a for­mer mem­ber of the P‑2) and oth­er fig­ures in the P‑2/Alleanza Nationale milieu are linked to the Al Taqwa com­plex, involved with—among oth­er things—the fund­ing of Al Qae­da. As seen in FTR#413, the Al Taqwa com­plex also han­dled some of the illic­it funds spir­it­ed out of Iraq by Sad­dam Hus­sein. Is it pos­si­ble that fig­ures involved with Al Taqwa may have intro­duced Al Qae­da and Baathist ele­ments, so that they could con­clude the “dooms­day” agree­ment dis­cussed above?

“Behind the CIA leak scan­dal lies a bizarre trail of forged doc­u­ments, an embassy break-in and inter­na­tion­al decep­tion that helped pro­pel the Unit­ed States to war in Iraq. While Amer­i­can pub­lic atten­tion focus­es on spe­cial coun­sel Patrick Fitzger­ald’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the leak, U.S. and Ital­ian law­mak­ers are prob­ing a series of bogus claims of Iraqi ura­ni­um pur­chas­es in Africa that were the open­ing chap­ters in a saga that result­ed in the dis­clo­sure of the iden­ti­ty of CIA offi­cer Valerie Plame.”

(“Seeds of Leak Scan­dal Sown in Ital­ian Intel­li­gence Agency” by Robert Col­lier; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 10/30/2005; p. E3.)

4. “In the past week, the respect­ed, left-of-cen­ter Ital­ian dai­ly La Repub­bli­ca pub­lished a three-part series of inves­tiga­tive arti­cles claim­ing that doc­u­ments pur­port­ing to prove that Sad­dam Hus­sein was seek­ing yel­low­cake ura­ni­um in Niger had been forged by an Ital­ian free­lance spy and then were fed by the Ital­ian intel­li­gence agency to eager offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton and Lon­don. On Capi­tol Hill, Sen. Har­ry Reid, D‑Nev., the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic leader, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D‑Mass., are ask­ing for pub­lic hear­ings into the forg­eries and their role in Bush admin­is­tra­tion claims that Hus­sein was devel­op­ing nuclear weapons.”

(Idem.)

5. “The Ital­ian Par­lia­ment is sched­uled to hold hear­ings about the La Repub­bli­ca alle­ga­tions on Thurs­day, with intel­li­gence chief Nico­lo Pol­lari expect­ed to come under heavy grilling. The arti­cles relied heav­i­ly on sources in the Ital­ian spy agency, the Mil­i­tary Infor­ma­tion and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice, known as SISMI. They pro­vide a tan­ta­liz­ing account — cred­i­ble to some observers, base­less spec­u­la­tion to oth­ers — of how Pres­i­dent Bush and Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair were snook­ered by fab­ri­cat­ed intel­li­gence about Hus­sein’s alleged nuclear pro­gram. The alle­ga­tions in La Repub­bli­ca’s arti­cles lead far into the murky depths of Italy’s intel­li­gence agen­cies, a realm of con­spir­a­cy claims and coun­ter­claims. In Italy this nether­world is called dietrolo­gia — a word that loose­ly trans­lates as the wide­spread belief that polit­i­cal, secu­ri­ty and crim­i­nal forces are con­stant­ly engaged in secret plots and maneu­vers, not­ed Hen­ry Far­rell, a pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tion­al affairs at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton and a blog­ger on the Crooked Tim­ber Web log, which has dis­sect­ed the Ital­ian angle to Plamegate”

(Idem.)

6. The arti­cle notes that, dur­ing the Cold War, the SISMI coop­er­at­ed close­ly with the US. In the wake of the Cold War, has that changed? Are the Ital­ian fas­cists mov­ing away from the “Atlanti­cist” posi­tion they held dur­ing the cold war? (By “Atlanti­cist,” we mean a pro‑U.S., pro-NATO stance.)

“ ‘It’s hard to say if (the Repub­bli­ca infor­ma­tion) is the truth, truth with some dis­tor­tion, or mis­in­for­ma­tion from the offi­cials who are lead­ing this,’ Far­rell said. ‘But it cer­tain­ly rais­es some very trou­bling ques­tions.’ Far­rell not­ed that dur­ing the Cold War, the U.S. and Ital­ian spy agen­cies coop­er­at­ed close­ly on under­cov­er work. Bush and Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlus­coni are close allies, and Berlus­coni has strong­ly sup­port­ed Bush’s Iraq pol­i­cy, sta­tion­ing 3,000 Ital­ian troops south of Bagh­dad.”

(Idem.)

7. The dis­cus­sion high­lights some of the fas­cist con­nec­tions of the SISMI orga­ni­za­tion. For more about SISMI and the Ital­ian ter­ror­ist land­scape, use the search func­tion and look for infor­ma­tion about the “strat­e­gy of ten­sion”.

“SISMI has long been accused of involve­ment in right­ist con­spir­a­cies, includ­ing work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pro­pa­gan­da Due, or P‑2, a Mason­ic secret soci­ety, and the Armed Falange, a neo-fas­cist ter­ror­ist group. SISMI ‘does not have an immac­u­late his­to­ry at all,’ said Gian­fran­co Pasquino, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Bologna, Italy, cam­pus of the School of Advanced and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty. ‘It has been purged and reor­ga­nized very often.’ Pasquino called SISMI ‘friend­ly to the right wing and will­ing to offer its ser­vices for right-wing pur­pos­es.’”

(Idem.)

8. “Accord­ing to La Repub­bli­ca, the forged doc­u­ments were orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced in 2000 by Roc­co Mar­ti­no, a for­mer mem­ber of the Cara­binieri para­mil­i­tary police who then became a free­lance agent for both SISMI and French intel­li­gence. SISMI com­bined these fakes with real doc­u­ments from the 1980s show­ing Hus­sein’s yel­low­cake pur­chas­es from Niger dur­ing that peri­od — in the process, con­duct­ing a break-in at the Niger Embassy in Rome to steal let­ter­head and seals. Soon after­ward, La Repub­bli­ca report­ed, Ital­ian oper­a­tives passed news of their scoop to the CIA and the British intel­li­gence agency, MI6. When the CIA expressed doubt about the verac­i­ty of the claims, SISMI began seek­ing to ped­dle it direct­ly to the most pro- war fac­tion of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion.”

(Idem.)

9. “SISMI chief Pol­lari met in Rome with Michael Ledeen, an influ­en­tial Wash­ing­ton neo­con­ser­v­a­tive who has long been reput­ed to play a back-chan­nel role between U.S. and Ital­ian spy agen­cies. Pol­lari also met in Wash­ing­ton with Stephen Hadley, deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, to dis­cuss the new infor­ma­tion, La Repub­bli­ca report­ed. On Thurs­day, a Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil spokesman con­firmed that the Hadley- Pol­lari meet­ing had tak­en place The elab­o­rate hoax final­ly suc­ceed­ed. In late Sep­tem­ber 2002, Sec­re­tary of State Col­in Pow­ell cit­ed Iraq’s alleged Niger deal­ings as proof of Hus­sein’s nuclear ambi­tions. In his Feb­ru­ary 2003 State of the Union address, Bush declared that British intel­li­gence had ‘learned’ Sad­dam Hus­sein had been seek­ing to buy nuclear mate­r­i­al in Africa. Through­out the peri­od, Blair made sim­i­lar claims.”

(Idem.)

10. “British offi­cials have insist­ed that they had oth­er evi­dence in addi­tion to the forged doc­u­ments that con­firmed Iraqi ura­ni­um pur­chas­es in Niger. The British have declined to show this evi­dence, how­ev­er. La Repub­bli­ca quot­ed a SISMI offi­cial as say­ing of this alleged cor­rob­o­rat­ing evi­dence, ‘If it ever were brought for­ward it would be dis­cov­ered, with red faces, that it was Ital­ian intel­li­gence col­lect­ed by SISMI at the end of the 1980s and shared with our friend Hamil­ton McMil­lan’ — the top MI6 counter-ter­ror­ism offi­cial dur­ing that peri­od. . . . .”

(Idem.)

11. The alle­ga­tions in La Repub­bli­ca were sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed b by Italy’s spy­mas­ter, Nico Pol­lari.

“Italy’s spy­mas­ter iden­ti­fied an Ital­ian occa­sion­al spy named Roc­co Mar­ti­no on Thurs­day as the dis­sem­i­na­tor of forged doc­u­ments that described efforts by Iraq to buy hun­dreds of tons of ura­ni­um ore from Niger for a nuclear weapons pro­gram, three Ital­ian law­mak­ers said Thurs­day. Gen. Nico­lo Pol­lari, direc­tor of the Ital­ian mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agency known as SISMI, dis­closed that Mar­ti­no had been the source of the forged doc­u­ments in closed- door tes­ti­mo­ny to a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee that over­sees secret ser­vices, the law­mak­ers said. . . .”

(“Ital­ian Spy Chief Dis­clos­es Source of Forged Doc­u­ments” by Elaine Sci­oli­no and Elis­a­bet­ta Pov­ole­do [New York Times]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 11/4/2005; p. A12.)

12. Next, the pro­gram revis­its a point of infor­ma­tion dis­cussed in—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 378, 456. In the spring of 2002, as the prepa­ra­tions for the Iraq war were under­way, Al Taqwa direc­tor Achmed Huber net­worked with oth­er Amer­i­can and Euro­pean fas­cists and far right­ists, includ­ing Gian­fran­co Fini, head of the Ital­ian Allean­za Nationale. Might the meet­ing have had some­thing to do with Iraq? Had the “Atlanti­cist” ori­en­ta­tion of the P‑2 milieu been super­seded by an anti‑U.S./Third Posi­tion ori­en­ta­tion in the Ital­ian fas­cist milieu? Did this meet­ing have any­thing to do with the feed­ing of false intel­li­gence to the US in order to lure the coun­try into a drain­ing, expen­sive and (ulti­mate­ly) fatal war with the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion of the “Earth Island”? Note in this regard, that Fini is cur­rent­ly the Ital­ian for­eign min­is­ter. Is it pos­si­ble that the man (Fini) who char­ac­ter­ized Mus­soli­ni as “the great­est states­man of the 20th cen­tu­ry” has not changed his stripes? Is it pos­si­ble that he was con­fer­ring with the oth­er Euro­pean fas­cist lead­ers in order to help lure the US into a trap? (For more on Huber, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 343, 354, 357, 359, 377, 456.)

“Per­haps the most recent remark­able sto­ry con­cern­ing Huber comes from a brief item in the Swiss tabloid Blick that in an April 26, 2002 arti­cle by Alexan­der Saut­ter that Huber was involved in a meet­ing of far-right lead­ers from Europe. A pho­to show­ing Huber with Jean Marie Le Pen accom­pa­nies the arti­cle. The Blick sto­ry (avail­able on the web) is as fol­lows: ‘Mon Pelerin VD: Chris­t­ian Cam­buzat, the pro­mot­er (Scharf­mach­er) of the right extrem­ist Jean-Marie Le Pen (73): The guru assem­bles togeth­er some of the top lead­ers of the Euro­pean right. On the idyl­lic Mont Pelerin, they debate their crude ideas. At his secret vis­it to a spa in Switzer­land, Le Pen hard­ly remained alone. Right­ist lead­ers from all over Europe trav­eled to meet the extrem­ist pres­i­den­tial can­di­date who was host­ed by Cam­buzat. Franz Schon­hu­ber (79). Founder of the Repub­li­can Par­ty in Ger­many and a for­mer mem­ber of the SS. He talked with Le Pen who con­sti­tutes togeth­er with Schon­hu­ber the ‘Front Nation­al’ Fac­tion in the Euro­pean par­lia­ment. Gian­fran­co Fini (50). Ital­ian post-fas­cist, Mus­soli­ni admir­er, and founder of the Alleanze Nationale. He also was at the meet­ing with Le Pen and Schon­hu­ber. Ahmed Huber (74). The Swiss is on the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion black­list . . . ‘I met le Pen at Mont Pelerin as he went to Chris­t­ian Cambuzat’s spa,’ Huber told Blick yes­ter­day. At the extrem­ist ren­dezvous an Amer­i­can far right politi­cian was also sup­posed to have tak­en part. [Note: the Amer­i­can is not fur­ther identified.—KC] Chris­t­ian Cam­buzat said that Le Pen (after the elec­tion) had again become the sharpest weapon of the ‘Front Nation­al’ because Le Pen changed his image from a ven­omous old man to a ‘kind­ly U.S. TV evan­ge­list.’ Proud­ly Cam­buzat brags, ‘With me Le Pen can relax well’ [from his polit­i­cal endeavors—KC]. And open­ly link up with new con­tacts. [Although the Blick sto­ry does not give details, Cam­buzat runs a spa for the very rich, the Lemanique de Revi­tal­i­sa­tion, inside a hotel on the famous Mont Pelerin.]’”

(“Report on Islamists, The Far Right, and Al Taqwa” by Kevin Coogan; pp. 14–15.)

13. In the con­text of the April, 2002 meet­ing of Euro­pean fas­cist lead­ers at Mt. Pel­lerin, it is impor­tant to note that (in addi­tion to Fini) oth­er Ital­ian fas­cists from the AN/P‑2 milieu are to be found with­in the Al Taqwa orbit. Allessan­dro Ghe is a mem­ber of the fas­cist Ordine Nuo­vo, head­ed up by Pino Rauti. Rauti is a vet­er­an of the SS-con­trolled Salo Repub­lic that was estab­lished in North­ern Italy after Mussolini’s capit­u­la­tion in 1943. Rauti is also a part of the suc­cess­ful elec­toral coali­tion of Sil­vio Berlus­coni and Gian­fran­co Fini.

“The goal of the meet­ing with the notary was the found­ing of ‘al-Taqwa man­age­ment Orga­ni­za­tion SA’ that said it would be con­cerned with import­ing and export­ing var­i­ous goods. ‘Taqwa man­age­ment Orga­ni­za­tion SA’ that said it would be con­cerned with import­ing and export­ing var­i­ous goods around the world. 333 of the 1000 shares (at 100 Swiss Francs a share) went to Mohammed Man­sour and his wife. 332 went to Huber. Nada and Him­mat took the rest. Man­sour was named the pres­i­dent but rarely was the clause in the con­tract papers men­tioned that each deci­sion must be co-signed by the minor­i­ty hold­ers Nada and Him­mat . . . Among the 500 share­hold­ers besides Huber, Him­mat and Nada were ‘also a noto­ri­ous right extrem­ist from Italy’ [not fur­ther iden­ti­fied but this is Alessan­dro Karim Abdul Ghe] and three mem­bers of the bin Laden fam­i­ly.”

(Ibid.; p. 8.)

14. More about Allessan­dro Ghe, and Ordinie Nuovo’s links with Moslem rad­i­cals and (alleged­ly) Bin Laden:

“Anoth­er Con­nec­tion involves al-Taqwa group share­hold­er Alle­san­dro Ghe, an Ital­ian rad­i­cal who has been ques­tioned by his country’s secu­ri­ty forces about his links to Bin Laden. Ghe was a mem­ber of the Ital­ian neo-fas­cist ‘Ordine Nuo­vo’ that began cou­pling up with Moslem rad­i­cals in the 1970’s, says Ely Kar­mon. [Empha­sis added.]”

(“A Ter­ri­fy­ing Alliance” by Yael Haran; 1/14/2002; Enduring-Freedom-Operation.org; pp. 4–5.)
(For more about the links between Ordine Nuo­vo and the cur­rent gov­ern­ing coali­tion of Italy, see, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR#’s 307, 320, 321. For more about con­duits run­ning between Al Taqwa and Sil­vio Berlus­coni, see FTR#’s 342, 351, 357.)

15. The Al Taqwa orbit con­tains one Gus­ta­vo Selva—a par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Fini’s Allean­za Nationale. “Gus­ta­vo Sel­va belongs to Nasreddin’s wider cir­cle. The for­mer jour­nal­ist and today par­lia­men­tary mem­ber of the post fas­cist Partei Allean­za Nationale, Sel­va was until April 19, 1999, involved in the Roman-based busi­ness, the Arab-Ital­ian Con­sult­ing House. Six months before it went under, on Sep­tem­ber 18, 1998, a cer­tain Ser­gio Mari­ni was named the firm’s offi­cial receiv­er. Mari­ni was, togeth­er with the Nasred­din Inter­na­tion­al Group Lim­it­ed Hold­ings, also part of the Milan-reg­is­tered Line Invest­ment Srl. Since 1988, Mari­ni was CEO of ‘L.I.N.E. Devel­op­ment Light Indus­try and Envi­ron­ment Devel­op­ment Srl’ in Rome whose admin­is­tra­tive direc­tor was Abduhrahim Nasred­din along with his deputy Ghaleb Him­mat, him­self a founder of Al Taqwa Group.”

(“Report on Islamists, The Far Right, and Al Taqwa” by Kevin Coogan; p. 9.)

16. Anoth­er evi­den­tiary trib­u­tary lead­ing in the direc­tion of the Ital­ian far right con­cerns areas of over­lap between the Al Taqwa milieu and that of Sil­vio Berlusconi—former mem­ber of the fas­cist P‑2 lodge and the head of the Ital­ian coali­tion gov­ern­ment of which Fini’s AN is part.

“The deep­er inves­ti­ga­tors dug, the more sense­less it seemed. For exam­ple: The Liecht­en­stein-reg­is­tered Nasred­din Inter­na­tion­al Lim­it­ed Hold­ings on Octo­ber 20, 1994, decid­ed to change its name to Mid­dle East and Turkey Invest­ment Hold­ing Ltd. And then eight days lat­er it returned to its orig­i­nal name. There is also the fact that Nasred­din at the found­ing of the Nasred­din Inter­na­tion­al Group Lim­it­ed Hold­ing in Jan­u­ary 1997 appointed—next to Dr. Enri­co Walser as trustee—of all peo­ple the Tessi­no lawyer Dr. Ercole Doninel­li to the admin­is­tra­tive board. Doninel­li, until his death, was seen as the ‘soul’ of the Lugano finance soci­ety Fimo that was wide­ly involved in the finan­cial scan­dals of the 1990’s. Fimo helped Ital­ians to send up to 250 mil­lion Swiss francs year­ly in cap­i­tal flight. Even more defin­i­tive is the role Fimo has played since 1968 in the financ­ing into the mil­lions [of] the first projects of the (at the time utter­ly unknown) con­struc­tion builder from Milan, Sil­vio Berlus­coni. The knowl­edge of how cap­i­tal from the mar­ried pair of Ercole and Ste­fa­nia Doninel­li went from Eti Hold­ings in Chi­as­so to more stops in the Inter­change Bank and from there to Ital­cantieri, a com­pa­ny head­ed by two Berlus­coni straw men, final­ly end­ed with the mass bank­rupt­cy of Fimo.”

(Ibid.; pp. 9–10.)

17. Anoth­er per­son bridg­ing the worlds of Berlus­coni and Al Taqwa is Pier Felice Barchi, an attor­ney for both Berlus­coni and Yussef Nada. (For more about Barchi, see FTR#’s 357, 359.)

“The Aki­da Bank of Nasred­din was also sup­posed to be con­cerned with the spread­ing of Islam­ic bank­ing prac­tices. The Lugano-reg­is­tered affil­i­ate of the bank list­ed along with its founder Nasred­din, the Tessi­no-based Pier Felice Barchi. This attor­ney had great expe­ri­ence with rich and influ­en­tial for­eign cus­tomers. Barchi was also con­cerned with the Tessi­no finan­cial inter­ests of Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Berlus­coni and the Sau­di minor­i­ty part­ner in Berlusconi’s media group Medi­aset, Prince al-Waleed al Talal.”

(Ibid.; pp. 10–11.)

18. Anoth­er detail con­cern­ing the bogus intel­li­gence that was used to jus­ti­fy the Iraq inva­sion involves an Al Qae­da cap­tive who was eval­u­at­ed by the Defense Intel­li­gence Agency. That agency opined that he was very like­ly giv­ing his Amer­i­can inter­roga­tors infor­ma­tion that he felt they want­ed to hear. Is it pos­si­ble that he was also help­ing to lure the US into a trap? Bin Laden him­self stat­ed that the US over­throw of Sad­dam was a boon for his orga­ni­za­tion. Is it pos­si­ble that Mr. al-Shaykh was delib­er­ate­ly work­ing to lure the Unit­ed States into the “dooms­day back-up” trap that had been laid by Al Qae­da and Iraq?! This is a pos­si­bil­i­ty to be seri­ous­ly eval­u­at­ed.

“Who in the White House knew about DITSUM No. 044–02 and when did they know it? That’s the new­ly declas­si­fied smok­ing- gun doc­u­ment, orig­i­nal­ly pre­pared by the Defense Intel­li­gence Agency in Feb­ru­ary 2002, but ignored by Pres­i­dent Bush. Its declas­si­fi­ca­tion last week­end blows anoth­er huge hole in Bush’s claim that he was act­ing on the best intel­li­gence avail­able when he pitched the inva­sion of Iraq as a way to pre­vent an al Qae­da ter­ror­ist attack using weapons of mass destruc­tion. The report demol­ished the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the key al Qae­da infor­mant the admin­is­tra­tion relied on to make its claim that a work­ing alliance exist­ed between Sad­dam Hus­sein and Osama bin Laden. It was cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly with­in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment a full eight months before Bush used the pris­on­er’s lies to argue for an inva­sion of Iraq because ‘we’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qae­da mem­bers in bomb-mak­ing and poi­sons and dead­ly gas­es.’”

(“Lying with Intel­li­gence” by Robert Scheer; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 11/9/2005; p. B13.)

19. “Al Qae­da senior mil­i­tary train­er lbn al-Shaykh al-Libi — a Libyan cap­tured in Pak­istan m 2001 — was prob­a­bly ‘inten­tion­al­ly mis­lead­ing the debriefers,’ the DIA report con­clud­ed in one of two para­graphs declas­si­fied at the request of Sen. Carl Levin, D‑Mich., and released by his office over the week­end. The report also said: ‘Ibn al-Shaykh has been under­go­ing debriefs for sev­er­al weeks and may be describ­ing sce­nar­ios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their inter­est.’ He got that right. Folks in the high­est places were very inter­est­ed in claims along the lines Libi was ped­dling, even though they went against both log­ic and the pre­pon­der­ance of intel­li­gence gath­ered to that point about pos­si­ble col­lab­o­ra­tion between two ene­mies of the Unit­ed States that were fun­da­men­tal­ly at odds with each oth­er. Al Qae­da was able to cre­ate a base in Iraq only after the U.S. over­throw of Hus­sein, not before. ‘Sad­dam’s regime is intense­ly sec­u­lar and is wary of Islam­ic rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ments,’ accu­rate­ly not­ed the DIA. Yet Bush used the infor­man­t’s already dis­cred­it­ed tall tale in his key Oct. 7, 2002, speech just before the Sen­ate vot­ed on whether to autho­rize the use of force in Iraq and again in two speech­es in Feb­ru­ary 2003, just before the inva­sion.”

(Idem.)

20. “Lead­ing up to the war, then-Sec­re­tary of State Col­in Pow­ell tried to sell it to the Unit­ed Nations, while Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney, nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Con­doleez­za Rice, White House spokesman Ari Fleis­ch­er and Under­sec­re­tary of Defense Dou­glas Fei­th repeat­ed it breath­less­ly for home­land audi­ences. The con worked, and Amer­i­cans came to believe that Hus­sein was asso­ci­at­ed with the Sept.11, 2001, hijack­ers. Even CIA Direc­tor George Tenet pub­licly fell into line, ignor­ing his own agen­cy’s dis­sent that Libi would not have been m a posi­tion to know what he said he knew. In fact, Libi, accord­ing to the DIA, could not name any Iraqis involved, any chem­i­cal or bio­log­i­cal mate­r­i­al used or where the train­ing alleged­ly occurred. In Jan­u­ary 2004, the pris­on­er recant­ed his sto­ry, and the next month the CIA with- drew all intel­li­gence reports based on his false infor­ma­tion.”

(Idem.)

21. Note the ref­er­ence here to “Curveball”—the code-name for an infor­mant who chan­neled sig­nif­i­cant ele­ments of the bogus intel­li­gence to the US. As dis­cussed in FTR#502: “Curve­ball” was a pro­tégé of Ahmed Cha­l­abi, him­self believed by the NSA to be an agent for the Iran­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists. In addi­tion, “Curve­ball” was at all times in the cus­tody of Ger­man intel­li­gence. The US was nev­er per­mit­ted to inter­view “Curve­ball” until after the start of the war. In FTR#502 we exam­ined the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the han­dling of “Curve­ball” by the BND–the suc­ces­sor agency to the Rein­hard Gehlen spy outfit—may have been anoth­er part of the hypo­thet­i­cal Under­ground Reich “death­trap” being dis­cussed here.

“One by one, the exot­ic intel­li­gence fac­toids Bush’s researchers culled from raw intel­li­gence data files to pub­licly bol­ster their claim of immi­nent threat — the yel­low­cake ura­ni­um from Niger, the alu­minum tubes for pro­cess­ing ura­ni­um- the Prague meet­ing with Mohamed Atta, the dis­cred­it­ed Iraqi infor­mants ‘Curve­ball’ and Ahmad Cha­l­abi — have been exposed as pre­vi­ous­ly known frauds. When it came to sell­ing an inva­sion of Iraq it had want­ed to launch before Sept. 11, the Bush White House sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ignored the best avail­able intel­li­gence from U.S. agen­cies or any oth­er reli­able source. . . .”

(Idem.)

Discussion

9 comments for “FTR #535 Death Trap, Part III – Italian Fascism, Bogus Intelligence and the Iraq War”

  1. This sort of feels like beat­ing a dead horse at this point, but any­ways....

    Jun 19, 8:40 PM EDT

    CIA releas­es declas­si­fied doc­u­ments from 9/11 file

    EILEEN SULLIVAN and ADAM GOLDMAN
    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    WASHINGTON (AP) — In the months before the ter­ror­ist attacks of Sep­tem­ber 2001, the CIA unit ded­i­cat­ed to hunt­ing for Osama bin Laden com­plained that it was run­ning out of mon­ey, and ana­lysts con­sid­ered the like­li­hood of catch­ing the ter­ror leader to be extreme­ly low, accord­ing to gov­ern­ment records pub­lished Tues­day.

    The declas­si­fied doc­u­ments, dat­ed between 1992 and 2004, are heav­i­ly blacked out and offer lit­tle new infor­ma­tion about what the U.S. knew about the al-Qai­da plot before 2001. Many of the files are cit­ed in the 9/11 Com­mis­sion report, pub­lished in 2004. The com­mis­sion deter­mined the fail­ure that led to 9/11 was a lack of imag­i­na­tion, and U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies did not con­nect the dots that could have pre­vent­ed the attacks.

    Though few new details are revealed in the doc­u­ments, the files offer more his­tor­i­cal con­text for the years sur­round­ing the dead­liest ter­ror attack on U.S. soil.

    The Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Archive obtained the doc­u­ments through a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request and pub­lished them on its web­site Tues­day. The archive is a pri­vate group seek­ing trans­paren­cy in gov­ern­ment.

    An April 2000 doc­u­ment from the CIA’s bin Laden unit allud­ed to a bud­getary cash crunch that was cut­ting into the agen­cy’s efforts to track the ter­ror leader.

    At that time, al-Qai­da was a major con­cern to U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies because of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bomb­ings in Kenya and Tan­za­nia that killed many, includ­ing two CIA employ­ees. Bin Laden had declared a holy war against the U.S., and the CIA had received mul­ti­ple warn­ings that al-Qai­da intend­ed to strike the U.S.

    “Need for­ward move­ment on sup­ple­men­tal soon­est,” said a heav­i­ly blacked-out doc­u­ment titled “Islam­ic Extrem­ist Update.” The sup­ple­men­tal bud­get was still being reviewed by the nation­al secu­ri­ty coun­cil and White House Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get. Because of bud­getary con­straints, the bin Laden unit would move from an “offen­sive to defen­sive pos­ture,” the doc­u­ment said. This meant that offi­cials feared they would have to shelve some of their more elab­o­rate pro­pos­als to track al-Qai­da and instead rely on exist­ing resources.

    ...

    The new­ly released files also offer details about the sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tions into the attacks.

    In one case, the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty inves­ti­gat­ed a link between one of the hijack­ers and the Iraqi Intel­li­gence Ser­vice — a con­nec­tion that was lat­er proved false but that the White House used in its cam­paign to con­nect the attacks to Iraq.

    Accord­ing to a Dec. 8, 2001, CIA report that was sent to the White House Sit­u­a­tion Room, the CIA had already made a pre­lim­i­nary deter­mi­na­tion that 9/11 hijack­er Mohammed Atta had not in fact trav­eled to Prague in the Czech Repub­lic in May 2000 to ren­dezvous with a senior offi­cial of the Iraqi Intel­li­gence Ser­vice. Atta was an Egypt­ian nation­al who pilot­ed Amer­i­can Air­lines Flight 11 into the World Trade Cen­ter. That he would have met with the IIS was sig­nif­i­cant for intel­li­gence offi­cials look­ing for a con­nec­tion between al-Qai­da and Iraq.

    But just one day after the report was sent to the White House, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney claimed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it had been “pret­ty con­firmed” that Atta had gone to Prague sev­er­al months before the attack. Accord­ing to the 9/11 Com­mis­sion report, it turned out to be a case of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty after a Pak­istani with a sim­i­lar name tried to get into the Czech Repub­lic but was turned away. The doc­u­ment was the basis for a foot­note in chap­ter sev­en of the 9/11 report.

    Even though the infor­ma­tion about Atta meet­ing with the ISS was lat­er dis­proved, it still res­onat­ed with those bent on going to war with Iraq.

    The hun­dreds of pages of CIA files released Tues­day include a chronol­o­gy of the agen­cy’s efforts to catch bin Laden.

    A March 2004 CIA report enti­tled, “The Rise of UBL and al-Qai­da and the Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty Response,” dis­cuss­es the like­li­hood of the CIA cap­tur­ing bin Laden in the late 1990s using Afghans to do the job. Such a plan did­n’t seem viable.

    The CIA esti­mat­ed that none of the avail­able Afghan units had more than a 10 per­cent chance of cap­tur­ing the heav­i­ly guard­ed bin Laden. Anoth­er option was using Ahmed Shah Mas­soud, leader of the North­ern Alliance, who was friend­ly with the CIA and fight­ing the Tal­iban. “Even if he agreed to do so, his chances of suc­cess against the Tal­iban were judged to be less than 5 per­cent,” the report said. Al-Qai­da oper­a­tives killed Mas­soud on Sept. 9, 2001.

    Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton was crit­i­cized for not doing more to catch bin Laden. But the doc­u­ments show it would­n’t have been an easy task, though some at the CIA were still hope­ful they could get him.

    “The odds of suc­cess are iffy,” Michael Scheuer, who ran the CIA’s bin Laden unit, said in a 1998 secret memo that was among the declas­si­fied doc­u­ments released Tues­day. “And the thing could blow up at any point along the way.”

    It would take the U.S. gov­ern­ment anoth­er 13 years to catch and kill bin Laden.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 20, 2012, 10:03 pm
  2. Inter­est­ing:

    The New York Times
    Con­spir­a­cy Buffs Gain in Court Rul­ing on Crash

    By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
    Pub­lished: Feb­ru­ary 10, 2013

    ROME — Itavia Flight 870 was enter­ing the final leg of a rou­tine domes­tic trip from Bologna, Italy, to Paler­mo, Sici­ly, one clear sum­mer evening when it sud­den­ly plunged into the Tyrrhen­ian Sea near the small island of Usti­ca, killing all 81 peo­ple aboard.

    Mechan­i­cal fail­ure was ruled out ear­ly on, and almost 33 years lat­er, the caus­es that led to the crash on June 27, 1980, are still a top­ic of pas­sion­ate debate in Italy, fueled by three decades of inquiry boards, par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sions, count­less expert reports and one of the longest judi­cial inquiries in recent Ital­ian his­to­ry. But despite all that, no for­mal charges have ever been filed in con­nec­tion with the crash.

    The crash, known as the Usti­ca affair, has pro­duced legions of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries here, the way the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion — or, on a less­er scale, the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996 — have in the Unit­ed States. But in the Usti­ca affair, the case for a cov­er-up is far stronger.

    Last week, when Italy’s high­est court ruled that the country’s Defense and Trans­porta­tion Min­istries had to com­pen­sate the fam­i­lies of some of the vic­tims, the court implic­it­ly acknowl­edged the most wide­ly accept­ed the­o­ry behind the crash: that a mis­sile fired by a war­plane had hit the twin-engine McDon­nell Dou­glas DC‑9 on Itavia, a now-defunct domes­tic Ital­ian air­line. But the court did not say where that mis­sile came from.

    To con­spir­a­cy buffs, it was vin­di­ca­tion — to a point.

    “It’s like the O. J. Simp­son affair, where he got off in crim­i­nal court but was found guilty in a civ­il pro­ce­dure and had to pay dam­ages,” said Andrea Pur­ga­tori, an inves­tiga­tive reporter whose exhaus­tive book on the dis­as­ter and the pre­sumed cov­er-up was made into a 1992 film.

    Over the years, sev­er­al Air Force offi­cials have been inves­ti­gat­ed for with­hold­ing evi­dence — wip­ing clean flight tracks and radar scans — and four gen­er­als were tried on charges of trea­son and obstruct­ing inves­ti­ga­tions. But no one has been con­vict­ed.

    In this hot­house atmos­phere, it is not sur­pris­ing that con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries have pro­lif­er­at­ed over the years. The crash has been blamed on U.F.O.’s (sev­er­al Web sites sub­scribe to this recon­struc­tion) or domes­tic ter­ror­ism (the Bologna train sta­tion was bombed not five weeks lat­er, killing 85 and wound­ing dozens more). In this sce­nario, the plane went down after a bomb explod­ed onboard, most like­ly in the toi­let.

    The mis­sile the­o­ry gained a new impe­tus in 2008 when Francesco Cos­si­ga, the prime min­is­ter at the time of the Usti­ca affair, said in an inter­view that the flight had been shot down by French mil­i­tary planes. Mr. Cos­si­ga did not pro­vide fur­ther details, nor can he. He died in 2010, at age 82.

    Cov­er-up the­o­ries have been fueled through the years by what news reports have described as a “sus­pi­cious­ly high mor­tal­i­ty” among mil­i­tary per­son­nel and oth­ers con­nect­ed to the case. (Mr. Cos­si­ga is not includ­ed among them.)

    Through traf­fic acci­dents, shoot­ing deaths and sui­cides by hang­ing, there were 36 untime­ly deaths by 2011, accord­ing to a tele­vi­sion report about Usti­ca. The pro­gram also cit­ed a num­ber of “bizarre acci­dents” that befell Usti­ca wit­ness­es, like being run over by a tri­cy­cle and slip­ping on a banana peel in a Rome sub­way sta­tion.

    “What ter­ri­fy­ing truth war­rant­ed a cov­er-up at the cost of the lives of all these peo­ple?” asked the show’s host, Adam Kad­mon, who plays a mys­te­ri­ous masked vig­i­lante who inves­ti­gates top­ics like Usti­ca, under­skin microchip implants and, more recent­ly, Michael Jackson’s prophe­cy about Sept. 11, and favors the French mis­sile the­o­ry.

    At the time, pro­po­nents say, Italy was covert­ly allow­ing Libyan air­craft to fly through its air­space undis­turbed. They did so by glid­ing in the slip­stream of Ital­ian domes­tic air­craft, where they could not be detect­ed by radar. On the night of June 27, 1980, there were unsub­stan­ti­at­ed reports that Col. Muam­mar el-Qaddafi was on one of those planes, the the­o­ry goes, and French forces tried to shoot it down to kill the Libyan leader, but hit the DC‑9 by mis­take. Don’t ask why. It has to do with rebels in North Africa and jock­ey­ing for oil con­ces­sions between Italy and France.

    But Colonel Qaddafi had been warned of the plan and nev­er board­ed his plane, accord­ing to this recon­struc­tion, which also says the pilot made a suc­cess­ful emer­gency land­ing at sea. There, a British sub­ma­rine reached it and deployed scu­ba divers to plant explo­sives to sink the plane and to silence poten­tial wit­ness­es to the assas­si­na­tion attempt.

    ...

    There’s quite a bit about SIS­MI’s involve­ment with the Usti­ca coverup in Philip Willan’s Pup­pet­mas­ters: The Polit­i­cal Use of Ter­ror­ism in Italy (avail­able online via google books).

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 11, 2013, 3:08 pm
  3. Did the coup attempt deba­cle in Venezuela that report­ed­ly left Pres­i­dent Trump frus­trat­ed with John Bolton’s regime change schemes end up giv­ing Trump cold feet about his admin­is­tra­tion’s long-stand­ing regime change designs for Iran? That’s one of the big ques­tions raised by a series of recent arti­cles regard­ing the US’s sud­den insis­tence that Iran and its prox­ies are plan­ning on mil­i­tar­i­ly tar­get­ing US forces. Because not only are we get­ting reports about US intel­li­gence assess­ments that there’s some grave new Iran­ian threat, we’re also get­ting reports Trump is appar­ent­ly frus­trat­ed with Bolton’s war mon­ger­ing. Not frus­trat­ed enough to actu­al­ly fire Bolton, mind you, but frus­trat­ed enough for these frus­tra­tions to end up get­ting leaked in news reports.

    Grant­ed, this could all be pure­ly the­atrics. But Trump does appear to be a reac­tionary indi­vid­ual and Bolton’s embar­rass­ing coup plot in Venezuela is cer­tain­ly the kind of thing that might trig­ger a reac­tion from Trump. Or per­haps Trump is respond­ing to the fact that the top British gen­er­al in the US-led anti-ISIS coali­tion just told the world that he’s seen no indi­ca­tion of a increased threats from Iran or its prox­ies:

    The Guardian

    No increased Iran threat in Syr­ia or Iraq, top British offi­cer says, con­tra­dict­ing US

    Deputy com­man­der of anti-Isis coali­tion rebuts White House jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for send­ing troops

    Julian Borg­er in Wash­ing­ton

    Tue 14 May 2019 19.34 EDT

    The top British gen­er­al in the US-led coali­tion against Isis has said there is no increased threat from Iran­ian-backed forces in Iraq or Syr­ia, direct­ly con­tra­dict­ing US asser­tions used to jus­ti­fy a mil­i­tary buildup in the region.

    Hours lat­er how­ev­er, his assess­ment was dis­owned by US Cen­tral Com­mand in an extra­or­di­nary rebuke of an allied senior offi­cer. A spokesman insist­ed that the troops in Iraq and Syr­ia were on a high lev­el of alert due to the alleged Iran­ian threat. The con­flict­ing ver­sions of the real­i­ty on the ground added to the con­fu­sion and mixed sig­nals in a tense part of the Mid­dle East.

    Maj Gen Christo­pher Ghi­ka, who is a deputy com­man­der of Oper­a­tion Inher­ent Resolve (OIR), the coali­tion con­duct­ing counter-ter­ror­ist oper­a­tions against Isis in Iraq and Syr­ia, was repeat­ed­ly ques­tioned by reporters about the threat from Shia mili­tias in Syr­ia and Iraq, cit­ed by US offi­cials over the past week as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for speed­ing up the deploy­ment of an air­craft car­ri­er strike group in the Gulf and for send­ing B‑52 Strato­fortress bombers and an anti-air­craft bat­tery to the region.

    “No – there’s been no increased threat from Iran­ian-backed forces in Iraq and Syr­ia,” Ghi­ka said in a vide­olink brief­ing from Bagh­dad to the Pen­ta­gon. “We’re aware of that pres­ence, clear­ly. And we mon­i­tor them along with a whole range of oth­ers because that’s the envi­ron­ment we’re in. We are mon­i­tor­ing the Shia mili­tia groups. I think you’re refer­ring to care­ful­ly and if the threat lev­el seems to go up then we’ll raise our force pro­tec­tion mea­sures accord­ing­ly.”

    On Tues­day night, US Cen­tral Com­mand – whose area of oper­a­tions cov­ers the Mid­dle East and Afghanistan – put out a state­ment refut­ing Ghika’s com­ments.

    “Recent com­ments from OIR’s deputy com­man­der run counter to the iden­ti­fied cred­i­ble threats avail­able to intel­li­gence from US and allies regard­ing Iran­ian-backed forces in the region,” it said.

    “US Cen­tral Com­mand, in coor­di­na­tion with OIR, has increased the force pos­ture lev­el for all ser­vice mem­bers assigned to OIR in Iraq and Syr­ia. As a result, OIR is now at a high lev­el of alert as we con­tin­ue to close­ly mon­i­tor cred­i­ble and pos­si­bly immi­nent threats to US forces in Iraq.”

    The rebuke was par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing as it implied that Ghi­ka was unaware of the state of alert of his own troops. The remark­able com­ments height­ened con­cerns that fab­ri­cat­ed or exag­ger­at­ed intel­li­gence may be being used by admin­is­tra­tion hawks led by the nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, John Bolton, to fur­ther the case for war against Iran, in a man­ner rem­i­nis­cent of the buildup to the Iraq inva­sion.

    The New York Times report­ed on Mon­day night that the act­ing defence sec­re­tary, Patrick Shana­han, had pre­sent­ed the White House with a plan that involved send­ing up to 120,000 troops to the Mid­dle East in the event of an Iran­ian attack or depar­ture from the con­straints of the 2015 nuclear deal that the US abro­gat­ed a year ago.

    The revised plans were ordered by admin­is­tra­tion hard­lin­ers led by Bolton, the report said.

    Don­ald Trump dis­missed the account as “fake news” on Tues­day. “Now, would I do that? Absolute­ly. But we have not planned for that,” the pres­i­dent said. “Hope­ful­ly we’re not going to have to plan for that and if we did that, we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that.”

    US offi­cials have said there was clear evi­dence that Iran was build­ing up its proxy forces’ com­bat readi­ness and prepar­ing them to attack US forces in the region. The sec­re­tary of state, Mike Pom­peo, went to Brus­sels on Mon­day to brief his Euro­pean coun­ter­parts on the alleged threats.

    Speak­ing in Rus­sia on Tues­day, Pom­peo said the Unit­ed States does not want war with Iran but vowed to keep pres­sur­ing Tehran.

    “We fun­da­men­tal­ly do not seek a war with Iran,” he said, adding: “We have also made clear to the Ira­ni­ans that if Amer­i­can inter­ests are attacked, we will most cer­tain­ly respond in an appro­pri­ate fash­ion.”

    The Shia mili­tias in Iraq are col­lec­tive­ly known as the Pop­u­lar Mobil­i­sa­tion Forces (PMF), and have ties of vary­ing strengths to Iran.

    In his brief­ing from Bagh­dad on Tues­day, Ghi­ka told Pen­ta­gon reporters: “We’ve seen no change in the pos­ture or the lay­down of the PMF. And of course the PMF is a moniker for a very broad range of groups. So I think it’s impor­tant to say that many of them are com­pli­ant and we have seen no change in that pos­ture since the recent exchange between the Unit­ed States and Iran. And we hope and expect that that will con­tin­ue.”

    The gen­er­al stressed that the coalition’s mis­sion was exclu­sive­ly focused on defeat­ing the remains of Isis and not on con­fronting Iran, but he added that the issue of force pro­tec­tion had been reviewed “in the light of the events of the last week or so”.

    “Am I con­cerned about the dan­ger? No, not real­ly,” Ghi­ka said.

    Sau­di Ara­bia said on Tues­day that armed drones had attacked two of its oil pump­ing sta­tions, two days after two Sau­di oil tankers were sab­o­taged off the coast of the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

    The Sau­di ener­gy min­is­ter, Khalid al-Fal­ih, said that the alleged drone attacks caused a fire and minor dam­age to one pump­ing sta­tion, and implied that the drone strikes and the sab­o­tage of the tankers were the work of Iran­ian prox­ies.

    “These attacks prove again that it is impor­tant for us to face ter­ror­ist enti­ties, includ­ing the Houthi mili­tias in Yemen that are backed by Iran,” Fal­ih said in an Eng­lish-lan­guage state­ment issued by his min­istry.

    Iran’s ambas­sador to the UN, Majid Takht Ravanchi, denied any involve­ment by his coun­try or any of its region­al allies in the attacks.

    “Def­i­nite­ly not,” Ravanchi told CNN. “Iran is not in the busi­ness of doing such a thing. We need to have a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion as to what has hap­pened and who is respon­si­ble for it.”

    ...

    ———-

    “No increased Iran threat in Syr­ia or Iraq, top British offi­cer says, con­tra­dict­ing US” by Julian Borg­er; The Guardian; 05/14/2019

    “No – there’s been no increased threat from Iran­ian-backed forces in Iraq and Syr­ia,” Ghi­ka said in a vide­olink brief­ing from Bagh­dad to the Pen­ta­gon. “We’re aware of that pres­ence, clear­ly. And we mon­i­tor them along with a whole range of oth­ers because that’s the envi­ron­ment we’re in. We are mon­i­tor­ing the Shia mili­tia groups. I think you’re refer­ring to care­ful­ly and if the threat lev­el seems to go up then we’ll raise our force pro­tec­tion mea­sures accord­ing­ly.””

    Ouch. That’s a remark­able rebuke from a top allied gen­er­al work­ing with US forces in the region, prompt­ing a counter-rebuke by US Cen­tral Com­mand which dou­bled down on the threat warn­ings. As the arti­cle notes, this kind of high-lev­el dis­agree­ment has height­ened con­cerns that the hawks in the US are exag­ger­at­ing or fab­ri­cat­ing intel­li­gence under the direc­tion of John Bolton, which is an entire­ly rea­son­able con­cern:

    ...
    On Tues­day night, US Cen­tral Com­mand – whose area of oper­a­tions cov­ers the Mid­dle East and Afghanistan – put out a state­ment refut­ing Ghika’s com­ments.

    “Recent com­ments from OIR’s deputy com­man­der run counter to the iden­ti­fied cred­i­ble threats avail­able to intel­li­gence from US and allies regard­ing Iran­ian-backed forces in the region,” it said.

    “US Cen­tral Com­mand, in coor­di­na­tion with OIR, has increased the force pos­ture lev­el for all ser­vice mem­bers assigned to OIR in Iraq and Syr­ia. As a result, OIR is now at a high lev­el of alert as we con­tin­ue to close­ly mon­i­tor cred­i­ble and pos­si­bly immi­nent threats to US forces in Iraq.”

    The rebuke was par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing as it implied that Ghi­ka was unaware of the state of alert of his own troops. The remark­able com­ments height­ened con­cerns that fab­ri­cat­ed or exag­ger­at­ed intel­li­gence may be being used by admin­is­tra­tion hawks led by the nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, John Bolton, to fur­ther the case for war against Iran, in a man­ner rem­i­nis­cent of the buildup to the Iraq inva­sion.
    ...

    And these con­cerns of exag­ger­at­ed or fab­ri­cat­ed intel­li­gence is on top of learn­ing that Bolton basi­cal­ly ordered act­ing Sec­re­tary of Defense Patrick Shana­han to come up with a plan for send­ing 120,000 US troops to the region in response to these intel­li­gence assess­ments:

    ...
    The New York Times report­ed on Mon­day night that the act­ing defence sec­re­tary, Patrick Shana­han, had pre­sent­ed the White House with a plan that involved send­ing up to 120,000 troops to the Mid­dle East in the event of an Iran­ian attack or depar­ture from the con­straints of the 2015 nuclear deal that the US abro­gat­ed a year ago.

    The revised plans were ordered by admin­is­tra­tion hard­lin­ers led by Bolton, the report said.
    ...

    But beyond the con­cerns about Bolton pump­ing junk intel­li­gence, we also have Sau­di Ara­bia alleg­ing that two of its oil pump­ing sta­tions were attacked by Iran­ian prox­ies. Keep in mind that Sau­di Ara­bia and the UAE is wag­ing one of the most bru­tal wars in recent mem­o­ry in Yemen (with US assis­tance), so it appears that attacks by the Yemeni Houthis on Sau­di or UAE assets will be used to hype Bolton’s push to war:

    ...
    Sau­di Ara­bia said on Tues­day that armed drones had attacked two of its oil pump­ing sta­tions, two days after two Sau­di oil tankers were sab­o­taged off the coast of the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

    The Sau­di ener­gy min­is­ter, Khalid al-Fal­ih, said that the alleged drone attacks caused a fire and minor dam­age to one pump­ing sta­tion, and implied that the drone strikes and the sab­o­tage of the tankers were the work of Iran­ian prox­ies.

    “These attacks prove again that it is impor­tant for us to face ter­ror­ist enti­ties, includ­ing the Houthi mili­tias in Yemen that are backed by Iran,” Fal­ih said in an Eng­lish-lan­guage state­ment issued by his min­istry.
    ...

    So was that major pub­lic dis­agree­ment between gen­er­al Ghi­ka and US Cen­tral Com­mand a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in Trump’s appar­ent sour­ing on Bolton’s Iran­ian war mon­ger­ing? It seems like the kind of thing that would have left Trump dis­pleased, at a min­i­mum. Gen­er­al Ghika’s com­ments were pret­ty damn embar­rass­ing for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, after all. But as the fol­low­ing arti­cle also describes, it’s not just a British gen­er­al who isn’t buy­ing into this new threat assess­ment. As Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo learned dur­ing his recent trip to Europe, the rest of the US’s Euro­pean allies don’t appear to be buy­ing this either:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Trump, frus­trat­ed by advis­ers, is not con­vinced the time is right to attack Iran

    By John Hud­son, Shane Har­ris, Josh Dawsey and Anne Gear­an
    May 15 at 11:35 PM

    The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has been on high alert in response to what mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence offi­cials have deemed spe­cif­ic and cred­i­ble threats from Iran against U.S. per­son­nel in the Mid­dle East.

    But Pres­i­dent Trump is frus­trat­ed with some of his top advis­ers, who he thinks could rush the Unit­ed States into a mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion with Iran and shat­ter his long-stand­ing pledge to with­draw from cost­ly for­eign wars, accord­ing to sev­er­al U.S. offi­cials. Trump prefers a diplo­mat­ic approach to resolv­ing ten­sions and wants to speak direct­ly with Iran’s lead­ers.

    Dis­agree­ments over assess­ing and respond­ing to the recent intel­li­gence — which includes a direc­tive from Iran’s supreme leader, Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamenei, that some Amer­i­can offi­cials inter­pret as a threat to U.S. per­son­nel in the Mid­dle East — are also fray­ing alliances with for­eign allies, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple offi­cials in the Unit­ed States and Europe.

    Trump grew angry last week and over the week­end about what he sees as war­like plan­ning that is get­ting ahead of his own think­ing, said a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial with knowl­edge of con­ver­sa­tions Trump had regard­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er John Bolton and Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo.

    “They are get­ting way out ahead of them­selves, and Trump is annoyed,” the offi­cial said. “There was a scram­ble for Bolton and Pom­peo and oth­ers to get on the same page.”

    Bolton, who advo­cat­ed regime change in Iran before join­ing the White House last year, is “just in a dif­fer­ent place” from Trump, although the pres­i­dent has been a fierce crit­ic of Iran since long before he hired Bolton. Trump “wants to talk to the Ira­ni­ans; he wants a deal” and is open to nego­ti­a­tion with the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment, the offi­cial said.

    “He is not com­fort­able with all this ‘regime change’ talk,” which to his ears echoes the dis­cus­sion of remov­ing Iraqi Pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein before the 2003 U.S. inva­sion, said the offi­cial, who like oth­ers spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss pri­vate delib­er­a­tions.

    When asked about the accounts of Trump’s frus­tra­tion with Bolton, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil spokesman Gar­rett Mar­quis said, “This report­ing doesn’t accu­rate­ly reflect real­i­ty.”

    Trump is not inclined to respond force­ful­ly unless there is a “big move” from the Ira­ni­ans, a senior White House offi­cial said. Still, the pres­i­dent is will­ing to respond force­ful­ly if there are Amer­i­can deaths or a dra­mat­ic esca­la­tion, the offi­cial said.

    While Trump grum­bles about Bolton some­what reg­u­lar­ly, his dis­con­tent with his nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er is not near the lev­els it reached with Rex Tiller­son when he served as Trump’s sec­re­tary of state, the offi­cial added.

    Trump denied any “infight­ing” relat­ed to his Mid­dle East poli­cies in a tweet on Wednes­day. “There is no infight­ing what­so­ev­er,” Trump said. “Dif­fer­ent opin­ions are expressed and I make a deci­sive and final deci­sion — it is a very sim­ple process. All sides, views, and poli­cies are cov­ered. I’m sure that Iran will want to talk soon.”

    ...

    Pen­ta­gon and intel­li­gence offi­cials said that three dis­tinct Iran­ian actions have trig­gered alarms: infor­ma­tion sug­gest­ing an Iran­ian threat against U.S. diplo­mat­ic facil­i­ties in the Iraqi cities of Bagh­dad and Irbil; U.S. con­cerns that Iran may be prepar­ing to mount rock­et or mis­sile launch­ers on small ships in the Per­sian Gulf; and a direc­tive from Khamenei to the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps and reg­u­lar Iran­ian mil­i­tary units that some U.S. offi­cials have inter­pret­ed as a poten­tial threat to U.S. mil­i­tary and diplo­mat­ic per­son­nel. On Wednes­day, the State Depart­ment ordered nonessen­tial per­son­nel to leave the U.S. mis­sions in Bagh­dad and Irbil.

    ...

    U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials said there are dis­agree­ments about Iran’s ulti­mate inten­tions and whether the new intel­li­gence mer­its a more force­ful response than pre­vi­ous Iran­ian actions.

    Some wor­ry that the renewed saber-rat­tling could cre­ate a mis­cal­cu­la­tion on the ground, said two West­ern offi­cials famil­iar with the mat­ter. And Iran’s use of proxy forces, the offi­cials said, means it does not have absolute con­trol over mili­tias, which could attack U.S. per­son­nel and pro­voke a dev­as­tat­ing U.S. response that in turn prompts a counter-esca­la­tion.

    Bolton warned in a state­ment last week that “any attack on Unit­ed States inter­ests or on those of our allies will be met with unre­lent­ing force.”

    Mil­i­tary offi­cials have described them­selves as torn between their desire to avoid open con­fronta­tion with Iran and their con­cern about the recent intel­li­gence, which led the com­man­der of the U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand, Gen. Ken­neth McKen­zie Jr., to request a host of addi­tion­al mil­i­tary assets, includ­ing an air­craft car­ri­er and strate­gic bombers.

    Mul­ti­ple offi­cials said uni­formed offi­cers from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by its chair­man, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dun­ford Jr., have been among the lead­ing voic­es artic­u­lat­ing the costs of war with Iran.

    Oth­er offi­cials said the view that deter­rence rather than con­flict was required was “mono­lith­ic” across the Pen­ta­gon and was shared by civil­ian offi­cials led by act­ing defense sec­re­tary Patrick Shana­han, whom Trump nom­i­nat­ed last week to remain in the job but who has not yet been con­firmed by the Sen­ate. As the ten­sions have inten­si­fied, Shana­han has been in touch mul­ti­ple times a day with oth­er senior lead­ers, includ­ing Bolton, Pom­peo and Dun­ford, offi­cials said.

    Some defense offi­cials have described Bolton’s more aggres­sive approach as trou­bling.

    Defense offi­cials said that they are con­sid­er­ing whether they will field addi­tion­al weapon­ry or per­son­nel to the Per­sian Gulf region to strength­en their deter­rent against pos­si­ble action by Iran or proxy groups, but that they hope addi­tion­al deploy­ments will pre­vent rather than fuel attacks.

    Trump’s fears of entan­gling the Unit­ed States in anoth­er war have been a pow­er­ful coun­ter­weight to the more bel­li­cose posi­tions of some of his advis­ers.

    Trump has called the Iraq War a mas­sive and avoid­able blun­der, and his polit­i­cal sup­port was built in part on the idea that he would not repeat such a cost­ly expen­di­ture of Amer­i­can blood and trea­sure.

    A new deal with Iran, which Trump has said he could one day envi­sion, would be a replace­ment for the inter­na­tion­al nuclear com­pact he left last year that was forged by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. Trump’s ear­ly pol­i­cy on Iran, which pre­dat­ed Bolton’s arrival, was aimed at neu­tral­iz­ing the pact and clear­ing the way for an agree­ment he thought would more strict­ly keep Iran in check.

    Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion has been frus­trat­ed, how­ev­er, that Iran and the rest of the sig­na­to­ries to the nuclear agree­ment have kept it in force.

    Trump’s anger over what he con­sid­ered a more war­like foot­ing than he want­ed was a main dri­ver in Pompeo’s deci­sion last week­end to sud­den­ly can­cel a stop in Moscow and on short notice fly instead to Brus­sels, where he sought meet­ings on Mon­day with the Euro­pean nations that are par­ties to the Iran nuclear deal, two offi­cials said. Pom­peo was not accord­ed the sym­bol­ic wel­come of join­ing their joint Iran-focused meet­ing. Instead, he met with for­eign min­is­ters one by one.

    Pompeo’s vis­it was meant to con­vey both U.S. alarm over the recent intel­li­gence on Iran and Washington’s desire for diplo­ma­cy, not war, two offi­cials said.

    But Euro­pean lead­ers, who have been watch­ing the febrile atmos­phere in Wash­ing­ton with alarm, have not been con­vinced, accord­ing to con­ver­sa­tions with 10 Euro­pean diplo­mats and offi­cials from sev­en coun­tries, all of whom spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss sen­si­tive assess­ments of Wash­ing­ton and Tehran.

    Pom­peo “didn’t show us any evi­dence” about his rea­sons Wash­ing­ton is so con­cerned about poten­tial Iran­ian aggres­sion, said one senior Euro­pean offi­cial who took part in one of Pompeo’s meet­ings. The official’s del­e­ga­tion left the meet­ing uncon­vinced of the Amer­i­can case and puz­zled about why Pom­peo had come at all.

    Many offi­cials in Euro­pean cap­i­tals said they fear that con­flict with Iran could have a cas­cad­ing effect on their rela­tions with Wash­ing­ton, rip­ping open divi­sions on unre­lat­ed issues.

    They dis­trust Trump’s Iran pol­i­cy, fear­ing that key White House advis­ers are gin­ning up ratio­nales for war. And lead­ers need to win reelec­tion from cit­i­zens who hold Trump in low regard and would pun­ish them for fight­ing along­side Amer­i­cans on the Iran issue.

    Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress, while tra­di­tion­al­ly strong sup­port­ers of pres­sur­ing Iran, have also raised ques­tions about the intel­li­gence and the administration’s appar­ent flir­ta­tion with com­bat. In a state­ment on the Sen­ate floor on Wednes­day, Sen. Robert Menen­dez (N.J.), the rank­ing Demo­c­rat on the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, demand­ed “answers from this admin­is­tra­tion about Iran ... and about what intel­li­gence this admin­is­tra­tion has.” So far, he said, the admin­is­tra­tion has ignored those demands and refused to pro­vide brief­in­gs.

    “We can­not, and we will not, be led into dan­ger­ous mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism,” he said.

    Anx­i­eties over the height­ened threat envi­ron­ment spilled over into Capi­tol Hill on Wednes­day dur­ing a clas­si­fied brief­ing. Rep. Liz Cheney (R‑Wyo.) argued that the intel­li­gence war­rant­ed an esca­la­tion against Iran, said one per­son with knowl­edge of the brief­ing. In response, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep. Seth Moul­ton (Mass.) accused her of exag­ger­at­ing the threat in what the per­son described as a “very heat­ed exchange.”

    ...

    ———-

    “Trump, frus­trat­ed by advis­ers, is not con­vinced the time is right to attack Iran” by John Hud­son, Shane Har­ris, Josh Dawsey and Anne Gear­an; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 05/15/2019

    Trump grew angry last week and over the week­end about what he sees as war­like plan­ning that is get­ting ahead of his own think­ing, said a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial with knowl­edge of con­ver­sa­tions Trump had regard­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er John Bolton and Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo.”

    LOL! Trump makes John Bolton — a guy known to be one of the biggest advo­cates for war with Iran on the plan­et — his nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er and Mike Pom­peo — anoth­er war hawk — his sec­re­tary of state, but he’s like to assure every­one that he’s real­ly against war with Iran. But that’s the cur­rent spin.

    Again, giv­en the incred­i­ble fail­ure of Bolton’s Venezue­lan coup attempt, it’s not incon­ceiv­able that Trump has lost faith in Bolton’s abil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly cre­ate the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for an Iran­ian con­flict. But it is pret­ty unimag­in­able that war with Iran has­n’t been on the Trump agen­da all along. And if we parse Trump’s alleged words, it sounds like he’s say­ing he’s not con­vinced the stage is set for war with Iran at this moment. Prob­a­bly because Bolton’s intel­li­gence assess­ment isn’t being believed. Plus, there’s noth­ing stop­ping him from fir­ing Bolton, Instead, we’re told that he’s not near­ly as upset with Bolton has he was with Rex Tiller­son, a Sec­re­tary of State who man­aged to embar­rass Trump on a num­ber of occa­sions. And don’t for­get that Tiller­son actu­al­ly sup­port­ed keep­ing the US in the Iran nuclear deal. Do when we’re told that Trump was more pissed as Tiller­son than he cur­rent­ly is at Bolton that gives us an idea of how much real dis­agree­ment there is between Trump and Bolton. If any­thing, this looks more like a dis­agree­ment of short-term tac­tics:

    ...
    While Trump grum­bles about Bolton some­what reg­u­lar­ly, his dis­con­tent with his nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er is not near the lev­els it reached with Rex Tiller­son when he served as Trump’s sec­re­tary of state, the offi­cial added.

    Trump denied any “infight­ing” relat­ed to his Mid­dle East poli­cies in a tweet on Wednes­day. “There is no infight­ing what­so­ev­er,” Trump said. “Dif­fer­ent opin­ions are expressed and I make a deci­sive and final deci­sion — it is a very sim­ple process. All sides, views, and poli­cies are cov­ered. I’m sure that Iran will want to talk soon.”
    ...

    It’s also worth not­ing that this entire pub­lic spat could be done in an pre-emp­tive attempt to por­tray Trump as a ret­i­cent dove who will only grudg­ing­ly be pushed into war. As the arti­cle reminds us, when Trump was a can­di­date he brand­ed him­self as some­one who would avoid get­ting the US into unces­sary wars. So it’s pos­si­ble we’re see­ing the threatrics Trump feels he needs to spark a con­flict in antic­i­pa­tion of the 2020 cam­paign:

    ...
    Trump’s fears of entan­gling the Unit­ed States in anoth­er war have been a pow­er­ful coun­ter­weight to the more bel­li­cose posi­tions of some of his advis­ers.

    Trump has called the Iraq War a mas­sive and avoid­able blun­der, and his polit­i­cal sup­port was built in part on the idea that he would not repeat such a cost­ly expen­di­ture of Amer­i­can blood and trea­sure.

    A new deal with Iran, which Trump has said he could one day envi­sion, would be a replace­ment for the inter­na­tion­al nuclear com­pact he left last year that was forged by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. Trump’s ear­ly pol­i­cy on Iran, which pre­dat­ed Bolton’s arrival, was aimed at neu­tral­iz­ing the pact and clear­ing the way for an agree­ment he thought would more strict­ly keep Iran in check.
    ...

    But it’s also very pos­si­ble that Trump was sim­ply real­ly frus­trat­ed and embar­rassed by the fact that appar­ent­ly no one believed Mike Pom­peo when he sud­den­ly trav­eled to Europe last week to meet with the Euro­pean gov­ern­ments and show them the alleged evi­dence of Iran’s schemes. As with Venezuela, it was already look­ing like a big Bolton plan for war was fiz­zling:

    ...
    Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion has been frus­trat­ed, how­ev­er, that Iran and the rest of the sig­na­to­ries to the nuclear agree­ment have kept it in force.

    Trump’s anger over what he con­sid­ered a more war­like foot­ing than he want­ed was a main dri­ver in Pompeo’s deci­sion last week­end to sud­den­ly can­cel a stop in Moscow and on short notice fly instead to Brus­sels, where he sought meet­ings on Mon­day with the Euro­pean nations that are par­ties to the Iran nuclear deal, two offi­cials said. Pom­peo was not accord­ed the sym­bol­ic wel­come of join­ing their joint Iran-focused meet­ing. Instead, he met with for­eign min­is­ters one by one.

    Pompeo’s vis­it was meant to con­vey both U.S. alarm over the recent intel­li­gence on Iran and Washington’s desire for diplo­ma­cy, not war, two offi­cials said.

    But Euro­pean lead­ers, who have been watch­ing the febrile atmos­phere in Wash­ing­ton with alarm, have not been con­vinced, accord­ing to con­ver­sa­tions with 10 Euro­pean diplo­mats and offi­cials from sev­en coun­tries, all of whom spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss sen­si­tive assess­ments of Wash­ing­ton and Tehran.

    Pom­peo “didn’t show us any evi­dence” about his rea­sons Wash­ing­ton is so con­cerned about poten­tial Iran­ian aggres­sion, said one senior Euro­pean offi­cial who took part in one of Pompeo’s meet­ings. The official’s del­e­ga­tion left the meet­ing uncon­vinced of the Amer­i­can case and puz­zled about why Pom­peo had come at all.

    Many offi­cials in Euro­pean cap­i­tals said they fear that con­flict with Iran could have a cas­cad­ing effect on their rela­tions with Wash­ing­ton, rip­ping open divi­sions on unre­lat­ed issues.

    They dis­trust Trump’s Iran pol­i­cy, fear­ing that key White House advis­ers are gin­ning up ratio­nales for war. And lead­ers need to win reelec­tion from cit­i­zens who hold Trump in low regard and would pun­ish them for fight­ing along­side Amer­i­cans on the Iran issue.
    ...

    So if Trump is pri­mar­i­ly just pissed at Bolton and Pom­peo over the fact that no one seems to be buy­ing the US intel­li­gence assess­ments, and he still has plans for a some­how spark­ing a con­flict with Iran, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that a lot of forces that are deemed ‘Iran­ian prox­ies’ aren’t real­ly under Iran’s con­trol. So the pos­si­bil­i­ty for an ‘Iran­ian proxy’ play­ing into the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s plans for cre­at­ing a pre­text for war is very real:

    ...
    U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials said there are dis­agree­ments about Iran’s ulti­mate inten­tions and whether the new intel­li­gence mer­its a more force­ful response than pre­vi­ous Iran­ian actions.

    Some wor­ry that the renewed saber-rat­tling could cre­ate a mis­cal­cu­la­tion on the ground, said two West­ern offi­cials famil­iar with the mat­ter. And Iran’s use of proxy forces, the offi­cials said, means it does not have absolute con­trol over mili­tias, which could attack U.S. per­son­nel and pro­voke a dev­as­tat­ing U.S. response that in turn prompts a counter-esca­la­tion.

    Bolton warned in a state­ment last week that “any attack on Unit­ed States inter­ests or on those of our allies will be met with unre­lent­ing force.”
    ...

    It’s also impor­tant to keep in mind that the sup­port for war with Iran in the US gov­ern­ment isn’t lim­it­ed to the hawks in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. For exam­ple, Liz Cheney, the daugh­ter of Dick Cheney who holds his old seat on con­gress, appears to be on board with Bolton’s plans of using these intel­li­gence assess­ment to esca­late ten­sions with Iran:

    ...
    Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress, while tra­di­tion­al­ly strong sup­port­ers of pres­sur­ing Iran, have also raised ques­tions about the intel­li­gence and the administration’s appar­ent flir­ta­tion with com­bat. In a state­ment on the Sen­ate floor on Wednes­day, Sen. Robert Menen­dez (N.J.), the rank­ing Demo­c­rat on the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, demand­ed “answers from this admin­is­tra­tion about Iran ... and about what intel­li­gence this admin­is­tra­tion has.” So far, he said, the admin­is­tra­tion has ignored those demands and refused to pro­vide brief­in­gs.

    “We can­not, and we will not, be led into dan­ger­ous mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism,” he said.

    Anx­i­eties over the height­ened threat envi­ron­ment spilled over into Capi­tol Hill on Wednes­day dur­ing a clas­si­fied brief­ing. Rep. Liz Cheney (R‑Wyo.) argued that the intel­li­gence war­rant­ed an esca­la­tion against Iran, said one per­son with knowl­edge of the brief­ing. In response, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep. Seth Moul­ton (Mass.) accused her of exag­ger­at­ing the threat in what the per­son described as a “very heat­ed exchange.”
    ...

    Inter­est­ing­ly, act­ing sec­re­tary of defense Patrick Shana­han, appears to be join­ing a num­ber of top US mil­i­tary com­man­ders in tak­ing a more cau­tions view of the sit­u­a­tion:

    ...
    Mil­i­tary offi­cials have described them­selves as torn between their desire to avoid open con­fronta­tion with Iran and their con­cern about the recent intel­li­gence, which led the com­man­der of the U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand, Gen. Ken­neth McKen­zie Jr., to request a host of addi­tion­al mil­i­tary assets, includ­ing an air­craft car­ri­er and strate­gic bombers.

    Mul­ti­ple offi­cials said uni­formed offi­cers from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by its chair­man, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dun­ford Jr., have been among the lead­ing voic­es artic­u­lat­ing the costs of war with Iran.

    Oth­er offi­cials said the view that deter­rence rather than con­flict was required was “mono­lith­ic” across the Pen­ta­gon and was shared by civil­ian offi­cials led by act­ing defense sec­re­tary Patrick Shana­han, whom Trump nom­i­nat­ed last week to remain in the job but who has not yet been con­firmed by the Sen­ate. As the ten­sions have inten­si­fied, Shana­han has been in touch mul­ti­ple times a day with oth­er senior lead­ers, includ­ing Bolton, Pom­peo and Dun­ford, offi­cials said.

    Some defense offi­cials have described Bolton’s more aggres­sive approach as trou­bling.
    ...

    So can we expect Shana­han, a for­mer Boe­ing exec­u­tive who had no gov­ern­ment expe­ri­ence before Trump select­ed him as under­sec­re­tary of defense in 2017 and who Trump recent­ly sig­naled he will nom­i­nate to replace Jim Mat­tis, to act as a back­stop against the war plans of Bolton and Pom­peo? Well, accord­ing to the fol­low­ing arti­cle, prob­a­bly not. When it comes to ques­tions of war in Trump’s cab­i­net it’s John Bolton call­ing the shots and Shana­han is still rel­a­tive­ly new the job and he’s already been los­ing fights with Bolton:

    Politi­co

    Shana­han’s Mat­tis test

    Can Trump’s untest­ed Pen­ta­gon chief han­dle the Iran hawks?

    By WESLEY MORGAN and NAHAL TOOSI

    05/14/2019 08:35 PM EDT
    Updat­ed 05/14/2019 10:21 PM EDT

    The Trump administration’s saber-rat­tling at Iran has skep­tics of mil­i­tary action con­cerned about the inex­pe­ri­ence of act­ing Defense Sec­re­tary Pat Shana­han — and whether he can stand up to long-time hawks like John Bolton.

    Shana­han had held no gov­ern­ment posts before join­ing the Pen­ta­gon near­ly two years ago, and in his four months lead­ing the Defense Depart­ment he has been less inclined than his pre­de­ces­sor, Jim Mat­tis, to resist Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s most dra­mat­ic impuls­es.

    Now the for­mer Boe­ing exec­u­tive risks being over­pow­ered in inter­nal debates by Trump aides such as nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Bolton and Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, say for­mer U.S. offi­cials who wor­ry that the admin­is­tra­tion is on a path to war. Those fears were inflamed by a New York Times report Mon­day that said Shana­han had deliv­ered Bolton a plan that could send as many as 120,000 troops to the Mid­dle East if need­ed to respond to a provo­ca­tion.

    Mat­tis, who resigned in Decem­ber after a dis­pute over Trump’s Syr­ia strat­e­gy, repeat­ed­ly watered down or slow-walked Trump poli­cies that mil­i­tary brass opposed or felt uncom­fort­able with, includ­ing on Iran and a 2018 mis­sile strike on Syr­ia. But Shanahan’s crit­ics say he has far less lever­age to do so — even if was so inclined.

    “Shana­han, in that group, is the weak­est link,” said a recent­ly depart­ed senior Pen­ta­gon offi­cial, speak­ing anony­mous­ly to dis­cuss sen­si­tive inter­nal delib­er­a­tions. “Shana­han hasn’t been around these kinds of deci­sions and has zero pol­i­cy expe­ri­ence and zero mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence. Mat­tis had expe­ri­ence and grav­i­tas that Shana­han sim­ply doesn’t have, and Bolton has years of expe­ri­ence in deal­ing with bureau­cra­cy in this town, which gives him a huge advan­tage.”

    Ilan Gold­en­berg, a long­time for­eign pol­i­cy expert who served in both the Pen­ta­gon and the State Depart­ment in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, agreed with that assess­ment.

    “Shana­han is cer­tain­ly out­matched by Bolton and Pom­peo,” said Gold­en­berg, who is now at the Cen­ter for a New Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty. “He has nei­ther the bureau­crat­ic expe­ri­ence or polit­i­cal lever­age to fight with them.”

    ...

    The report of a new mil­i­tary option has set off fresh con­cerns about a pos­si­ble march to war at a time when the Pen­ta­gon has an untest­ed leader who may have far more dif­fi­cul­ty than Mat­tis did in shap­ing Trump’s deci­sions. Trump hasn’t yet nom­i­nat­ed Shana­han to be per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, although the White House tweet­ed last week that he “intends to.”

    Shana­han has led the Pen­ta­gon since Jan­u­ary — the longest stretch ever for an act­ing defense sec­re­tary. Before that, the Sen­ate con­firmed him in 2017 as deputy sec­re­tary under Mat­tis.

    A lack of more mod­er­ate voic­es in the admin­is­tra­tion’s nation­al secu­ri­ty lead­er­ship was a major con­cern in both par­ties in the days after Mat­tis resigned over Trump’s abrupt deci­sion to pull Amer­i­can troops out of Syr­ia.

    “I want some­one like Mat­tis who will tell the pres­i­dent the truth to his face,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D‑Va.), a mem­ber of the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, told POLITICO at the time.

    Repub­li­cans also expressed con­cern then that Mat­tis’ res­ig­na­tion, fol­low­ing the depar­tures of for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er H.R. McMas­ter and White House chief of staff John Kel­ly, meant that Trump would be rely­ing on a much nar­row­er set of view­points.

    Dur­ing Mat­tis’ tenure as defense sec­re­tary, the White House was often frus­trat­ed with Pen­ta­gon resis­tance to more aggres­sive moves against Iran and its allies, accord­ing to a cur­rent defense offi­cial who was not autho­rized to speak pub­licly about inter­nal debates.

    The offi­cial point­ed to the slow-rolling by Mat­tis, a retired gen­er­al, and Joint Chiefs Chair­man Gen. Joe Dun­ford on mil­i­tary options against Iran’s key ally Syr­ia last year. In that instance, Mat­tis and Dun­ford pushed Trump toward the most lim­it­ed item on his menu of pro­posed mil­i­tary options — a set of mis­sile strikes against Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons facil­i­ties — by paint­ing it as more mus­cu­lar than it real­ly was.

    Shana­han is now con­tend­ing with the out­size per­son­al­i­ties of Bolton and Pom­peo. Bolton pre­vi­ous­ly served as ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations and under­sec­re­tary of state for arms con­trol and inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty affairs, while Pom­peo, a for­mer con­gress­man and Army offi­cer, was Trump’s first CIA direc­tor.

    Shana­han “likes to say that he earned a PhD in world affairs as Sec­re­tary Mat­tis’s deputy, and he draws on his 17 months of expe­ri­ence and tute­lage as deputy sec­re­tary” in his new role, said Shana­han’s spokesper­son, Lt. Col. Joe Buc­ci­no. And Shana­han has mal­so recent­ly won over for­mer skep­tics such as Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Chair­man Jim Inhofe (R‑Okla.), who promised Tues­day to hold his nom­i­na­tion hear­ing “as fast as pos­si­ble.”

    Many in the Pen­ta­gon clear­ly think Shana­han is up to the task. While “he would not have been a good SecDef” two years ago, “he absolute­ly has the expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge to hold his own in inter­a­gency debates today,” said a sec­ond cur­rent defense offi­cial who was also not autho­rized to speak pub­licly.

    Mat­tis trust­ed Shana­han to chair updates from com­man­ders on the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syr­ia dur­ing his time as deputy sec­re­tary, the offi­cial said, and Shana­han also received “more than 500 intel­li­gence brief­in­gs” in that role.

    But the Pen­ta­gon has already lost one Iran pol­i­cy bat­tle under Shana­han, dur­ing bureau­crat­ic tus­sles over the deci­sion to des­ig­nate Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards Corps as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. The White House and State Depart­ment sup­port­ed the move, but the Pen­ta­gon opposed it on grounds it might lead Iran to retal­i­ate against Amer­i­can troops and facil­i­ties in the region.

    Dur­ing that debate, Shana­han large­ly allowed his sub­or­di­nates who were holdovers from Mattis’s team to “car­ry the water” on the Pentagon’s argu­ment with­out chal­leng­ing Bolton and Pom­peo him­self, POLITICO pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.

    The recent­ly depart­ed senior Pen­ta­gon offi­cial said Shanahan’s slow, delib­er­ate man­age­ment style may also not be con­ducive to the fast deci­sions he could have to make dur­ing a mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion involv­ing large num­bers of troops.

    “Shana­han has no expe­ri­ence with this — what kinds of things can hap­pen as you mobi­lize and deploy forces, how esca­la­tion works, what it sig­nals to for­eign gov­ern­ments,” said anoth­er for­mer senior defense offi­cial who still advis­es Pen­ta­gon lead­ers. “He’s nev­er done any of this, where­as Bolton and Pom­peo have been at this a long time. How seri­ous­ly are they going to take him?”

    The first for­mer senior defense offi­cial echoed those con­cerns, cit­ing the bat­tle­field options that Shana­han would have to help choose.

    “There are very con­se­quen­tial deci­sions that will have to be made,” the for­mer offi­cial said. “Shana­han has a man­age­ment style that’s well known in the build­ing and avoid­ing and delay­ing deci­sions. That’s not what you need in the top seat in this sit­u­a­tion.”

    More­over, Shana­han “will also have to sell any inter­ven­tion to the Hill and make troops feel con­fi­dent about his lead­er­ship,” the for­mer offi­cial added. “It’s not clear he can do either suc­cess­ful­ly.”

    ...

    As the ten­sions sim­mered Tues­day, how­ev­er, whose judg­ment would pre­vail on Trump was promi­nent on the minds of many.

    “We don’t have a Sec­re­tary of Defense who’s a dec­o­rat­ed 4‑star Marine Corps gen­er­al with decades of mil­i­tary lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence, and we don’t have a Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor with com­pa­ra­ble, sig­nif­i­cant, nation­al secu­ri­ty lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence,” Sen. Chris Coons, a Demo­c­rat from Delaware and mem­ber of the For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, said in a state­ment.

    “The Pres­i­dent did ben­e­fit from such a team in his first cou­ple of years,” he added, “and he did not launch any major new wars. I’m grave­ly con­cerned that we’ve got folks who are encour­ag­ing or tol­er­at­ing his bum­bling for­ward into a major deploy­ment into the Mid­dle East with­out a clear strat­e­gy.”

    ———-

    “Shana­han’s Mat­tis test” by WESLEY MORGAN and NAHAL TOOSI; Politi­co; 05/14/2019

    “Shana­han had held no gov­ern­ment posts before join­ing the Pen­ta­gon near­ly two years ago, and in his four months lead­ing the Defense Depart­ment he has been less inclined than his pre­de­ces­sor, Jim Mat­tis, to resist Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s most dra­mat­ic impuls­es.”

    Is the new guy on the job up to the chal­lenge of coun­ter­ing some­one like Bolton, who has been work­ing on gov­ern­ment for years? That’s one of the big ques­tions sur­round­ing Shana­han’s like­ly nom­i­na­tion to for­mal­ly replace Jim Mat­tis as sec­re­tary of defense. And based on what we’ve seen, the answer appears to be, no, Shana­han is like­ly not up to the task:

    ...
    Now the for­mer Boe­ing exec­u­tive risks being over­pow­ered in inter­nal debates by Trump aides such as nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Bolton and Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, say for­mer U.S. offi­cials who wor­ry that the admin­is­tra­tion is on a path to war. Those fears were inflamed by a New York Times report Mon­day that said Shana­han had deliv­ered Bolton a plan that could send as many as 120,000 troops to the Mid­dle East if need­ed to respond to a provo­ca­tion.

    Mat­tis, who resigned in Decem­ber after a dis­pute over Trump’s Syr­ia strat­e­gy, repeat­ed­ly watered down or slow-walked Trump poli­cies that mil­i­tary brass opposed or felt uncom­fort­able with, includ­ing on Iran and a 2018 mis­sile strike on Syr­ia. But Shanahan’s crit­ics say he has far less lever­age to do so — even if was so inclined.

    “Shana­han, in that group, is the weak­est link,” said a recent­ly depart­ed senior Pen­ta­gon offi­cial, speak­ing anony­mous­ly to dis­cuss sen­si­tive inter­nal delib­er­a­tions. “Shana­han hasn’t been around these kinds of deci­sions and has zero pol­i­cy expe­ri­ence and zero mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence. Mat­tis had expe­ri­ence and grav­i­tas that Shana­han sim­ply doesn’t have, and Bolton has years of expe­ri­ence in deal­ing with bureau­cra­cy in this town, which gives him a huge advan­tage.”

    Ilan Gold­en­berg, a long­time for­eign pol­i­cy expert who served in both the Pen­ta­gon and the State Depart­ment in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, agreed with that assess­ment.

    “Shana­han is cer­tain­ly out­matched by Bolton and Pom­peo,” said Gold­en­berg, who is now at the Cen­ter for a New Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty. “He has nei­ther the bureau­crat­ic expe­ri­ence or polit­i­cal lever­age to fight with them.”

    ...

    Adding to those fears is the fact that Shana­han appar­ent­ly opposed to the recent move to declare Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards Corps a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, which the Pen­ta­gon opposed, and Shana­han lost that bat­tle to Bolton:

    ...
    Dur­ing Mat­tis’ tenure as defense sec­re­tary, the White House was often frus­trat­ed with Pen­ta­gon resis­tance to more aggres­sive moves against Iran and its allies, accord­ing to a cur­rent defense offi­cial who was not autho­rized to speak pub­licly about inter­nal debates.

    The offi­cial point­ed to the slow-rolling by Mat­tis, a retired gen­er­al, and Joint Chiefs Chair­man Gen. Joe Dun­ford on mil­i­tary options against Iran’s key ally Syr­ia last year. In that instance, Mat­tis and Dun­ford pushed Trump toward the most lim­it­ed item on his menu of pro­posed mil­i­tary options — a set of mis­sile strikes against Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons facil­i­ties — by paint­ing it as more mus­cu­lar than it real­ly was.

    ...

    Mat­tis trust­ed Shana­han to chair updates from com­man­ders on the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syr­ia dur­ing his time as deputy sec­re­tary, the offi­cial said, and Shana­han also received “more than 500 intel­li­gence brief­in­gs” in that role.

    But the Pen­ta­gon has already lost one Iran pol­i­cy bat­tle under Shana­han, dur­ing bureau­crat­ic tus­sles over the deci­sion to des­ig­nate Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards Corps as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. The White House and State Depart­ment sup­port­ed the move, but the Pen­ta­gon opposed it on grounds it might lead Iran to retal­i­ate against Amer­i­can troops and facil­i­ties in the region.

    Dur­ing that debate, Shana­han large­ly allowed his sub­or­di­nates who were holdovers from Mattis’s team to “car­ry the water” on the Pentagon’s argu­ment with­out chal­leng­ing Bolton and Pom­peo him­self, POLITICO pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.
    ...

    So we’re already see­ing signs that the next cur­rent act­ing sec­re­tary of defense, who is like­ly to for­mal­ly become the sec­re­tary of defense, is like­ly going to play sec­ond fid­dle to Bolton war cries in Trump’s cab­i­net.

    And that all sug­gests that the biggest force left to oppose the Bolton/Pompeo war plans in the Trump White House is Trump him­self. *gulp*

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 16, 2019, 12:15 pm
  4. It was pret­ty clear that regime change in Iran was going to be a top for­eign pol­i­cy objec­tive when Pres­i­dent Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear treaty in May of 2018. This was arguably clear at the begin­ning of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion much ear­li­er giv­en the Trump’s deep ties to the Sau­di gov­ern­ment and right-wing forces in Israel. But the nature of that regime change plan was nev­er quite clear. Was the idea to ratch­et up sanc­tions and eco­nom­i­cal­ly stran­gle Iran in the hopes of encour­ag­ing pop­u­lar protests that bring down the Iran­ian regime? Or was it going to be a war?

    It ini­tial­ly looked like sanc­tions were going to be the tool of choice fol­low­ing the reim­po­si­tion of eco­nom­i­cal­ly crush­ing sanc­tions after Trump pulled out of the nuclear treaty. But then we had those strange events last year like the attack on a Japan­ese tanker (while Shin­zo Abe was mak­ing a his­toric vis­it to Iran) that was blamed on Iran but had the look of being a false flag set up. So was the plan to weak­en Iran with sanc­tions in prepa­ra­tion for a full blown war? Well, it’s increas­ing­ly look­ing like that may have been the plan fol­low­ing Trump’s uni­lat­er­al deci­sion to assas­si­nate Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps-Quds Force and some­one seen the sec­ond most impor­tant fig­ure in Iran’s gov­ern­ment:
    Mil­i­tary Times

    Fears of new con­flict rise after US kills Qasem Soleimani, a top Iran­ian gen­er­al, in strike on Bagh­dad air­port

    By: Shawn Snow , Howard Alt­man , and Aaron Mehta
    1/2/2020

    One of Iran’s most revered and pow­er­ful mil­i­tary com­man­ders has been killed in a U.S. strike near the Bagh­dad Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, the Pen­ta­gon con­firmed Thurs­day.

    The strike will inten­si­fy ten­sions between the U.S. and Iran and many experts say it esca­lates the risk of a new con­flict spread­ing across the region.

    “At the direc­tion of the Pres­i­dent, the U.S. mil­i­tary has tak­en deci­sive defen­sive action to pro­tect U.S. per­son­nel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tion,” the Depart­ment of Defense said in an emailed state­ment.

    Also killed in the strike was a top Iraqi leader, Abu Mah­di al-Muhan­dis, the deputy com­man­der of the Pop­u­lar Mobi­liza­tion Forces, which is known as the PMF and is part of a larg­er umbrel­la group that includes a num­ber of Shia mil­i­tant groups sup­port­ed by Iran.

    An Iraqi offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, told the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that al-Muhan­dis had arrived to the air­port in a con­voy to receive Soleimani whose plane had arrived from either Lebanon or Syr­ia. The airstrike occurred as soon as he descend­ed from the plane to be greet­ed by al-Muhan­dis and his com­pan­ions, killing them all.

    The DoD said Soleimani was “active­ly devel­op­ing plans to attack Amer­i­can diplo­mats and ser­vice mem­bers in Iraq and through­out the region. Gen­er­al Soleimani and his Quds Force were respon­si­ble for the deaths of hun­dreds of Amer­i­can and coali­tion ser­vice mem­bers and the wound­ing of thou­sands more.”

    The Pen­ta­gon also said Soleimani orches­trat­ed the Dec. 27 rock­et attack on the Kirkuk mil­i­tary instal­la­tion that result­ed in the death of an Amer­i­can con­trac­tor and wound­ed four Amer­i­can troops.

    William Fal­lon, a retired admi­ral who ran U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand from March 2007 to March 2008, told Mil­i­tary Times that Soleimani’s death is a “sig­nif­i­cant blow” to Iran.

    “There is lit­tle doubt in my mind he was in Bagh­dad orches­trat­ing activ­i­ty,” said Fal­lon, who point­ed to the recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Bagh­dad Tues­day by pro-Iran­ian mil­i­tants. “Those were not protests, they were coor­di­nat­ed attacks on the embassy.”

    Fal­lon said that while ten­sions between the U.S. and Iran are like­ly to ratch­et up, he does not antic­i­pate a full-scale war.

    “It will be inter­est­ing to see how big a strike back Iran wants to try,” Fal­lon said, adding that he expects ter­ror attacks and Iran­ian-backed mili­tia lead­ers to “put on a pret­ty good show against the embassy.”

    “They have to be care­ful about it, as we have seen over the last six months, they are not shy,” said Fal­lon. “Whether it is tanker attacks, drone attacks, they will like­ly do some­thing, but they will have to cal­cu­late how far they want to go.”

    As far as an all-out war, “nei­ther side real­ly wants it,” said Fal­lon. “It is not in the inter­est of either par­ty to do it. There is too much to lose. The Ira­ni­ans have a lot of chess pieces on the table.”

    The US’ act of inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism, tar­get­ing & assas­si­nat­ing Gen­er­al Soleimani—THE most effec­tive force fight­ing Daesh (ISIS), Al Nus­rah, Al Qae­da et al—is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous & a fool­ish escalation.The US bears respon­si­bil­i­ty for all con­se­quences of its rogue adven­tur­ism.— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) Jan­u­ary 3, 2020

    Mara Kar­lin — a for­mer defense offi­cial with exper­tise in the region who most recent­ly served as deputy assis­tant sec­re­tary of defense for strat­e­gy and force devel­op­ment — not­ed that mil­i­tary offi­cers who served in Iraq dur­ing the days when Iran was sup­ply­ing arms to insur­gents have a dark view of Soleimani per­son­al­ly.

    “Don’t under­es­ti­mate the hatred and vit­ri­ol that senior U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cials with expe­ri­ence in Iraq have toward Qassem Soleimani,” she said. “He has the blood of hun­dreds of Amer­i­can troops on his hands. The con­se­quences of killing Soleimani — the most influ­en­tial Mid­dle East mil­i­tary offi­cial for decades — can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. ”

    A U.S. State Depart­ment report esti­mat­ed that Iran’s Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps was respon­si­ble for 17 per­cent of all deaths of U.S. per­son­nel in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 — rough­ly 603 casu­al­ties.

    The strikes prompt­ed an imme­di­ate spike in glob­al oil prices Thurs­day night and set off a debate on Capi­tol Hill about the White House deci­sion to launch the strike. One law­mak­er applaud­ed the killing of Soleimani and call­ing him “an evil bas­tard who mur­dered Amer­i­cans.” Anoth­er law­mak­er sug­gest­ed the strike was an assas­si­na­tion that could cause a “mas­sive region­al war.”

    The U.S. strike against Soleimani was “one of the most major counter-ter­ror and oper­a­tions and moves against the Ira­ni­ans exe­cut­ed by any actor in decades,” Phillip Smyth, a research fel­low with the Wash­ing­ton Insti­tute, told Mil­i­tary Times Thurs­day night.

    Soleimani, as com­man­der of Iran’s Quds force — which is tasked with car­ry­ing out para­mil­i­tary and clan­des­tine oper­a­tions out­side of Iran — has lead Tehran’s irreg­u­lar wars across Yemen and Syr­ia for sev­er­al years.

    The Quds Force com­man­der has been among America’s top adver­saries in recent years as he has helped prop up bru­tal Syr­i­an dic­ta­tor Bashar Assad’s regime amid a bloody civ­il war that has rav­aged the coun­try since 2011.

    And in Yemen, Iran has sup­port­ed Houthi rebels with train­ing and sophis­ti­cat­ed drone and mis­sile and anti-ship sys­tems in their fight against the cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

    It’s unknown how Iran may retal­i­ate against the death of its mil­i­tary com­man­der who is high­ly revered in the coun­try.

    But researcher Kyle Orton says the U.S. may not be able to absorb what Iran throws at the U.S.

    Amer­i­can “troops are spread to thin, and Iran’s agents too wide­spread,” Orton told Mil­i­tary Times.

    Orton was pre­vi­ous­ly a Syr­ia con­flict expert at the Hen­ry Jack­son Soci­ety — a Lon­don-based think tank.

    “If Iran makes the deci­sion to flip the switch, I’m not sure how U.S. forces in Iraq defend them­selves,” he said.

    The U.S. has deployed more than 14,000 addi­tion­al troops to the Mid­dle East through­out the past six months. There are more than 60,000 Amer­i­can troops in the CENTCOM the­ater of oper­a­tions. On Tues­day, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ordered an addi­tion­al 4,000 sol­diers from the Army’s 82 Air­borne Divi­sion to deploy to Kuwait to rein­force secu­ri­ty in the region.

    “This strike and accom­pa­ny­ing raid dealt an incred­i­ble blow to Iran’s proxy net­work across the entire region. They [Iran] will respond vio­lent­ly and like­ly in mul­ti­ple the­aters,” Jen­nifer Cafarel­la, an researcher with the Insti­tute for the Study of War, told Mil­i­tary Times.

    “But they [Iran] will do so deprived of key lead­ers and the impuni­ty they’ve enjoyed for the last few years. Tonight’s events have like­ly fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the tra­jec­to­ry of the region,” she explained.

    ...

    “This strike was aimed at deter­ring future Iran­ian attack plans,” the DoD said Thurs­day evening. “The Unit­ed States will con­tin­ue to take all nec­es­sary action to pro­tect our peo­ple and our inter­ests wher­ev­er they are around the world.”

    The attack came amid ris­ing ten­sion between the U.S. and Iran and a series of attacks and counter-strikes that inten­si­fied this week. That includ­ed a New Year’s Eve attack by Iran-backed mili­tias on the U.S. Embassy in Bagh­dad. The two-day embassy attack end­ed Wednes­day.

    The breach at the embassy fol­lowed U.S. airstrikes on Sun­day that killed 25 fight­ers of the Iran-backed mili­tia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbol­lah. The U.S. mil­i­tary said the strikes were in retal­i­a­tion for last week’s killing of an Amer­i­can con­trac­tor in a rock­et attack on an Iraqi mil­i­tary base that the U.S. blamed on the mili­tia.

    U.S. offi­cials have sug­gest­ed they were pre­pared to engage in fur­ther retal­ia­to­ry attacks in Iraq.

    “The game has changed,” Defense Sec­re­tary Mark Esper said Thurs­day, telling reporters that vio­lent acts by Iran-backed Shi­ite mili­tias in Iraq — includ­ing the rock­et attack on Dec. 27 that killed one Amer­i­can — will be met with U.S. mil­i­tary force.

    ———-

    “Fears of new con­flict rise after US kills Qasem Soleimani, a top Iran­ian gen­er­al, in strike on Bagh­dad air­port” by Shawn Snow, Howard Alt­man, and Aaron Mehta; Mil­i­tary Times; 01/02/2020

    “An Iraqi offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, told the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that al-Muhan­dis had arrived to the air­port in a con­voy to receive Soleimani whose plane had arrived from either Lebanon or Syr­ia. The airstrike occurred as soon as he descend­ed from the plane to be greet­ed by al-Muhan­dis and his com­pan­ions, killing them all.

    A drone strike assas­si­na­tion of top gov­ern­ment lead­ers. There’s a prece­dent now. Although the Trump admin­is­tra­tion already sort of estab­lished that prece­dent giv­en the US fin­ger­prints on the drone assas­si­na­tion attempt against Nicolás Maduro in Sep­tem­ber of 2018.

    And note the pre­text for the assas­si­na­tion: it was a pre­emp­tive strike “aimed at deter­ring future Iran­ian attack plans.” It’s the kind of expla­na­tion that is par­tic­u­lar­ly omi­nous giv­en that it basi­cal­ly forces a major response from Iran and appears to be a pre­emp­tive move to ensure future attacks of this nature are deemed nec­es­sary:

    ...
    The DoD said Soleimani was “active­ly devel­op­ing plans to attack Amer­i­can diplo­mats and ser­vice mem­bers in Iraq and through­out the region. Gen­er­al Soleimani and his Quds Force were respon­si­ble for the deaths of hun­dreds of Amer­i­can and coali­tion ser­vice mem­bers and the wound­ing of thou­sands more.”

    The Pen­ta­gon also said Soleimani orches­trat­ed the Dec. 27 rock­et attack on the Kirkuk mil­i­tary instal­la­tion that result­ed in the death of an Amer­i­can con­trac­tor and wound­ed four Amer­i­can troops.

    ...

    “This strike was aimed at deter­ring future Iran­ian attack plans,” the DoD said Thurs­day evening. “The Unit­ed States will con­tin­ue to take all nec­es­sary action to pro­tect our peo­ple and our inter­ests wher­ev­er they are around the world.”
    ...

    Also note the sig­nif­i­cant build up of US troops in recent months, with 14,000 more troops deployed to the Mid­dle East in the last six months. Recall that it was about 6 months ago when the strange attack on that Japan­ese tanker took place. It’s the kind of sequence of events that makes it look like we’re see­ing a plan for mak­ing war inevitable that’s been play­ing out for months:

    ...
    It’s unknown how Iran may retal­i­ate against the death of its mil­i­tary com­man­der who is high­ly revered in the coun­try.

    But researcher Kyle Orton says the U.S. may not be able to absorb what Iran throws at the U.S.

    Amer­i­can “troops are spread to thin, and Iran’s agents too wide­spread,” Orton told Mil­i­tary Times.

    Orton was pre­vi­ous­ly a Syr­ia con­flict expert at the Hen­ry Jack­son Soci­ety — a Lon­don-based think tank.

    “If Iran makes the deci­sion to flip the switch, I’m not sure how U.S. forces in Iraq defend them­selves,” he said.

    The U.S. has deployed more than 14,000 addi­tion­al troops to the Mid­dle East through­out the past six months. There are more than 60,000 Amer­i­can troops in the CENTCOM the­ater of oper­a­tions. On Tues­day, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ordered an addi­tion­al 4,000 sol­diers from the Army’s 82 Air­borne Divi­sion to deploy to Kuwait to rein­force secu­ri­ty in the region.
    ...

    And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle that was pub­lished hours before the assas­si­na­tion drone strike points out, it’s not just war that’s back on the table. The Bush Doc­trine of pre­emp­tive war is back on the table. That’s what both Sec­re­tary of Defense Mark Esper and Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Mil­ley were mak­ing clear when they appeared on var­i­ous new chan­nels and mak­ing dec­la­ra­tions like, “Enough is enough,” he said. “We have all the capa­bil­i­ties to either respond to fur­ther attacks or take pre­emp­tive action.” In oth­er words, hours before this ‘pre­emp­tive’ drone assas­si­na­tion strike, Trump’s top mil­i­tary offi­cials were pre­emp­tive­ly reit­er­at­ing the Bush Doc­trine:

    Break­ing Defense

    SecDef Esper Warns Iran: US May Take ‘Pre­emp­tive Action’
    While Wash­ing­ton warns of con­flict with Iran, some for­mer Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials com­plain old Mid­dle East are hurt­ing the promised reset to meet Chi­nese, Russ­ian chal­lenges.

    By Paul McLeary on Jan­u­ary 02, 2020 at 12:39 PM

    PENTAGON: In what appears to be a return to the Bush Doc­trine, the Unit­ed States will con­sid­er launch­ing pre­emp­tive strikes on Iran to stop what it says are months of attacks on US forces and facil­i­ties in Iraq and the Mid­dle East, Defense Sec­re­tary Mark Esper says.

    The warn­ing came this morn­ing dur­ing an off-cam­era meet­ing with reporters at the Pen­ta­gon, where Esper said there are indi­ca­tions Iran may be plan­ning more attacks on the US and its inter­ests in the region. “We will take pre­emp­tive action as well to pro­tect Amer­i­can forces and pro­tect Amer­i­can lives,” he said. “The game has changed, and we’re pre­pared to do what is nec­es­sary to defend our per­son­nel and our inter­ests and our part­ners in the region.”

    Lend­ing weight to the secretary’s state­ment, Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Mil­ley appeared along­side and said Iran has been run­ning “a sus­tained cam­paign at least since Octo­ber,” tar­get­ing the US in the region. “We know that for cer­tain. We know that the cam­paign has increased in tem­po and inten­si­ty.”

    Esper kept up the drum­beat by talk­ing to MSNBC on cam­era after the brief­ing: “Enough is enough,” he said. “We have all the capa­bil­i­ties to either respond to fur­ther attacks or take pre­emp­tive action.”

    The warn­ings come after a dizzy­ing hol­i­day week dur­ing which the US struck sev­er­al posi­tions of Kataib Hezbol­lah, an Iran­ian-backed mili­tia the US accus­es of con­duct­ing rock­et attacks on the US base in Iraq. The strikes killed around 18 fight­ers and wound­ed anoth­er 50. Iraq’s gov­ern­ment protest­ed the strikes say­ing it object­ed to airstrikes on its ter­ri­to­ry which it had not agreed to.

    The strikes led to a day-long assault on the US Embassy in Bagh­dad by KH sup­port­ers and mili­ti­a­men, which the Iraqi mil­i­tary did lit­tle to staunch. The US flew 100 spe­cial­ly trained and equipped Marines in to defend the facil­i­ty, and dis­patched 750 para­troop­ers from the 82nd Air­borne Divi­sion to Kuwait to back­stop the Marines. Pre­sum­ably, the para­troop­ers would be part of any strike team against Iran.

    Mil­ley said that an attack last month that killed a US civil­ian con­trac­tor at a base near Kirkuk was meant “to kill Amer­i­can sol­diers, sailors, air­men and Marines …31 rock­ets aren’t designed as a warn­ing shot. That’s designed to inflict dam­age and kill.” Esper added: There are some indi­ca­tions out there that they may be plan­ning addi­tion­al attacks. Do I think they may do some­thing? Yes. And they will like­ly regret it.”

    The lat­est dra­ma in the Mid­dle East comes two years after the Pen­ta­gon released its lat­est Nation­al Defense Strat­e­gy which sought to guide the depart­ment away from two decades of con­flict in the region and sharp­en the focus on peer com­peti­tors like Chi­na and Rus­sia. But despite the desire the new strat­e­gy, which senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials cite repeat­ed­ly when­ev­er they appear on Capi­tol Hill, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to strug­gle to extri­cate itself from the shad­owy con­flicts in Iraq, Syr­ia and Afghanistan that have sucked in three pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tions dat­ing back to the attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.

    Pres­i­dent Trump ran for office pledg­ing to end the “end­less wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has instead deployed almost 15,000 new troops to the Mid­dle East since last May, along with new air wings and Patri­ot air defense sys­tems to Sau­di Ara­bia.

    The deploy­ments have drawn crit­i­cism from some for­mer Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials who see lit­tle val­ue in con­tin­u­ing to focus on Iran and its lim­it­ed capa­bil­i­ties, while Chi­na is rush­ing ahead and pump­ing bil­lions into high-end mil­i­tary pro­grams such as two new air­craft car­ri­ers, dozens of high­ly-capa­ble war­ships, long-range pre­ci­sion mis­siles, and fifth-gen­er­a­tion fight­er planes.

    ...

    ———-

    “SecDef Esper Warns Iran: US May Take ‘Pre­emp­tive Action’” by Paul McLeary; Break­ing Defense; 01/02/2020

    “The warn­ing came this morn­ing dur­ing an off-cam­era meet­ing with reporters at the Pen­ta­gon, where Esper said there are indi­ca­tions Iran may be plan­ning more attacks on the US and its inter­ests in the region. “We will take pre­emp­tive action as well to pro­tect Amer­i­can forces and pro­tect Amer­i­can lives,” he said. “The game has changed, and we’re pre­pared to do what is nec­es­sary to defend our per­son­nel and our inter­ests and our part­ners in the region.”

    Note the vague­ness of Esper’s lan­guage. He was just talk­ing about pre­emp­tive attacks to “do what is nec­es­sary to defend our per­son­nel.” He includ­ed pre­emp­tive attacks to defend “our inter­ests and our part­ners in the region.” That’s the kind of scope for jus­ti­fy­ing pre­emp­tive attacks that could read­i­ly be used to jus­ti­fy a pre­emp­tive war with Iran at a momen­t’s notice giv­en the extreme rival­ry Iran has with Sau­di Ara­bia and Israel. So while Esper declared that, “the game has changed,” it’s real­ly just changed back to the Bush Doc­trine of pre­emp­tive war when that’s per­ceived to be nec­es­sary.

    So is war with Iran more or less a giv­en at this point? Well, here’s an arti­cle from exact­ly one month ago that gives some of the con­text for this esca­la­tion: Fol­low­ing a large spike in the price of gaso­line in Iran, thanks large­ly to the reim­po­si­tion of sanc­tions on Iran, large scale domes­tic protests broke out inside Iran, trig­ger­ing a bloody response by the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment that killed over 200 pro­tes­tors. It was the kind of sit­u­a­tion that had the Trump admin­is­tra­tion look­ing for ways to encour­age those protests in the hopes that it would lead to the kind of domes­tic pop­u­lar revolt against the Iran­ian regime. Yes, just one month ago, the foment­ing pop­u­lar unrest was the focus of Trump’s regime change agen­da. It was the kind of plan that has now obvi­ous­ly been com­plete­ly aban­doned since it’s hard to think of a move that would be more like­ly to shore up pub­lic sup­port in Iran for the regime than killing some­one like Soleimani. So while the regime change agen­da has­n’t changed, the plan for bring­ing that about has sud­den­ly done a 180:

    Politi­co

    Trump team scours intel sent by Ira­ni­ans as it weighs new sanc­tions

    The team sees the Iran protests as a sign that its sanc­tions-heavy “max­i­mum pres­sure” cam­paign is work­ing.

    By NAHAL TOOSI
    12/03/2019 03:49 PM EST

    Aides to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump are weigh­ing impos­ing new sanc­tions on Iran­ian offi­cials impli­cat­ed in human rights abus­es, rely­ing in part on intel­li­gence gleaned from some 36,000 pic­tures, videos and oth­er tips sent in by Ira­ni­ans caught up in the regime’s recent crack­down on mass protests.

    The Trump admin­is­tra­tion is also explor­ing new ways to help Ira­ni­ans evade inter­net black­outs imposed by the regime in Tehran, peo­ple famil­iar with the plans said. It fur­ther is expect­ed to dial up its own infor­ma­tion cam­paign against Iran in the com­ing days, includ­ing a poten­tial speech on Iran by Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo.

    The Trump team sees the Iran protests as a sign that its sanc­tions-heavy “max­i­mum pres­sure” cam­paign against Iran is work­ing – fuel­ing dis­sent among ordi­nary Ira­ni­ans who will then pres­sure their lead­ers to spend more at home instead of their nuclear pro­gram or mil­i­tary actions out­side Iran’s bor­ders. The end goal: an Iran less threat­en­ing to the U.S. and its allies.

    “The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca sup­ports the brave peo­ple of Iran who are protest­ing for their FREEDOM. We have under the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion, and always will!” the U.S. pres­i­dent tweet­ed Tues­day from Lon­don, where he’s attend­ing a NATO gath­er­ing.

    The debate among U.S. offi­cials now cen­ters on exact­ly how to take advan­tage of the moment:

    How much and how fast to fur­ther max­i­mize the pres­sure cam­paign giv­en the poten­tial blow­back in a region mired in crises. The U.S. and Iran bare­ly avoid­ed mil­i­tary con­fronta­tions ear­li­er this year fol­low­ing attacks on oil tankers and Sau­di facil­i­ties that U.S. offi­cials blamed on Iran.

    The imme­di­ate cri­sis soon passed, but the risk of con­fronta­tion remains high as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion seeks to starve the Iran­ian regime of rev­enue and as the pres­i­dent beefs up the U.S. mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Mid­dle East — by some 14,000 troops since May.

    “If you do dou­ble down on the eco­nom­ic pres­sure, how will the regime respond? You have to be pre­pared for major esca­la­tion,” said Mark Dubowitz, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the Foun­da­tion for Defense of Democ­ra­cies, a hawk­ish think tank close to the admin­is­tra­tion. He stressed that he wants the admin­is­tra­tion to exert more pres­sure.

    A Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, added: “There’s an emerg­ing belief that these protests are not like the oth­ers. More con­vul­sions are com­ing.”

    Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and their allies are aware that protest move­ments can go any num­ber of ways, espe­cial­ly in the Mid­dle East, from help­ing estab­lish still-nascent demo­c­ra­t­ic rule in a place like Tunisia to devolv­ing into a vicious civ­il war in a place like Syr­ia.

    Aside from Iran, there are ongo­ing protests across Iraq and in Lebanon; the prime min­is­ters of both those coun­tries have resigned in a bow to demon­stra­tors’ demands. While the Iraqi and Lebanese pro­test­ers have var­i­ous griev­ances, some of their anger is over Iran’s influ­ence in their coun­tries. “Here is Lebanon, not Iran” some pro­test­ers have chant­ed; in Iraq, pro­test­ers have torched the Iran­ian con­sulate in the city of Najaf.

    Iran has a his­to­ry of mass protests, not the least of which led to its 1979 Islam­ic rev­o­lu­tion and the end of its diplo­mat­ic ties with the Unit­ed States. The cler­ic-led regime that has ruled since man­aged to quell protests in 2009 — known as the “Green Move­ment” — after a dis­put­ed elec­tion. It also clung to pow­er despite a spate of protests across the coun­try in late 2017 and ear­ly 2018, in which labor rights were a major issue.

    Just how much these protest move­ments have been fueled by polit­i­cal demands, as opposed to pure­ly eco­nom­ic griev­ances, is the sub­ject of fierce debate among Iran watch­ers.

    The lat­est protests were sparked in mid-Novem­ber by the Iran­ian government’s sud­den move to raise gaso­line prices. The deci­sion infu­ri­at­ed a pop­u­la­tion already bat­tered by heavy U.S. sanc­tions imposed by Trump after he quit the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, but which also has seethed over regime cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment.

    As the protests spread, the regime react­ed vio­lent­ly. Its armed forces gunned down demon­stra­tors, many of whom were unem­ployed or oth­er­wise poor young men. The Islamist lead­er­ship also effec­tive­ly shut down the inter­net for rough­ly a week, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for Ira­ni­ans to com­mu­ni­cate with the out­side world or even with each oth­er.

    On Mon­day, Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al put the death toll at 208; many observers sus­pect it is much high­er. Thou­sands are believed to have been arrest­ed, although the regime has been vague or dis­mis­sive of some of the reports. It has described the pro­test­ers as for­eign-linked riot­ers.

    Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo spoke out rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly about the protests; in a tweet sent Nov. 16, he told Ira­ni­ans: “The Unit­ed States is with you.” But he’s also down­played the notion that U.S. sanc­tions were a dri­ver in bring­ing peo­ple out to the streets, insist­ing Ira­ni­ans are unhap­py with their repres­sive gov­ern­ment.

    On Nov. 21, Pom­peo issued an unusu­al request: In a Far­si-lan­guage tweet, he asked Ira­ni­ans to send in pho­tos, videos and oth­er data that would help the U.S. expose and sanc­tion abus­es. A week ago, he said the U.S. had received “20,000 mes­sages, videos, pic­tures, notes of the regime’s abus­es through Telegram mes­sag­ing ser­vices.”

    I have asked the Iran­ian pro­tes­tors to send us their videos, pho­tos, and infor­ma­tion doc­u­ment­ing the regime’s crack­down on pro­tes­tors. The U.S. will expose and sanc­tion the abus­es. https://t.co/korr5p0woA
    — Sec­re­tary Pom­peo (@SecPompeo) Novem­ber 21, 2019

    The Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial who spoke to POLITICO said the num­ber in the days since had climbed to 36,000, with more data still com­ing. Now that Iran has begun restor­ing inter­net access, the num­ber is like­ly to keep ris­ing.

    The offi­cial said that State Depart­ment has assigned staff to ana­lyze the data, which he described as being tips about “peo­ple and places, both vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors.” He declined to get more spe­cif­ic.

    Ana­lysts said U.S. offi­cials from the intel­li­gence ser­vices, the Trea­sury Depart­ment and oth­er agen­cies also would like­ly play a role in sift­ing through the infor­ma­tion and ver­i­fy­ing it as they build dossiers of peo­ple they want to hold respon­si­ble for any abus­es.

    Already, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has imposed sanc­tions on Moham­mad Javad Azari Jahro­mi, Iran’s min­is­ter of infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, over the inter­net shut­down. U.S. offi­cials declined to say whom they would sanc­tion next.

    But, telling­ly, the State Department’s “Rewards for Jus­tice” Twit­ter account retweet­ed Dubowitz’s call for them to sanc­tion 10 spe­cif­ic Ira­ni­ans he list­ed. That account’s pinned tweet tells Iran­ian read­ers, in Far­si, “We are wait­ing to hear from you.”

    U.S. offi­cials also won’t say what exact­ly they plan to do to pre­vent an Iran­ian inter­net black­out in the future, although there have been efforts in the past to help Ira­ni­ans evade cen­sors. Some of the Trump administration’s crit­ics, mean­while, argue that U.S. sanc­tions have made it hard­er for Ira­ni­ans to access the tools they need to work around the regime’s infor­ma­tion con­trols.

    Iran’s lead­ers have blamed the Unit­ed States, Israel and oth­er long­time scape­goats for the unrest. Iran’s Supreme Leader Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamenei blamed a “deep-root­ed, wide­spread and very dan­ger­ous” con­spir­a­cy. But the protests have exposed ten­sions among Iran’s rulers, with var­i­ous offi­cials try­ing to dis­tance them­selves from the gas price hike – includ­ing Khamenei, who point­ed out he’s not an expert on petro­le­um pric­ing.

    Ari­ane Tabatabai, an Iran spe­cial­ist at the RAND Cor­po­ra­tion, not­ed that some Iran­ian state media out­lets’ cov­er­age has sim­ply translit­er­at­ed the Eng­lish word “leader” — instead of using a Far­si word, such as “rah­bar” — to ref­er­ence those who direct­ed the protests, anoth­er poten­tial sly way of cast­ing the blame on for­eign­ers.

    Tabatabai said that blame game is one rea­son the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has to be care­ful about its next steps, espe­cial­ly on the mes­sag­ing front. “State­ments – if more of them come – could be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive if they are seen as tak­ing cred­it” for the protests, she said.

    Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, how­ev­er, appear eager to keep speak­ing out. They are weigh­ing hav­ing Pom­peo deliv­er a speech about Iran and human rights in the com­ing days; his top Iran envoy, Bri­an Hook, is also expect­ed to give at least one speech at a think tank. And that’s on top of stepped-up mes­sag­ing on var­i­ous social media plat­forms.

    Many in the admin­is­tra­tion believe Trump’s pre­de­ces­sor, Barack Oba­ma, failed to take advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion in 2009, when Ira­ni­ans demon­strat­ed en masse over the ques­tion­able results of the country’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Oba­ma even­tu­al­ly did speak out in sup­port of the Green Move­ment, so named because it was the col­or of the cam­paign of an oppo­si­tion can­di­date. But many viewed Obama’s sup­port for the pro­test­ers as too late and too meek.

    Part of the rea­son Oba­ma held off on mak­ing tough com­ments was the long-held belief that sup­port­ing Iran’s pro­test­ers would under­mine their cause by link­ing them with the West. Because of the anger spurred in Iran by the U.S. and British role in a 1953 coup there, U.S. offi­cials have long been wary about open­ly align­ing them­selves with pop­u­lar move­ments in Iran.

    But many Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials believe that con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is no longer wise, and that the Iran­ian peo­ple, many of whom are young and know noth­ing beyond the repres­sive rule of the cler­ics, would wel­come out­side help of any kind. They also argue that since the regime is like­ly to blame the Unit­ed States no mat­ter what, the U.S. might as well offer its full-throat­ed sup­port.

    One endur­ing ques­tion is how far Trump him­self wants to go.

    Although the pres­i­dent hap­pi­ly walked away from the Oba­ma-era nuclear deal of 2015 and has raged against Iran’s cler­ics on many occa­sions, he’s been keen on mak­ing a deal with the gov­ern­ment there and averse to a mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion. Dur­ing the U.N. Gen­er­al Assem­bly in Sep­tem­ber, Trump came close to hold­ing a phone con­ver­sa­tion with Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Has­san Rouhani and even worked out a four-point doc­u­ment with his Iran­ian coun­ter­part, only to have the diplo­mat­ic efforts col­lapse and Rouhani fail to answer his call.

    On Tues­day, Trump momen­tar­i­ly sparked con­fu­sion when he said “no” when asked if the U.S. sup­port­ed the Iran­ian pro­test­ers. He lat­er clar­i­fied that he had mis­un­der­stood the ques­tion, appar­ent­ly think­ing it was about whether the U.S. was finan­cial­ly back­ing the protests. He also issued his tweet assert­ing his moral sup­port for the demon­stra­tors.

    But even sup­port­ers of Trump’s max­i­mum pres­sure cam­paign say he can do more than just offer tough talk and sanc­tions if he tru­ly wants the regime to change its behav­ior. Dubowitz said he’d like to see Trump lift – at least in some degree – the trav­el ban he imposed on Ira­ni­ans in his first days in office.

    The ban bars near­ly all Ira­ni­ans from enter­ing the Unit­ed States. Iran­ian-Amer­i­cans com­plain that it has sep­a­rat­ed loved ones and oth­er­wise hurt inno­cent ordi­nary Ira­ni­ans who could have come to love Amer­i­ca and appre­ci­at­ed demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues.

    ...

    ———-

    “Trump team scours intel sent by Ira­ni­ans as it weighs new sanc­tions” by NAHAL TOOSI; Politi­co; 12/03/2019

    The Trump team sees the Iran protests as a sign that its sanc­tions-heavy “max­i­mum pres­sure” cam­paign against Iran is work­ing – fuel­ing dis­sent among ordi­nary Ira­ni­ans who will then pres­sure their lead­ers to spend more at home instead of their nuclear pro­gram or mil­i­tary actions out­side Iran’s bor­ders. The end goal: an Iran less threat­en­ing to the U.S. and its allies.”

    So just a month ago, the Trump team appeared to view its “max­i­mum pres­sure” strat­e­gy of intense sanc­tions as work­ing. Although, giv­en that the mas­sive protests appeared to be large­ly in response to gaso­line price hikes, there remained a ques­tion of whether or not the protests reflect­ed a demand for the end to the Iran­ian theo­crat­ic form of gov­ern­ment or sim­ply a demand for low­er gas prices. The Iran­ian gov­ern­ment blamed the US and Israel for the protests, which was a reminder of the obvi­ous risks of hav­ing the large­ly loathed Trump admin­is­tra­tion get direct­ly involved in advo­cat­ing for the pro­test­ers. And yet it appeared that some on the Trump team were con­vinced that these protests real­ly did rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ty for the kind of pop­u­lar protests that could end up in regime change and open US sup­port for that would make that out­come more like­ly:

    ...
    “If you do dou­ble down on the eco­nom­ic pres­sure, how will the regime respond? You have to be pre­pared for major esca­la­tion,” said Mark Dubowitz, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the Foun­da­tion for Defense of Democ­ra­cies, a hawk­ish think tank close to the admin­is­tra­tion. He stressed that he wants the admin­is­tra­tion to exert more pres­sure.

    A Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, added: “There’s an emerg­ing belief that these protests are not like the oth­ers. More con­vul­sions are com­ing.”

    Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and their allies are aware that protest move­ments can go any num­ber of ways, espe­cial­ly in the Mid­dle East, from help­ing estab­lish still-nascent demo­c­ra­t­ic rule in a place like Tunisia to devolv­ing into a vicious civ­il war in a place like Syr­ia.

    ...

    Just how much these protest move­ments have been fueled by polit­i­cal demands, as opposed to pure­ly eco­nom­ic griev­ances, is the sub­ject of fierce debate among Iran watch­ers.

    ...

    Iran’s lead­ers have blamed the Unit­ed States, Israel and oth­er long­time scape­goats for the unrest. Iran’s Supreme Leader Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamenei blamed a “deep-root­ed, wide­spread and very dan­ger­ous” con­spir­a­cy. But the protests have exposed ten­sions among Iran’s rulers, with var­i­ous offi­cials try­ing to dis­tance them­selves from the gas price hike – includ­ing Khamenei, who point­ed out he’s not an expert on petro­le­um pric­ing.

    Ari­ane Tabatabai, an Iran spe­cial­ist at the RAND Cor­po­ra­tion, not­ed that some Iran­ian state media out­lets’ cov­er­age has sim­ply translit­er­at­ed the Eng­lish word “leader” — instead of using a Far­si word, such as “rah­bar” — to ref­er­ence those who direct­ed the protests, anoth­er poten­tial sly way of cast­ing the blame on for­eign­ers.

    Tabatabai said that blame game is one rea­son the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has to be care­ful about its next steps, espe­cial­ly on the mes­sag­ing front. “State­ments – if more of them come – could be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive if they are seen as tak­ing cred­it” for the protests, she said.

    Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, how­ev­er, appear eager to keep speak­ing out. They are weigh­ing hav­ing Pom­peo deliv­er a speech about Iran and human rights in the com­ing days; his top Iran envoy, Bri­an Hook, is also expect­ed to give at least one speech at a think tank. And that’s on top of stepped-up mes­sag­ing on var­i­ous social media plat­forms.

    Many in the admin­is­tra­tion believe Trump’s pre­de­ces­sor, Barack Oba­ma, failed to take advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion in 2009, when Ira­ni­ans demon­strat­ed en masse over the ques­tion­able results of the country’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Oba­ma even­tu­al­ly did speak out in sup­port of the Green Move­ment, so named because it was the col­or of the cam­paign of an oppo­si­tion can­di­date. But many viewed Obama’s sup­port for the pro­test­ers as too late and too meek.

    Part of the rea­son Oba­ma held off on mak­ing tough com­ments was the long-held belief that sup­port­ing Iran’s pro­test­ers would under­mine their cause by link­ing them with the West. Because of the anger spurred in Iran by the U.S. and British role in a 1953 coup there, U.S. offi­cials have long been wary about open­ly align­ing them­selves with pop­u­lar move­ments in Iran.

    But many Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials believe that con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is no longer wise, and that the Iran­ian peo­ple, many of whom are young and know noth­ing beyond the repres­sive rule of the cler­ics, would wel­come out­side help of any kind. They also argue that since the regime is like­ly to blame the Unit­ed States no mat­ter what, the U.S. might as well offer its full-throat­ed sup­port.
    ...

    So those opti­mists in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion that domes­tic pop­u­lar protests could accom­plish the regime change agen­da have clear­ly been over­ruled. Because, again, it’s hard to imag­ine a move more like­ly to dam­age those protest move­ments than the killing of the high­ly revered Qasem Soleimani. That’s part of what makes his assas­si­na­tion so dis­turb­ing: it was clear fol­low­ing the Trump admin­si­tra­tion’s pull out of the Iran nuclear treaty that regime change is a top pri­or­i­ty, but it was­n’t clear that war was nec­es­sar­i­ly going to be how the Trump admin­is­tra­tion would go about it. And with the “max­i­mum pres­sure” strat­e­gy of extreme sanc­tions, it did seem like foment­ing pop­u­lar protests might actu­al­ly be the strat­e­gy the Trump admin­is­tra­tion was going to fol­low. It was the kind of strat­e­gy that made polit­i­cal sense for a politi­cian who cam­paigned on non-inter­ven­tion­ism and end­ing the US’s for­eign wars. It was a sen­ti­ment Trump reit­er­at­ed in Jan­u­ary of 2019 when he announced that the US must “stop the end­less wars” when he announced that the US had begun the with­draw­al of US troops from Syr­ia. From a crass, cyn­i­cal stand­point, a strat­e­gy of regime change in Iran with­out a war fits Trump’s polit­i­cal brand. But here we are, with Trump sin­gle-hand­ed­ly ensur­ing that pop­u­lar sup­port for the Iran­ian regime is bound to solid­i­fy, leav­ing out­right war as the only real­is­tic option left for accom­plish­ing that regime change agen­da. True to form, Trump is pur­su­ing some­thing that would, in the­o­ry, be great for the world — the col­lapse of a wretched theo­crat­ic regime that real­ly has oppressed its peo­ple and real­ly is a stain on the world stage — in the worst way pos­si­ble. Impos­ing bru­tal sanc­tions in the hopes of starv­ing the pop­u­lace into rebel­lion is a pret­ty awful strat­e­gy, and yet Trump is pur­su­ing an even worse approach. It’s like he’s aller­gic to not being as hor­ri­ble as pos­si­ble.

    It’s worth recall­ing that, back in 2011, Trump repeat­ed­ly claimed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was going to start a war with Iran as a bid to get reelect­ed. Giv­en Trump’s propen­si­ty for pro­jec­tion, it’s not hard to imag­ine that he might imag­ine a war to be polit­i­cal boon for him­self at this point, and yet it’s hard to see how out­right war with Iran real­ly would polit­i­cal­ly help Trump at this point. More wars in the Mid­dle East aren’t exact­ly pop­u­lar with the US pub­lic. And that rais­es the ques­tion: just who is Trump try­ing to appease with this move? Does he think inde­pen­dent vot­ers are going to won over with a war that he clear­ly just start­ed? Is this pri­mar­i­ly being dri­ven by the long-stand­ing war hawk con­tin­gent in DC? Or are the gov­ern­ments of Sau­di Ara­bia, the UAE, and Israel qui­et­ly tempting/threatening Trump into this sit­u­a­tion? Beyond their long-stand­ing desire to see Iran crushed, let’s not for­get that Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s nuclear weapons ambi­tions are poised to get a boost from the this esca­la­tion of con­flict, espe­cial­ly if Iran ends up pulling out of the nuclear treaty entire­ly (only the US pulled out of it) and accel­er­ates its nuclear weapons pro­gram. Let’s also not for­get about the entire unre­solved “Psy Group” sto­ry from 2016, where the crown princes of Sau­di Ara­bia and the UAE offered the ser­vices of an Israeli psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare firm to assist Trump in the elec­tion. Is this, in part, the oblig­at­ed pay back for that assis­tance? And per­haps a pre-pay­ment for 2020 assis­tance from “Emer­da­ta”, the reborn Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca that’s part­ly owned by fig­ures close to the Saud­is and UAE roy­al fam­i­lies? These are some of the ques­tions we have to ask about the motive for this move giv­en that this assas­si­na­tion drone strike appears to have been done at the direc­tive of Trump him­self and the US Con­gress was­n’t involved in this deci­sion. It’s one of the con­se­quences of hav­ing a pres­i­dent who open­ly embraces for­eign emol­u­ments: the US for­eign pol­i­cy is poten­tial­ly up for sale giv­en the near-uni­lat­er­al pow­er the pres­i­dent has on these mat­ters. And then there’s the fact that there’s no rea­son to assume a war with Iran will be lim­it­ed to Iran. So we also need to be ask­ing some ques­tions about the con­se­quences of WWIII at this point too. It’s quite a start to the new decade.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 3, 2020, 2:09 pm
  5. US Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo just again refused to pub­licly pro­vide evi­dence of the “immi­nent threat” to Amer­i­can lives that was the osten­si­ble basis for the drone assas­si­na­tion strike against Iran’s top gen­er­al, Qasem Soleimani. It’s not a good look for Pom­peo. Or Trump. Although not as bad a look as the fol­low­ing arti­cle depicts: accord­ing to Iraq’s prime min­is­ter Adil Abdul-Mah­di, the rea­son Soleimani arrived in Bagh­dad on the day he was hit with the drone strike was to deliv­er a response to a mes­sage that Iraq sent to Iran on behalf of Sau­di Ara­bia about rec­on­cil­ing the two hos­tile nations. In oth­er words, Soleimani was in Bagh­dad under the pre­tens­es of some sort of Iran-Sau­di peace ini­tia­tive:

    The Inde­pen­dent

    The rea­son Qassem Soleimani was in Bagh­dad shows how com­plex the Iran cri­sis is

    The com­man­der is said to have been in Iraq to dis­cuss moves to ease ten­sions between Tehran and Sau­di Ara­bia – some­thing that will have been of inter­est to Wash­ing­ton

    Kim Sen­gup­ta
    Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 7, 2020 17:07

    As part of the incen­di­ary and esca­lat­ing cri­sis sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Qassem Soleimani, there has come an expla­na­tion of why the Iran­ian com­man­der was actu­al­ly in Bagh­dad when he was tar­get­ed by a US mis­sile strike.

    Iraq’s prime min­is­ter revealed that he was due to be meet­ing the Iran­ian com­man­der to dis­cuss moves being made to ease the con­fronta­tion between Shia Iran and Sun­ni Sau­di Ara­bia – the crux of so much of strife in the Mid­dle East and beyond.

    Adil Abdul-Mah­di was quite clear: “I was sup­posed to meet him in the morn­ing the day he was killed, he came to deliv­er a mes­sage from Iran in response to the mes­sage we had deliv­ered from the Saud­is to Iran.”

    The prime min­is­ter also dis­closed that Don­ald Trump had called him to ask him to medi­ate fol­low­ing the attack on the US embassy in Bagh­dad. Accord­ing to Iraqi offi­cials con­tact was made with a num­ber of mili­tias as well as fig­ures in Tehran. The siege of the embassy was lift­ed and the US pres­i­dent per­son­al­ly thanked Abdul-Mah­di for his help.

    There was noth­ing to sug­gest to the Iraqis that it was unsafe for Soleimani to trav­el to Bagh­dad – quite the con­trary. This sug­gests that Trump helped lure the Iran­ian com­man­der to a place where he could be killed. It is pos­si­ble that the pres­i­dent was unaware of the cru­cial role that Soleimani was play­ing in the attempt­ed rap­proche­ment with the Saud­is. Or that he knew but did not care.

    One may even say that it is not in the inter­est of a pres­i­dent who puts so much empha­sis on Amer­i­can arms exports, and whose first offi­cial trip after com­ing to office was a weapons-sell­ing trip to Sau­di Ara­bia – dur­ing which he railed against Iran – to have peace break out between the Ira­ni­ans and the king­dom. But that would be far too cyn­i­cal a thought.

    Abdul-Mah­di spoke of his dis­ap­point­ment that while Trump was express­ing his grat­i­tude over the medi­a­tion, he was also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly plan­ning an attack on Soleimani. That attack took place not long after the tele­phone call from the pres­i­dent.

    There is also the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the US mil­i­tary plan­ners knew noth­ing about the con­ver­sa­tions between Trump and Abdul-Mah­di, and took out Soleimani when the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself.

    There may be cre­dence to this, if one fol­lows the nar­ra­tive which is emerg­ing from defence and intel­li­gence offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton: that the assas­si­na­tion option pre­sent­ed to Trump was bound to be refused, as it had been by his pre­de­ces­sors in the White House. And that there was a des­per­ate scram­ble to track down Soleimani when, much to their shock, Trump ordered the hit.

    The exis­tence of the talks between the Sau­di and the Ira­ni­ans and, more impor­tant­ly, the threat of impend­ing vio­lence, has meant reac­tion in Riyadh at the killing has been marked­ly mut­ed.

    Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, not a stranger to sabre rat­tling, has sent his younger broth­er, deputy defence min­is­ter Khalid bin Salman, to Wash­ing­ton to urge restraint.

    ...

    The Trump admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to insist that Soleimani was killed because he was about to launch an immi­nent ter­ror cam­paign, with­out pro­vid­ing any evi­dence for the asser­tion. There is increas­ing scep­ti­cism about the claim and the ques­tions are not going to go away. There are too many mem­o­ries of Sad­dam Hus­sein and his non-exis­tent WMD arse­nal. The reper­cus­sions from the assas­si­na­tion in Bagh­dad will con­tin­ue for a very long time.
    ———-

    “The rea­son Qassem Soleimani was in Bagh­dad shows how com­plex the Iran cri­sis is” by Kim Sen­gup­ta; The Inde­pen­dent; 01/07/2020

    “Adil Abdul-Mah­di was quite clear: “I was sup­posed to meet him in the morn­ing the day he was killed, he came to deliv­er a mes­sage from Iran in response to the mes­sage we had deliv­ered from the Saud­is to Iran.””

    So did Soleimani show up in Bagh­dad for the pur­pose of low­er­ing ten­sions between Iran and the Saud­is? If so, that’s anoth­er big rea­son this attack should be seen as a means of mak­ing war with Iran inevitable. That’s the mes­sage of the tim­ing of this attack if Soleimani real­ly was there on a peace ini­tia­tive. Espe­cial­ly if Trump had Abdul-Mah­di effec­tive­ly lure him there as Abdul-Mah­di sug­gests:

    ...
    The prime min­is­ter also dis­closed that Don­ald Trump had called him to ask him to medi­ate fol­low­ing the attack on the US embassy in Bagh­dad. Accord­ing to Iraqi offi­cials con­tact was made with a num­ber of mili­tias as well as fig­ures in Tehran. The siege of the embassy was lift­ed and the US pres­i­dent per­son­al­ly thanked Abdul-Mah­di for his help.

    There was noth­ing to sug­gest to the Iraqis that it was unsafe for Soleimani to trav­el to Bagh­dad – quite the con­trary. This sug­gests that Trump helped lure the Iran­ian com­man­der to a place where he could be killed. It is pos­si­ble that the pres­i­dent was unaware of the cru­cial role that Soleimani was play­ing in the attempt­ed rap­proche­ment with the Saud­is. Or that he knew but did not care.

    One may even say that it is not in the inter­est of a pres­i­dent who puts so much empha­sis on Amer­i­can arms exports, and whose first offi­cial trip after com­ing to office was a weapons-sell­ing trip to Sau­di Ara­bia – dur­ing which he railed against Iran – to have peace break out between the Ira­ni­ans and the king­dom. But that would be far too cyn­i­cal a thought.

    Abdul-Mah­di spoke of his dis­ap­point­ment that while Trump was express­ing his grat­i­tude over the medi­a­tion, he was also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly plan­ning an attack on Soleimani. That attack took place not long after the tele­phone call from the pres­i­dent.
    ...

    So future US-backed peace over­tures were dis­cred­it­ed by this drone attack. Again, it’s a bad look. But the fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle makes it look even worse, espe­cial­ly for Mike Pom­peo. Because as chill­ing as the idea is that Trump spon­ta­neous­ly took the option of killing Soleimani that Pen­ta­gon offi­cials pro­vid­ed him, catch­ing every­one off guard, the arti­cle describes a very dif­fer­ent dynam­ic that led to Trump mak­ing that deci­sion: Mike Pomeo and Mike Pence have been push­ing Trump to assas­si­nate Soleimani for months now, and they were final­ly able to con­vince Trump to car­ry it out fol­low­ing the attack on the US embassy in Bagh­dad. Yep, the two chief End Times Chris­t­ian theocrats at the top of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion have been lob­by­ing Trump to set these events in motion for months now. Pom­peo was even described as “morose” when Trump refused to kill Soleimani ear­li­er this year. So it would appear that the pri­ma­ry immi­nent threat avoid­ed by the killing of Soleimani was the immi­nent threat of Mike Pom­peo becom­ing even more morose if Trump refused the attack again:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Killing of Soleimani fol­lows long push from Pom­peo for aggres­sive action against Iran, but airstrike brings seri­ous risks

    By John Hud­son, Josh Dawsey, Shane Har­ris and Dan Lamothe
    Jan. 5, 2020 at 6:00 p.m. CST

    Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo woke on Tues­day to a 4 a.m. call alert­ing him to a large protest out­side the U.S. Embassy in Bagh­dad.

    As demon­stra­tors began hurl­ing molo­tov cock­tails at the heav­i­ly for­ti­fied com­pound, Pom­peo grap­pled with the new secu­ri­ty threat to his diplo­mats in phone calls start­ing at 4:30 a.m. with Defense Sec­re­tary Mark T. Esper, Gen. Mark A. Mil­ley, chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Matthew Tueller, the U.S. ambas­sador to Iraq, accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials.

    The sec­re­tary also spoke to Pres­i­dent Trump mul­ti­ple times every day last week, cul­mi­nat­ing in Trump’s deci­sion to approve the killing of Iran’s top mil­i­tary com­man­der, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at the urg­ing of Pom­peo and Vice Pres­i­dent Pence, the offi­cials said, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss inter­nal delib­er­a­tions.

    Pom­peo had lost a sim­i­lar high-stakes delib­er­a­tion last sum­mer when Trump declined to retal­i­ate mil­i­tar­i­ly against Iran after it downed a U.S. sur­veil­lance drone, an out­come that left Pom­peo “morose,” accord­ing to one U.S. offi­cial. But recent changes to Trump’s nation­al secu­ri­ty team and the whims of a pres­i­dent anx­ious about being viewed as hes­i­tant in the face of Iran­ian aggres­sion cre­at­ed an open­ing for Pom­peo to press for the kind of action he had been advo­cat­ing.

    The green­light­ing of the airstrike near Bagh­dad air­port rep­re­sents a bureau­crat­ic vic­to­ry for Pom­peo, but it also car­ries mul­ti­ple seri­ous risks: anoth­er pro­tract­ed region­al war in the Mid­dle East; retal­ia­to­ry assas­si­na­tions of U.S. per­son­nel sta­tioned around the world; an inter­rup­tion in the bat­tle against the Islam­ic State; the clo­sure of diplo­mat­ic path­ways to con­tain­ing Iran’s nuclear pro­gram; and a major back­lash in Iraq, whose par­lia­ment vot­ed on Sun­day to expel all U.S. troops from the coun­try.

    Iran says it is sus­pend­ing all com­mit­ments to 2015 Iran nuclear deal

    For Pom­peo, whose polit­i­cal ambi­tions are a source of con­stant spec­u­la­tion, the death of U.S. diplo­mats would be par­tic­u­lar­ly dam­ag­ing giv­en his unyield­ing crit­i­cisms of for­mer sec­re­tary of state Hillary Clin­ton fol­low­ing the killing of the U.S. ambas­sador to Libya and oth­er Amer­i­can per­son­nel in Beng­hazi in 2012.

    But none of those con­sid­er­a­tions stopped Pom­peo from push­ing for the tar­get­ed strike, U.S. offi­cials said, under­scor­ing a fix­a­tion on Iran that spans 10 years of gov­ern­ment ser­vice from Con­gress to the CIA to the State Depart­ment.

    “We took a bad guy off the bat­tle­field. We made the right deci­sion,” Pom­peo told CNN. “I’m proud of the effort that Pres­i­dent Trump under­took.”

    Pom­peo first spoke with Trump about killing Soleimani months ago, said a senior U.S. offi­cial, but nei­ther the pres­i­dent nor Pen­ta­gon offi­cials were will­ing to coun­te­nance such an oper­a­tion.

    For more than a year, defense offi­cials warned that the administration’s cam­paign of eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Iran had increased ten­sions with Tehran, requir­ing a big­ger and big­ger share of mil­i­tary resources in the Mid­dle East when many at the Pen­ta­gon want­ed to rede­ploy their fire­pow­er to East Asia.

    Trump, too, sought to draw down from the Mid­dle East as he promised from the open­ing days of his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. But that mind-set shift­ed on Dec. 27 when 30 rock­ets hit a joint U.S.-Iraqi base out­side Kirkuk, killing an Amer­i­can civil­ian con­trac­tor and injur­ing ser­vice mem­bers.

    On Dec. 29, Pom­peo, Esper and Mil­ley trav­eled to the president’s pri­vate club in Flori­da, where the two defense offi­cials pre­sent­ed pos­si­ble respons­es to Iran­ian aggres­sion, includ­ing the option of killing Soleimani, senior U.S. offi­cials said.

    Trump’s deci­sion to tar­get Soleimani came as a sur­prise and a shock to some offi­cials briefed on his deci­sion, giv­en the Pentagon’s long-stand­ing con­cerns about esca­la­tion and the president’s aver­sion to using mil­i­tary force against Iran.

    One sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor was the “lock­step” coor­di­na­tion for the oper­a­tion between Pom­peo and Esper, both grad­u­ates in the same class at the U.S. Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my, who delib­er­at­ed ahead of the brief­ing with Trump, senior U.S. offi­cials said. Pence also endorsed the deci­sion, but he did not attend the meet­ing in Flori­da.

    “Tak­ing out Soleimani would not have hap­pened under [for­mer sec­re­tary of defense Jim] Mat­tis,” said a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial who argued that the Mat­tis Pen­ta­gon was risk-averse. “Mat­tis was opposed to all of this. It’s not a hit on Mat­tis, it’s just his pre­dis­po­si­tion. Mil­ley and Esper are dif­fer­ent. Now you’ve got a cohe­sive nation­al secu­ri­ty team and you’ve got a sec­re­tary of state and defense sec­re­tary who’ve known each oth­er their whole adult lives.”

    ..

    In the days since the strike, Pom­peo has become the voice of the admin­is­tra­tion on the mat­ter, speak­ing to allies and mak­ing the pub­lic case for the oper­a­tion. Trump chose Pom­peo to appear on all of the Sun­day news shows because he “sticks to the line” and “nev­er gives an inch,” an admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said.

    But crit­ics inside and out­side the admin­is­tra­tion have ques­tioned Pompeo’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the strike based on his claims that “dozens if not hun­dreds” of Amer­i­can lives were at risk.

    Law­mak­ers left clas­si­fied brief­in­gs with U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials on Fri­day say­ing they heard noth­ing to sug­gest that the threat posed by the proxy forces guid­ed by Soleimani had changed sub­stan­tial­ly in recent months.

    When repeat­ed­ly pressed on Sun­day about the immi­nent nature of the threats, whether it was days or weeks away, or whether they had been foiled by the U.S. airstrike, Pom­peo dis­missed the ques­tions.

    “If you’re an Amer­i­can in the region, days and weeks — this is not some­thing that’s rel­e­vant,” Pom­peo told CNN.

    Some defense offi­cials said Pompeo’s claims of an immi­nent and direct threat were over­stat­ed, and they would pre­fer that he make the case based on the killing of the Amer­i­can con­trac­tor and pre­vi­ous Iran­ian provo­ca­tions.

    Crit­ics have also ques­tioned how an immi­nent attack would be foiled by killing Soleimani, who would not have car­ried out the strike him­self.

    “If the attack was going to take place when Soleimani was alive, it is dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend why it wouldn’t take place now that he is dead,” said Robert Mal­ley, the pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Cri­sis Group and a for­mer Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial.

    Fol­low­ing the strike, Pom­peo has held back-to-back phone calls with his coun­ter­parts around the globe but has received a chilly recep­tion from Euro­pean allies, many of whom fear that the attack puts their embassies in Iran and Iraq in jeop­ardy and has now elim­i­nat­ed the chance to keep a lid on Iran’s nuclear pro­gram.

    “We have wok­en up to a more dan­ger­ous world,” said France’s Europe min­is­ter, Amelie de Montchalin.

    Two Euro­pean diplo­mats famil­iar with the calls said Pom­peo expect­ed Euro­pean lead­ers to cham­pi­on the U.S. strike pub­licly even though they were nev­er con­sult­ed on the deci­sion.

    “The U.S. has not helped the Iran sit­u­a­tion, and now they want every­one to cheer­lead this,” one diplo­mat said.

    “Our posi­tion over the past few years has been about defend­ing the JCPOA,” said the diplo­mat, refer­ring to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

    On Sun­day, Iran announced that it was sus­pend­ing all lim­its of the nuclear deal, includ­ing on ura­ni­um enrich­ment, research and devel­op­ment, and enlarg­ing its stock­pile of nuclear fuel. Britain, France and Ger­many, as well as Rus­sia and Chi­na, were orig­i­nal sig­na­to­ries of that deal with the Unit­ed States and Iran, and all opposed Trump’s deci­sion to with­draw from the pact.

    “No one trusts what Trump will do next, so it’s hard to get behind this,” said the Euro­pean diplo­mat.

    Pom­peo has slapped back at U.S. allies, say­ing “the Brits, the French, the Ger­mans all need to under­stand that what we did — what the Amer­i­cans did — saved lives in Europe as well,” he told Fox News.

    Israel has stood out in emphat­i­cal­ly cheer­ing the Soleimani oper­a­tion, with Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu prais­ing Trump for “act­ing swift­ly, force­ful­ly and deci­sive­ly.”

    “Israel stands with the Unit­ed States in its just strug­gle for peace, secu­ri­ty and self-defense,” he said.

    Since his time as CIA direc­tor, Pom­peo has forged a friend­ship with Yos­si Cohen, the direc­tor of the Israeli intel­li­gence ser­vice Mossad, said a per­son famil­iar with their meet­ings. The men have spo­ken about the threat posed by Iran to both Israel and the Unit­ed States. In a pre­scient inter­view in Octo­ber, Cohen said Soleimani “knows per­fect­ly well that his elim­i­na­tion is not impos­si­ble.”

    Though Democ­rats have greet­ed the strike with skep­ti­cism, Repub­li­can lead­ers, who have long viewed Pom­peo as a reas­sur­ing voice in the admin­is­tra­tion, uni­form­ly praised the deci­sion as the erad­i­ca­tion of a ter­ror­ist who direct­ed the killing of U.S. sol­diers in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led inva­sion.

    “Soleimani made it his life’s work to take the Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ary call for death to Amer­i­ca and death to Israel and turn them into action,” Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) said.

    A crit­i­cal moment for Pom­peo is near­ing as he faces grow­ing ques­tions about a poten­tial Sen­ate run, though some GOP insid­ers say that deci­sion seems to have stalled. Pom­peo has kept in touch with Ward Bak­er, a polit­i­cal con­sul­tant who would prob­a­bly lead the oper­a­tion, and oth­ers in McConnell’s orbit, about a bid. But Pom­peo hasn’t com­mit­ted one way or the oth­er, peo­ple famil­iar with the con­ver­sa­tions said.

    Some peo­ple close to the sec­re­tary say he has mixed feel­ings about becom­ing a rel­a­tive­ly junior sen­a­tor from Kansas after lead­ing the State Depart­ment and CIA, but there is lit­tle doubt in Pompeo’s home state that he could win.

    At every step of his gov­ern­ment career, Pom­peo has tried to stake out a max­i­mal­ist posi­tion on Iran that has made him pop­u­lar among two crit­i­cal pro-Israel con­stituen­cies in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics: con­ser­v­a­tive Jew­ish donors and Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cals.

    After Trump tapped Pom­peo to lead the CIA, Pom­peo quick­ly set up an Iran Mis­sion Cen­ter at the agency to focus intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing efforts and oper­a­tions, ele­vat­ing Iran’s impor­tance as an intel­li­gence tar­get.

    At the State Depart­ment, he is a vora­cious con­sumer of diplo­mat­ic notes and report­ing on Iran, and he places the coun­try far above oth­er geopo­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic hot spots in the world.

    “If it’s about Iran, he will read it,” said one diplo­mat, refer­ring to the mas­sive flow of paper that cross­es Pompeo’s desk. “If it’s not, good luck.”

    ———–

    “Killing of Soleimani fol­lows long push from Pom­peo for aggres­sive action against Iran, but airstrike brings seri­ous risks” by John Hud­son, Josh Dawsey, Shane Har­ris and Dan Lamothe; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 01/05/2020

    “The sec­re­tary also spoke to Pres­i­dent Trump mul­ti­ple times every day last week, cul­mi­nat­ing in Trump’s deci­sion to approve the killing of Iran’s top mil­i­tary com­man­der, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at the urg­ing of Pom­peo and Vice Pres­i­dent Pence, the offi­cials said, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss inter­nal delib­er­a­tions.”

    The drone strike was approved “at the urg­ing of Pom­peo and Vice Pres­i­dent Pence.” That sure does­n’t sound like Trump’s deci­sion to take the most extreme option pre­sent­ed to him by the Pen­ta­gon was a big sur­prise. Espe­cial­ly since it was Mike Pom­peo, along with Defense Sec­re­tary Mark Esper and chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark A. Mil­ley who per­son­al­ly pre­sent­ed those options to Trump and Pom­peo had been push­ing for this for months. It also could­n’t have been very sur­pris­ing giv­en the fact that Mike Pom­peo appears to have been per­son­al­ly obsessed with Iran since becom­ing Sec­re­tary of State. The writ­ing has been on the wall for while now:

    ...
    Pom­peo had lost a sim­i­lar high-stakes delib­er­a­tion last sum­mer when Trump declined to retal­i­ate mil­i­tar­i­ly against Iran after it downed a U.S. sur­veil­lance drone, an out­come that left Pom­peo “morose,” accord­ing to one U.S. offi­cial. But recent changes to Trump’s nation­al secu­ri­ty team and the whims of a pres­i­dent anx­ious about being viewed as hes­i­tant in the face of Iran­ian aggres­sion cre­at­ed an open­ing for Pom­peo to press for the kind of action he had been advo­cat­ing.

    ...

    Pom­peo first spoke with Trump about killing Soleimani months ago, said a senior U.S. offi­cial, but nei­ther the pres­i­dent nor Pen­ta­gon offi­cials were will­ing to coun­te­nance such an oper­a­tion.

    ...

    On Dec. 29, Pom­peo, Esper and Mil­ley trav­eled to the president’s pri­vate club in Flori­da, where the two defense offi­cials pre­sent­ed pos­si­ble respons­es to Iran­ian aggres­sion, includ­ing the option of killing Soleimani, senior U.S. offi­cials said.

    Trump’s deci­sion to tar­get Soleimani came as a sur­prise and a shock to some offi­cials briefed on his deci­sion, giv­en the Pentagon’s long-stand­ing con­cerns about esca­la­tion and the president’s aver­sion to using mil­i­tary force against Iran.

    One sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor was the “lock­step” coor­di­na­tion for the oper­a­tion between Pom­peo and Esper, both grad­u­ates in the same class at the U.S. Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my, who delib­er­at­ed ahead of the brief­ing with Trump, senior U.S. offi­cials said. Pence also endorsed the deci­sion, but he did not attend the meet­ing in Flori­da.

    “Tak­ing out Soleimani would not have hap­pened under [for­mer sec­re­tary of defense Jim] Mat­tis,” said a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial who argued that the Mat­tis Pen­ta­gon was risk-averse. “Mat­tis was opposed to all of this. It’s not a hit on Mat­tis, it’s just his pre­dis­po­si­tion. Mil­ley and Esper are dif­fer­ent. Now you’ve got a cohe­sive nation­al secu­ri­ty team and you’ve got a sec­re­tary of state and defense sec­re­tary who’ve known each oth­er their whole adult lives.”

    ...

    At every step of his gov­ern­ment career, Pom­peo has tried to stake out a max­i­mal­ist posi­tion on Iran that has made him pop­u­lar among two crit­i­cal pro-Israel con­stituen­cies in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics: con­ser­v­a­tive Jew­ish donors and Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cals.

    After Trump tapped Pom­peo to lead the CIA, Pom­peo quick­ly set up an Iran Mis­sion Cen­ter at the agency to focus intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing efforts and oper­a­tions, ele­vat­ing Iran’s impor­tance as an intel­li­gence tar­get.

    At the State Depart­ment, he is a vora­cious con­sumer of diplo­mat­ic notes and report­ing on Iran, and he places the coun­try far above oth­er geopo­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic hot spots in the world.

    “If it’s about Iran, he will read it,” said one diplo­mat, refer­ring to the mas­sive flow of paper that cross­es Pompeo’s desk. “If it’s not, good luck.”
    ...

    Yes, Mike Pom­peo had been lob­by­ing for this deci­sion for months and he was one of the three peo­ple who pre­sent­ed Trump with the list of options when he made this deci­sion. And one of the oth­er fig­ures present was Mark Esper, a long-time asso­ciate of Pom­peo who is described as being in “lock­step” with Pom­peo. So based on these anony­mous sources who are famil­iar with how Trump made this deci­sion, it was­n’t just ran­dom Trumpian pique that led to this. It was Mike Pom­peo. With the lat­er endorse­ment of Mike Pence. In oth­er words, the world should­n’t be wor­ried about Trump acci­den­tal­ly get­ting the US into WWIII. The con­cern should be over Trump car­ry­ing out an exist­ing plan to get the US into WWIII that was hand­ed to him by the chief apoc­a­lyp­tic war­mon­gers in his admin­is­tra­tion, which is a much scari­er sce­nario than ran­dom Trump pique. It’s a reminder that while Trump’s impul­sive­ness is cer­tain­ly a rea­son to view the man as unfit for office, the fact that he sur­rounds him­self with apoc­a­lyp­tic war­mon­gers and prone to being influ­enced by them is a big­ger rea­son to view him as unfit.
    So what did Pom­peo and Esper argue this time that con­vinced to go through with the assas­si­na­tion plan? We have no idea at this point. But here’s an arti­cle from back in March of 2019, right after Trump decid­ed to rec­og­nize Israel’s sov­er­eign over the Golan Heights, describ­ing how Pom­peo was open­ly talk­ing to the Chris­t­ian Broad­cast­ing Net­work about the idea that Trump is being direct­ed by God, which is pre­sum­ably some­thing Trump likes to hear. So we prob­a­bly should­n’t be super sur­prised if it turns out Pom­peo’s per­sua­sion was root­ed in con­vinc­ing Trump that he will be seen as a ves­sel of God if he car­ries out this drone strike since he’s already been mak­ing those kinds of argu­ments pub­licly:

    Politi­co

    Pom­peo says ‘it’s pos­si­ble’ Trump was sent to save the Jew­ish peo­ple

    By REBECCA MORIN
    03/22/2019 02:58 PM EDT

    Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo on Thurs­day said “it’s pos­si­ble” that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump was sent to pro­tect the Jew­ish peo­ple from the threat of Iran.

    Dur­ing an inter­view with Pom­peo broad­cast on the Chris­t­ian Broad­cast­ing Net­work, Mid­dle East bureau chief Chris Mitchell not­ed that Wednes­day and Thurs­day marked the cel­e­bra­tion of Purim, which is derived from the sto­ry of Queen Esther, who in the Hebrew Bible was mar­ried to a Per­sian king and saved thou­sands of Jews from being killed.

    “Could it be that Pres­i­dent Trump right now has been sort of raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jew­ish peo­ple from the Iran­ian men­ace?” Mitchell asked Pom­peo.

    “As a Chris­t­ian, I cer­tain­ly believe that’s pos­si­ble,” Pom­peo, who was vis­it­ing Israel, replied.

    “It was remark­able — so we were down in the tun­nels where we could see 3,000 years ago, and 2,000 years ago — if I have the his­to­ry just right — to see the remark­able his­to­ry of the faith in this place and the work that our administration’s done to make sure that this democ­ra­cy in the Mid­dle East, that this Jew­ish state remains,” he said.

    “I am con­fi­dent that the Lord is at work here,” Pom­peo con­clud­ed.

    The com­ments came after Trump announced the U.S. will rec­og­nize Israel’s sov­er­eign­ty over the Golan Heights region, which was part of Syr­ia until the Six-Day War in 1967.

    Israel Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu on Thurs­day called the Unit­ed States’ recog­ni­tion a “Purim mir­a­cle,” the CBN report­ed.

    ...

    ———-

    “Pom­peo says ‘it’s pos­si­ble’ Trump was sent to save the Jew­ish peo­ple” by REBECCA MORIN; Politi­co; 03/22/2019

    ““I am con­fi­dent that the Lord is at work here,” Pom­peo con­clud­ed.”

    Lord is at work here. Via Trump. That was the mes­sage from Mike Pom­peo on tele­vi­sion less than a year ago. And don’t for­get that Queen Esther isn’t the only Bib­li­cal fig­ure Trump’s sup­port­ers com­pare him to, with King Cyrus being anoth­er favorite (because it helps excuse his un-Chris­t­ian past and lifestyle). Might there have been some Esther or Cyrus ref­er­ences dur­ing that fate­ful meet­ing in late Decem­ber? Who knows, but it’s pret­ty clear at this point that the assas­si­na­tion of Soleimani was some­thing that’s been on Pom­peo’s mind for quite while. Which implies Pom­peo’s got plans for the rest of the steps nec­es­sary to bring the US into a full-scale war with Iran also in mind right now. Maybe Trump has already heard those plans or maybe not. But he will even­tu­al­ly. So as this dis­as­ter plays out, it’s going to be worth keep­ing a close eye on Pom­peo’s lev­els of morose­ness because a morose­less Pom­peo is clear­ly an inter­na­tion­al red alert sit­u­a­tion at this point.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 7, 2020, 3:02 pm
  6. Now that we’ve seen an ini­tial response from Iran fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion drone strike of Qasem Soleimani, and it appears to have been cal­cu­lat­ed to avoid US casu­al­ties and not give the Trump admin­is­tra­tion an excuse to esca­late the hos­til­i­ties, the issue of whether or not Mike Pom­peo is the pri­ma­ry dri­ving force for this push to war is only going to become more impor­tant as this plays out. After all, while Trump has a polit­i­cal incen­tive to avoid a full blown war head­ing into a reelec­tion, Pom­peo does­n’t have those same con­sid­er­a­tions. So along those lines, here’s a pair of arti­cles from ear­li­er in 2019 that give us an idea of the broad­er plans Mike Pom­peo has in mind for the Mid­dle East. The arti­cles also high­light how Pom­peo’s plans regard­ing Iran has been lead­ing to fric­tions between the State Depart­ment and oth­er agen­cies like the Pen­ta­gon and CIA. Over­all, they paint a pic­ture where this pol­i­cy of mov­ing towards war with Iran real­ly is being heav­i­ly dri­ven by Pom­peo alone. In oth­er words, Pom­peo is like some sort of Iran-hawk-extrem­ists, because he’s even more hawk­ish than the rest of US gov­ern­ment.

    Ok, first, here’s an arti­cle from almost exact­ly a year ago. It describes a Mid­dle East ‘anti-Iran’ tour that Pom­peo was in the mid­dle of at the time and the dif­fi­cul­ties he was fac­ing in putting togeth­er a kind of ‘Arab NATO’ mil­i­tary coali­tion of Mid­dle East nations focused on oppos­ing Iran in the region. That sure sounds like the build up for a planned mul­ti-nation inva­sion of Iran.

    But this mil­i­tary coali­tion would­n’t just be focused on Iran. Pom­peo also envi­sioned it mov­ing into North East Syr­ia fol­low­ing the pull back of US forces there. And it would have poten­tial­ly fight the var­i­ous Iran­ian-backed mili­tias oper­at­ing in the region. In oth­er words, the ‘Arab NATO’ would real­ly be a ‘Sun­ni Arab NATO’ focused on attack­ing Shia forces in the region. Keep in mind that the drone strike that killed Soleimani also killed Iraqi mili­tia leader Abu Mah­di al-Muhan­dis, the deputy com­man­der of the Pop­u­lar Mobi­liza­tion Forces. So the killing of Abu Mah­di al-Muhan­dis was was con­sis­tent with this broad­er agen­da by Pom­peo to cre­ate a Mid­dle East NATO focused on fight­ing Iran and any group asso­ci­at­ed with Iran. A broad­er agen­da that Pom­peo was not at all suc­ceed­ing at imple­ment­ing this time last year:

    The New York Times

    Pompeo’s Anti-Iran Tour Faces Obsta­cles of a Frac­tious Mid­dle East

    By Edward Wong and Ben Hub­bard
    Jan. 14, 2019

    RIYADH, Sau­di Ara­bia — In a barn­storm­ing tour that took him to eight coun­tries in one week, Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo burned with one cen­tral mes­sage: “The need to counter the great­est threat of all in the Mid­dle East, the Iran­ian regime and its cam­paigns of ter­ror­ism and destruc­tion,” as he put it in Cairo on Thurs­day.

    Jet­ting from cap­i­tal to cap­i­tal, meet­ing with kings, princes and pres­i­dents, his goal was to get Arab coun­tries to work togeth­er to roll back Iran­ian influ­ence in the region and take on the mili­tias Iran is back­ing.

    But as the trip drew to a close on Mon­day, it was unclear whether he had made any notable progress on that front. The obsta­cles toward build­ing such a coali­tion are for­mi­da­ble.

    In prac­tice, it will be dif­fi­cult for the Arab nations to work close­ly togeth­er on anti-Iran poli­cies because of the com­plex­i­ty of rela­tion­ships in the region, offi­cials and ana­lysts from those coun­tries say. The Iran­ian-backed mili­tias Mr. Pom­peo wants to rein in vary wide­ly and would resist a one-size-fits all solu­tion: Hezbol­lah is amajor force in the gov­ern­ment of Lebanon, the groups in Syr­ia work most­ly apart from one anoth­er in the war zone, and those in Iraq have great influ­ence in the oil-rich south.

    Amer­i­can offi­cials have had dif­fi­cul­ty coor­di­nat­ing their own anti-Iran pol­i­cy beyond eco­nom­ic sanc­tions, which Mr. Trump imposed in Novem­ber after with­draw­ing from a nuclear arms agree­ment that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and oth­er gov­ern­ments had reached with Iran.

    Against the wish­es of all his top nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials, Mr. Trumpdecid­ed last month to with­draw about 2,000 Amer­i­can troops from east­ern Syr­ia, which would cede any lever­age the Amer­i­cans had to lim­it the pres­ence of Iran­ian forces and Iran­ian-backed mili­tias there — pre­cise­ly the goal that Mr. Pom­peo was ask­ing Arab part­ners to take up across the region.

    And Mr. Pom­peo offered no expla­na­tion of how he expect­ed oth­er coun­tries to do the job.

    When asked Mon­day what the Unit­ed States want­ed Arab nations to do to get rid of the mili­tias, Mr. Pom­peo did not give spe­cif­ic answers.

    He said Iran aimed to dom­i­nate “five cap­i­tals,” a ref­er­ence to the gov­ern­ment seats of Iraq, Lebanon, Syr­ia, Yemen and Iran itself.

    “And our effort is to make sure that the Iran­ian peo­ple get con­trol of their cap­i­tal, and that it becomes a nation that is nor­mal and isn’t con­duct­ing ter­ror cam­paigns that are unri­valed any­place else in the world,” he said.

    In gen­er­al, Mr. Pompeo’s mes­sage was well received among Sun­ni Arab lead­ers. They tend to con­sid­er Iran, a Shi­ite Per­sian nation, to be a threat.

    “We all have prob­lems with Iran’s expan­sion­ist poli­cies in the region,” Jordan’s for­eign min­is­ter, Ayman Safa­di, said in a news con­fer­ence with Mr. Pom­peo in Amman last week. “All Arab coun­tries, and I think the Unit­ed States too, would want healthy rela­tions based on the prin­ci­ple of non­in­ter­ven­tion in the inter­nal affairs of the oth­er, and respect­ing the sov­er­eign­ty of oth­er coun­tries.”

    In Cairo, Mr. Pom­peo said that Egypt, Oman, Kuwait and Jor­dan had been “instru­men­tal in thwart­ing Iran’s efforts to evade sanc­tions.” And he said that Bahrain was work­ing to com­bat Iran’s “illic­it mar­itime activ­i­ties” in the region.

    Mr. Pom­peo has not yet pro­posed that Arab nations out­side the war zones send troops to fight the mili­tias, though he has left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the Unit­ed States help­ing piece togeth­er an Arab mil­i­tary coali­tion to move into north­east­ern Syr­ia as the Unit­ed States with­draws.

    In any case, troop deploy­ments could prove to be as inef­fec­tive as they have been in Yemen. Since 2015, Sau­di Ara­bia, one of the world’s largest spenders on mil­i­tary hard­ware,has failed to oust Houthi rebels who are aligned with Iran from the cap­i­tal of Yemen, the Arab world’s poor­est state. The fight­inghas result­ed in the world’s worst human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis.

    The cre­ation of a uni­fied Arab coali­tion against Iran would require resolv­ing many polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary issues among Arab coun­tries.

    “If you are talk­ing about coor­di­na­tion in cer­tain areas, that is already tak­ing place, but if you want to cre­ate a mil­i­tary alliance, an Arab NATO, I think it’s a non­starter,” said Mar­wan Muash­er, the vice pres­i­dent for stud­ies at the Carnegie Endow­ment for Inter­na­tion­al Peace and a for­mer for­eign min­is­ter of Jor­dan. “The ingre­di­ents are not there.”

    He cit­ed a num­ber of fac­tors: dis­putes between states like Sau­di Ara­bia and Qatar, the inabil­i­ty to inte­grate Arab armies, the lack of any kind of unit­ed com­mand struc­ture and the fact that not all of the Unit­ed States’ Arab allies view Iran at the same lev­el of threat.

    “I also don’t see a small coun­try like Jor­dan, with lim­it­ed resources, par­tic­i­pat­ing in a mil­i­tary alliance,” Mr. Muash­er said. “Iran is not seen in a good light among many of the coun­tries of the region, but that is dif­fer­ent from par­tic­i­pat­ing in a mil­i­tary alliance against it. I don’t think this is an idea that will gain a lot of trac­tion in coun­tries oth­er than Sau­di Ara­bia.”

    Sau­di Ara­bia and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates are lead­ing the anti-Iran charge in the region. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Sau­di Ara­bia has com­pared Iran’s supreme leader to Hitler and even threat­ened to incite vio­lence inside of Iran. This has made him the go-to part­ner for the Iran hard-lin­ers in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Prince Mohammed has also led a qui­et détente between his king­dom and Israel, which, like Sau­di Ara­bia, views Iran as an arch­en­e­my.

    Many coun­tries in the region do see Iran as a foe, but some, like Egypt and Jor­dan, do not feel direct­ly threat­ened by it and would be hes­i­tant to risk con­fronting it. Small­er Gulf states, like Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, main­tain diplo­mat­ic and trade ties with Iran and would be unlike­ly to join in hos­til­i­ties against it.

    Iraq, how­ev­er, is dom­i­nat­ed by Shi­ite Arabs and shares a long bor­der and deep cul­tur­al, reli­gious and polit­i­cal ties with Iran.

    Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have insist­ed to Iraqi lead­ers that they begin sev­er­ing eco­nom­ic ties to Iran, and have urged Sau­di Ara­bia and oth­er Arab nations to help improve Iraq’s econ­o­my.

    “There are lots of eco­nom­ic things we might do to assist Iraq get­ting back on its feet, which will per­mit them to be more inde­pen­dent, have more con­trol, be more sov­er­eign,” Mr. Pom­peo said Mon­day.

    But while the Iraqi gov­ern­ment has tak­en steps to loosen itself from Iran’s tight embrace, it has shown no incli­na­tion to oppose it.

    “Iraq is not a part of the Amer­i­can sanc­tions sys­tem and Iraq is not a part of the sys­tem of attack­ing any state,” Prime Min­is­ter Adel Abdul Mah­di said in Novem­ber.

    Mowaf­fak al-Rubaie, a for­mer Iraqi nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, said that Mr. Pom­peo had “tun­nel vision” when it came to the Mid­dle East.

    “There are a lot of oth­er prob­lems than Iran, but they are obsessed with Iran,” he said. “If two fish fight in the Tigris Riv­er, it is because of Iran.”

    He said Iraq, which waged a long war against Iran in the 1980s and has fought sev­er­al wars since, had no inter­est in join­ing anoth­er one.

    “I don’t want to be a vic­tim of Amer­i­ca ver­sus Iran or Sau­di Ara­bia ver­sus Iran,” he said. “I don’t get any­thing out of that.”

    Nabil Fah­my, a for­mer Egypt­ian for­eign min­is­ter, said that he and many in the Arab world agreed that region­al coun­tries should play a greater role in ensur­ing broad sta­bil­i­ty. But it will take time for indi­vid­ual Arab coun­tries to devel­op their own mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties as well as some sort of mech­a­nism to allow dif­fer­ent states to work togeth­er.

    “You build your mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal capac­i­ty grad­u­al­ly and you do that with your friends pro­vid­ing sup­port in the mean­time,” he said. “In the absence of that, who will have instant capa­bil­i­ties or bear the para­mount, sin­gu­lar respon­si­bil­i­ty of putting troops in harm’s way and boots on the ground?”

    ...

    ————
    “Pompeo’s Anti-Iran Tour Faces Obsta­cles of a Frac­tious Mid­dle East” by Edward Wong and Ben Hub­bard; The New York Times; 01/14/2019

    “If you are talk­ing about coor­di­na­tion in cer­tain areas, that is already tak­ing place, but if you want to cre­ate a mil­i­tary alliance, an Arab NATO, I think it’s a non­starter,” said Mar­wan Muash­er, the vice pres­i­dent for stud­ies at the Carnegie Endow­ment for Inter­na­tion­al Peace and a for­mer for­eign min­is­ter of Jor­dan. “The ingre­di­ents are not there.””

    Yep, there’s going to be no short­age of rea­sons putting togeth­er an ‘Arab NATO’, start­ing with the fact that Sau­di Ara­bia and the UAE are the only two coun­tries that appear to be on board with the idea:

    ...
    He cit­ed a num­ber of fac­tors: dis­putes between states like Sau­di Ara­bia and Qatar, the inabil­i­ty to inte­grate Arab armies, the lack of any kind of unit­ed com­mand struc­ture and the fact that not all of the Unit­ed States’ Arab allies view Iran at the same lev­el of threat.

    “I also don’t see a small coun­try like Jor­dan, with lim­it­ed resources, par­tic­i­pat­ing in a mil­i­tary alliance,” Mr. Muash­er said. “Iran is not seen in a good light among many of the coun­tries of the region, but that is dif­fer­ent from par­tic­i­pat­ing in a mil­i­tary alliance against it. I don’t think this is an idea that will gain a lot of trac­tion in coun­tries oth­er than Sau­di Ara­bia.”

    Sau­di Ara­bia and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates are lead­ing the anti-Iran charge in the region. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Sau­di Ara­bia has com­pared Iran’s supreme leader to Hitler and even threat­ened to incite vio­lence inside of Iran. This has made him the go-to part­ner for the Iran hard-lin­ers in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Prince Mohammed has also led a qui­et détente between his king­dom and Israel, which, like Sau­di Ara­bia, views Iran as an arch­en­e­my.

    Many coun­tries in the region do see Iran as a foe, but some, like Egypt and Jor­dan, do not feel direct­ly threat­ened by it and would be hes­i­tant to risk con­fronting it. Small­er Gulf states, like Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, main­tain diplo­mat­ic and trade ties with Iran and would be unlike­ly to join in hos­til­i­ties against it.
    ...

    And then there’s the fact the Iraq is a major­i­ty Shia coun­try with exten­sive ties to Iran. So try­ing to get Iraq on board with join­ing a mil­i­tary coali­tion against Iran is basi­cal­ly a non-starter:

    ...
    Iraq, how­ev­er, is dom­i­nat­ed by Shi­ite Arabs and shares a long bor­der and deep cul­tur­al, reli­gious and polit­i­cal ties with Iran.

    Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have insist­ed to Iraqi lead­ers that they begin sev­er­ing eco­nom­ic ties to Iran, and have urged Sau­di Ara­bia and oth­er Arab nations to help improve Iraq’s econ­o­my.

    “There are lots of eco­nom­ic things we might do to assist Iraq get­ting back on its feet, which will per­mit them to be more inde­pen­dent, have more con­trol, be more sov­er­eign,” Mr. Pom­peo said Mon­day.

    But while the Iraqi gov­ern­ment has tak­en steps to loosen itself from Iran’s tight embrace, it has shown no incli­na­tion to oppose it.

    “Iraq is not a part of the Amer­i­can sanc­tions sys­tem and Iraq is not a part of the sys­tem of attack­ing any state,” Prime Min­is­ter Adel Abdul Mah­di said in Novem­ber.
    ...

    So that was how Mike Pom­peo’s anti-Iran agen­da was going in Jan­u­ary of 2019. Next, here’s an arti­cle from March of 2019 about how Pom­peo was ratch­et­ing up pres­sure on Iraq to active­ly weak­en the Iran­ian-backed Shi­ite mili­tias oper­at­ing in the coun­try. Pom­peo was push­ing a plan that would not only des­ig­nate Iran’s Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards Corps as a for­eign ter­ror­ist organ­za­tion, but would also poten­tial­ly make the same des­ig­na­tion for Iraq’s Shia mili­tias like the Pop­u­lar Mobi­liza­tion Forces umbrel­la group. As a result, these mili­tia mem­bers, and Iraqi offi­cials who sup­port them, would be sub­ject to new eco­nom­ic sanc­tions and trav­el restric­tions. As the arti­cle notes, one sig­nif­i­cant com­pli­ca­tion in declar­ing these mili­tias ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions is that some of them are already legit­i­mate play­ers in Iraq’s pol­i­tics, with mem­bers elect­ed to par­lia­ment. And these demands are on top of Trump admin­is­tra­tion demands that Iraq cut eco­nom­ic ties with Iran as a result of the reim­po­si­tion of US sanc­tions fol­low­ing Trump’s pull­out of the Iran nuclear agree­ment. It’s all part of the con­text of the par­lia­men­tary vote to kick US forces out of Iraq fol­low­ing the drone strike: it was a drone strike that also killed the leader of one of the top Iraqi mili­tia umbrel­la groups that the US had already been pres­sur­ing Iraq to cut ties with:

    The New York Times

    U.S. Pres­sures Iraq Over Embrace of Mili­tias Linked to Iran

    By Edward Wong and Eric Schmitt
    March 19, 2019

    KUWAIT CITY — The Unit­ed States’ attempts to iso­late Iran, includ­ing by pun­ish­ing Iraqi mili­tias and politi­cians who are sup­port­ed by Iran­ian offi­cials, has deep­ened ten­sions not only between Wash­ing­ton and Bagh­dad but also with­in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence offi­cials said the increas­ing pres­sure on Iraq risks infu­ri­at­ing its Par­lia­ment, includ­ing politi­cians linked to Iran, which could lim­it the move­ments of the 5,200 Unit­ed States troops based in Iraq.

    Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, whose con­fronta­tion­al stand on Iran has already strained ties with Euro­pean allies, is lead­ing the push for Iraq to con­front its fel­low Shi­ite-major­i­ty neigh­bor. He arrived in the Mid­dle East on Tues­day to speak with offi­cials in Kuwait, Israel and Lebanon about con­tain­ing Iran.

    Under plans rec­om­mend­ed by Mr. Pom­peo and some White House offi­cials, the State Depart­ment would des­ig­nate Iran’s mil­i­tary Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards Corps as a for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. It would be a first instance of the Unit­ed States des­ig­nat­ing a unit of anoth­er government’s mil­i­tary as a ter­ror­ist group. Amer­i­can offi­cials said it could put Unit­ed States troops and intel­li­gence offi­cers at risk of sim­i­lar actions by for­eign gov­ern­ments.

    The plans also would des­ig­nate some Iraqi Shi­ite mili­tias as for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. As a result, the Iran­ian-trained mili­tias — and Iraqi offi­cials who sup­port them — would be sub­ject to new eco­nom­ic sanc­tions and trav­el restric­tions.

    The pro­pos­al was described to The New York Times on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty by a half-dozen Amer­i­can and Iraqi offi­cials and experts famil­iar with the sen­si­tive diplo­mat­ic plans but not autho­rized to dis­cuss them by name.

    Mr. Pom­peo con­firmed Mon­day night that he was look­ing at var­i­ous groups, includ­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards in Iran, after he was asked by The Times on the flight to Kuwait about the pro­posed des­ig­na­tions.

    “There may well be oth­er orga­ni­za­tions that we des­ig­nate,” he said. The State Depart­ment des­ig­nat­ed an Iraqi group as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion this month, despite oppo­si­tion from the Pen­ta­gon.

    The Iraqi mili­tias — some of which were trained by the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards — oper­ate with Baghdad’s approval or finan­cial sup­port. Sev­er­al are legit­i­mate play­ers in Iraqi pol­i­tics. They are part of the Pop­u­lar Mobi­liza­tion Forces, an umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion of about 50 para­mil­i­tary groups that fought against the Islam­ic State, a rad­i­cal Sun­ni group, and are paid by the Shi­ite-dom­i­nat­ed Iraqi gov­ern­ment.

    “The Amer­i­cans can make the deci­sions they want, but what the Amer­i­cans see is dif­fer­ent than what we see,” Prime Min­is­ter Adel Abdul Mah­di of Iraq said last week. “Our posi­tion on the Pop­u­lar Mobi­liza­tion Forces is very clear and well known.”

    Offi­cials at the Pen­ta­gon and the C.I.A. — which Mr. Pom­peo ran in the Trump administration’s first year — oppose des­ig­nat­ing the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards or the Iraqi mili­tias as ter­ror­ist groups, fear­ing a back­lash that could con­strain Amer­i­can troops. Qas­sim Suleimani, com­man­der of the corps’ elite Quds Force and a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor to Iraq, has been des­ig­nat­ed a ter­ror­ist by the Unit­ed States.

    Iraqi lead­ers were already irate over the Trump administration’s insis­tence that they com­ply with Amer­i­can sanc­tions imposed against Iran after Pres­i­dent Trump with­drew from the nuclear deal with Tehran.

    ...

    In Feb­ru­ary, Iraqi politi­cians bris­tled after Mr. Trump said Amer­i­can troops in Iraq would mon­i­tor and pres­sure Iran. Iraqi lead­ers are resist­ing demands by Mr. Pom­peo to stop buy­ing ener­gy from Iran — anoth­er issue on which Pen­ta­gon offi­cials have sided with Bagh­dad. Iraq offi­cials also remain unhap­py by the clos­ing of the Unit­ed States Con­sulate in Bas­ra, the country’s sec­ond-largest city, where a tem­po­rary halt of elec­tric­i­ty exports from Iran led to vio­lent riot­ing last sum­mer.

    On Fri­day, a senior State Depart­ment offi­cial said Mr. Pompeo’s vis­it to the Mid­dle East this week was part of the goal of rolling back Iran’s forces and linked Shi­ite mili­tias. As with Iraq, the pres­sure cam­paign has angered lead­ers in Lebanon, where Iran-backed Hezbol­lah is a major mil­i­tary force, holds par­lia­men­tary seats and runs the health min­istry.

    Ana­lysts said Mr. Pompeo’s trip and its focus on Iran is an attempt to lend Trump admin­is­tra­tion sup­port to embat­tled Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu of Israel before nation­al elec­tions set for April 9. Iran and Israel are long­time ene­mies. Mr. Pom­peo has denied such inten­tions.

    Mr. Pom­peo has told the lead­ers of pow­er-starved Iraq that they must stop buy­ing Iran­ian nat­ur­al gas and elec­tric­i­ty. But on Tues­day, fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions by senior Pen­ta­gon offi­cials, he agreed to extend a waiv­er of the sanc­tions to allow Iraq to buy elec­tric­i­ty from Iran. The new waiv­er will expire in 90 days, in the mid­dle of Iraq’s scorch­ing sum­mer.

    If they are forced to stop buy­ing elec­tric­i­ty from Iran, Iraqi offi­cials warned, protests could desta­bi­lize the gov­ern­ment of Mr. Abdul Mah­di, who was named prime min­is­ter in Octo­ber. In Feb­ru­ary, he said Iraq would not com­ply with the sanc­tions, cit­ing the 13 years of Unit­ed Nations sanc­tions against the gov­ern­ment of Sad­dam Hus­sein that took a bruis­ing toll on Iraqis through­out the coun­try.

    Iraqi offi­cials now are explor­ing how to buy nat­ur­al gas from Iran but still pro­tect Iraqi banks from Amer­i­can penal­ties.

    This month, against the advice of offi­cials at the Pen­ta­gon, the State Depart­ment announced that it was des­ig­nat­ing an Iraqi mili­tia, Harakat Hezbol­lah al-Nuja­ba, and its leader, Akram Abbas al-Kaabi, as “spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed glob­al ter­ror­ists.” The group is fund­ed by the Iraqi gov­ern­ment, but the State Depart­ment said its loy­al­ty was to Iran.

    Mr. Pom­peo also is seek­ing to des­ig­nate a more sig­nif­i­cant group, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq won 15 seats in Iraq’s Par­lia­ment last year. Though its offi­cials now say they tol­er­ate the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary pres­ence in Iraq, the mili­tia fought Amer­i­can troops at the height of the Iraq war. The mili­tia is led by Qais al-Khaz­a­li, a for­mer Amer­i­can detainee who is accused of mas­ter­mind­ing an ambush in the holy Shi­ite city of Kar­bala that killed five Amer­i­can sol­diers in 2007.

    After Mr. Trump announced in Decem­ber that he would with­draw Unit­ed States forces from the fight against the Islam­ic State in Syr­ia, Amer­i­can offi­cials began qui­et­ly nego­ti­at­ing with Iraqi coun­ter­parts to shift hun­dreds of com­man­dos and sup­port troops to Iraq. The ini­tial urgency for the shift has cooled, how­ev­er, now that Mr. Trump has agreed to leave 400 Amer­i­can troops in Syr­ia rather than with­draw all 2,000. But many Iraqi law­mak­ers are reluc­tant to give the 5,200 Amer­i­can troops already in Bagh­dad and at a hand­ful of oth­er bases much free­dom to move or oper­ate.

    The ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tions could com­pli­cate talks over those issues and a range of diplo­mat­ic mat­ters by fuel­ing ani­mos­i­ty toward the Unit­ed States. One senior Amer­i­can offi­cial said the des­ig­na­tions could lead to bar­ring mem­bers of the Iraqi and Iran­ian gov­ern­ments from trav­el­ing to the Unit­ed States — includ­ing to the Unit­ed Nations in New York.

    Admin­is­tra­tion lawyers have been por­ing over the pro­posed lan­guage for the ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tions and their pos­si­ble con­se­quences. So far, that has kept Mr. Pom­peo from issu­ing them, two senior Amer­i­can offi­cials said. One offi­cial said that try­ing to enforce the sanc­tions that the ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tions would prompt would be a night­mare.

    ———-

    “U.S. Pres­sures Iraq Over Embrace of Mili­tias Linked to Iran” by Edward Wong and Eric Schmitt; The New York Times; 03/19/2019

    “Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, whose con­fronta­tion­al stand on Iran has already strained ties with Euro­pean allies, is lead­ing the push for Iraq to con­front its fel­low Shi­ite-major­i­ty neigh­bor. He arrived in the Mid­dle East on Tues­day to speak with offi­cials in Kuwait, Israel and Lebanon about con­tain­ing Iran.”

    As we can see, con­vinc­ing the Iraqi gov­ern­ment to treat Iran like an ene­my was part of Pom­peo’s agen­da dur­ing his Mid­dle East trip in March of last year. But Iran was­n’t the only focus. Iraqi Shia mili­tias were also tar­get­ed and declar­ing them to be ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions was what Pom­peo was rec­om­mend­ing at the time. It was a posi­tion Iraq’s prime min­is­ter explic­it­ly reject­ed:

    ...
    Under plans rec­om­mend­ed by Mr. Pom­peo and some White House offi­cials, the State Depart­ment would des­ig­nate Iran’s mil­i­tary Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards Corps as a for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. It would be a first instance of the Unit­ed States des­ig­nat­ing a unit of anoth­er government’s mil­i­tary as a ter­ror­ist group. Amer­i­can offi­cials said it could put Unit­ed States troops and intel­li­gence offi­cers at risk of sim­i­lar actions by for­eign gov­ern­ments.

    The plans also would des­ig­nate some Iraqi Shi­ite mili­tias as for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. As a result, the Iran­ian-trained mili­tias — and Iraqi offi­cials who sup­port them — would be sub­ject to new eco­nom­ic sanc­tions and trav­el restric­tions.

    ...

    The Iraqi mili­tias — some of which were trained by the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards — oper­ate with Baghdad’s approval or finan­cial sup­port. Sev­er­al are legit­i­mate play­ers in Iraqi pol­i­tics. They are part of the Pop­u­lar Mobi­liza­tion Forces, an umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion of about 50 para­mil­i­tary groups that fought against the Islam­ic State, a rad­i­cal Sun­ni group, and are paid by the Shi­ite-dom­i­nat­ed Iraqi gov­ern­ment.

    “The Amer­i­cans can make the deci­sions they want, but what the Amer­i­cans see is dif­fer­ent than what we see,” Prime Min­is­ter Adel Abdul Mah­di of Iraq said last week. “Our posi­tion on the Pop­u­lar Mobi­liza­tion Forces is very clear and well known.”
    ...

    But oppo­si­tion to Pomeo’s plans were just com­ing from Iraq. Pen­ta­gon and CIA offi­cials were also warn­ing that the plan to des­ig­nate these mili­tias, as well as the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards, as ter­ror­ist groups risk a back­lash and US troops receiv­ing the same treat­ment:

    ...
    Offi­cials at the Pen­ta­gon and the C.I.A. — which Mr. Pom­peo ran in the Trump administration’s first year — oppose des­ig­nat­ing the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards or the Iraqi mili­tias as ter­ror­ist groups, fear­ing a back­lash that could con­strain Amer­i­can troops. Qas­sim Suleimani, com­man­der of the corps’ elite Quds Force and a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor to Iraq, has been des­ig­nat­ed a ter­ror­ist by the Unit­ed States.

    ...

    This month, against the advice of offi­cials at the Pen­ta­gon, the State Depart­ment announced that it was des­ig­nat­ing an Iraqi mili­tia, Harakat Hezbol­lah al-Nuja­ba, and its leader, Akram Abbas al-Kaabi, as “spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed glob­al ter­ror­ists.” The group is fund­ed by the Iraqi gov­ern­ment, but the State Depart­ment said its loy­al­ty was to Iran.

    ...

    The ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tions could com­pli­cate talks over those issues and a range of diplo­mat­ic mat­ters by fuel­ing ani­mos­i­ty toward the Unit­ed States. One senior Amer­i­can offi­cial said the des­ig­na­tions could lead to bar­ring mem­bers of the Iraqi and Iran­ian gov­ern­ments from trav­el­ing to the Unit­ed States — includ­ing to the Unit­ed Nations in New York.

    Admin­is­tra­tion lawyers have been por­ing over the pro­posed lan­guage for the ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tions and their pos­si­ble con­se­quences. So far, that has kept Mr. Pom­peo from issu­ing them, two senior Amer­i­can offi­cials said. One offi­cial said that try­ing to enforce the sanc­tions that the ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tions would prompt would be a night­mare.
    ...

    So it would appear that the pol­i­cy Pom­peo is pur­su­ing in the region is being done over the oppo­si­tion of both US mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence offi­cials.

    Next, here’s an arti­cle from May that describes the rea­son for a sur­prise vis­it by Pom­peo to Bagh­dad ear­li­er that month. It appears the focus of the trip was US intel­li­gence about the sus­pi­cious posi­tion by these Iraqi mili­tias towards the US troops sta­tion in Iraq. Pom­peo’s trip appar­ent­ly focused on deliv­er­ing a warn­ing to the Iraqi gov­ern­ment: get those mili­tias under con­trol or the US mil­i­tary will uni­lat­er­al­ly do it for them:

    Reuters

    U.S. pres­sures Bagh­dad over Iran-backed mili­tias

    Ahmed Rasheed, John Davi­son
    May 15, 2019 / 12:36 AM

    BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pompeo’s sur­prise vis­it to Bagh­dad this month came after U.S. intel­li­gence showed Iran-backed Shi’ite mili­tias posi­tion­ing rock­ets near bases hous­ing U.S. forces, accord­ing to two Iraqi secu­ri­ty sources.

    He told Iraq’s top brass to keep the mili­tias, which are expand­ing their pow­er in Iraq and now form part of its secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus, in check, the sources said. If not, the U.S. would respond with force.

    As ten­sions between Wash­ing­ton and Tehran increase, Iraq finds itself caught between neigh­bor­ing Iran, whose region­al influ­ence has grown in recent years, and the Unit­ed States.

    “The mes­sage from the Amer­i­cans was clear. They want­ed guar­an­tees that Iraq would stop those groups threat­en­ing U.S. inter­ests,” a senior Iraqi mil­i­tary source with knowl­edge of Pompeo’s trip said.

    “They said if the U.S. were attacked on Iraqi soil, it would take action to defend itself with­out coor­di­nat­ing with Bagh­dad.”

    The U.S. State Depart­ment declined to com­ment on the details of Pompeo’s dis­cus­sions. He had said after the trip: “We don’t want any­one inter­fer­ing in their coun­try (Iraq), cer­tain­ly not by attack­ing anoth­er nation inside of Iraq.”

    The sec­ond Iraqi secu­ri­ty source said: “Com­mu­ni­ca­tions inter­cept­ed by the Amer­i­cans showed some mili­tia groups rede­ployed to take up sus­pi­cious posi­tions, which the Amer­i­cans con­sid­ered provo­ca­tions.”

    He said the Iraqis were told that any threat from the groups “would be dealt with direct­ly by the Amer­i­cans with force.”

    Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Adel Abdul Mah­di on Tues­day told reporters that the Iraqi side had not observed “move­ments that con­sti­tute a threat to any side. We clar­i­fied that to the Amer­i­cans — the gov­ern­ment is doing its duty to pro­tect all par­ties.”

    Ten­sions between Wash­ing­ton and Tehran inten­si­fied ear­ly this month as U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion stepped up sanc­tions pres­sure by end­ing waivers for some coun­tries to pur­chase Iran­ian oil — part of efforts to roll back the Islam­ic Republic’s expand­ing region­al clout.

    It also said last week it was send­ing addi­tion­al mil­i­tary forces to the Mid­dle East.

    “PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE”

    Iraq would strug­gle to rein in the Iran-backed mili­tias.

    The para­mil­i­taries are for­mal­ly part of Iraq’s secu­ri­ty forces but oper­ate semi-inde­pen­dent­ly, backed by pow­er­ful Iran-allied politi­cians, and are expand­ing their eco­nom­ic pow­er.

    Spokes­men for two Iran-backed para­mil­i­tary groups said there were no plans to tar­get U.S. forces, say­ing talk of threats was “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” by Wash­ing­ton.

    The Unit­ed States says Iran is the biggest threat to peace in the region. It wants to weak­en the para­mil­i­taries which have expand­ed their sway over land stretch­ing to Syr­ia and Lebanon, and for Iraq to decrease depen­dence on Iran­ian gas exports.

    Iran sees Iraq as an impor­tant link to the world in the face of U.S. sanc­tions, and ana­lysts say the posi­tion­ing of pro-Iran forces and rock­ets indi­cates Tehran is pre­pared at least to threat­en the Unit­ed States with vio­lence.

    The Iraqi secu­ri­ty source said U.S. offi­cials dis­cussed with Iraqi offi­cials Iran-backed mili­tia deployed along the Syr­i­an bor­der, where U.S. troops have helped fight Islam­ic State.

    Pom­peo said last week: “We’ve urged the Iraqi gov­ern­ment ... to get all of those forces under Iraqi cen­tral con­trol.”

    The groups say they already fol­low the orders of the Iraqi state and are not plan­ning to tar­get U.S. inter­ests.

    “Amer­i­can claims are base­less. It reminds us of the big lie of weapons of mass destruc­tion in Iraq,” said Laith al-Athari, a spokesman for the Iran-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq group, refer­ring to the pre­text for the U.S.-led inva­sion of Iraq in 2003.

    The Pop­u­lar Mobil­i­sa­tion Forces (PMF), the umbrel­la group­ing of most­ly Shi’ite mili­tias, num­bers around 150,000 men.

    ...

    Ana­lysts say the posi­tion­ing of mis­siles by mili­tias backed by Iran is like­ly meant as a sym­bol­ic threat to the Unit­ed States, rather than a real plan to use them.

    Pro­fes­sor Toby Dodge of the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics said Iran has in the past moved such weapons “to slow­ly ratch­et up the heat under Amer­i­ca in Iraq when it feels Amer­i­ca is seek­ing to threat­en Iran’s inter­ests.”

    ECONOMIC POWER

    Some observers say eco­nom­ic pres­sure on Iran will have more impact than mil­i­tary action.

    Pom­peo said he dis­cussed on his Bagh­dad vis­it “crude oil and nat­ur­al gas ... (and) ways we could ... make those projects move for­ward very quick­ly,” a ref­er­ence to efforts to wean Iraq off cru­cial Iran­ian ener­gy imports.

    He urged Iraq to sign oil and pow­er deals being nego­ti­at­ed with Amer­i­can com­pa­nies, two ener­gy offi­cials said.

    U.S. ener­gy giant Gen­er­al Elec­tric is seek­ing a share of a $14 bil­lion scheme to devel­op elec­tric­i­ty infra­struc­ture, and Iraq is close to sign­ing a $53 bil­lion oil infra­struc­ture con­tract which includes Exxon Mobil.

    This is anoth­er way in which the Unit­ed States is seek­ing to pres­sure Iraq’s major elec­tric­i­ty sup­pli­er Iran and force Iraq to choose between Wash­ing­ton and Tehran as its chief ally, said Renad Man­sour, a research fel­low at Chatham House.

    “The U.S. is ... going to Iraqi lead­ers and say­ing you’re either with us or with them,” Man­sour said.

    “Iraqis have been say­ing why can’t we be allies with both? But the Amer­i­cans aren’t inter­est­ed in that and I think nei­ther are the Ira­ni­ans.”

    A West­ern diplo­mat said warned of the dan­ger of a seri­ous esca­la­tion.

    “The atmos­phere is no longer friend­ly ... (and) the White House does not seem to be con­cerned if Iraq is col­lat­er­al dam­age,” the diplo­mat said.

    ———-

    “U.S. pres­sures Bagh­dad over Iran-backed mili­tias” by Ahmed Rasheed, John Davi­son; Reuters; 05/15/2019

    “He told Iraq’s top brass to keep the mili­tias, which are expand­ing their pow­er in Iraq and now form part of its secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus, in check, the sources said. If not, the U.S. would respond with force.”

    So back in May, Pom­peo was threat­en­ing to use US mil­i­tary force against these Shia mili­tia. Some ana­lysts, how­ev­er, view the unset­tling posi­tion of the mis­siles by the mili­tias as pure­ly sym­bol­ic:

    ...
    Ana­lysts say the posi­tion­ing of mis­siles by mili­tias backed by Iran is like­ly meant as a sym­bol­ic threat to the Unit­ed States, rather than a real plan to use them.

    Pro­fes­sor Toby Dodge of the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics said Iran has in the past moved such weapons “to slow­ly ratch­et up the heat under Amer­i­ca in Iraq when it feels Amer­i­ca is seek­ing to threat­en Iran’s inter­ests.”
    ...

    Keep in mind that Pom­peo was try­ing to get these same groups des­ig­nat­ed as ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions in the months lead­ing up to this so that pre­sum­ably played a role in any deci­sions to make a threat­en­ing sym­bol­ic ges­ture towards US troops.

    So that’s also part of the con­text of both the assas­si­a­tion drone strike that also killed the deputy com­man­der of the Pop­u­lar Mobil­i­sa­tion Forces.

    But note the prof­it-mak­ing angle to this sto­ry (because there’s always one of those): by demand­ing that Iraq cut eco­nom­ic ties to Iran, includ­ing ener­gy imports, that does­n’t just weak­en Iran. It also cre­ates a mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty for com­pa­nies like GE and Exxon Mobil:

    ...
    Some observers say eco­nom­ic pres­sure on Iran will have more impact than mil­i­tary action.

    Pom­peo said he dis­cussed on his Bagh­dad vis­it “crude oil and nat­ur­al gas ... (and) ways we could ... make those projects move for­ward very quick­ly,” a ref­er­ence to efforts to wean Iraq off cru­cial Iran­ian ener­gy imports.

    He urged Iraq to sign oil and pow­er deals being nego­ti­at­ed with Amer­i­can com­pa­nies, two ener­gy offi­cials said.

    U.S. ener­gy giant Gen­er­al Elec­tric is seek­ing a share of a $14 bil­lion scheme to devel­op elec­tric­i­ty infra­struc­ture, and Iraq is close to sign­ing a $53 bil­lion oil infra­struc­ture con­tract which includes Exxon Mobil.
    ...

    And that’s also one of the con­texts to keep in mind with Pom­peo’s intense dri­ve to iso­late Iran in the region: there’s a lot of mon­ey to be made. Might those ener­gy inter­ests also be whis­per­ing in Mike Pom­peo’s ears while Pom­peo whis­pers in Trump’s ear? We don’t know. But it’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that Pom­peo is the key dri­ving force between the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s pol­i­cy towards Iran. And that pol­i­cy appears to not just be an even­tu­al war with Iran but also war against all of the var­i­ous Shia mili­tia groups oper­at­ing in the region. And the for­ma­tion of an Arab Sun­ni NATO. In oth­er words, a region­al reli­gious civ­il war. That was Mike Pom­peo’s top agen­da in 2019 and there’s no rea­son to assume that isn’t still on the agen­da for 2020.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 8, 2020, 4:20 pm
  7. The mys­te­ri­ous crash of a Ukrain­ian air­lin­er is get­ting some­what less mys­te­ri­ous as more infor­ma­tion is com­ing out and look­ing more and more like a hor­ri­ble mis­take that hap­pened in the con­text of a war sit­u­a­tion: First, the infor­ma­tion com­ing in yes­ter­day indi­cat­ed that the flight explod­ed in midair. Accord­ing to Jeff Guzzetti, the for­mer acci­dent inves­ti­ga­tion chief at the FAA, the crash had “all the ear­marks of an inten­tion­al act.” And Mary Shi­a­vo, the for­mer Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion inspec­tor gen­er­al, “Some­thing hap­pened to blow that plane out of the air. Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, that’s a mis­sile or a bomb.” And then there was a video that appeared to show the plane on fire crash­ing to the ground. Note that the plane, a Boe­ing 737–800, isn’t the Boe­ing 737 Super­max that’s had mul­ti­ple plane crash­es that were appar­ent­ly due to soft­ware issues. This was the old­er ver­sion of the 737 that is wide­ly used around the world and has an excel­lent safe­ty record. Iran is refus­ing to share the black box with the Unit­ed States despite the planed being a Boe­ing 737–800 which would nor­mal­ly make the US a part of the inves­ti­ga­tion. Tak­en togeth­er, there’s an abun­dance of mys­tery about what exact­ly hap­pened but it’s strong­ly look­ing like an explo­sion of some sort took that plane down:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    News

    Here’s What We Know About The Mys­tery Plane Crash In Iran That Claimed 176 Lives

    By Matt Shuham
    Jan­u­ary 8, 2020 6:16 p.m.

    A few min­utes after 6 a.m. Tehran time Wednes­day, Ukraine Inter­na­tion­al Flight 752 took off from Tehran Imam Khome­i­ni Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.

    With­in 10 min­utes, the plane had explod­ed in midair and crashed into a field, killing all 167 pas­sen­gers and nine crew on board. Some experts have point­ed to pos­si­ble foul play, but details are still emerg­ing.

    The tragedy added to a tur­bu­lent time in Iran: On Fri­day, the Unit­ed States killed the country’s most famous mil­i­tary com­man­der, Qassem Soleimani. On Tues­day, 56 peo­ple were killed in a stam­pede as the commander’s cas­ket was car­ried in a funer­al pro­ces­sion. A few hours lat­er, Iran fired mis­siles that struck two Amer­i­can bases in Iraq, killing none.

    When the plane crashed with­in hours of those strikes, rumors swirled — was the crash relat­ed to esca­lat­ing Iran‑U.S. ten­sions? So far, no evi­dence has emerged to sup­port that.

    Still, sev­er­al avi­a­tion experts have point­ed to pos­si­ble foul play.

    Jeff Guzzetti, for­mer acci­dent inves­ti­ga­tion chief at the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, told the Wash­ing­ton Post the crash had “all the ear­marks of an inten­tion­al act.”

    “That is the wreck­age of an explo­sion in the air,” for­mer Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion inspec­tor gen­er­al Mary Schi­a­vo told USA Today. “Some­thing hap­pened to blow that plane out of the air. Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, that’s a mis­sile or a bomb.”

    Accord­ing to pub­lic data, flight 752 stopped trans­mit­ting radar data just more than three min­utes after tak­ing off, and just after reach­ing an alti­tude of 7,500 feet. Iran’s state news agency shared a video that it claimed showed the plane break­ing up in fiery streaks before even­tu­al­ly crash­ing in even more flames.

    ...

    The plane, a Boe­ing 737–800, was man­u­fac­tured in the Unit­ed States. Typ­i­cal­ly, that would mean the Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board would play a role in the crash inves­ti­ga­tion, along with Iran and Ukraine.

    But Iran’s top civ­il air offi­cial said the Unit­ed States wouldn’t be grant­ed access to the plane’s “black box,” which was recov­ered after the crash and like­ly holds vital infor­ma­tion about the plane’s final sec­onds.

    “We will not give the black box to the man­u­fac­tur­er and the Amer­i­cans,” the offi­cial, Ali Abedzadeh, said. “This acci­dent will be inves­ti­gat­ed by Iran’s avi­a­tion orga­ni­za­tion but the Ukraini­ans can also be present.”

    A spokesper­son for the NTSB told the Times that the agency “is work­ing with the State Depart­ment and oth­er agen­cies to deter­mine the best course of action.”

    Tal­lies of pas­sen­gers’ nation­al­i­ties var­ied, sug­gest­ing some were dual cit­i­zens. In all counts, the plu­ral­i­ty of the deceased were Iran­ian. Ukraine’s min­is­ter of for­eign affairs count­ed 63 Cana­di­ans aboard the flight. Oth­ers on board includ­ed cit­i­zens of Ukraine, Swe­den, Afghanistan, Ger­many and the Unit­ed King­dom. One hun­dred and thir­ty-eight peo­ple on board the flight were on their way to Cana­da, Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau said Wednes­day.

    Soon after the crash, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple reports, the Ukrain­ian embassy in Iran released a state­ment rul­ing out ter­ror­ism as the cause of the crash. Lat­er, it took the state­ment down and said “any state­ments about the caus­es of the acci­dent before the deci­sion of the com­mis­sion are not offi­cial.”

    ————

    “Here’s What We Know About The Mys­tery Plane Crash In Iran That Claimed 176 Lives” by Matt Shuham; Talk­ing Points Memo; 01/08/2020

    “Jeff Guzzetti, for­mer acci­dent inves­ti­ga­tion chief at the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, told the Wash­ing­ton Post the crash had “all the ear­marks of an inten­tion­al act.”

    All signs point to an inten­tion­al act. But was it an acci­den­tal inten­tion­al act or a delib­er­ate inten­tion­al act? And who com­mit­ted the act? That’s all still part of the mys­tery. Although accord­ing to var­i­ous unnamed US offi­cials, the sus­pi­cions are that the Ira­ni­ans acci­den­tal­ly mis­took the plane for a hos­tile US mil­i­tary plane and shot it down with a sur­face-to-air mis­sile:

    USA Today

    Ukraine plane may have been shot down by Iran­ian mis­sile by mis­take

    John Bacon and Tom Van­den Brook
    Pub­lished 11:34 a.m. ET Jan. 9, 2020 | Updat­ed 1:33 p.m. ET Jan. 9, 2020

    The Ukrain­ian jet that crashed after tak­ing off from a Tehran air­port may have been downed by a mis­sile, a U.S. offi­cial not autho­rized to speak pub­licly con­firmed to USA TODAY.

    The con­fir­ma­tion came after a Lon­don-based glob­al infor­ma­tion firm report­ed Thurs­day that the plane, car­ry­ing 176 pas­sen­gers and crew, like­ly was mis­tak­en­ly shot down by an Iran­ian mis­sile. No one sur­vived the crash.

    “Pho­tographs pur­port­ed­ly tak­en near the site of the crash and cir­cu­lat­ed on social media appear to show the guid­ance sec­tion of an SA-15 Gaunt­let short-range, sur­face to air mis­sile, which land­ed in a near­by gar­den,” the firm IHS Mark­it said in its report.

    The firm said it could not con­firm the authen­tic­i­ty of the pho­tos but “assess­es them to be cred­i­ble.”

    Ukraine Inter­na­tion­al Air­lines Flight 752 crashed hours after Iran launched a bal­lis­tic mis­sile attack on Iraqi bases hous­ing U.S. sol­diers.

    Pres­i­dent Trump said Thurs­day he found the crash sus­pi­cious and that “some­body could have made a mis­take on the oth­er side.”

    In Ukraine, Olek­siy Danilov, sec­re­tary of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and Defense Coun­cil, said that inves­ti­ga­tors were look­ing into claims that parts of a Russ­ian-made, sur­face-to-air mis­sile stocked by Iran had been found near the crash site.

    The head of Iran’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion, Ali Abedzadeh, quick­ly moved to dis­pute any sug­ges­tion that it shot down Ukraine’s com­mer­cial air­lin­er, accord­ing to Iran state media. The Fars News Agency, cit­ing Abedzadeh, said its mis­siles were not capa­ble of reach­ing that alti­tude. Abedzadeh char­ac­ter­ized the sug­ges­tion as “sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble.”

    In a pre­lim­i­nary crash report issued Thurs­day, Iran’s civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ty said the plane’s crew nev­er made a radio call for help and were try­ing to turn back to the air­port when the plane went down. The plane appar­ent­ly suf­fered engine fail­ure, Iran­ian offi­cials said.

    IHS Mark­it says pub­licly avail­able air traf­fic data is “not con­sis­tent” with Iran’s claim. The firm says flight data shows a nor­mal ascent until the plane dis­ap­pears at 8,000 feet.

    “This is con­sis­tent with a cat­a­stroph­ic inci­dent onboard the air­craft,” the report said.

    The report adds that “A pilot of an air­lin­er that took off from Tehran air­port short­ly after UIA Flight 752 told an IHS Mark­it source that he watched the air­craft take off and then explode in midair.”

    Iran author­i­ties say they have recov­ered the audio and data recorders from the flight, but say they won’t allow Boe­ing or U.S. avi­a­tion offi­cials access to the black box­es.

    The evi­dence over­whelm­ing­ly points to a cat­a­stroph­ic event in midair, said Mary Schi­a­vo, a for­mer U.S. Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion inspec­tor gen­er­al. She said not only did the flight’s crew not send out a dis­tress call, the plane itself has the capa­bil­i­ty to report any mechan­i­cal issues. It did not.

    “It’s clear that the air­craft did not send any prob­lem mes­sages back to the air­line,” she said, adding that “the air­craft did not turn around. Any turn that peo­ple saw was the air­craft falling from the sky.”

    CBS News, cit­ing unnamed sources, report­ed that U.S. intel­li­gence picked up sig­nals of a radar being turned on, and that U.S. satel­lites also detect­ed two sur­face-to-air mis­sile launch­es short­ly before the plane explod­ed. Fed­er­al offi­cials were briefed on the intel­li­gence Thurs­day, and a source who was in the brief­ing said it appears mis­sile com­po­nents were found near the crash site, CBS report­ed.

    Newsweek, cit­ing two Pen­ta­gon offi­cials, said the plane was struck by an anti-air­craft mis­sile. The offi­cials told Newsweek the strike was like­ly acci­den­tal.

    CNN, cit­ing mul­ti­ple US. offi­cials, also report­ed that the strike was like­ly an Iran­ian mis­sile and acci­den­tal. The offi­cials cit­ed analy­sis of data from satel­lites, radar and elec­tron­ic data col­lect­ed rou­tine­ly by U.S. mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence.

    ...

    Iran, too, has mourned mil­i­tary shoot­downs of civil­ian jet­lin­ers. In 1988, the guid­ed-mis­sile cruis­er USS Vin­cennes acci­den­tal­ly shot down an Iran Air jet over the Per­sian Gulf short­ly after its take­off from Tehran.

    ———-

    “Ukraine plane may have been shot down by Iran­ian mis­sile by mis­take”
    by John Bacon and Tom Van­den Brook; USA Today; 01/09/2020

    ““Pho­tographs pur­port­ed­ly tak­en near the site of the crash and cir­cu­lat­ed on social media appear to show the guid­ance sec­tion of an SA-15 Gaunt­let short-range, sur­face to air mis­sile, which land­ed in a near­by gar­den,” the firm IHS Mark­it said in its report.”

    So pieces of a sur­face-to-air mis­sile guid­ance sys­tem land­ed in a near­by gar­den and pho­tos are avail­able. If those pho­tos are legit­i­mate that’s pret­ty com­pelling evi­dence of what exact­ly took the plane down, mak­ing an online bomb or some­thing like a shoul­der-fired Stinger mis­sile much less like­ly. And we’re also told that US intel­li­gence picked up a radar being turned on sig­nals of two sur­face-to-air mis­sile launch­es short­ly before the explo­sion:

    ...
    “This is con­sis­tent with a cat­a­stroph­ic inci­dent onboard the air­craft,” the report said.

    The report adds that “A pilot of an air­lin­er that took off from Tehran air­port short­ly after UIA Flight 752 told an IHS Mark­it source that he watched the air­craft take off and then explode in midair.”

    Iran author­i­ties say they have recov­ered the audio and data recorders from the flight, but say they won’t allow Boe­ing or U.S. avi­a­tion offi­cials access to the black box­es.

    ...

    CBS News, cit­ing unnamed sources, report­ed that U.S. intel­li­gence picked up sig­nals of a radar being turned on, and that U.S. satel­lites also detect­ed two sur­face-to-air mis­sile launch­es short­ly before the plane explod­ed. Fed­er­al offi­cials were briefed on the intel­li­gence Thurs­day, and a source who was in the brief­ing said it appears mis­sile com­po­nents were found near the crash site, CBS report­ed.

    Newsweek, cit­ing two Pen­ta­gon offi­cials, said the plane was struck by an anti-air­craft mis­sile. The offi­cials told Newsweek the strike was like­ly acci­den­tal.

    CNN, cit­ing mul­ti­ple US. offi­cials, also report­ed that the strike was like­ly an Iran­ian mis­sile and acci­den­tal. The offi­cials cit­ed analy­sis of data from satel­lites, radar and elec­tron­ic data col­lect­ed rou­tine­ly by U.S. mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence.
    ...

    So giv­en that US intel­li­gence claims to have evi­dence of these mis­sile launch­es, it’s worth not­ing that a report from yes­ter­day on the brief­ing giv­en to the US Con­gress on the sit­u­a­tion in Iran stat­ed that Con­gress was told there was no intel­li­gence to indi­cate that the plan was shot down and Gina Haspel, the head of the CIA, and Defense Sec­re­tary Mark Esper, were two of the offi­cials giv­ing this brief­ing:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Dead­ly crash of a Boe­ing jet in Iran adds to company’s woes

    By DAVID KOENIG
    2020-01-08 23:56:39 — Wed Jan 08 2020 17:56:39 GMT-0600 (Cen­tral Stan­dard Time)

    Still reel­ing from a cri­sis involv­ing its long-ground­ed Max jet, Boe­ing faces new ques­tions after an ear­li­er mod­el of the 737 crashed Wednes­day in Iran.

    It is too ear­ly to know what caused the crash and whether Boe­ing bears any respon­si­bil­i­ty for the lives of all 176 peo­ple who died aboard the 3 1/2‑year-old plane.

    At a min­i­mum, how­ev­er, the dis­as­ter will add to the bur­den fac­ing Boeing’s incom­ing CEO, David Cal­houn, as he tries to repair the icon­ic air­plane maker’s bal­ance sheet and rep­u­ta­tion.

    “We need to know the cause,” said William Wal­dock, a safe­ty sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Embry-Rid­dle Aero­nau­ti­cal Uni­ver­si­ty. “If it turns out to be an inten­tion­al act, that’s not some­thing (Boe­ing) can con­trol. If it was some­thing with the plane, there is one more item they have to get fixed.”

    Even experts who dis­count the like­li­hood of a prob­lem with the plane — a ver­sion of the 737 that has been built since the 1990s and has earned a good safe­ty record — say that Boeing’s pub­lic image will suf­fer.

    “I think every­one will quick­ly real­ize that there is very lit­tle chance, if any, that this has any­thing to do with the design or man­u­fac­ture of the jet,” said Richard Aboulafia, an avi­a­tion ana­lyst with Teal Group in the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., sub­urbs. “But peo­ple are going to see ‘737 Destroyed.’ How do you quan­ti­fy that in terms of rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age?”

    Boe­ing offi­cials hun­kered down on Wednes­day, not say­ing much pub­licly after a 737–800 flown by Ukraine Inter­na­tion­al Air­lines crashed short­ly after take­off from Tehran’s main air­port.

    The com­pa­ny issued short state­ments say­ing it was gath­er­ing more infor­ma­tion and was ready to help the Ukrain­ian air­line in any way.

    “This is a trag­ic event and our heart­felt thoughts are with the crew, pas­sen­gers, and their fam­i­lies,” Boe­ing said.

    The crash occurred hours after Iran launched mis­siles at U.S. forces in neigh­bor­ing Iraq, lead­ing to spec­u­la­tion by avi­a­tion experts that the plane might have been shot down. Iran­ian offi­cials were quick to blame the dis­as­ter on a mechan­i­cal prob­lem with the plane, although they cit­ed no evi­dence.

    In Wash­ing­ton, U.S. offi­cials brief­ing mem­bers of Con­gress on the cur­rent ten­sion between the Unit­ed States and Iran said there was no intel­li­gence to indi­cate that the plane was shot down, accord­ing to a law­mak­er at the brief­ing and who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the clas­si­fied ses­sion. The briefers includ­ed Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, Defense Sec­re­tary Mark Esper and CIA Direc­tor Gina Haspel.

    Boe­ing is still strug­gling with the cri­sis sur­round­ing the Max, which was ground­ed last March after two crash­es that killed 346 peo­ple. It has tak­en Boe­ing far longer than it expect­ed to fix the plane. It is still unclear when it might fly again, and Boe­ing expects to spend bil­lions to com­pen­sate air­lines that can­celed Max flights.

    The com­pa­ny also faces inves­ti­ga­tions by the Jus­tice Depart­ment and Con­gress and dozens of law­suits by the fam­i­lies of pas­sen­gers killed on the Max. Last month, Boeing’s board oust­ed CEO Den­nis Muilen­burg and replaced him with Cal­houn, who had been chair­man.

    Calhoun’s first day of work is next Mon­day.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors look­ing into the Max crash­es have focused on the role played by a new flight-con­trol sys­tem that was not on the 737–800 that crashed near Tehran.

    Boe­ing has sold near­ly 5,000 737–800s since the late 1990s. There have been eight fatal crash­es, most blamed on pilot error, accord­ing to Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Net­work, which tracks acci­dents. That’s a far low­er fatal-acci­dent rate than many oth­er pop­u­lar planes, includ­ing pre­vi­ous 737s and the Max.

    Boe­ing has a huge back­log of orders for the Max, but if air­lines can­celed a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber — and few ana­lysts see that hap­pen­ing — it could force the com­pa­ny to rely more heav­i­ly on its defense and space busi­ness.

    If Boe­ing is blamed for Wednesday’s crash, “Boe­ing would sur­vive; I’m not sure what form they would be in,” Wal­dock said.

    ...

    ———-
    “Dead­ly crash of a Boe­ing jet in Iran adds to company’s woes” by DAVID KOENIG; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 01/08/2020

    In Wash­ing­ton, U.S. offi­cials brief­ing mem­bers of Con­gress on the cur­rent ten­sion between the Unit­ed States and Iran said there was no intel­li­gence to indi­cate that the plane was shot down, accord­ing to a law­mak­er at the brief­ing and who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the clas­si­fied ses­sion. The briefers includ­ed Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, Defense Sec­re­tary Mark Esper and CIA Direc­tor Gina Haspel.”

    It’s a bit of an incon­sis­ten­cy in the report­ing, although for event this recent it’s not sur­pris­ing to see con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments like this. And all of the avail­able evi­dence sug­gests some­thing cause that plane to explode in mid-air that that can only mean a bomb or a mis­sile. But even if we assume there was foul play at work here with the down­ing of this plane over Iran, it’s entire­ly unclear who ben­e­fits unless we learn that the pas­sen­ger list includ­ed the kind of peo­ple a gov­ern­ment would want killed. It’s not like the shoot­ing down of this plane makes a con­flict with Iran any more or less like­ly. Unless the sole pur­pose was to ‘send­ing a mes­sage’ of some sort, or a live cyber exper­i­ment with mess­ing around with Iran’s air defense sys­tems, it’s hard to see how any­one ben­e­fits from this. It’s cer­tain­ly an embar­rass­ment for Iran, but not the kind of embar­rass­ment that real­ly changes the sit­u­a­tion. So it’s going to be inter­est­ing to hear what Iran releas­es for its final offi­cial expla­na­tion of what hap­pened and whether or not the black box data gets shared with any oth­er inves­ti­ga­tors.

    Still, the fact that this was a Ukrain­ian air­line makes this tragedy a remark­able coin­ci­dence too. After all, it was in the skies of Ukraine that a Malaysian pas­sen­ger air­lin­er, flight MH-17, was shot down back in 2014 under high­ly sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances. What are the odds of the next pas­sen­ger air­line to get shot out of the sky by a mil­i­tary mishap being Ukrain­ian? That seems extreme­ly improb­a­ble and yet here we are. Should we expect an Iran­ian air­lin­er to get acci­den­tal­ly shot down next? If so, hope­ful­ly the fact that the US already shot an Iran­ian air­lin­er out of the skies back in 1988 — Iran Air flight 655 — some­how com­pletes this weird cycle of air tragedies.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 9, 2020, 2:16 pm
  8. From the moment reports first came out about the drone assas­si­na­tion attack on Iran’s top gen­er­al Qassem Soleimani there was spec­u­la­tion that this was dri­ven, in part, by a ‘wag the dog’ desire by Pres­i­dent Trump to dis­tract the Amer­i­can pub­lic from the ongo­ing #UkraineGate impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings. Those sus­pi­cions were only bol­stered by the con­gres­sion­al response to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’ pri­vate con­gres­sion­al brief­ing on the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the strike, with a num­ber of Sen­a­tors com­ing out of the brief­ing decry­ing the lack of evi­dence that Soleimani was plan­ning an “immi­nent” attack. But it was the com­plaints of two Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors, Rand Paul and Mike Lee, that pre­sent­ed per­haps the most omi­nous warn­ing of what’s the come: As Lee put it, the brief­ing was “prob­a­bly the worst brief­ing I have seen, at least on a mil­i­tary issue, in the nine years I’ve served in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate”, specif­i­cal­ly because Trump offi­cials spent the brief­ing argu­ing that a pub­lic debate over the wis­dom of the drone strike would dam­age the coun­try. In oth­er words, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion was­n’t just unable to present evi­dence of a immi­nent threat posed by Soleimani, but it also wants to ensure Con­gress con­tin­ues to give the admin­is­tra­tion autho­riza­tion to do this again in the future:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    The most trou­bling part of Mike Lee’s broad­side against the Trump administration’s Iran brief­ing

    By Aaron Blake
    Jan. 8, 2020 at 5:16 p.m. CST

    Sen. Mike Lee (R‑Utah) was nev­er going to be an easy get for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion when it comes to its actions on Iran. Lee and Sen. Rand Paul (R‑Ky.) are the most lib­er­tar­i­an-lean­ing Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate, and both have insist­ed that Con­gress should be con­sult­ed about mil­i­tary action with regard to the Mid­dle East­ern coun­try.

    But even con­sid­er­ing that, Lee’s sum­ma­ry of the administration’s Iran brief­ing Wednes­day is stun­ning.

    Stand­ing next to Paul, Lee made a point to say that he sup­ports Pres­i­dent Trump’s gen­er­al for­eign pol­i­cy, which has often sought to pull the Unit­ed States out of Mid­dle East­ern con­flicts. But then he pro­ceed­ed to accuse the admin­is­tra­tion of sly­ly try­ing to side­line Con­gress — alleged­ly for the good of the cause — in the debate over Iran and whether the killing of Iran­ian Quds Force com­man­der Qasem Soleimani was war­rant­ed.

    There have already been plen­ty of ques­tions about the intel­li­gence used to jus­ti­fy the Soleimani strike, most notably when it comes to the Trump administration’s claim that Soleimani was plan­ning “immi­nent” attacks on Amer­i­cans. But Lee described a very dif­fer­ent prob­lem: one in which it was explained to him and oth­ers that any poten­tial dis­sent wasn’t help­ful to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion or the coun­try.

    Lee labeled the brief­ing on Iran “prob­a­bly the worst brief­ing I have seen, at least on a mil­i­tary issue, in the nine years I’ve served in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate.”

    He added: “What I found so dis­tress­ing about the brief­ing is one of the mes­sages we received from the briefers was, ‘Do not debate, do not dis­cuss the issue of the appro­pri­ate­ness of fur­ther mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion against Iran,’ and that if you do ‘You will be embold­en­ing Iran.’ ”

    He added: “The impli­ca­tion being that some­how we would be mak­ing Amer­i­ca less safe by hav­ing a debate or a dis­cus­sion about the appro­pri­ate­ness of fur­ther mil­i­tary involve­ment against the gov­ern­ment of Iran. Now, I find this insult­ing and demean­ing — not per­son­al­ly, but to the office that each of the 100 per­sons in this build­ing hap­pens to hold.”

    ...

    The result of the brief­ing, accord­ing to Lee, was that he decid­ed to sup­port a Demo­c­ra­t­ic-led res­o­lu­tion on war pow­ers. “That brief­ing is what changed my mind,” he said. “I walked into the brief­ing unde­cid­ed; I walked out decid­ed — specif­i­cal­ly because of what hap­pened in that brief­ing.” Paul took the same posi­tion.

    To be clear, Lee isn’t describ­ing lack­ing evi­dence when it comes to the strike on Soleimani, which some Democ­rats have allud­ed to; he is say­ing that the admin­is­tra­tion has said that any poten­tial dis­sent is to be avoid­ed.

    That’s per­haps some­thing you’d expect an admin­is­tra­tion to say pri­vate­ly, but not out loud and not to skep­ti­cal sen­a­tors such as Lee and Paul. The fact that it was alleged­ly uttered in a clas­si­fied brief­ing — in the pres­ence of the likes of Lee and Paul — appears to have been a remark­able mis­cal­cu­la­tion on behalf of the admin­is­tra­tion.

    The GOP has enough votes in the Sen­ate with­out Lee and Paul to help its pol­i­cy along, but Lee’s very severe rebuke should reg­is­ter when it comes to its ongo­ing plans with regards to Iran — and when it comes to pret­ty much any pres­i­den­tial pre­rog­a­tive. It appears the admin­is­tra­tion has some explain­ing to do.

    ———–

    “The most trou­bling part of Mike Lee’s broad­side against the Trump administration’s Iran brief­ing” by Aaron Blake; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 01/08/2020

    “He added: “What I found so dis­tress­ing about the brief­ing is one of the mes­sages we received from the briefers was, ‘Do not debate, do not dis­cuss the issue of the appro­pri­ate­ness of fur­ther mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion against Iran,’ and that if you do ‘You will be embold­en­ing Iran.’ ””

    Yes, con­gres­sion­al over­sight only embold­ens Iran. That was the core of the Trump offi­cials’ mes­sage to Con­gress, because it does­n’t sound like they pro­vid­ed much else in terms of describ­ing the threat.

    Even worse, Sen­a­tor Lee lat­er gave an inter­view with NPR where he described a scene where Sen­a­tors asked the Trump offi­cials if they felt they need­ed Con­gres­sion­al autho­riza­tion to call a strike in on the Supreme Leader of Iran and Trump offi­cials refused to answer that ques­tion:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    GOP sen­a­tor who erupt­ed over Iran brief­ing shares awful new details

    By
    Greg Sar­gent
    Opin­ion writer
    Jan. 9, 2020 at 9:05 a.m. CST

    If Pres­i­dent Trump made the deci­sion to assas­si­nate the supreme leader of Iran, would he need to come to Con­gress to get autho­riza­tion for it?

    The Trump admin­is­tra­tion won’t say.

    That remark­able claim is now being made by a Repub­li­can sen­a­tor — Mike Lee of Utah. He offered it in a a new inter­view with NPR, in which he shared fresh details about why he erupt­ed in anger on Wednes­day over the brief­ing Con­gress received from the admin­is­tra­tion on Iran.

    As you know, Lee’s com­ments went viral Wednes­day after he ripped into the brief­ing giv­en to law­mak­ers about Trump’s deci­sion to assas­si­nate Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

    Lee, echo­ing the com­plaints of many Democ­rats, blast­ed the brief­ing on the intel­li­gence behind the assas­si­na­tion as the “worst” he’d ever seen. He also fumed that offi­cials refused to acknowl­edge any “hypo­thet­i­cal” sit­u­a­tions in which they would come to Con­gress for autho­riza­tion for future mil­i­tary hos­til­i­ties against Iran.

    Now, in the inter­view with NPR’s Rachel Mar­tin, Lee has gone into more alarm­ing detail. Lee reit­er­at­ed that offi­cials “were unable or unwill­ing to iden­ti­fy any point” at which they’d come to Con­gress for autho­riza­tion for the use of mil­i­tary force. Then this exchange hap­pened:

    MARTIN: What kind of hypo­thet­i­cals were you putting to them in hopes of under­stand­ing when the admin­is­tra­tion sees a need for Con­gres­sion­al author­i­ty?

    LEE: As I recall, one of my col­leagues asked a hypo­thet­i­cal involv­ing the Supreme Leader of Iran: If at that point, the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment decid­ed that it want­ed to under­take a strike against him per­son­al­ly, rec­og­niz­ing that he would be a threat to the Unit­ed States, would that require autho­riza­tion for the use of mil­i­tary force?

    The fact that there was noth­ing but a refusal to answer that ques­tion was per­haps the most deeply upset­ting thing to me in that meet­ing.

    Obvi­ous­ly, this was an extreme hypo­thet­i­cal. But the point of it was to dis­cern the con­tours of the administration’s sense of its own oblig­a­tion to come to Con­gress for approval of future hos­til­i­ties. And it suc­ceed­ed in doing just that, demon­strat­ing that they rec­og­nize no such oblig­a­tion.

    “It would be hard to under­stand assas­si­nat­ing a for­eign head of state as any­thing oth­er than an act of war,” Josh Chafetz, a Cor­nell law pro­fes­sor and the author of a book on Con­gress’ hid­den pow­ers, told me. “It’s appalling that exec­u­tive-branch offi­cials would imply, even in respond­ing to a hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion, that they do not need con­gres­sion­al autho­riza­tion to do it.”

    “If the admin­is­tra­tion won’t con­cede that this is a clear exam­ple of when they would have to go to Con­gress, it’s hard to imag­ine what would be,” Stephen Vladeck, a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin, added. “This under­scores just how com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant they view Con­gress to be in the war pow­ers con­ver­sa­tion.”

    In the NPR inter­view, Lee also dis­closed that at one point in the brief­ing, an offi­cial “dis­cour­aged us from even hav­ing a debate on the Sen­ate floor” about whether Con­gress should pass new mea­sures con­strain­ing Trump’s author­i­ty to launch future mil­i­tary actions with­out autho­riza­tion.

    It’s worth stress­ing that this is emerg­ing as the explic­it posi­tion among Trump’s loy­al­ists and pro­pa­gan­dists. Sen. Lind­sey O. Gra­ham (R‑S.C.) is now dis­miss­ing con­cerns about the need for Con­gress to reassert its war­mak­ing author­i­ty as “embold­en­ing the ene­my.”

    Mean­while, Trump just rage-tweet­ed that he wants “all House Repub­li­cans” to “vote against Crazy Nan­cy Pelosi’s War Pow­ers Res­o­lu­tion.”

    That’s a ref­er­ence to a mea­sure that the House speak­er is putting to a House vote Thurs­day that would require Trump to cease any mil­i­tary hos­til­i­ties against Iran 30 days after enact­ment, if he hasn’t received con­gres­sion­al autho­riza­tion for it. The House will all but cer­tain­ly pass this, and there are oth­er tougher mea­sures on tap.

    ...

    ———-

    “GOP sen­a­tor who erupt­ed over Iran brief­ing shares awful new details” by Greg Sar­gent; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 01/09/2020

    ““It would be hard to under­stand assas­si­nat­ing a for­eign head of state as any­thing oth­er than an act of war,” Josh Chafetz, a Cor­nell law pro­fes­sor and the author of a book on Con­gress’ hid­den pow­ers, told me. “It’s appalling that exec­u­tive-branch offi­cials would imply, even in respond­ing to a hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion, that they do not need con­gres­sion­al autho­riza­tion to do it.””

    Yep, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion basi­cal­ly assert­ed to Con­gress that the pow­ers con­gress grant­ed to the pres­i­den­cy to uni­lat­er­al­ly engage in mil­i­tary action includes the pow­er to assas­si­nate for­eign lead­ers. Not just pop­u­lar gen­er­als but the actu­al lead­ers.

    So the Trump admin­is­tra­tion killed Iran’s top gen­er­al under the pre­tense that he posed an immi­nent threat, then the admin­is­tra­tion refused to pro­vide Con­gress with infor­ma­tion about that immi­nent threat and demand­ing that there be no pub­lic debate about whether or killing a top Iran­ian leader was jus­ti­fied because that would embold­en Iran. And the admin­is­tra­tion also appeared to argue before Con­gress that it has the pow­ers to kill top for­eign lead­ers with­out first get­ting autho­riza­tion from Con­gress. And almost all of the Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors appear to be behind this pres­i­den­tial pow­er grab. It’s pret­ty omi­nous.

    But the Repub­li­cans Sen­a­tor’s hand­ing over of this unprece­dent­ed war mak­ing pow­ers to the exec­u­tive branch gets worse in the con­text of the fol­low­ing sto­ry: Accord­ing to both the New York Times and the Wall Street Jour­nal, Trump told peo­ple dur­ing phone calls that part of the rea­son he con­duct­ed the drone strike was because of pres­sure he was get­ting from Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors who are import sup­port­ers in his upcom­ing Sen­ate tri­al. So this strike was lit­er­al­ly an attempt to appease the Sen­ate war hawks:

    Moth­er Jones

    Report: Trump Ordered Iran Strike Because of Impeach­ment Fears
    Was there actu­al­ly an “immi­nent” threat, or was it a polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion?

    Inae Oh
    01/10/2020

    To jus­ti­fy its drone strike against Qassem Soleimani, the White House claimed last week that the top Iran­ian mil­i­tary leader had been prepar­ing “immi­nent” attacks against Amer­i­can diplo­mats in the region. That claim has since evolved, as var­i­ous Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials strug­gled on mul­ti­ple occa­sions to explain what exact­ly defines an “immi­nent” threat.

    “We don’t know pre­cise­ly when and we don’t know pre­cise­ly where, but it was real,” Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo told Fox News on Thurs­day, remarks many inter­pret­ed as an admis­sion that Soleimani did not actu­al­ly pose a grave and imme­di­ate threat to Amer­i­can lives.

    But while the White House con­tin­ues to be all over the map on this, a new report appears to con­firm a sneak­ing sus­pi­cion held by Trump crit­ics for why Trump ordered the strike at this very point in his pres­i­den­cy. From the Wall Street Jour­nal:

    Mr. Trump, after the strike, told asso­ciates he was under pres­sure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP sen­a­tors he views as impor­tant sup­port­ers in his com­ing impeach­ment tri­al in the Sen­ate.

    The New York Times report­ed some­thing sim­i­lar this week, stat­ing that Trump had said in a phone call that “he had been pres­sured to take a hard­er line on Iran by some Repub­li­can sen­a­tors whose sup­port he needs now more than ever amid an impeach­ment bat­tle.”

    ...

    ———

    “Report: Trump Ordered Iran Strike Because of Impeach­ment Fears” by Inae Oh; Moth­er Jones; 01/10/2020

    The New York Times report­ed some­thing sim­i­lar this week, stat­ing that Trump had said in a phone call that “he had been pres­sured to take a hard­er line on Iran by some Repub­li­can sen­a­tors whose sup­port he needs now more than ever amid an impeach­ment bat­tle.””

    Spark­ing a region­al con­flict in order to appease Sen­a­tors in his upcom­ing impeach­ment tri­al. That’s an impeach­able offense, right? It sure seems like one. And that’s part of what makes the pow­er-grab­bing nature of this scheme so dis­turb­ing: it’s already look­ing like part of the moti­va­tion for this strike was to cre­ate a giant dis­trac­tion from his upcom­ing Sen­ate impeach­ment tri­al over the #UkraineGate scan­dal. But what hap­pens if his impeach­ment tri­als starts includ­ing charges over this ‘trumped up’ move to war? Is he going to start an even big­ger cri­sis? Maybe kill off Iran’s Supreme Leader under the pre­tense of a vague “immi­nent” threat?

    Also recall how it’s not just hawk­ish Sen­a­tors who have been pres­sur­ing Trump to war. Mike Pom­peo has made this his pet issue for over a now. It rais­es the fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tion of whether or not Pom­peo, and per­haps John Bolton, have been in con­tact with these hawk­ish Sen­a­tors. Was there some sort of GOP-hawk extor­tion cam­paign against Trump going on to press him into war? That would be rather iron­ic giv­en the extortive nature of the #UkraineGate scan­dal.

    And note how Mike Pom­peo came right out and said on Thurs­day that, “We don’t know pre­cise­ly when and we don’t know pre­cise­ly where, but it was real,” when asked about that immi­nent threat:

    ...
    “We don’t know pre­cise­ly when and we don’t know pre­cise­ly where, but it was real,” Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo told Fox News on Thurs­day, remarks many inter­pret­ed as an admis­sion that Soleimani did not actu­al­ly pose a grave and imme­di­ate threat to Amer­i­can lives.
    ...

    It’s exact­ly the kind of answer to the grow­ing ques­tion of the verac­i­ty of the evi­dence that this attack was pred­i­cat­ed on that can turn this whole fias­co into anoth­er impeach­ment charge. And it also hap­pens to con­tra­dict what Trump has start­ed claim­ing on Thurs­day and in inter­view Fri­day: accord­ing to Trump, Soleimani was plan­ning on blow­ing up a US embassy. Lat­er, he assert­ed that the plot was actu­al­ly against four embassies:

    CNN

    Trump claims Soleimani plot­ted to blow up US embassies

    By Ryan Browne and Paul LeBlanc, CNN

    Updat­ed 2:34 PM ET, Fri Jan­u­ary 10, 2020

    Wash­ing­ton (CNN)President Don­ald Trump on Thurs­day assert­ed that Iran­ian Gen. Qasem Soleimani was plot­ting to blow up a US embassy before he was killed by a US drone strike last week, lat­er say­ing that the Iran­ian gen­er­al was threat­en­ing mul­ti­ple Amer­i­can embassies over­seas.

    “We caught a total mon­ster. We took them out. And that should have hap­pened a long time ago. We did it because they were look­ing to blow up our embassy,” Trump told reporters.

    “We also did it for oth­er rea­sons that were very obvi­ous. Some­body died ... peo­ple were bad­ly wound­ed just a week before. And we did it. We had a shot at it ... that was the end of a mon­ster,” Trump added, refer­ring to a recent rock­et attack by an Iran­ian-backed mili­tia group in Iraq, Khat­ib Hezbol­lah, that killed an Amer­i­can con­trac­tor and wound­ed sev­er­al US mil­i­tary per­son­nel.

    Lat­er on Thurs­day, Trump claimed that Soleimani was plan­ning attacks on mul­ti­ple US embassies.

    “Soleimani was active­ly plan­ning new attacks, and he was look­ing very seri­ous­ly at our embassies, and not just the embassy in Bagh­dad,” Trump said at a ral­ly in Tole­do, Ohio, adding, “but we stopped him, and we stopped him quick­ly, and we stopped him cold.”

    And Trump claimed in an inter­view Fri­day that slain Iran­ian com­man­der Qasem Soleimani was tar­get­ing four embassies before he was killed.

    “I can reveal that I believe it would’ve been four embassies,” Trump said in an inter­view with Fox News.

    A senior defense offi­cial told reporters Thurs­day the US had intel­li­gence about mul­ti­ple plots and threats involv­ing Soleimani, includ­ing one that involved a plan to attack the embassy using explo­sives.

    The plot was sep­a­rate and more sophis­ti­cat­ed than the attempts to storm the US embassy in Bagh­dad by Molo­tov-cock­tail wield­ing Khat­ib Hezbol­lah mem­bers and its sup­port­ers, an effort US offi­cials have said was also orches­trat­ed by Soleimani.

    The offi­cial added that the US gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about the threats posed by Iran­ian-linked groups to mul­ti­ple US embassies in the peri­od lead­ing up to the strike on Soleimani, includ­ing the US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

    But the senior defense offi­cial would not pro­vide any addi­tion­al details on the plot against the embassy cit­ing the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the intel­li­gence.

    CNN was not able to con­firm claims by Trump and the senior defense offi­cial. Two promi­nent Sen­ate Repub­li­cans and con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats on Wednes­day slammed the admin­is­tra­tion’s brief­ing on the rea­son­ing for the strike fol­low­ing brief­in­gs by Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo and Sec­re­tary of Defense Mark Esper. Mul­ti­ple law­mak­ers said they saw no spe­cif­ic intel­li­gence that point­ed to an immi­nent threat from Soleimani that jus­ti­fied the strike.

    Asked about those crit­i­cisms Wednes­day Sec­re­tary of Defense Mark Esper said “most mem­bers of Con­gress do not have access to the intel­li­gence that I think was the most com­pelling.”

    The US mil­i­tary has deployed thou­sands of addi­tion­al mil­i­tary forces to the Mid­dle East in recent days to help bol­ster the secu­ri­ty of US per­son­nel and facil­i­ties, includ­ing US embassies in Bagh­dad and Beirut. The addi­tion­al troops will allow the mil­i­tary to respond quick­ly in the event of a cri­sis.

    Ear­li­er Thurs­day, admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials had explained Trump’s com­ments about the plot to blow up the US embassy by say­ing he was refer­ring to the pub­lic demon­stra­tions by Khat­ib Hezbol­lah.

    The offi­cials have not explained why there is a dis­crep­an­cy.

    Top US nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials have con­tin­ued to defend the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s claim that it killed Soleimani in response to an impend­ing threat to Amer­i­can lives, but the lack of evi­dence pro­vid­ed to law­mak­ers and the pub­lic has fueled lin­ger­ing skep­ti­cism about whether the strike was jus­ti­fied.

    ...

    ———–

    “Trump claims Soleimani plot­ted to blow up US embassies” By Ryan Browne and Paul LeBlanc; CNN; 01/10/2020

    “Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Thurs­day assert­ed that Iran­ian Gen. Qasem Soleimani was plot­ting to blow up a US embassy before he was killed by a US drone strike last week, lat­er say­ing that the Iran­ian gen­er­al was threat­en­ing mul­ti­ple Amer­i­can embassies over­seas.

    First, Trump claims Thurs­day night there was a plan to blow up an embassy. Then it was mul­ti­ple embassies. This is on the same day that Mike Pop­meo, as we saw above, acknowl­edged that “We don’t know pre­cise­ly when and we don’t know pre­cise­ly where, but it was real.” So Trump appears to be assert­ing the oppo­site and that there were four par­tic­u­lar embassies that were at risk of being attacked. Immi­nent risk, of course.

    And yet none of this evi­dence about threats to mul­ti­ple embassies were pre­sent­ed to Con­gress, from the Sec­re­tary of Defense to sug­gest that Con­gress sim­ply did­n’t have access to the intel­li­gence. Keep in mind that the main thing the Sen­a­tors were angry about after the brief­ing was that they weren’t shown any intel­li­gence of an immi­nent threat and the whole pur­pose of the brief­ing was to pro­vide that evi­dence:

    ...
    But the senior defense offi­cial would not pro­vide any addi­tion­al details on the plot against the embassy cit­ing the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the intel­li­gence.

    CNN was not able to con­firm claims by Trump and the senior defense offi­cial. Two promi­nent Sen­ate Repub­li­cans and con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats on Wednes­day slammed the admin­is­tra­tion’s brief­ing on the rea­son­ing for the strike fol­low­ing brief­in­gs by Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo and Sec­re­tary of Defense Mark Esper. Mul­ti­ple law­mak­ers said they saw no spe­cif­ic intel­li­gence that point­ed to an immi­nent threat from Soleimani that jus­ti­fied the strike.

    Asked about those crit­i­cisms Wednes­day Sec­re­tary of Defense Mark Esper said “most mem­bers of Con­gress do not have access to the intel­li­gence that I think was the most com­pelling.”
    ...

    And note how the admin­is­tra­tion already appears to be engag­ing in dam­age con­trol over Trump’s asser­tions, sug­gest­ing that he was refer­ring to pub­lic demon­stra­tions by a par­tic­u­lar group:

    ...
    Ear­li­er Thurs­day, admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials had explained Trump’s com­ments about the plot to blow up the US embassy by say­ing he was refer­ring to the pub­lic demon­stra­tions by Khat­ib Hezbol­lah.

    The offi­cials have not explained why there is a dis­crep­an­cy.
    ...

    So we appear to have all the hall­marks of a sign­f­i­cant coverup here. A coverup involv­ing the pres­i­dent try­ing to start a war in order to dis­trict from his impeach­ment. Or rather, in order to gar­ner the sup­port of the Sen­a­tors he feels he needs to sur­vive the Sen­ate impeach­ment inquiry. And as part of this scheme, the admin­is­tra­tion is also effec­tive­ly try­ing to seize even more pow­ers to car­ry out even more sig­nif­i­cant mil­i­tary actions with­out Con­gres­sion­al approval.

    Over­all, the table is now set for some sort of dia­bol­i­cal ‘wag­ging the ‘wag the dog” sce­nario here: A new larg­er mil­i­tary act to dis­tract from the inves­ti­ga­tion over the pre­vi­ous mil­i­tary act that was sup­posed to pro­tect Trump dur­ing an impeach­ment inves­ti­ga­tion. An impeach­ment inves­ti­ga­tion that, iron­i­cal­ly, involved with­hold­ing mil­i­tary aid in order to extort Ukraine into pro­vid­ing Trump with polit­i­cal fod­der for his reelec­tion. So whether he’s with­hold­ing mil­i­tary aid to force a polit­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion, or engag­ing in mil­i­tary acts to dis­tract from a polit­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion, it’s all about cre­at­ing a spec­ta­cle to get reelect­ed. Which seems like a pret­ty big rea­son not to reelect the guy. Yes, there was already an abun­dance of rea­sons to to reelect the guy, but he’s some­how com­ing up with new, even more com­pelling reasons...which will prob­a­bly make him feel even more com­pelled to start a war for reelec­tion pur­pos­es. It’s a reminder that, of all the esca­la­to­ry sce­nar­ios we want to avoid at this point, it’s an esca­la­tion of this cycle of des­per­ate malign incom­pe­tence is the cycle we want to avoid most of all. But we can’t real­ly avoid that unless Con­gress steps in to reassert its war-mak­ing pow­ers, which won’t hap­pen because the Repub­li­cans won’t do that. Which is also a reminder that Trump isn’t the only Repub­li­can stuck in a cycle des­per­ate malign incom­pe­tence endan­ger­ing us all.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 10, 2020, 4:19 pm
  9. A debate over the mean­ing of the word “immi­nent” is an increas­ing­ly hot top­ic in DC these days fol­low­ing the mud­dled and con­tra­dic­to­ry expla­na­tions from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion on the nature of the intel­li­gence point­ing to Qassem Soleimani pos­ing an “immi­nent” threat as the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the drone assas­si­na­tion strike. And it does­n’t appear that this debate is going to be end­ing any­time soon. Because based on the com­ments from Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo on Fri­day it appears the def­i­n­i­tion of “immi­nent” that the white house is now work­ing with is ‘some­thing that will hap­pen as some point in the future’, which is a pret­ty con­tentious def­i­n­i­tion of immi­nent:

    Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

    ‘Immi­nent’ Threat — Trump Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion Of Attack On Iran­ian Gen­er­al — Is Unde­fined

    David Wel­na
    Jan­u­ary 10, 2020 7:16 PM ET

    Seek­ing to jus­ti­fy Pres­i­dent Trump’s deci­sion to have Iran’s top gen­er­al killed in a drone strike, Trump’s allies favor the same adjec­tive to describe the dan­ger that prompt­ed that attack: immi­nent.

    “There is no doubt that there were a series of immi­nent attacks that were being plot­ted by (Iran­ian gen­er­al) Qassem Soleimani,” Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo declared Thurs­day evening on Fox News. “We don’t know pre­cise­ly when, and we don’t know pre­cise­ly where, but it was real.

    On Fri­day morn­ing at a White House news con­fer­ence, a reporter informed Pom­peo that not know­ing pre­cise­ly when and where was not the def­i­n­i­tion of “immi­nent.”

    Pom­peo was not back­ing down.

    “We had spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion on an immi­nent threat, and those threats includ­ed attacks on U.S. embassies,” the for­mer Kansas Repub­li­can con­gress­man shot back. “Peri­od, full stop.”

    Anoth­er try: “Sec­re­tary Pom­peo,” he was asked, “what is your def­i­n­i­tion of immi­nent?”

    At first Pom­peo paused. He then exhaled and declared, “This was gonna hap­pen. Amer­i­can lives were at risk.”

    He did not give any time­frame.

    ...

    The word “immi­nent” appears sev­er­al times in the 1973 War Pow­ers Res­o­lu­tion, a doc­u­ment that lays out the ground rules for pres­i­dents seek­ing to send U.S. forces “into hos­til­i­ties or into sit­u­a­tions where immi­nent involve­ment in hos­til­i­ties is clear­ly indi­cat­ed by the cir­cum­stances.”

    ...

    ———-

    “ ‘Immi­nent’ Threat — Trump Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion Of Attack On Iran­ian Gen­er­al — Is Unde­fined” by David Wel­na; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio; 01/10/2020

    ““There is no doubt that there were a series of immi­nent attacks that were being plot­ted by (Iran­ian gen­er­al) Qassem Soleimani,” Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo declared Thurs­day evening on Fox News. “We don’t know pre­cise­ly when, and we don’t know pre­cise­ly where, but it was real.””

    We don’t know where, we don’t know when. We just knew it was going to hap­pen. That appears to be Pom­peo’s def­i­n­i­tion of “immi­nent”, which sounds like the kind of def­i­n­i­tion that would allow the Pres­i­dent to use the “immi­nent” threat clause in 1973 War Pow­ers Action to engage in pret­ty much any act of war they choose with­out con­gres­sion­al approval. That’s part of what makes this debate over the mean­ing of “immi­nent” a pret­ty high stakes debate. If the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s def­i­n­i­tion wins out, there’s basi­cal­ly noth­ing restrain­ing the pres­i­dent from declar­ing wars. In that sense, the fact that this “immi­nent” debate is hap­pen­ing in the con­text of Pres­i­dent Trump appear­ing to have cho­sen this moment to kill Soleimani and bring the US to the brink of war is a help­ful reminder of the extreme dan­ger of giv­ing pres­i­dents de fac­to uni­lat­er­al war-mak­ing pow­ers.

    So it’s worth recall­ing that this isn’t the first time Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo has issued vague, mud­dled warn­ings about “immi­nent” Iran­ian attacks. Back in ear­ly May of 2019, Pom­peo made an unan­nounced trip to Iraq and it was dur­ing this trip that we heard Pom­peo warn of “spe­cif­ic and cred­i­ble” intel­li­gence warn­ing of immi­nent Iran­ian attacks on US forces in the region:

    CNN

    Pom­peo makes unan­nounced trip to Iraq to dis­cuss ten­sions with Iran

    By Jen­nifer Hansler
    Updat­ed 7:04 PM ET, Tue May 7, 2019

    (CNN)Secretary of State Mike Pom­peo made an unan­nounced trip to Iraq on Tues­day after abrupt­ly can­cel­ing a planned trip to Berlin amid esca­lat­ing ten­sions with Iran.

    The top US diplo­mat met with Prime Min­is­ter Adil Abd al-Mah­di, Pres­i­dent Barham Sal­ih and oth­er offi­cials while on the ground in the Iraqi cap­i­tal in a rough­ly four-hour vis­it, accord­ing to the pool trav­el­ing with Pom­peo.

    Pom­peo described his meet­ings as “pro­duc­tive” and said he spoke to the offi­cials “about the impor­tance of Iraq ensur­ing that it’s able to ade­quate­ly pro­tect Amer­i­cans in their coun­try.”

    “They both pro­vid­ed assur­ances that they under­stood that was their respon­si­bil­i­ty,” he said.

    He also said that the US “want­ed to let them know about the increased threat stream that we had seen and give them a lit­tle bit more back­ground on that so they could ensure that they were doing all they could to pro­vide pro­tec­tion for our team.”

    “They under­stood too it’s impor­tant for their coun­try. We don’t want any­one inter­fer­ing in their coun­try, cer­tain­ly not by attack­ing anoth­er nation inside of Iraq and there was com­plete agree­ment,” Pom­peo said.

    US offi­cials have told CNN the US had “spe­cif­ic and cred­i­ble” intel­li­gence that sug­gest­ed Iran­ian forces and prox­ies were plan­ning to tar­get US forces in loca­tions includ­ing Iraq. That intel­li­gence led the Pen­ta­gon to rec­om­mend a car­ri­er strike group be moved to the region. Speak­ing to the press pool fol­low­ing his vis­it, Pom­peo reit­er­at­ed that it was the US’ under­stand­ing that “these were attacks that were immi­nent, these were attacks that were going to hap­pen fair­ly soon, we’ve learned about them and we’re tak­ing every action to deter them.”

    Pri­or to his arrival in Bagh­dad, Pom­peo declined to go into details when asked to elab­o­rate fur­ther on the “tip­ping point” for his abrupt change of trav­el plans

    ...

    The US sec­re­tary of state said he and offi­cials dis­cussed how to defeat the remain­ing pock­ets of ISIS in the coun­try and for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers being held in deten­tion camps. Although Pom­peo indi­cat­ed pri­or to his stop that he would dis­cuss “big ener­gy deals that can dis­con­nect (Iraq) from Iran­ian ener­gy,” he said after­ward that although they spoke about ener­gy infra­struc­ture, they “did­n’t spend much time talk­ing about sanc­tions issues.”

    Pom­peo abrupt­ly can­celed a sched­uled trip to Ger­many ear­li­er on Tues­day “due to press­ing issues,” the State Depart­ment said. The sec­re­tary of state told the pool pri­or to land­ing in Iraq that Ger­many’s for­eign min­is­ter, Heiko Maas, under­stood the deci­sion to can­cel.

    Pom­peo’s trip to Iraq came amid news that Iran plans to announce it will reduce its com­mit­ments to the Joint Com­pre­hen­sive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — one year after the US announced its depar­ture from the land­mark nuclear deal.

    “Iran exer­cised restraint over the past year, but the oth­er par­ties to the deal failed to adhere to their com­mit­ments so that Iran had no oth­er way but to reduce its com­mit­ments under the deal,” a let­ter from Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Has­san Rouhani to the Euro­pean Union is expect­ed to read, accord­ing to state-run IRNA.

    Speak­ing to the press pri­or to arriv­ing in Bagh­dad, Pom­peo said the US would look at Iran’s action regard­ing the JCPOA, but said that com­pli­ance with the deal was “bina­ry.”

    “You’re either in com­pli­ance or you’re not. And so we’ll obvi­ous­ly have to wait and see what they choose to do, but in — you’re — it’s zeroes and ones. You’re either in com­pli­ance with the agree­ment or you’re not. And so, look, we’ve with­drawn from the agree­ment. The Ira­ni­ans will have to make their own choice about how they want to pro­ceed,” he said.
    ———–

    “Pom­peo makes unan­nounced trip to Iraq to dis­cuss ten­sions with Iran” by Jen­nifer Hansler; CNN; 05/07/2019

    “US offi­cials have told CNN the US had “spe­cif­ic and cred­i­ble” intel­li­gence that sug­gest­ed Iran­ian forces and prox­ies were plan­ning to tar­get US forces in loca­tions includ­ing Iraq. That intel­li­gence led the Pen­ta­gon to rec­om­mend a car­ri­er strike group be moved to the region. Speak­ing to the press pool fol­low­ing his vis­it, Pom­peo reit­er­at­ed that it was the US’ under­stand­ing that “these were attacks that were immi­nent, these were attacks that were going to hap­pen fair­ly soon, we’ve learned about them and we’re tak­ing every action to deter them.”

    Yes, eight months ago we were warned by Pom­peo about “spe­cif­ic and cred­i­ble” intel­li­gence of “immi­nent” attacks from Iran­ian forces. And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, Con­gress was still debat­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of this warn­ing of an “immi­nent” attack two weeks lat­er, with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress accus­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion of hyp­ing up intel­li­gence as a pre­text for lay­ing the ground­work for war and Repub­li­cans large­ly defend­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s actions and back­ing up the intel­li­gence claims and were large­ly uncon­cerned with the require­ment that the pres­i­dent con­sult Con­gress in advance of mil­i­tary action. In oth­er words, we’ve been here before. Eight months ago:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Trump offi­cials brief a divid­ed Con­gress on esca­lat­ing ten­sions with Iran

    By Karoun Demir­jian, Shane Har­ris and Karen DeY­oung
    May 21, 2019 at 5:23 p.m. CDT

    Law­mak­ers were sharply divid­ed Tues­day over whether Iran pos­es an immi­nent threat to U.S. inter­ests or the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is exag­ger­at­ing intel­li­gence to lay the ground­work for war.

    Top admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials briefed the House and Sen­ate in two closed-door ses­sions for all mem­bers, pre­sent­ing evi­dence that Iran may be poised to attack U.S. mil­i­tary and diplo­mat­ic per­son­nel in the Mid­dle East.

    But some Democ­rats said that none of the infor­ma­tion showed Iran was appre­cia­bly more of a threat now than in the past, and they accused the admin­is­tra­tion of being ready to attack at the slight­est provo­ca­tion.

    U.S. and West­ern intel­li­gence offi­cials also have debat­ed whether the intel­li­gence, which includes pho­tographs of Ira­ni­ans load­ing mis­siles onto small boats, indi­cates that the nation is ready to strike or is respond­ing defen­sive­ly to eco­nom­ic pres­sure from Trump admin­is­tra­tion sanc­tions and a per­cep­tion that the White House is eager for a fight.

    Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, act­ing defense sec­re­tary Patrick Shana­han and the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dun­ford Jr., faced skep­ti­cal mem­bers, some of whom said they heard echoes of a pre­vi­ous administration’s case for war in the Mid­dle East.

    “I tru­ly believe that the intel has been mis­in­ter­pret­ed and mis­rep­re­sent­ed by Sec­re­tary Pom­peo, by [nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er John] Bolton and oth­er peo­ple that do want us to go to war in Iran, as a repeat to Iraq,” Rep. Ruben Gal­lego (D‑Ariz.) said upon leav­ing the brief­ing for House mem­bers.

    “This is a case of some­body get­ting into somebody’s face and hop­ing that they’ll punch, and wait­ing to punch back,” said Rep. Joaquin Cas­tro (D‑Tex.).

    But some Repub­li­can law­mak­ers saw the infor­ma­tion dif­fer­ent­ly and point­ed to “new,” “cred­i­ble,” and “con­sis­tent” threats that Sen. Lind­sey O. Gra­ham (R‑S.C.) called “a game-chang­er.”

    Gra­ham said the administration’s recent actions, includ­ing the deploy­ment of an air­craft car­ri­er to the Per­sian Gulf, were in response to “strong intel­li­gence” that Iran’s lead­ers had giv­en Shi­ite mili­tias in Iraq “more run­ning room and direc­tion that attacks against Amer­i­can inter­ests and per­son­nel were immi­nent.”

    Repub­li­cans insist­ed that the admin­is­tra­tion was not hurtling toward a war with Iran, call­ing recent mil­i­tary moves “mea­sured.” But Gra­ham warned the admin­is­tra­tion not to shy from using force.

    “If one Amer­i­can is injured or killed by actions com­ing from Iran, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, at the direc­tion of the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment, and you don’t respond, you will be up here explain­ing why you let those Amer­i­cans get hurt and did noth­ing about it,” he said. “We’re push­ing back against the regime and we’re reset­ting the rules of engage­ment. We’re let­ting them know that you’ve attacked us in the past .?.?. those days are over.”

    Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats were direct­ly at odds over whether the administration’s recent show of force is a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion, or legit­i­mate deter­rence.

    “This is not an esca­la­tion,” Sen. Mar­co Rubio (R‑Fla.) insist­ed, argu­ing that the Unit­ed States had “an affir­ma­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty to have mil­i­tary assets in the region pre­pared to defend” Amer­i­cans deployed there, mak­ing the Trump administration’s moves “not an esca­la­tion. That’s a response.”

    “Our recent actions over the last few weeks have been defen­sive,” Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R‑La.) said. He added that he thought the Unit­ed States was “in a bet­ter pos­ture today than two weeks ago,” but acknowl­edged that “we don’t know where it’s going to go next.”

    Gra­ham put the respon­si­bil­i­ty for de-esca­la­tion ful­ly on Iran.

    “The only way this changes is for Iran to change,” he said. “We’re not back­ing off, and if they use mil­i­tary force to try to stop our eco­nom­ic efforts to change their behav­ior, then they’ll suf­fer mil­i­tar­i­ly.”

    Pom­peo, a long­time Iran hawk since his days rep­re­sent­ing Kansas in the House, said the offi­cials described the administration’s “strate­gic cam­paign, the effort to push back against Iran’s malign activ­i­ty, 40 years of ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty” and “our efforts and our ulti­mate objec­tive over the past days, which has been to deter Iran.”

    Shana­han said he explained to mem­bers the “cred­i­ble intel­li­gence about threats to our inter­ests in the Mid­dle East and to Amer­i­can forces and how we act­ed on that cred­i­ble intel­li­gence.”

    “Our biggest focus at this point is to pre­vent Iran­ian mis­cal­cu­la­tion,” Shana­han said. “We do not want the sit­u­a­tion to esca­late. This is about deter­rence, not about war.”

    Some Repub­li­cans pushed back against the asser­tion that Pres­i­dent Trump’s advis­ers were hyp­ing the intel­li­gence.

    “If anybody’s ques­tion­ing that some­how there’s made-up in intel­li­gence, that’s ludi­crous,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R‑Ill.).

    ...

    For Trump, the pur­pose of exert­ing “max­i­mum pres­sure” on Iran through sanc­tions is “the belief that he will bring them around and they’ll real­ize they need to do a deal and the terms will be bet­ter,” said Den­nis Ross, a for­mer diplo­mat who nego­ti­at­ed Mid­dle East agree­ments for Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tions.

    “The point is, he still thinks there’s a deal he can do. ... I think for him, the real mea­sure, in his mind, is show­ing he improved over what [Pres­i­dent Barack] Oba­ma did. My sense right now is the Ira­ni­ans will try to out­last him,” Ross said, although “they may well have under­es­ti­mat­ed how much they will feel the pres­sure. There’s no ques­tion they’re hurt­ing” from sanc­tions, “and they’re going to hurt more.”

    In remarks Tues­day while vis­it­ing devel­op­ment projects in north­west Iran, Pres­i­dent Has­san Rouhani acknowl­edged that his coun­try was under pres­sure but said it would not “bow its head in the face of bul­lies,” Iran’s PressTV report­ed.

    Law­mak­ers and admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials also debat­ed whether Trump has the author­i­ty to launch new mil­i­tary engage­ments in the Mid­dle East under the near­ly 20-year-old Autho­riza­tion for Use of Mil­i­tary Force passed after the 9/11 attacks.

    Short­ly before the brief­in­gs, mem­bers of the House Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee includ­ed a pro­vi­sion in the annu­al defense appro­pri­a­tions bill that would end the 2001 autho­riza­tion, which gave the admin­is­tra­tion per­mis­sion to pur­sue al-Qae­da and its affil­i­ates into Afghanistan. In the years since, the law has been used to jus­ti­fy cam­paigns against the Islam­ic State and oth­er extrem­ist groups. Law­mak­ers have nev­er been able to agree across par­ty lines on a replace­ment.

    Rep. Bar­bara Lee (D‑Calif.), the author of the new pro­vi­sion, said it “absolute­ly” was part of the strat­e­gy to con­strain the Trump administration’s options on Iran and was con­fi­dent it would reach the floor for a vote.

    Repub­li­cans seemed large­ly uncon­cerned with whether Con­gress would be con­sult­ed in advance of mil­i­tary action.

    When asked whether offi­cials would jus­ti­fy action under the president’s author­i­ty as com­man­der in chief or under exist­ing autho­riza­tions, Gra­ham brushed off both sug­ges­tions, clas­si­fy­ing any poten­tial mil­i­tary action as falling under the “inher­ent right to defend your­self.”

    ———–

    “Trump offi­cials brief a divid­ed Con­gress on esca­lat­ing ten­sions with Iran” by Karoun Demir­jian, Shane Har­ris and Karen DeY­oung; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 05/21/2019

    “When asked whether offi­cials would jus­ti­fy action under the president’s author­i­ty as com­man­der in chief or under exist­ing autho­riza­tions, Gra­ham brushed off both sug­ges­tions, clas­si­fy­ing any poten­tial mil­i­tary action as falling under the “inher­ent right to defend your­self.””

    Yep, Lind­sey Gra­ham, per­haps the biggest advo­cate for war with Iran in the Sen­ate, does­n’t appear to feel the pres­i­dent needs any con­gres­sion­al autho­riza­tion at all for mil­i­tary actions. That pow­er falls under the “inher­ent right to defend your­self.” So that’s some­thing to watch­ing for as the debate over pres­i­den­tial author­i­ty to use mil­i­tary force gets under­way: Lind­sey Gra­ham wants to grant pres­i­dents some sort of blan­ket “inher­ent right to defend your­self” author­i­ty for using mil­i­tary force. And in gen­er­al, the Repub­li­can sen­a­tors appeared to be com­plete­ly on board with the then-two-week-old warn­ings of “immi­nent” threat warn­ings Pom­peo was mak­ing while Democ­rats were call­ing the evi­dence over­hyped. Evi­dence that appeared to be lim­it­ed to intel­li­gence like pho­tos Iran load­ing small boats with mis­siles:

    ...
    U.S. and West­ern intel­li­gence offi­cials also have debat­ed whether the intel­li­gence, which includes pho­tographs of Ira­ni­ans load­ing mis­siles onto small boats, indi­cates that the nation is ready to strike or is respond­ing defen­sive­ly to eco­nom­ic pres­sure from Trump admin­is­tra­tion sanc­tions and a per­cep­tion that the White House is eager for a fight.

    ...

    “I tru­ly believe that the intel has been mis­in­ter­pret­ed and mis­rep­re­sent­ed by Sec­re­tary Pom­peo, by [nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er John] Bolton and oth­er peo­ple that do want us to go to war in Iran, as a repeat to Iraq,” Rep. Ruben Gal­lego (D‑Ariz.) said upon leav­ing the brief­ing for House mem­bers.
    ...

    So while we aren’t told what the intel­li­gence basis was for the lat­est “immi­nent” warn­ing issued by Pom­peo about Iran­ian threats were that left law­mak­ers irate and accus­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of hyp­ing evi­dence, this episode back in May gives us an idea of what left those elect­ed offi­cials so flab­ber­gast­ed. Pic­tures of mis­siles being loaded onto boats. That was the immi­nent threat. The immi­nent threat that was being debat­ed weeks lat­er. Who knows, based on Pom­peo’s extreme­ly lax def­i­n­i­tion of “immi­nent”, maybe they used the same pho­tos of boats loaded with mis­siles for this lat­est immi­nent threat.

    But it’s worth not­ing that we’re now informed that some mem­bers of con­gress were very much in the loop when the Trump admin­is­tra­tion was plan­ning its assas­si­na­tion drone strike attack. Specif­i­cal­ly, Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Lind­sey Gra­ham and Tom Cot­ton were report­ed­ly both in the loop and active­ly encour­aged the strike. So Con­gress was noti­fied in advance of this strike, but it hap­pened to be lim­it­ed to the two most hawk­ish mem­bers of the pres­i­den­t’s par­ty who have been push­ing for war with Iran for years. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing giv­en the recent rev­e­la­tion that Trump report­ed­ly told peo­ple that he con­duct­ed the strike in order to appease Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors that would be impor­tant defend­ers in his upcom­ing #UkraineGate Sen­ate impeach­ment tri­al. It was the kind of rev­e­la­tion that raised the ques­tion of whether or not there was a fac­tion of hawk­ish Repub­li­cans that were using the threat of impeach­ment to lit­er­al­ly extort Trump into con­duct­ing this strike. And now we learn that two of the biggest Iran hawks in the Sen­ate were not just aware of these strike plans but encour­ag­ing it:

    CNN

    How Pom­peo con­vinced Trump to kill Soleimani and ful­filled a decade-long goal

    By Nicole Gaou­ette and Jamie Gan­gel, CNN

    Updat­ed 11:58 AM ET, Sat Jan­u­ary 11, 2020

    (CNN)Secretary of State Mike Pom­peo was a dri­ving force behind Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s deci­sion to kill a top Iran­ian gen­er­al, sources inside and around the admin­is­tra­tion tell CNN, a high-stakes move that demon­strates Pom­peo’s sta­tus as the most influ­en­tial nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cial in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    Tak­ing Iran­ian Gen. Qasem Soleimani “off the bat­tle­field” has been a goal for the top US diplo­mat for a decade, sev­er­al sources told CNN.

    Tar­get­ing Iran’s sec­ond most pow­er­ful offi­cial — the leader of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, the polit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful mil­i­tary group with region­al clout — was Pom­peo’s idea, accord­ing to a source from his inner cir­cle. That source said the sec­re­tary brought the sug­ges­tion to Trump. Pom­peo “was the one who made the case to take out Soleimani, it was him absolute­ly,” this source said.

    Accord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources close to Pom­peo, the sec­re­tary of state has believed through­out his career that Iran is at the root of all the Mid­dle East­’s prob­lems and has focused on Soleimani, Iran’s “shad­ow com­man­der,” as the mas­ter­mind behind the coun­try’s state spon­sored ter­ror­ism through­out the region.

    “We took a bad guy off the bat­tle­field,” Pom­peo told CNN on Jan­u­ary 5. “We made the right deci­sion.” The same day, Pom­peo told ABC that killing Soleimani was impor­tant “because this was a fel­la who was the glue, who was con­duct­ing active plot­ting against the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, putting Amer­i­can lives at risk.”

    ‘Lead­ing the way’

    “Pom­peo pro­vid­ed the war­rant for why Soleimani is a bad guy,” the source said. “It’s not per­son­al because he was a ter­ror­ist and the mas­ter­mind.” The source also said tak­ing out Soleimani had been Pom­peo’s mis­sion for a decade.

    The sec­re­tary of state has been so fix­at­ed on the Iran­ian gen­er­al that he even sought to get a visa to Iran in 2016 when he was a con­gress­man from Kansas. While he said it was to mon­i­tor elec­tions, he also sug­gest­ed to con­fi­dants that he want­ed to try to con­front Soleimani when he was there. He nev­er got the visa.

    Pom­peo, a West Point grad­u­ate who still has many friends in the mil­i­tary serv­ing in the Mid­dle East, also believed Sole­mani had the blood of hun­dreds of US sol­diers on his hands.

    US offi­cials believe that dur­ing the Iraq War, Soleimani’s units pro­vid­ed Iraqi insur­gents with spe­cial­ly made bombs that could pen­e­trate armor, a dead­ly weapon against Amer­i­can forces. Iran denies the claim, but the Pen­ta­gon still says Soleimani and his troops were “respon­si­ble for the deaths of hun­dreds of Amer­i­can and coali­tion ser­vice mem­bers and the wound­ing of thou­sands more.”

    More recent­ly, Soleimani has been seen as the archi­tect of Iran­ian mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Iraq and Syr­ia. The source told CNN that as the years have gone by, Pom­peo has told friends and col­leagues that “I will not retire from pub­lic ser­vice until Soleimani is off the bat­tle­field.”

    Long known as a “Trump whis­per­er” for the rela­tion­ship he’s cul­ti­vat­ed with the Pres­i­dent, Pom­peo’s abil­i­ty to sell such an aggres­sive Iran strat­e­gy to Trump — a con­flict-averse Pres­i­dent — is tes­ta­ment to his unpar­al­leled sway.

    Now, with Pom­peo’s recent dec­la­ra­tion that he will not run for a US Sen­ate seat in Kansas, the for­mer three-term House law­mak­er and CIA direc­tor appears set to con­tin­ue wield­ing his influ­ence in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    “He’s the one lead­ing the way,” accord­ing to the source in Pom­peo’s inner cir­cle, dis­cussing the face off with Iran. “It’s the Pres­i­den­t’s pol­i­cy, but Pom­peo has been the lead­ing voice in help­ing the Pres­i­dent craft this pol­i­cy. There is no doubt Mike is the one lead­ing it in the Cab­i­net.”

    One for­mer Repub­li­can nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cial, who is a Trump crit­ic but sup­port­ed the strike on Soleimani, told CNN that Pom­peo is so influ­en­tial, he is like the “sec­re­tary of state, sec­re­tary of defense and direc­tor of the CIA” com­bined.

    ‘Un-Amer­i­can’

    Pom­peo’s rise has sparked con­cerns with­in some Repub­li­can nation­al secu­ri­ty cir­cles, where crit­ics say he has enabled the famous­ly mer­cu­r­ial Pres­i­dent.

    While he’s earned the Pres­i­den­t’s trust, how­ev­er, Pom­peo has not been insu­lat­ed from scathing crit­i­cism over the admin­is­tra­tion’s approach to Iran. On Wednes­day, even some Repub­li­cans emerged from a brief­ing about the sit­u­a­tion uncon­vinced.

    GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah called the ses­sion by Pom­peo and Defense Sec­re­tary Mark Esper the “worst brief­ing I’ve had on a mil­i­tary issue in my nine years” in the Sen­ate. Lee said the admin­is­tra­tion’s sug­ges­tion that Con­gress should­n’t have a role in debat­ing mil­i­tary action against Iran was “un-Amer­i­can” and “com­plete­ly unac­cept­able.”

    Con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats were high­ly crit­i­cal, with Rep. Ger­ry Con­nol­ly of Vir­ginia call­ing the brief­ing “sopho­moric.” Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren said she was­n’t con­vinced Soleimani pre­sent­ed the immi­nent threat the admin­is­tra­tion claimed to jus­ti­fy his killing, while Sen. Dick Durbin of Illi­nois, the sec­ond-rank­ing Sen­ate Demo­c­rat, dis­put­ed Esper’s descrip­tion of intel­li­gence on Soleimani as “exquis­ite.”

    “It was not,” Durbin said.

    Since becom­ing the top US diplo­mat, Pom­peo has been the point per­son for the admin­is­tra­tion’s “max­i­mum pres­sure” cam­paign against Tehran. In April, Pom­peo was a major force behind the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s con­tro­ver­sial move to des­ig­nate Iran’s IRGC, includ­ing the Quds Force, as a for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.

    It was the first time the US had ever des­ig­nat­ed part of anoth­er gov­ern­ment as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion and laid a foun­da­tion for the legal ratio­nal­iza­tion to kill Soleimani, who had led the Quds Force since 1998.

    In June, after Iran shot down a US drone, Pom­peo was dis­ap­point­ed when he failed to con­vince Trump to take aggres­sive action against Iran and Soleimani. The Pres­i­dent, at the last minute, reversed a deci­sion to strike IRGC tar­gets.

    But this time, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources with knowl­edge, Pom­peo built a case that won over the Pres­i­dent, par­tic­u­lar­ly after a Decem­ber 27, a rock­et attack killed a US civil­ian con­trac­tor in the north­ern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

    On Decem­ber 29, US planes killed at least 25 peo­ple in bomb­ing strikes on the mili­tia group Kataib Hezbol­lah, which reports to Iraqi lead­ers but is heav­i­ly influ­enced by Iran. On New Year’s Eve, Iraqi protest­ed in response to the Amer­i­can strikes, storm­ing the US embassy com­pound in Bagh­dad.

    Wor­ry about anoth­er 1979

    Accord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources famil­iar with these events, Trump was deeply con­cerned the embassy protests could lead to a repeat of the 2012 deaths of four Amer­i­cans at a diplo­mat­ic facil­i­ty in Beng­hazi, Libya, or even the 1979 stand­off between Wash­ing­ton and Tehran, when Iran­ian stu­dents stormed the US embassy in Iran and held 52 Amer­i­cans hostage for 444 days.

    “I know Trump tweet­ed about Beng­hazi, but he did­n’t want to face anoth­er Tehran 1979,” said the source in Pom­peo’s inner cir­cle. Refer­ring to Iran today, this source said that “they want­ed to take hostages.”

    A Repub­li­can con­gres­sion­al source with knowl­edge of the events said that the Amer­i­can con­trac­tor’s death was piv­otal.

    While Pom­peo and Esper have argued that intel­li­gence sug­gest­ed an immi­nent threat, this Repub­li­can source said, “the intel­li­gence may be no dif­fer­ent of (Soleimani) plan­ning” attacks sim­i­lar to those he’d con­duct­ed in the past. The dif­fer­ence this time was that an Amer­i­can had been killed, the Repub­li­can said, tying the deci­sion to strike to esca­lat­ing encoun­ters that began with the death of the 27-year-old Iraqi-Amer­i­can lin­guist from the San Fran­cis­co area.

    “If an Amer­i­can had­n’t died, I don’t think any of this would have hap­pened,” the Repub­li­can said.

    As plan­ning got under­way, Pom­peo worked with Esper, the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark Mil­ley and the com­man­der of CENTCOM Marine Gen. Ken­neth McKen­zie, who assessed the pro­file of troops in the field. Mul­ti­ple sources also say that hawk­ish Repub­li­can Sens. Tom Cot­ton of Arkansas and Lind­sey Gra­ham of South Car­oli­na, were kept in the loop and also pushed Trump to respond.

    Trump was not at all reluc­tant to tar­get Soleimani, mul­ti­ple sources said, adding that the Pres­i­den­t’s oth­er senior advis­ers — Esper, Mil­ley, CIA Direc­tor Gina Haspel and nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Robert O’Brien — “were all on board.”

    Pom­peo has forged “very close rela­tion­ships” with Haspel and Esper, alliances that bol­stered his abil­i­ty to make the case to Trump. “They all work togeth­er very, very close­ly,” said the for­mer Repub­li­can nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cial.

    That said, the for­mer offi­cial expressed con­cern about the lack of deep exper­tise in Trump’s nation­al secu­ri­ty team. Sev­er­al ana­lysts point­ed to this as one fac­tor in Pom­peo’s out­sized influ­ence with­in the admin­is­tra­tion.
    s
    The gov­ern­ment is so com­pro­mised by Trump and by all the vacan­cies and lack of expe­ri­ence, this for­mer offi­cial said, that “every­thing is being done by a hand­ful of prin­ci­ples — Pom­peo, Esper, Mil­ley. There are a lot of things being left on the floor.”

    ‘Such a low bar’

    Pom­peo is arguably the most expe­ri­enced of the nation­al secu­ri­ty Cab­i­net, the for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cial said, “but it’s such a low bar.”

    “It’s such a small group and there’s so much that needs to be done,” the for­mer offi­cial said. “Every­one in this admin­is­tra­tion is a lev­el and a half high­er than they would be in a nor­mal admin­is­tra­tion. They have no bench,” they said.

    The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has been hand­i­capped by the Pres­i­den­t’s refusal to hire Repub­li­cans who crit­i­cize him. Oth­er Repub­li­cans won’t work for the admin­is­tra­tion, for fear of being “taint­ed” or sum­mar­i­ly fired, the for­mer offi­cial said.

    As lay­ers of expe­ri­ence have been peeled away at the White House, some ana­lysts say safe­guards have been removed as well. CNN’s Peter Bergen has writ­ten in his new book, “Trump and his Gen­er­als,” that for­mer Defense Sec­re­tary James Mat­tis told his aides not to present the Pres­i­dent with options for con­fronting Iran mil­i­tar­i­ly.

    ...

    ———-

    “How Pom­peo con­vinced Trump to kill Soleimani and ful­filled a decade-long goal” by Nicole Gaou­ette and Jamie Gan­gel; CNN; 01/11/2020

    “As plan­ning got under­way, Pom­peo worked with Esper, the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark Mil­ley and the com­man­der of CENTCOM Marine Gen. Ken­neth McKen­zie, who assessed the pro­file of troops in the field. Mul­ti­ple sources also say that hawk­ish Repub­li­can Sens. Tom Cot­ton of Arkansas and Lind­sey Gra­ham of South Car­oli­na, were kept in the loop and also pushed Trump to respond.”

    Cot­ton and Gra­ham pushed Trump to car­ry out the strike. That’s what we’re now told. Although it does­n’t sound like Trump need­ed much coax­ing:

    ...
    Trump was not at all reluc­tant to tar­get Soleimani, mul­ti­ple sources said, adding that the Pres­i­den­t’s oth­er senior advis­ers — Esper, Mil­ley, CIA Direc­tor Gina Haspel and nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Robert O’Brien — “were all on board.”
    ...

    Still, while Trump appar­ent­ly was­n’t reluc­tant to car­ry out the strike, he still report­ed­ly told peo­ple that he felt under pres­sure from GOP Sen­a­tors to car­ry out the strike. And it’s hard to imag­ine Gra­ham and Cot­ton weren’t two of the Sen­a­tors apply­ing that pres­sure. It’s a reminder that this Repub­li­can push to grant pres­i­dents more pow­ers to make war on flim­sy evi­dence is par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous when the pres­i­dent hap­pens to be so cor­rupt almost any­one can black­mail him. It’s a real dan­ger. Some might even call it an immi­nent dan­ger.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 11, 2020, 5:05 pm

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