When it comes to Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear bomb the timeline of ‘a year’ we’d been given turns out not to have changed. Oh, we’ve gotten day after day of the same kind of ‘happy talk’ b.s. we got after that huge strike last year. For this actual war the administration is spinning tales of destruction and death on what Team Trump says is an epic scale. Yet when it started Iran was ‘a year away’ from making a bomb. As reported by Alternet a leaked memo says Iran is currently… You guessed it – a year away from developing an atomic bomb.
Trump has as you know given various reasons for starting a war with Iran. The same is true when it comes to our goals, what we want to achieve to end the war. It’s pretty much word salad with him emphasizing whatever talking point he got from Susie Wiles, Hegseth or whomever before he faces reporters. One thing that’s come up is him saying we have to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. Ok, that’s been a given with U.S. and our allies’ policy for decades. The thing is, when they got too far along we and others found ways to set them back. Then came the agreement that was negotiated that put Iran’s nuclear program on a strict limit to enriching just enough uranium for medical purposes for ten years. The agreement had teeth including real time continuous inspectors.
Trump of course tore it up because it had been negotiated by the Obama administration. And allies in Europe/NATO who Trump has always believed have ‘taken advantage of the U.S.’ He acts like his saying Iran can’t be allowed to have a nuke is a concept HE came up with. Like I said, it’s been something nations have worked to prevent for decades but Trump is TRUMP and by god he would make sure it could never, ever ever happen. His massive airstrike didn’t get the job done. So, despite all his campaign talk about not getting us into new foreign wars and ‘nation building’ he decided he could do in Iran a larger version of what he did in Venezuela – take out the leader and elevate someone who would ‘play ball.’ With Iran it was more than just the Supreme Leader.
The problem is that Iran’s government is structured to survive what that initial strike at the building where top leaders were meeting to discuss a quite reasonable proposal. Had Trump bothered to talk with anyone who actually knew Iran he’d have been told he’d get an even more hard-line leader and government. Including a Supreme Leader who is supremely pissed that his father and predecessor was killed in what qualifies as a war crime! Alas, the die was cast and Trumpty’s and Petey Boy’s breezy assessments that Iran would fold like a cheap lawn chair were flat out dead WRONG. From the linked article:
Despite repeatedly claiming a decisive victory, the reality of the war in Iran has proven much more dire for Trump, as he has failed to consistently define a strategic end goal and has been outmaneuvered by Iranian leaders during peace talks. One of the justifications he has attempted to give for the conflict has been to destroy Iran’s capability of producing a nuclear weapon — something he already claimed to have accomplished with airstrikes last summer.
Last week we got the spectacle of Hegseth being confronted by House and Senate committees over talking out of both sides of his ass. He sat there even during the hearing saying at one point Iran was nowhere near close to having a nuclear weapon yet at other times saying we had to go to war because the threat was ‘imminent.’ Even accepting the ‘year’ estimate (personally I think it would be longer but that’s a separate matter) that doesn’t qualify as imminent to anyone of even MAGA goober level intellect. Now we have a leaded intelligence memo that paints a damning picture for Trump’s (and Hegseth’s) pathetic attempts to justify this war:
This week, however, a leaked memo showed the military officials suspect that Iran’s timeline for a hypothetical nuclear weapon is unchanged, sinking one of Trump’s biggest supposed goals. As The Daily Beast explained in a Tuesday report, officials currently believe Iran is as close to having a weapon as they were after last summer’s airstrikes. Those strikes are thought to have set the Iranian nuclear program back just a year, counter to Trump’s claim that the program was entirely “obliterated.”
The memo goes on to discuss some of the other justifications but the heart of the matter is Iran’s nuclear program. International law allows every country to have a bit of enriched uranium to use for medical purposes. Countries with the ability to do so want to enrich it themselves because it costs less in the long term. The agreement that Iran took home to discuss with the leadership was similar to the one Trump tore up, but it actually reduced the amount Iran would be able to enrich! Yet Trump wouldn’t take the win. He wanted something a lot more spectacular than some ‘boring’ treaty and he also needed a distraction from Epstein. And other matters.
So we are at war, even if a fragile cease fire is kind of in place. The thing is, in order to completely shut down Iran’s nuclear program you’d have to kill off not just a huge number of the existing government and Revolutionary Guard, but an awful lot of scientists and technicians. AND destroy a lot of facilities that are too deep underground or inside mountains to take out even with penetrating “bunker buster’ bombs. Finally you’d have to seize ALL of Iran’s uranium. And that last part is worth a closer mention:
With the damage done to the Iranian nuclear program stalling out, reports indicate that the only means left for the U.S. military to do more damage would require “destroying or removing” the country’s “remaining stockpile of highly enriched uranium.” Experts suggest that this would need a much more substantial and prolonged military engagement that could create many more casualties.
Trump can claim fake polling numbers all he wants but he knows the truth. He’s mightily pissed off MAGA. A strong majority would still vote for him or how he tells them to but putting a large number of U.S. troops on the ground in Iran will change that in a hurry. Iran has a tough military that has older folks blooded in years of war with Iraq leading well trained and equipped ground forces. It’s also clear since they still carry out missile and drone strikes they have NOT used up most of their own arsenal. I can assure you what professionals who actually ‘know shit’ are worried about what Iran has kept hidden. AND the fact they’ve spent decades preparing for the possibility of someone, whether us or another country trying to invade them.
Right now I think Trump’s getting so little sleep because he knows the story of the infamous Vlad the Impaler – and has nightmares of being ole Vlad who somehow self-impaled himself and is slowly and (agonizingly) painfully sliding down that long pointed stick!
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