Iran says Trump playing ‘very dangerous game’ and risking ‘devastating war’
KIM HJELMGAARD | USA TODAY | 28 minutes ago
President Donald Trump is warning Iran, saying that if Tehran does “anything” in the form of an attack “they will suffer greatly.”
AP
LONDON – The United States is playing a “very dangerous game” as it attempts to “drag Iran into an unnecessary war,” a senior Iranian official said Tuesday.
Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, told reporters here that the Trump administration’s deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group, B-52 bombers and other military personnel and equipment to the Persian Gulf to counter alleged, unspecified Iranian threats risked “serious miscalculation.”
Baeidinejad denied that Iran or its “proxies” were behind what Washington has described as the possible Iranian-backed “sabotage” of oil tankers in the Gulf belonging to Saudi Arabia, Norway and the United Arab Emirates. On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia said that drones also attacked one of its oil pipelines and other energy infrastructure, an incident that caused global oil price benchmarks to jump.
“We are prepared for any eventuality, this I can tell you,” Baeidinejad said, amid growing tensions between the U.S. and Iran that have appeared to bring the two longstanding foes to the brink of war. The two countries have no formal diplomatic channel of communication, contributing to fears war could be started by accident.
Baeidinejadsaid said from the Iranian perspective it appeared that some of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers such as National Security Adviser John Bolton were actively “trying to convince” Trump to start a military confrontation that neither country wants and would be “devastating” for both Iran, the U.S. and the region.
‘They’re not going to be happy’: Trump threatens Iran over reports of ‘sabotage’
This handout picture released by the U.S. Navy on May 8, 2019, shows the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln conducting exercises in the Persian Gulf.
Baeidinejad’s comments came as Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan reportedly presented a military plan at a meeting of top national security officials that would send as many as 120,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East in the event Iran strikes U.S. forces in the region or speeds up its development of nuclear weapons, according to a report published in The New York Times on Monday. The plan was partly ordered by Bolton, the report said. It does not call for a land invasion of Iran.
Trump dismissed the report but also said he would send U.S. troops if needed.
Since last week the Trump administration has been insisting that is has “specific and credible” intelligence indicating Iran or its regional supporters may be preparing attacks against American forces or targets in the region. “It’s going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens,” Trump said Monday outside the White House.
However, the details of that intelligence remain murky and potentially wrapped up in what seasoned Iran-watchers and security experts believe may be part of attempts by Trump administration hawks to find a pretext for a military conflict with Iran following the president’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. The accord was viewed by former President Barack Obama as one his signature foreign policy accomplishments and Trump campaigned on abolishing it.
“As we read of Bolton’s plan to send 120,000 U.S. troops to go to with Iran, we should remind ourselves that this is a TOTALLY UNNECESSARY CRISIS!” wrote Trita Parsi, the founder of the National Iranian American Council, on Twitter.
“We’re only here cuz Trump quit the deal and put Bolton in charge of Iran policy,” he said. The NIAC seeks improved relations between Washington and Tehran.
“This is politics, and this is about Bolton and others who have had a bee in their bonnet about Iran for as long as they have been in politics,” said Robert Muggah, a specialist in international security and co-founder of The SecDev Group, an Ottawa, Canada-headquartered consultancy that analyses open-source intelligence.
Trump has pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, a strategy that has seen the U.S. slap the Middle East country with a series of increasingly onerous economic sanctions that have crippled its economy, led to runaway inflation and caused some food and medicine shortages. Last week, Tehran announced that it was abandoning two of its nuclear-deal-related obligations: exporting excess uranium and “heavy water” used in nuclear reactors. The Trump administration characterized this move as an attempt by Iran to hold the U.S. “hostage” and an example of “nuclear blackmail.”
However, Iran’s partial breach of the accord was a direct response to the U.S. ending exemptions from nations that purchase these stockpiles. In other words: It did it to comply with U.S. sanctions. “The (nuclear deal) is becoming meaningless because of the U.S.,” Baeidinejad said, noting that Iran has given the three European signatories to the deal – the United Kingdom, Germany and France – 60 days to “salvage” it.
Otherwise, he said, “there will be consequences from our side” that could include suspending modernization of Iran’s Arak nuclear facility. Modernization of the “heavy water” plant has ensured it produces less plutonium, needed for a nuclear bomb. The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has verified 14 times that Iran has been complying with the terms of the agreement – even after the U.S. withdrew from it in May last year.
Baeidinejad refused to be drawn on whether Iran would consider Trump’s apparent offer to hold talks with Tehran. “I’d like to see them call me,” Trump said last week. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated while on a trip to Moscow where he met with his Russian counterpart that the U.S. isn’t seeking a war with Iran.
Still, inside Iran, the U.S. military moves were being taken seriously.
“You wanted a better deal with Iran. Looks like you are going to get a war instead,” wrote Hesameddin Ashena, an adviser to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, on Twitter.
Yet Ashena also found room for a moment of levity on the social media platform.
“That’s what happens when you listen to the mustache,” he added in the tweet, referring to Bolton, who is known for his bushy facial hair above the upper lip, and who Trump sometimes reportedly refers to as “the Mustache.”
Middle East in turmoil: Saudi Arabia says 2 oil tankers damaged by sabotage attacks
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Rolling Stone
The Trump Administration Is Thirsty for War, Intelligence Be Damned
The United States is goading Iran into taking action so it can justify an invasion
RYAN BORT
MAY 15, 2019 8:57AM EDT
It was reported on Monday that the Trump administration has concocted a plan that involves sending 120,000 troops to the Middle East to counter a potential Iranian attack on American forces. Whatever threat may exist is almost entirely of the president’s own design. Since Trump rebuffed allies, experts and his own administration in removing the United States from the Iran nuclear deal last year, tension between the two nations has escalated steadily. Both have seemed especially jittery in the past few months as the U.S. continues to ramp up sanctions aimed at crippling Iran’s economy.
But it seems like the threat of military aggression from Iran isn’t what the Trump administration wants people to believe. On Tuesday, a British military official told reporters at the Pentagon that there isn’t evidence Iran is any more of a threat that it has been in the past. “We are aware of their presence clearly and we monitor them along with a whole range of others because of the environment we are in,” said Major General Chris Ghika, adding that “there has been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq or Syria.”
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According to the New York Times, these early machinations for conflict have largely been set in motion by National Security Adviser John Bolton, a war hawk who supported the invasion of Iraq and unsuccessfully pushed George W. Bush to take action against Iran. The plan to send 120,000 troops was reportedly his idea, as has been the idea that military action against Iran could soon be warranted. The Times notes that, according to intelligence and military officials in both the United States and Europe, “most aggressive moves have originated not in Tehran but in Washington — where Bolton has prodded Trump into backing Iran into a corner.”
One American official said, according to the paper, that the intelligence supporting the idea that Iran is a threat is “small stuff,” and that Bolton wants to goad Iran into taking action against American forces, thus, in his mind, justifying a military response. Vali Nasr, the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told the Times the current tension with Iran is “a crisis that has entirely been manufactured by the Trump administration.”
Democratic politicians feel similarly. When asked by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes whether he trusts the administration to not manipulate intelligence reports, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said he doesn’t. “As a member of the Senate, I actually also have information about the things the U.S. is doing to provoke and poke Iran,” he said. “I think there is an effort underway by the U.S. to try to instigate Iran into doing something, and if they do something in response to U.S. provocation, the administration … will use that as their pretext for 125,000 troops, or as the president said today, more.”
Though some Republicans have cautioned against the administration getting ahead of itself in regard to Iran, others practically seem giddy at the idea of unleashing America’s military might on the nation. “Two strikes, the first strike and the last strike,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said flatly of how the United States would wipe out the nation during an appearance on Firing Line With Margaret Hoover.
As Daily Beast reporter Lachlan Marchly noted on Twitter, former defense secretary Jim Mattis gave a more tempered response when asked about a potential conflict in Iran before Trump took office. “We can handle Iran. I have no doubt,” he said. “It would be bloody awful. It would be a catastrophe if we have to have another war in the Middle East like that. But could we handle it from a military point of view? Absolutely.”
But Mattis, who also advocated for remaining in the Iran nuclear deal, is gone now. He resigned late last year out of frustration with the president continually undermining him. In his place is Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who, as Politico recently reported, is being “overpowered” in internal debates by war-crazy officials like Bolton. Unlike Mattis, Shanahan doesn’t seem to have any inclination to push back against Trump, who seems perfectly willing to indulge Bolton’s thirst for conflict.
When asked on Tuesday about the report that the administration’s devised a plan to send 120,000 troops to the Middle East, Trump naturally called it “fake news” but then said he “absolutely” would do it, and that “if we did that we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that.”
In December, the president, who now doesn’t seem to mind the idea of sending “a hell of a lot more” than 120,000 troops to fight Iran, made a big show of opposing foreign wars, abruptly deciding he wanted to pull American troops out of Syria and Afghanistan. He justified the move by repeatedly and falsely claiming ISIS had been defeated, and that there was no longer any reason for troops to be over there. “We’re no longer the suckers, folks,” he explained during a brief visit to Iraq later that month.
If his stated opposition to entanglements in the Middle East and his administration’s strategy toward Iran don’t seem to jibe, it’s because they don’t. Trump has no overarching foreign policy philosophy. Everything he does is done according to what he thinks is most politically expedient in the moment. One would hope that he’d stop short of going to war for political purposes, but this is of course not true. Years ago, he repeatedly theorized that a “desperate” President Obama was planning to attack Iran in order to “save face” and “get re-elected.” This is just how Trump thinks. Everything is done solely for one’s own self interest, nothing more.
What political purpose would be served by going to war with Iran? Plenty, but most pressing for Trump is probably the onslaught of investigations Democrats have launched into his administration. You probably didn’t think about any of them over the course of reading this article. That’s the point.
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