{"id":190550,"date":"2019-06-26T05:56:42","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T05:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=190550"},"modified":"2019-06-29T05:55:03","modified_gmt":"2019-06-29T05:55:03","slug":"no-war-with-iran-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=190550","title":{"rendered":"No War With Iran, for Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

But Mike Pompeo and John Bolton Still Really, Really Want One<\/h2>\n

Gareth Porter \u2013 AntiWar.com June 25, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Left to right: Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and CIA Director Gina Haspel, who is reported to have ‘personally’ been involved in torturing detainees. Click link for more on that..<\/p><\/div>\n

After a week of high drama in which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated the Trump administration was preparing for war with Iran, President Trump sought to end the war crisis, at least for now, by declining to retaliate against Iran over what he called \u201cvery minor\u201d attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump canceled a retaliatory strike on Iran in the early hours on Friday, at least in part because he was not certain that the drone or a Navy spy plane following it had not strayed into Iran\u2019s airspace in Strait of Hormuz, according to the New York Times<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the evident determination of Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton to get Trump to carry out a military strike against Iran \u2013 combined with Trump\u2019s \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d strategy, which has already prompted Iranian pushback \u2013 mean that such crises are bound to continue until either war comes or U.S. policy fundamentally changes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pompeo and Bolton are said by Washington insiders to have personal differences, but they combined to create a virtual crisis machine, as the crisis over the June 13 mine attacks on two freighters in the Sea of Oman shows. Within a few hours after the attacks, Pompeo declared that Iran was responsible<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, referring to \u201cthe assessment of the US government\u201d \u2013 a term of art that has come to mean the judgment of senior administration officials, ever since the White House issued its cherry-picked intelligence summary on the August 2013 Syria chemical weapons attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pompeo presented no specific evidence, instead reciting a litany of alleged Iranian attacks in May that included limpet mine attacks on four ships, a rocket that fell in the Green Zone in Baghdad and even a car bomb in Afghanistan. The latter turned out to be a reference to a Taliban suicide bomb attack on. May 29, which Pompeo insisted on \u201cFace the Nation\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that Iran had somehow \u201cinstigated.\u201d He claimed to have \u201cintelligence\u201d to support that far-fetched idea, but refused to reveal anything about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The main exhibit that was produced to support the case Iran was responsible for the new tanker attacks revolved around a blurry surveillance video that appears to show Iranians in a boat next to the Japanese freighter Kokuka Courageous removing something from the ship\u2019s hull. Other information appears to confirm that the object was an unexploded limpet mine. But the video evidence left key questions unanswered, and the German and Japanese foreign ministers both declared that it was not sufficient proof of Iranian responsibility.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pompeo nevertheless implied during the next week that the administration was preparing for war with Iran over the issue. In a closed meeting with members of the House Intelligence Committee, he argued<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that the post-9\/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, could be used to carry out a strike against Iran. Last Sunday, Pompeo said on \u201cFace the Nation\u201d that he and other national security officials had \u201cbriefed the president a couple of times\u201d and that the administration was \u201cconsidering a full range of options\u201d to respond to the attacks, including the use of military force.<\/span><\/p>\n

Someone familiar with the briefings told an unidentified diplomat at the United Nations<\/a><\/strong><\/span> \u2013 who was evidently in touch with the Bolton-Pompeo team and had ties to conservative media in Israel \u2013 that one of the briefings had included a discussion of a strike against targets related to Iran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/span><\/p>\n

But in an interview with TIME magazine<\/a><\/strong><\/span> published the next day, on Trump renounced the option of a military attack on Iran in response to the mine attacks on shipping. Asked whether he was considering military action against Iran, Trump responded, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that. I can\u2019t say that at all.\u201d He minimized the threat represented by limpet bomb attacks as \u201cvery minor\u201d and contradicted Pompeo\u2019s argument that an attack on ships in the vicinity of the Strait of Hormuz was a dire threat to US interests.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even after the publication of that Trump interview, however, Pompeo did not back down. He characterized the Iranian threat to shipping in the Persian Gulf region as an existential issue for the United States and the rest of the world, in remarks to the press<\/a><\/strong><\/span> at Central Command headquarters in Tampa that afternoon. By then it was clear that the administration would continue to speak with different voices on Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pompeo and Bolton build a war crisis strategy <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ever since taking over their preset positions, Pompeo and Bolton have been developing a strategy to draw the Trump administration into a war by claiming that Iran is bent on attacking the US and its allies. A key influence on this strategy has been a still secret U.S.-Israeli agreement in December 2017 to develop a common approach to Iran, as revealed by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid<\/strong><\/span>.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The Bolton-Pompeo strategy began to unfold last September when they both claimed that rockets that had been fired in the vicinity of US diplomatic facilities in Iraq were aimed at threatening US diplomats. Bolton sought and obtained military options for retaliation against Iran if any Americans were harmed by any action of an Iranian \u201cproxy,\u201d and Pompeo issued a public threat to Iran to avoid any attack on US\u201cinterests.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, the claimed threat was demonstrably false. The rockets in question were not launched by Iranian \u201cproxy\u201d militias as Pompeo suggested. They were fired during violent protests in Basra by anti-Iran protesters<\/strong><\/span><\/a> who burned down the Iranian consulate as well as the offices of pro-Iranian political parties and militias. And the rocket that fell in the Green Zone of Baghdad that same night was undoubtedly launched by sympathizers with the Basra protesters in Baghdad who were protesting against corruption<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the United States designated Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a \u201cterrorist organization<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u201d and removed all sanctions waivers<\/strong><\/span><\/a> for nations purchasing oil from Iran, the Iranians undoubtedly responded by moving to a higher state of military readiness. That in turn presented Bolton and Pompeo with new opportunities for generating a war crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bolton kicked off the next step with a statement on May 5, referring darkly to \u201ctroubling and escalatory indications and warnings\u201d and threatening that \u201cany attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.\u201d He announced the dispatch of a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those moves toward higher tensions with Iran have been based all along on nothing more than a highly convenient interpretation of Iranian moves \u2013 much of that interpretation was influenced by the Israelis. The day after Bolton\u2019s declaration, Israeli journalist Ravid reported<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that a \u201csenior Israeli official\u201d had told him Israel had passed information to Bolton and other senior US officials at a White House meeting on April 15, concerning a US or allied target in the Gulf and \u201cmentioning either Saudi Arabia or the UAE.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On a sudden trip to Iraq on May 8, Pompeo told officials there<\/strong><\/span><\/a> about intelligence that Iran-backed Shiite militias were \u201cpositioning rockets hear bases housing US forces,\u201d according to a Reuters story. He ordered the withdrawal of nonessential personnel from the US Embassy by helicopter, ostensibly because of concerns about a possible threat of attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Information on that alleged threat came from the Israelis. Senior US officials in Amman, Jordan, told former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that Israeli intelligence had given the United States photos showing a stockpile of Iranian missiles in Iraq. And an article published by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>(WINEP), co-authored by a former senior IDF official, pushed the idea that \u201cconcern\u201d was \u201cmounting in Iraqi, US and Israeli intelligence circles\u201d that Iran was \u201ccovertly supplying long-range artillery rockets to proxy militias inside Iraq.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Those Iranian rockets in Iraq were neither covert nor new. Western intelligence had reported that Iran had distributed some two dozen such rockets to Iraqi militias beginning in late spring or early summer of 2018. Iranian officials not only acknowledged their deployment<\/strong><\/span><\/a> to Reuters in August 2018 but explained that they were aimed at strengthening Iran\u2019s deterrent to an attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another key story line peddled by Bolton and Pompeo was about Iranians posing a new offensive threat to US ships by putting missiles on relatively small boats called dhows, which was said to be a key justification for the escalation of US military presence in the region. This narrative exploited the fact that US had photographs of the missiles being loaded onto such boats, but it made no sense, as a specialist on missile proliferation pointed out<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, because Iran had land-based anti-ship missiles that were far more secure, and there was no known way of launching from the boats.<\/span><\/p>\n

From May 5 to June 5, the atmosphere of U.S.-Iran tension continued to grow, but Trump became wary of his advisers\u2019 tone of his advisers and made it clear he wanted an end to signs of escalating conflict crisis. On June 5, according to a former US official, the Pentagon shut down the \u201ccrisis center\u201d it had set up on May 5. It was Trump\u2019s first significant pushback against his warhawk advisers, but evidently not his last.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/em>, was published in 2006.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump’s “war hawks” have been arguing for military action against Iran for at least a year; with much of their case based on \u2018intelligence\u2019 supplied by Israel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Current_Affairs","category-Iran"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190550"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190576,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190550\/revisions\/190576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}