It all sounds a bit too familiar to those of us on The BradCast who covered the last time a Republican President forced the U.S. into a “Forever War” in the Middle East based on known lies regarding “Weapons of Mass Destruction” which they never had. Here we go again? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
Of course, part of the irony this time around is that Donald Trump ran for President on the false claim that he opposed the war in Iraq. And, despite his expansion of every inherited U.S. war, his unlawful targeted assassination of Iran’s top military commander, and extreme expansion of the use of killer drones in all sorts of country during his first term in office, his supporters (and the corporate media) were dumb or duplicitous enough to characterize him as an “anti-war” President.
Trump’s unconstitutional and unlawful attacks on three nuclear facilities in Iran over the weekend — after Israel had cleared the field for him — should put an end to the “anti-war” fairy tale once and for all. But we’ll see.
Following Saturday’s U.S. bombing run — which, according to the Administration, has “obliterated” the three targeted nuclear production cites (something about which you should remain skeptical) — Iran has responded with a fairly limp attack on a U.S. air base in Qatar and perhaps another in Iraq; the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a terrorism advisory warning of potential Iran-sponsored cyberattacks and the possibility of new attacks in the U.S.; Trump’s failing social media cite seems to have fallen victim to one of those cyberattacks over the weekend; and Russia suggests “a number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.”
Meanwhile, the Administration has been unable to proffer any actual evidence to suggest that Iran was anywhere near building a nuclear weapon — the pretext for Saturday’s attack — much less posing a threat, imminent or otherwise, to the U.S.
According to sources in the U.S. intel community who spoke to our guest today, Rolling Stone‘s Senior Political Reporter, ANDREW PEREZ, “there is no intel” to suggest anything has changed regarding an Iranian nuclear program since Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in March that “the IC [U.S. Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
While the White House attacked Perez and his co-author, Asawin Suebsaeng for “false and lazy ‘reporting’ designed to undermine President Trump’s highly successful operation to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” subsequent statements from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Sec. of State Marco Rubio confirm that, in fact, “there is no intel” to suggest anything has changed in Iran’s nuclear program between Gabbard’s March 25th testimony in Congress and Trump’s Saturday night B-2 stealth bomber assault on Iran.
Perez was not impressed by the White House attack on his reporting. “What we’ve been hearing from the Administration is that there has been no new intelligence to justify any sort of immediate actions against Iran,” he says today. “What we’re hearing is the White House is looking at the same intel it was looking at months ago.”
To what does Perez attribute Trump’s sudden decision to join Israel’s war after spending months trying to negotiate a deal with Iran (like the one Obama struck in 2015)? “One of the major factors in the President’s different posture, as it pertained to Iran, was watching Fox News coverage the last couple of weeks.” On Fox, of course, they’ve been covering Israel’s attack on Iran and calling for the U.S. to join in. Trump, according to Perez, thought “it looked very cool.”
“What the President did this weekend definitely constitutes several acts of war,” Perez argues. “It does look possible that this doesn’t blow up into a broader conflict, but it still could.”
None of this, it should be noted, should have even been necessary in the first place, but for Trump having unilaterally reneged on Obama’s 2015 anti-nuclear deal with Iran. By all assessments (perhaps other than Israel’s) the agreement worked, observably preventing Iran from enriching uranium above levels required for civilian use — at least until Trump ripped it up upon taking office because HE wasn’t the one to have made it.
Hilariously, that agreement was struck after Trump, in both 2011 and again in 2013 declared: “Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly – not skilled!”
Then, with a few minutes left on today’s program, we open up the phone to callers, including one who claims to have voted for Trump three times but now concedes he feels like he was completely duped. “I am so disappointed,” he tells me. “I feel stabbed in the back.” Tune in to find out why!…
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