Dissent Inside DC
It's doubtful the entire Iranian program has been destroyed. Iran seems to have much of its stockpile of enriched uranium left. Israel will soon point to this and urge the US to bomb Iran again. Rather than the one-and-done Trump envisioned, he may have started an endless war. Linear what really afraid, some, both GOP and Dems, that the U.S. isn’t really superior as Iraq Invasion 2003 or Gulf War 1991. US$38 trillion debt [still rocketing], and other reason.
[Thomas Massie]
[tweeting same message, in pict]:
Biden's admin planned this event long time ago, even Kamala herself says the biggest enemy of the U.S. isn’t Russia [and make entire European Union afraid, due to crisis in Ukraine] but Iran. Like everything else, Trump simply surfs the waves that the Dems made. Trump prefers swift Machiavellian decisiveness over lofty adventurism.’
Trump did NOT inform Democratic leaders in Congress before bombing Natanz, Fordow, and Esfahan. But he did inform the GOP leaders. This is more of Trump wanting to be King. He doesn't care about US Constitution or international law.. 5 Years ago, Congress voted in 2020 to ban Trump from attacking Iran without Congressional approval, but he vetoed it - and they didn’t have 2/3 to override the veto.
[Tim Kaine]
Official military position on whether or not Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed is notably more cautious than what Trump / JD Vance / Hegseth are saying. The CJCS [Commander of Joint Chief Staff] says battle damage assessment [BDA] is ongoing. Their Initial assessment is that all precision munitions struck where intended to strike.
Raytheon [RTX]
The pernicious "nuclear Iran" sleight-of-hand. Both the genocide in Gaza and war with Iran are very unpopular, increasingly with both parties’ voters. So both parties massage their anti war constituents by playing into the idea the all powerful and manipulative Israelis force them into doing Objectively Unpopular Things
President Donald Trump said the U.S. attack “totally and completely obliterated” what remained of Iran’s nuclear program, after more than a week of pummeling by Israeli airstrikes. Why would Iran abandon nuclear weapons if Israel can attack the country and its leaders for any reason Israel wants? Unless the US answers this question, any future negotiations with Iran are unlikely to produce meaningful results.
An Iranian official said that the strikes had done no irreversible damage to the country’s nuclear program, which it insists is designed for peaceful purposes. Netanyahu's been trying to get an American president to attack Iran for literally decades. In Trump he found his chump. Khamenei will likely think his biggest mistake was his fatwa and not getting the bomb sooner. This will be the object lesson of this moment for many other countries. In the end it will be the U.S. and not Iran that damaged the non-proliferation regime.
Crisis hour-by-hour before bomb hit Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan [Esfahan], Trump told Erdoğan he was willing to send Vance and Witkoff — and even travel to Turkiye himself to meet with Pezeshkian. Pezeshkian and Araghchi tried contacting Khamenei to get his approval “but Khamenei, who has been in hiding for fear of being assassinated by Israel, couldn't be reached.” Erdogan shied away from condemning the US strikes on Iran. Erdogan wants to host US-Iran talks and maintain his good relationship with Trump. Don’t forget that last admin, still under Biden, finally U.S. government approved to sells multiple jet fighters to Turkiye, around US$35 billion, even with fact that Turkiye facing difficulties on budget after great earthquake 2023 [some analysts say reconstruction fund will be US$400 billion].
[Operation Midnight Hammer. Red circle is Incirlik. B-2 bombers from George Allison Whiteman Air Force Base Missouri came from Turkish airspace]
Of course, also, Turkiye is part of NATO and Incirlik has a nuclear bomb weapon too. At least 2,500 U.S. troops stationed in Incirlik. The State Department has issued a travel alert for Turkey, specifically Adana, which is home to the US Incirlik Air Base. Worth noting that the American B-2 bombers came from Turkish airspace, so Iran "might" consider "punishing" Türkiye.
Most of Turks don’t like Iranian government for their theocratic state or their past campaign of domination in Syria and Lebanon. You name it, everyone has a reason. But everyone Turks has a remorse on what Iran goes through. No one enjoys it, everyone is worried.
Turkish public asks, after Israel and the U.S. attack on Iran, are we next? Turkish officials have been quick to reassure an unsettled public by pledging massive investment in the defence sector and leaks. Türkiye has the full diplomatic relations with Israel and Turkish - Israeli intel officers were routinely meeting for weeks to resolve their issues in the region.
Iran has said it would respond to any American attack on its nuclear sites by targeting U.S. bases and more than 50,000 personnel in the region, using allied militias in Iraq and Yemen, and with its missile arsenal.
The Islamic Republic could also close the Strait of Hormuz, the channel for 20% of the world’s oil, analysts say, or even attempt to dash for a nuclear weapon – which it has forsworn until now – in the belief that such a step may be its only way to deter future attack. Parliament has little real power, the real decision will be made by the SNSC and the supreme leader. Also, Majlis is dominated by hardliners, reaction from that quarter certain to be more fiery. Shariatmadari's initial reaction was that Iran should close Hormuz.
Iranian state media quoted a senior official saying that the “majority” of Iran’s highly enriched uranium was “transferred to an undisclosed location” before the U.S. attack. The claims could not be independently verified.
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed [Sayyid] Abbas Araghchi had been negotiating a nuclear deal with Washington until Israel launched a military attack on June 13, which upended diplomacy by striking a swath of targets across Iran in hundreds of airstrikes, and assassinating the top echelons of Iran’s military leadership and nuclear scientists.
A war of aggression against Iran, in violation of the UN Charter and basic tenets of international law, and in the absence of any imminent threat or concrete evidence from international inspection bodies and intelligence agencies of the existence of an Iranian military nuclear program. A war that is being waged by two nuclear weapon states (one of which is outside the nuclear arms control regime NPT) possessing thousands of nuclear weapons.
A war that clearly brings to mind the catastrophic war on Iraq, a war based on deception and in violation of all international inspection reports stating the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A war that is taking place against the backdrop of a total paralysis of the Security Council and obscene double standards by those who trumpet a rule-based system.
A war that will add a huge blow to the international order, international law and institutions including the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime .A war that will likely have devastating effects on the peace and stability of region and its people. Lasting peace can only be achieved through justice, mutual security and dialogue.
With President Trump now loudly backing Israel’s war on the Iranian nuclear program and issuing increasingly hawkish warnings against the mullahs, there has been a lot of teeth-gnashing and garment-rending from the usual quarters -- and these days, those usual quarters are a horseshoe-shaped alliance of doves and antisemites on the “restrainer” right and the progressive left. At times, it can be hard to tell their rhetoric apart. They form a uniparty of opposition to resisting America’s sworn enemies. The ‘restrainer’ right and the progressives sound an awful lot alike on Israel and Iran — but they are on the margins. There will be no new congressional vote on the use of additional military force.
For years, in reaction to the substantially failed American adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, talk about “forever wars” has abounded. It’s a foolish concept. It should be obvious enough that wars are unpredictable and don’t come with an end date.
More basically, though, “forever wars” is a misnomer because what Americans find objectionable about the post-9/11 wars is not the war part. In terms of combat, American victories in those conflicts were rapid and decisive. What grates is the ineptitude and delusions of the bipartisan Beltway in managing the post-combat phase.
You may know the names of these antiwar conservatives. Some are famous: Patrick Buchanan and Robert Novak. Others are not: Llewellyn Rockwell, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, Scott McConnell, Justin Raimondo, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese, Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, and Taki Theodoracopulos.
The antiwar conservatives aren’t satisfied merely to question the wisdom of an Iraq war. Questions are perfectly reasonable, indeed valuable. There is more than one way to wage the war on terror, and thoughtful people will naturally disagree about how best to do it, whether to focus on terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah or on states like Iraq and Iran; and if states, then which state first?
But the antiwar conservatives have gone far, far beyond the advocacy of alternative strategies. They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation’s enemies.
Common cause: The websites of the antiwar conservatives approvingly cite and link to the writings of John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Noam Chomsky, Ted Rall, Gore Vidal, Alexander Cockburn, and other anti-Americans of the far Left.
Terror denial: In his column of December 26, 2002, Robert Novak attacked Condoleezza Rice for citing Hezbollah, instead of al-Qaeda, as the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization: “In truth, Hezbollah is the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization from Israel’s standpoint. While viciously anti-American in rhetoric, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah is focused on the destruction of Israel. ‘Outside this fight [against Israel], we have done nothing,’ Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the organization’s secretary-general, said in a recent New York Times interview.” The sheik did not say, and Novak did not bother to add, that Hezbollah twice bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, murdering more than 60 people, and drove a suicide bomb into a Marine barracks in October 1983, killing 241 servicemen.
Espousing defeatism: Here is Robert Novak again, this time on September 17, 2001, predicting that any campaign in Afghanistan would be a futile slaughter: “The CIA, in its present state, is viewed by its Capitol Hill overseers as incapable of targeting bin Laden. That leads to an irresistible impulse to satisfy Americans by pulverizing Afghanistan.” And here is Patrick Buchanan that same day gloomily asserting that the United States would be as baffled by Osama bin Laden as the British Empire was by George Washington: “We remain unrivaled in material wealth and military dominance, but these are no longer the components of might. . . . Our instinct is the strongman’s impulse: hit back, harder. But like British Lobsterbacks dropped in a colonial wilderness, we don’t know this battle, and the weapons within our reach are blunt.”
Excuse-making: On September 30, 2002, Pat Buchanan offered this explanation of 9/11 during a debate on Chris Matthews’s Hardball: “9/11 was a direct consequence of the United States meddling in an area of the world where we do not belong and where we are not wanted. We were attacked because we were on Saudi sacred soil and we are so-called repressing the Iraqis and we’re supporting Israel and all the rest of it.”
Conspiracy-theorizing: Justin Raimondo, an Internet journalist who delivered Pat Buchanan’s nominating speech at the Reform party convention in 2000, alleged in December 2001 that Israel was implicated in the terror attacks of 9/11: “Whether Israeli intelligence was watching, overseeing, collaborating with or combating the bin Ladenites is an open question. . . . That the Israelis had some significant foreknowledge and involvement in the events preceding 9/11 seems beyond dispute.” Raimondo has also repeatedly dropped broad hints that he believes the October 2001 anthrax attacks were the work of an American Jewish scientist bent on stampeding the U.S. into war.
But even with fact many dissents about Iran Operation from Trump perspective, also, presence hawkish-pro war, some can says Israel backers, already funded by AIPAC. During these critical moments following the US bombing of Iran, key lawmakers and pundits are circulating a lie on par with Iraq WMD falsehoods: that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. US intel consensus is they do not. US intelligence consensus is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. So why do key lawmakers and pundits keep heavily implying––and sometimes explicitly saying––otherwise. Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, but listening to leading lawmakers and pundits, you would think they do. It’s all just vibes, insinuations, and repeating the term “nuclear program” enough to make it sound weapon-y and scary. Outright falsehoods.