As we’ve seen in the past, Trump is going to do all he can to avoid war, but, he will strike if necessary
Trump’s new two-week negotiating window sets off scramble to restart stalled Iran talks
President Donald Trump’s decision to open a two-week negotiating window before deciding on striking Iran sets off an urgent effort to restart talks that had been deadlocked when Israel began its bombing campaign last week.
The hope among Trump and his advisers is that Iran — under constant Israeli attack and having suffered losses to its missile arsenal — will relent on its hardline position and agree to terms it had previously rejected, including abandoning its enrichment of uranium, according to US officials.
The deferred decision, which came after days of increasingly martial messages from the president suggesting he was preparing to order a strike, also gives Trump more time to weigh the potential consequences — including the chance it could drag the United States into the type of foreign conflict he promised to avoid.
But negotiating a diplomatic solution in Trump’s condensed timeline appeared to face significant early hurdles.
Yeah, there are, starting with it being Iran and their insane, ultra-Islamist leaders. I hope they realize that Donald Trump is not a typical politician. He doesn’t really have that whole moderation thing down. He won’t lean into a proportional attack. Just like he wacked Qasem Soleimani where no one else would, he will hit Iran hard.
In putting off a decision, Trump appears to be placing more stock in a diplomatic solution that only a day earlier he appeared to suggest was out of reach.
“I think the president has made it clear he always wants to pursue diplomacy. But believe me, the president is unafraid to use strength if necessary,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday after relaying Trump’s new two-week timeline. “And Iran and the entire world should know that the United States military is the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world, and we have capabilities that no other country on this planet possesses.”
See?
The new, within-two-weeks time frame for talks was not universally welcomed. An Israeli intelligence official expressed dismay that Trump would not make a decision – one way or the other.
“This is not helping,” the official said.
Yeah, well, we certainly want to support Israel, but, we would like to avoid a new war, even if it would involve bombing parts of Iran back to the stone age.
Trump loves him some weeks or 2 weeks timeline. CNN did a montage yesterday of Trump saying in 2 weeks about almost everything.
Was kind of funny and it is most likely a negotiating tool for him. As natural as breathing in a world in which Trump probably negotiates with his toilet paper. HAHA. Two weeks this time by the way will be July 4th.
Trump is being backed into a corner. He is evil if he doesn’t help Israel whom we are to believe started this war without his approval. Trump will be railroaded by the holdovers of the establishment GOP which is JUST ABOUT ALL OF THEM….as they all went to DC to GET RICH, not to for sure fuking help anyone.
Even the great Tucker Carlson lost his mind the other day interviewing Ted Cruz, I mean Tucker was a raving lunatic from the days long gone by. His CNN roots are popping out, as he was aghast at Iranians were complicit in trying to kill Trump…..CAUGHT by the former administration and arrested before Trump was even president…..not like it was a secret but Tucker began screaming at Cruz that we should NUKE IRAN over this……I mean it was Mushroom Time for Carlson.
The world is going crazy, one person at a time….Perhaps aliens really do live amongst us.
Everyone with any sense, a definition which excludes all supporters of Islam and Arabs and Iranians, agrees that Iran should never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, but there are a whole lot of Americans who don’t want us to be the world’s policemen. A lot of people who would be very happy if Israel nuked Iran’s nuclear sites don’t want the US to do it.
The United States has a bad, bad habit of thinking that we somehow have to fix what we’ve broken, and breaking Iran’s nuclear facilities should never entail trying to repair any of the damage we caused. If we’re going to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites, do it and then walk the f(ornicate) away.
In the end, the problem of Iran can only be solved by the people of Iran throwing away their Islamic dictatorship. Iranians were happily modernizing under the Shah, but his brutal regime turned the public against everything about him, and allowed the Islamist extremists to gain power. There are signs that the public today are more than tired of it, but who can know if enough of them are tired of it enough to overthrow the mad mullahs?
The conundrum is that Israel could kill every last one of the mullahs, in theory freeing Iran from their oppression, but historical experience teaches us that bombing nations mostly strengthens the resolve of those nations’ people. The blitz didn’t break the resolve of the British, and the Germans resisted to the bitter end, despite being bombed to bits. Many in Japan wanted to continue the fight, but the country was too thoroughly destroyed to continue.
The thing is that what we have often thought as having them by the balls has not worked out that way at all.
“Rolling Thunder” was the policy of adding both punishments and incentives to get the North Vietnamese to quit fighting; did it work?
Iran is a nation of 92 million people; how many of them do you believe we must kill to make them stop fighting?
My latest: World War III Watch: Going to war based on intelligence estimates?
Sure. That may have been the right approach 100 years ago. The right approach today is “use the right amount of force to accomplish your purpose”. Military force is a continuum, not an on/off switch. At the lower levels, you may not even notice it is happening. In LeMay’s world, he never did achieve overwhelming force and certainly didn’t save any lives. The combatants in WW2 fought until one side was exhausted and couldn’t fight any longer.
Iraq shot at American airplanes every day (weather permitting) for ten years before we did something about it.
Iran used massive terrorist attacks against Americans about every couple of years since their glorious revolution and for the most part, we ignored them.
“Too much” today would annihilate the population of Iran. Our national goals WRT Iran should be convincing them to “stop being assholes” not “just die”.
With all respect, how many American soldiers and national treasure should be sacrificed in order to convince the Iranians to “stop being assholes” and “play nice”?
The good Professor wrote:
You’ve never heard of “Nuke their ass and take their gas”?
Dana,
I don’t want their gas that much to kill them for it.
I live with the fear that I serve just God who will one day judge me for the things I have done. I don’t wish to meet Him with the blood of my brothers on my hands.
[…] based on intelligence estimates, and sometimes intelligence estimates are wrong. As William Teach noted on the 20th, President Donald Trump had set a two-week window for negotiations with Iran to produce an […]