IRAN: Trump's war?
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:14
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What Iran Knows About Trump
The mullahs of Iran join the bet that Trump always chickens out.
By David Frum | June 21, 2025, 9 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/iran-trump-taco-play
/683271/
President Donald Trump is being pulled toward war in the Middle East by his predator’s eye for a victim’s weakness and his ego’s need to claim the work of others as his own. But since his “unconditional surrender” social-media post on Tuesday, other Trump instincts have asserted themselves: above all, his fear of responsibility.
Trump enjoys wielding power. He flinches from accountability. Days ago, Trump seemed to hunger for entry into Israel’s war. A dramatic victory seemed poised to tumble into somebody’s lap. Why not his? But as the hours passed, Trump reconsidered. Instead of acting, he postponed. He said that a decision would come within “two weeks.”
Time for diplomacy to work? Perhaps that might be the case in another administration. In this one, as attentive Trump watchers have learned, the “two weeks” promise is a way of shirking a decision altogether, whether on Russia sanctions (deadline lapsed June 11, without action), trade deals (deadline lapsed June 12, without result), or a much-heralded infrastructure program (deadline lapsed May 20, 2017, without action then or ever).
During his first term, Trump claimed to have taken the U.S. to the verge of war with Iran in the summer of 2019, only to cancel the mission (again, by his own account) 10 minutes before mission launch. The story, as Trump told it, can hardly have impressed the rulers of Iran with the U.S. president’s commitment and resolve. But the experience of 2019 could suggest to the Iranian regime a strategy for 2025:
Step 1: Absorb the Israeli strikes, as painful and humiliating as they are.
Step 2: Mobilize Russian President Vladimir Putin to dissuade Trump from military action.
Step 3: Agree to return to negotiations if Trump forces a cease-fire on Israel.
Step 4: Dawdle, obfuscate, and generally play for time.
Step 5: Reconstitute whatever remains of the Iranian nuclear program.
This strategy would play on all of Trump’s pressure points, especially his unwillingness to ever do anything that Putin does not want. It would leave Israel in the lurch, but over the years Trump has left many other allies like that.
Trump is vulnerable to the negotiate-to-delay strategy because he has not taken any of the necessary steps to lead the nation into the war he once seemed ready to join.
Trump has not asked Congress for any kind of authorization. The decision, he insists, will be his and his alone. Which will be feasible if the operation turns out as Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada did in 1983: over in a few days with few U.S. casualties and at minimal cost. But Grenada was a nearby island nation with a population of less than 100,000; Iran is a regional power with a population of more than 90 million.
War with Iran will also need real money. The 78-day air war against Serbia in 1998 cost the U.S. and its NATO allies a comparatively modest $7 billion (about $14 billion in today’s dollars). Iran is likely to prove a more dangerous enemy than Serbia was. Israel’s air war against Iran costs about $1 billion a day, according to estimates published by Ynet News. A fight with Iran will likely require some kind of supplemental appropriation above the present defense budget. Congress may balk at funding a costly war it did not approve in the first place.
Trump has not put competent leadership in charge of the nation’s defense or domestic security. Trump’s secretary of defense is accused by his own former advisers and friends of playacting a role that completely exceeds his abilities. If Iran retaliates with terror attacks inside the United States or on American interests abroad, it will find the U.S. desperately vulnerable. Trump purged experienced leaders from counterterrorism jobs. He installed underqualified culture warriors atop the FBI, and appointed at the Department of Homeland Se
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American Democracy Might Not Survive a War With Iran
The United States is well down the road to dictatorship. Imagine what Trump would do with a state of war.
By Robert Kagan | June 21, 2025, 7 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/democracy-ir
an-israel-war-trump/683269/
The current debate over bombing Iran is surreal. To begin with, bombardment is unlikely to lead to a satisfactory outcome. If history has shown one thing, it is that achieving a lasting resolution by bombing alone is almost impossible. There was a reason the United States sent ground forces into Iraq in 2003, and it was not to plant democracy. It was that American officials believed they could not solve the problem of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs simply by bombing. They had tried that. The Clinton administration bombed Iraq for four days in 1998. At the end, they had no idea what they had destroyed and what they hadn’t. They certainly knew they had not put a permanent end to the program. In 2003, if George W. Bush thought he could have permanently ended Saddam’s weapons programs by bombing alone, he would have taken that option.
Iran today poses the same dilemma. America’s weapons may be better than they were in 2003, its intelligence capabilities greater, and Iran may be weaker than it was even a year ago, but the problem remains. Bombing alone will not achieve a verifiable and lasting end to Iran’s nuclear program. It can buy time, and Israel’s strikes have done that. American strikes could extend that period, but a determined Iranian regime will likely try again. A permanent solution would require a far more intrusive international verification regime, which in turn would require a ground presence for protection.
However, that is not the main reason I oppose bombing Iran. Nor is it the reason I find the discussion of all of this so bizarre. You would never know, as The New York Times churns out its usual policy-option thumb-suckers, that the United States is well down the road to dictatorship at home.
That is the context in which a war with Iran will occur. Donald Trump has assumed dictatorial control over the nation’s law enforcement. The Justice Department, the police, ICE agents, and the National Guard apparently answer to him, not to the people or the Constitution. He has neutered Congress by effectively taking control of the power of the purse. And, most relevant in Iran’s case, he is actively and openly turning the U.S. military into his personal army, for use as he sees fit, including as a tool of domestic oppression. Whatever action he does or doesn’t take in Iran will likely be in furtherance of these goals. When he celebrates the bombing of Iran, he will be celebrating himself and his rule. The president ordered a military parade to honor his birthday. Imagine what he will do when he proclaims military success in Iran. The president is working to instill in our nation’s soldiers a devotion to him and him alone. Imagine how that relationship will blossom if he orders what he will portray as a successful military mission.
Indeed, I can think of nothing more perilous to American democracy right now than going to war. Think of how Trump can use a state of war to strengthen his dictatorial control at home. Trump declared a state of national emergency in response to a nonexistent “invasion” by Venezuelan gangs. Imagine what he will do when the United States is actually at war with a real country, one that many Americans fear. Will he tolerate dissent in wartime? Woodrow Wilson locked up peace activists, including Eugene V. Debs. You think Trump won’t? He has been locking people up on flimsier excuses in peacetime. Even presidents not bent on dictatorship have taken measures in wartime that would otherwise be unthinkable.
Then there is the matter of terrorism. What if Iran is able to pull off a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in retaliation for an American strike? Or even just tries and fails? The courts will permit a president almost anything in the aftermath of an attack: Any restraints the
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What Iran Knows About Trump
The mullahs of Iran join the bet that Trump always chickens out.
By David Frum | June 21, 2025, 9 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/iran-trump-taco-play
/683271/
That's David Frum goading Trump into attacking Iran by playing on Trump's weak point: his ego.
Instead of discussing the issues...
* Is an attack TRULY necessary? Does Iran really have a nuclear weapons program? Or is Iran simply creating bargaining chips?
* The bunker buster's ability to pentrate 300 ft of rock, and whether a strike, or multiple precision strikes, would be successful or even possible.
* The CONSEQUENCES of a strike, successful or not. Worldwide political, financial, economic, and MILITARY.
* Whether there is any other way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Why isn't the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, with inspections, enough?
* Is "nuclear weapons" just another "Saddam WMD" cover story?
... Frum just psychologizes the hell out of everything.
Instead of CELEBRATING the fact that Trump is reluctant to use weapons, this is all psychological manipulation of the crudest kind.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:Yes, it's very hard to destroy something that doesn't exist.
Originally posted by second:
American Democracy Might Not Survive a War With Iran
The United States is well down the road to dictatorship. Imagine what Trump would do with a state of war.
By Robert Kagan | June 21, 2025, 7 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/democracy-ir
an-israel-war-trump/683269/
The current debate over bombing Iran is surreal. To begin with, bombardment is unlikely to lead to a satisfactory outcome. If history has shown one thing, it is that achieving a lasting resolution by bombing alone is almost impossible. There was a reason the United States sent ground forces into Iraq in 2003, and it was not to plant democracy. It was that American officials believed they could not solve the NONEXISTANT problem of Saddam Hussein’s NONEXISTANT weapons programs simply by bombing. They had tried that. The Clinton administration bombed Iraq for four days in 1998. At the end, they had no idea what they had destroyed and what they hadn’t. They certainly knew they had not put a permanent end to the NONEXISTENT program. In 2003, if George W. Bush thought he could have permanently ended Saddam’s NONEXISTENT weapons programs by bombing alone, he would have taken that option.
Iran today poses the same dilemma.
Quote:
A permanent solution would require a far more intrusive international verification regime, which in turn would require a ground presence for protection.
Saddam was subject to intrusive on the ground UNMOVIC inspections. OUR BOMBS CHASED THEM OUT. Apparently, we're either not satisfied with the NPT and intrusive inspections, or "WMD" isn't really the problem.
The whole drama is surreal, and we created it, not Iran.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Explosions reported in Tehran, Tabriz and Shiraz.
https://x.com/InsiderGeo/status/1936563426731471092
Loud explosions reported in Tabriz and east of Tehran right now
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1936554497959944416
Israeli officials have told the Trump Administration they do not intend to wait two weeks for Iran to reach a deal to dismantle key parts of its nuclear program, like the Fordow Nuclear Facility, and that the Israel Defense Force could act alone before the deadline is up, two sources told Reuters.
https://x.com/sprinterindexx/status/1936541215387770917
Javier Bardem
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Quote:
Trump Confirms Strikes On Iran's Nuclear Sites: Fordow, Natanz, And Esfahan "Successfully Targeted"
OMFG. Sigh.
Trump always does what Israel wants.
This was my LEGITIMATE fear of Trump's policies.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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But if we don't get reports of a big radioactive cloud circling the globe, then this was just a big fireworks show to get Netanyahu and the anti-MAGA war hawks off his back.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Trump is now a "war president."
https://www.hide5politics.com/viewtopic.php?t=64892
So a lot of Iranians crossed the Mexico and Canadian border?
what is going to happen now
Aussie Murdoch SkyNews are big fans
Viral ‘eating the cats’ meme sees Donald Trump gain election advantage
Trump ‘ignored’ intelligence advice in ‘surprising’ Iran strikes
A spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reported that the 20th wave of Operation True Promise 3 was launched using new tactics that combine liquid and solid-fuel long-range ballistic missiles with destructive warheads and enhanced capabilities to penetrate enemy air defenses.
https://x.com/SprinterObserve/status/1936669669571580271
The strikes were aimed at
- Ben Gurion Airport.
- Biological Research Center of the Israel Education.
- Support bases and command and control centers.
owned?
https://x.com/mrZEExrp/status/1936618073173205299
the Goyim?
https://x.com/Classicist9999/status/1936204079652651167
Nikki
https://x.com/BerryRazi/status/1936623937192141181
tracker of money
https://x.com/TrackAIPAC/status/1936651724128915586
Every time America is on the verge of greatness, we get involved in another foreign war.
https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1936564082477531596
There would not be bombs falling on the people of Israel if Netanyahu had not dropped bombs on the people of Iran first.
Israel is a nuclear armed nation.
This is not our fight.
Peace is the answer.
"Regime change" is a misnomer. There may be regime collapses. But nothing that resembles a governing system will replace it. It will be civil war, chaos, refugee crises, misery and global instability far worse than the rise of ISIS and what happened in Iraq and Syria.
https://x.com/Harbpeace/status/1935152177032413648
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Quote:I wonder who should be blamed for the decisions Trump makes, Signym? There must be a Deep State, or a Neo-Con conspiracy, making the decisions he gets blamed for.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What Iran Knows About Trump
The mullahs of Iran join the bet that Trump always chickens out.
By David Frum | June 21, 2025, 9 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/iran-trump-taco-play
/683271/
That's David Frum goading Trump into attacking Iran by playing on Trump's weak point: his ego.
Instead of discussing the issues...
* Is an attack TRULY necessary? Does Iran really have a nuclear weapons program? Or is Iran simply creating bargaining chips?
* The bunker buster's ability to pentrate 300 ft of rock, and whether a strike, or multiple precision strikes, would be successful or even possible.
* The CONSEQUENCES of a strike, successful or not. Worldwide political, financial, economic, and MILITARY.
* Whether there is any other way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Why isn't the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, with inspections, enough?
* Is "nuclear weapons" just another "Saddam WMD" cover story?
... Frum just psychologizes the hell out of everything.
Instead of CELEBRATING the fact that Trump is reluctant to use weapons, this is all psychological manipulation of the crudest kind.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
21 thoughts on Trump's war with Iran
A risky situation brought to us by a weak president
Slow Boring by Matthew Yglesias / Jun 21, 2025 at 8:51 PM
https://www.slowboring.com/p/21-thoughts-on-trumps-war-with-iran
1. America’s top priority in the Middle East should be decreasing our involvement in the region. President after president keeps vowing to do that, they’ve all failed, and now Trump has arguably failed most of all.
2. What’s been maddening about Iran policy debates for the past decade is that the hawks keeps lying about their own policy preferences.
3. Opponents of the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal would make a big show of getting upset if you said that their preferred alternative to the deal was war. When Trump tore up the JCPOA, they again made a big show of getting mad at anyone who said this was putting us on a course for war. But here we are, at war.
4. Now that war is upon us, the biggest red herring in the world is that proponents will say they did this to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. No. Obama signed the JCPOA to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
5. To be clear, JCPOA critics weren’t delusional. The reason that Iran was willing to sign the deal was that it provided them with meaningful upside in the form of sanctions relief. And because the point of the JCPOA was to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, it did not address other concerns one might have with Iran, like the nature of its regime or its cultivation of a regional network of proxy militias or its ballistic missile arsenal. But JCPOA prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. What deal opponents didn’t like was that this was all that it did.
6. The problem with making a deal with Iran that offers Iran upside is it lets them improve their economy and thus pour more resources into various non-nuclear undertakings. This is especially a problem from Israel’s perspective, since they are the targets of many of these undertakings.
7. But the problem with not offering Iran upside is that if Iran doesn’t get upside in a deal, then there’s no deal. You end up with either a nuclear Iran or a war.
8. Now, maybe the war will end up being a “splendid little war” conducted by air with no American casualties and minimal impacts on Israel. Maybe Iran caves and signs a humiliating deal. This definitely might happen
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Quote:That is NOT what would happen if Iran bombed an American Uranium enrichment site, so why do you trivialize the idiotic thing Trump just did? He started a war without a declaration of war from Congress. If Congress wasn't made up of a majority of highly irresponsible and fearful individuals, worried mainly about themselves, he would be removed from office for what he did to Iran, yesterday.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But if we don't get reports of a big radioactive cloud circling the globe, then this was just a big fireworks show to get Netanyahu and the anti-MAGA war hawks off his back.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
Most people agree, at minimum, that the Declare War Clause grants Congress an exclusive power. That is, Presidents cannot, on their own authority, declare war. Although it is somewhat more contested among scholars and commentators, most people also agree that Presidents cannot initiate wars on their own authority (a minority argues that Presidents may initiate uses of force without formally declaring war and that Congress’s exclusive power to “declare war” refers only to issuing a formal proclamation).
In the early post-ratification period, the clause’s limit on presidential warmaking was read broadly. Many key founders, including Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and James Madison, referred to the clause’s importance as a limit on presidential power. In the nation’s early conflicts, Congress’s approval was thought necessary – not only for the War of 1812, for which Congress issued a formal declaration, but also for lesser uses of force including the Quasi-War with France in 1798, conflicts with the Barbary States of Tripoli and Algiers, and conflicts with Native American tribes on the Western frontier (all of which were approved by Congress, albeit without formal declarations).
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/article-i/cla
uses/753
Some lawmakers in both parties question the legality of Trump's Iran strikes
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/lawmakers-both-parties-quest
ion-legality-trumps-iran-strikes-rcna214316
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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