IRAN: Trump's war?
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:14
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'I ran the CIA - these are Trump's mistakes and why they're so scary'
Leon Panetta warns Donald Trump's lack of trust in his own intelligence chiefs is 'very scary' and 'dangerous' to world security
By Rob Hastings | June 25, 2025 4:08 pm
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/cia-trumps-mistakes-scary-3768498
Donald Trump’s lack of trust in his own intelligence chiefs and ignorance of their advice while launching military action is “very scary” and “dangerous” to world security, a former head of the CIA has warned.
Leon Panetta, who was Director of the US spy agency from 2009 to 2011, is alarmed by the President’s declaration that intelligence he received on Iran’s nuclear programme – shortly before he ordered risky strikes on the country – was “wrong”.
Panetta’s intervention comes after Trump once again hit out at his own security experts, saying a leaked assessment was “fake news,” after it reportedly suggested Iran’s nuclear facilities may have only been set back by months and not “obliterated” as he claimed.
In an interview with The i Paper, Panetta said that Trump’s attitude sets a worrying trend for the White House’s decision-making process over any future armed interventions.
He also suggested that the President’s “unpredictability” means he is a risk to Nato allies, who will have to consider this while monitoring the actions of dictators such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un.
Panetta said: “I don’t think there’s any alternative but to understand how dangerous a world we live in right now.
“Not only because of the adversaries that are out there – whether it’s China, or Russia, or North Korea, or Iran, or terrorism – but also because of the concerns about leadership, and whether or not the US will exercise the right kind of leadership in a dangerous world.”
Controversy over how the White House uses intelligence reports to make vital decisions has grown after the latest dismissive comments from Trump and his team.
The President has rejected the Defence Intelligence Agency’s leaked initial judgment that the American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities may not have been a knock-out blow, with a White House spokesperson also saying: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong.”
Speaking from his home in California, Panetta said: “There’s no question that when the US President makes a statement that our intelligence assessments are wrong and doesn’t believe our own intelligence, that creates a very dangerous moment.
“It undermines the work of our intelligence professionals who really are focused on trying to provide the President with the truth. When the President questions their credibility, that certainly undermines their morale, I’m sure.
“But secondly, it also creates a real problem for the President, because if he rejects the intelligence he’s receiving, then what will be the basis for the decisions that he makes in the future, and that is a very scary prospect.”
He added: “I have always been confident about our intelligence assessments with regards to Iran… The fundamental question is: did they make a decision to proceed with developing a weapon? And I think our intelligence indicates that that still was not the case.”
The row originally broke out after Trump publicly slapped down guidance from his own director of national security, Tulsi Gabbard, who told Congress in March that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” Serving security officials insist this has remained true all along.
Trump publicly dismissed the guidance, bluntly telling reporters last Friday: “My intelligence community is wrong.” The following night, American B-2 bombers struck Iran’s key uranium plants.
However, Panetta said that once Trump had asserted that Iran was aiming to manufacture a bomb, the White House “had to stand by its word” and was left with “no alternative” but to attack.
Gabbard has since tried to realign her stance with Trump, writing online: “America has intelligence that Iran i
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The Current Iran War will Likely End Soon, but the Arms Race will Heat Up
Juan Cole | 06/23/2025
https://www.juancole.com/2025/06/current-iran-likely.html
The hot war will end, but the Middle East arms race is with us for the foreseeable future, and the opportunities for Russia and China, should they want them, to play a bigger role in the region have expanded.
America’s credibility as a negotiator and mediator is completely ruined, since Trump hit Iran in the midst of negotiations, which a reader reminded me is a violation of the Hague Regulations of 1907 and was held against Japan in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
It is still not clear to me that the ayatollahs’ longstanding opposition to nuclear weapons will change. Many countries throughout the world, however, may now be tempted to go for a nuclear weapon, since the difference between North Korea on the one hand and Iraq and Iran on the other is glaringly clear.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You are out of your fucking little mind, 6ix,
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Keep crying cunts.
Trump is killing it.
Your party is dead and there's nothing you can do about it now.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I'm not the one who lives and breathes Trump every day, sociopath.
Quote:
but don't feel bad.
Oh, don't worry. I don't.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Are you one of those Trumptards who disbelieve the Bible? Then I guess this will be a surprise for you: War with Iran is the key to bringing Jesus back to Earth.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm not the one who lives and breathes Trump every day, sociopath.
'Biblical prophecy': Christian nationalists pushing Trump to 'usher in the End Times'
By Alex Henderson | June 25, 2025 | 09:29AM ET
Before launching his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump didn't have a lot of contact with evangelical Christian fundamentalism.
Trump was raised Presbyterian/Mainline Protestant — not evangelical — in Queens by a Scottish immigrant mother and an American father. And religion, even non-fundamentalist Protestant Christianity, wasn't a high priority for him.
In 2016, 2020 and 2024, however, white evangelicals were a key part of Trump's MAGA base. And he gets a lot of input from them, often attacking Democrats as anti-religion even though many prominent Democrats — from Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) to MSNBC's the Rev. Al Sharpton to Catholic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) — are quite religious and can quote the Bible with much more detail than Trump.
In an article published on June 25, Salon's Amanda Marcotte warns that Trump is getting a lot of input from far-right white Christian nationalists on the Middle East and explains why that is dangerous. https://www.salon.com/2025/06/25/evangelicals-push-trump-into-conflict
-with-iran/
"The wild claims made by leaders of the Christian Right have also been in the mix: that Trump is a prophet sent by God to usher in the End Times, and that attacking Iran is necessary to bring about the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ," the Philadelphia-based Marcotte explains. "It's this delusion that (Sen. Ted) Cruz was winking at, and it was likely a powerful reason Trump decided to escalate."
White evangelical Christian fundamentalists have a complex relationship with Israel. On one hand, they believe that Jews are damned to eternal hell because they don't accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah; on the other hand, they consider themselves very pro-Israel because of the role they think Israel will play in the End Times.
"Anthea Butler, a religious studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told Salon that Cruz was referencing evangelical belief in a Biblical prophecy that war involving Israel and the larger Middle East is 'only one more step in ushering in Jesus' return," Marcotte notes. "As journalist Sarah Posner explained at Talking Points Memo, 'this movement holds that a series of prophesied events, including Jews' return to Israel and invasion by armies of foreign countries including Iran, will culminate in a bloody, victorious battle at Armageddon.'"
Marcotte continues, "As a result, the conflict between Iran and Israel has launched a frenzy within evangelical circles, as they hope the final battle is coming and they will get to witness the End Times…. Family Research Council head Tony Perkins was one of the architects of Project 2025, the far-right plan for a government takeover being implemented by Trump's administration. He's also a big believer in this Biblical prophecy and, as Kyle Mantyla of Right Wing Watch documented, has been using his podcast to frame war with Iran as the key to bringing Jesus back to Earth."
According to Marcotte, the "pressure from Trump's evangelical base" on the Middle East "offers insight into why he is cracking."
"He almost certainly would like to leave his intervention in Iran behind," Marcotte observes. "But he can't say no to evangelicals, because he knows that he’s nothing without them."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Are you one of those Trumptards who disbelieve the Bible? Then I guess this will be a surprise for you: War with Iran is the key to bringing Jesus back to Earth.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm not the one who lives and breathes Trump every day, sociopath.
Shut the fuck up.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Trump’s reckless bluster about his “spectacular military success” in Iran has just been thoroughly debunked. A classified defense report has surfaced, indicating that the US targeted bombing campaign barely made a dent in Iran’s nuclear program.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut the fuck up.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-iran-2672439415/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Trump’s
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut the fuck up.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Shut the fuck up.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Here's my take:
Netanyahu and American (traitorous) Zionist neocons were putting all kinds of pressure on Trump.
Now, personally, I don't know why he didn't just tell them to fuck off, but Trump may still have a soft spot for Israel, he may have a real fear of Iranian nuclear weapons, he may have wanted to overthrow the Iranian govt, or he was simply responding to political pressure at home.
In any case, he and Israel coordinated a "blitzkrieg" attack consisting of assassinations of top military commanders and nuclear scientists by Israel, sabotage of Iran's air defenses by Israel, and a real bombing and missile campaign by both Israel and the USA against what appeared to be Iran's ballistic launch sites and three of Iran's nuclear sites. Azerbaijan, Turkye, and Diego Garcia (among other places) were the bases.
I don't think we -or Israel - held anything back, except tactical nukes.
We all went all out.
But things didn't go as planned. Iran's air defenses slowly came back online. The "missile launch sites" appeared to be mostly decoys. Iran's nuclear sites had apparently been emptied and were more resistant to attack than anticipated.
And Iran's government and military didn't fall.
Iran started a punishing missile campaign against Israel. Israel tightly censored new of the damage, and our western press filters the rest, but I saw video after video of missiles raining down on Israel, the Iron Dome proving to be an Iron Sieve. And Iran is widely thought to have THOUSANDS of missiles in reserve.
So, blitzkreig having failed, we were looking at the beginning of an attritional war with Iran.
As always, it's far easier to attack from the air than it is to defend, and neither Iran nor Israel held up well in that regard, but Iran has a far bigger industrial base than Israel, and USA stocks were depleted in Ukraine.
Sensing FAILURE, and sensing Israel on the ropes, Trump did the next best thing: declare victory and manage a ceasefire. Similar to the Yemen op, but on a bigger scale.
The DIA, which is supposed to be a source of "ground truth", didn't get with the program. But the CIA, which is entirely political, and Trump's closest advisors, and Israel are standing shoulder to shoulder to draw a line under this event and not gave it go any further. Iran probably wants the time to purge its ranks of infiltrators and to beef up its air defenses. The government understands that Israel, having failed militarily, would target population centers next, and didn't want that kind of damage.
So it's a short term draw. Long term, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has been broken, the head of the enforcement arm IAEA (Grossi) has been exposed as a western asset, nobody in the west knows where Iran's 90% uranium is and Iran's not going to tell them, and everybody now has another example that you can't trust negotiating with the USA (as if Iraq and Libya wasn't enough).
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"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:Here's Pete Hegseth’s take:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Here's my take:
Yes, the Iran Mission Was Successful. No, We Are Not Taking Questions.
Pete Hegseth’s guide to war
By Alexandra Petri | June 26, 2025, 1:26 PM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/06/hegseth-iran-p
ress-conference/683332/
Pete Hegseth here.
Wow.
Wow.
I’ve called you members of the Fake News together for this special meeting because I can’t believe you could have gotten it so wrong. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/live-blog/trump-
administration-congress-iran-israel-immigration-live-updates-rcna214380
I am personally ashamed of you. You are the reason that people are saying that the mission “only set back Iran’s nuclear program for months” and “was not an unmitigated success.” Did you not hear the president? The target was OBLITERATED. Stop acting like something can’t be obliterated for months. I’ve been obliterated for months myself.
Maybe if you BELIEVED more, you would understand how well the mission went! You would know that the second the bombs fell, the only thing they could possibly have hit was their target, and the only thing they could possibly have done was DECIMATE and DESTROY their target exactly as intended. But instead, because you didn’t BELIEVE enough, you demanded “reports”—and now we’re in this mess. You are making our pilots sad!
I know there is an old journalistic saying: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. I would never! I know my mother loves me, despite what her emails published in The New York Times suggest.
Everyone with eyes knows this mission was a success! And if you doubt, here are a number of quotes from people brave enough to see what was REALLY there and not just what so-called INTELLIGENCE shows. This is also what I’m like when my loved ones come out of surgery. I don’t need to see the patient. I just want to hear statements from True Patriots about how he’s probably doing. That’s enough for me. If you weren’t FAKE NEWS, it would be enough for you.
Now, thanks to Donald Trump, we are on the historic, unprecedented verge of a thing that we used to have before he tore up the treaty! Where’s the praise? Where’s the adulation?
You are free to write whatever you want. You can say the target was “devastated.” You can say the target was “obliterated.” Choose whatever word you like, as long as it is a synonym for destroyed. You can even say “utterly destroyed.” It’s a free country.
When I look out over this press corps, I think, Is it any wonder the mission only set back the nuclear program for months? Which, of course, it didn’t. It set the program back for an untold, unfathomable length of time. Who can fathom it? Who can tell it? Not I. After a mission like this, how about we take a beat, wave a flag, celebrate our warriors’ success?
Maybe, if you were a better press corps, the mission would have gone better. Have you ever considered that?
Not that it didn’t go perfectly! But hypothetically.
Say you are one of our brave pilots. How do you think he feels? He’s refueled. He’s dropped his payload. What he wants to hear you say is, “Great job, Kevin! Mission accomplished, Kevin!” He doesn’t need you saying, “Actually, was the whole target, you know, THERE?”
Look, we remember from 2003 that all you need in order to have accomplished your mission is a big-enough banner. Then it’s your job, as the media, to say, “Great job accomplishing that mission!” You know what it isn’t your job to do? Ask questions.
Why don’t you want to celebrate? Why do you hate America?
CLAP if you believe in mission.
CLAP! See, it’s going better all the time. CLAP! KEEP CLAPPING!
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump has been so unnerved by Iran that he can focus on nothing else
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-iran-2672441389/
Only one of 17 intelligence agencies released reports on the possible effects of last weekend's bombing, yet the Trump administration continues to call it a raging success. When the press has questioned exactly how Trump knows Iran's nuclear capabilities have been wiped out, the president has been going ballistic.
At Wednesday's NATO summit press conference at The Hague, Trump claimed news media was out to disparage him and the brave men and women who defend the country.
Trumpian rage rants are, of course, routine. But this time feels different. The president posted 21 times on Truth Social yesterday about the supposed success of his military strikes. And at yesterday’s NATO summit — a moment specifically designed by the Western world for Trump to bask in the glory of a huge defense spending boost — he spent most of his public appearances repeating his assertions on Iran.
Sykes turned to Politico's reporting to find the reasoning behind Trump's "latest indignant frenzy."
"Critics see a president spooked by a bombshell leak that has undermined his authority," wrote Politico's Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns.
"Supporters say Trump is genuinely outraged by what he claims is false reporting and wants the record corrected. Either way — he’s using every tool in his arsenal to push back hard: Witness the hammer-like repetition that sites were 'obliterated'; the plentiful use of surrogates like Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio; the vindictive targeting of the journalists and media organizations involved; the barrage of statements from both U.S. and Israeli intelligence chiefs yesterday that the initial report was wrong," the report states.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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