It is fascinating, however Trump is playing the base by maintaining some ambiguity here. What really matters is, if Donald does directly engage with Iran with military forces, committing us, will any of his loyal MAGA show the spine to publicly disagree with him, or break with him?Who knew Israel-Iran would erode the MAGA base allegiance to Dear Leader
It’s quite delicious actually.
I have no doubt that if US and Iran ever go to war, the MAGA base will reunite and 100% stand behind the President.Who knew Israel-Iran would erode the MAGA base allegiance to Dear Leader
It’s quite delicious actually.
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Summary
Talks coordinated with US, source says
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BERLIN, June 18 (Reuters) - The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain plan to hold nuclear talks with their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Geneva, a German diplomatic source told Reuters.
The ministers will first meet with the European Union's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, at Germany's permanent mission in Geneva before holding a joint meeting with the Iranian foreign minister, the source said.
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The European initiative comes amid fears of a spiralling conflict in the Middle East after Israel launched wide-ranging military strikes on its arch-enemy Iran last week and Iran sent waves of missiles at Israeli targets in respons
The US supporting a blatant war of aggression is nothing new.
Can't argue with this, unfortunately, but the poll doesn't support the Twitterer's conclusion.The US supporting a blatant war of aggression is nothing new.
The Pentagon steered a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East this week, two defense officials said, as well as new deployments of F-22, F-35 and F-16 fighter planes. This gives the U.S. two aircraft carriers in the region for the second time this year, a rare move. It also takes them from the Pacific, a signal that the Middle East is once again a priority for the administration, even as Pentagon leaders have sought tofocus their efforts on China.
Kurilla, testifying on Capitol Hill last week, said he had prepared a “wide range of options” for Hegseth and President Donald Trump to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
The White House has backed the military buildup in the region, although some officials noted how easy it’s been for Kurilla to make the case for why he needs more planes, ships and air defenses.
“He’s not worried about taking that directly to his civilian superiors,” said the diplomat. “Hegseth has sided with him time and again.”
Some former officials contend Kurilla’s influence is tied more to the nature of his job, the head of the combatant command overseeing the Middle East at a time of crisis.
“This has little to do with Kurilla himself,” said Bilal Saab, who served in the Pentagon during the first Trump administration. “There’s no resistance in the Pentagon or the NSC to moving assets to protect troops and personnel in the region.”
Despite his sometimes abrasive character — including the alleged shoving of a military crew member that prompted an Army investigation — the battle-tested and media-averse Kurilla has impressed top officials for his courage. He won a Bronze Star for leading U.S. troops in a firefight in 2005 at the height of the Iraq War despite having been shot three times. (CENTCOM said at the time that officials weren’t aware of any investigation into Kurilla.)
“He’s got the look of the general that both Hegseth and Trump are looking for,” said the former official. “He’s a big dude, he’s jacked, he’s exactly this ‘lethality’ look they’re going for.”
Officials who have participated in talks with Kurilla about military assets in the region said he also has a knack for convincing others about their importance.
“He’s extremely strategic and persuasive about what CENTCOM can do given adequate resources,” said Dan Shapiro, who until January was the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy official. “That was certainly true in the Biden administration. It may be more true now.”
John Sakellariadis contributed to this report.
Filed under: White House, Military,
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An allied invasion of Iran would be an incredible dumb thing to do, because Iran is twice the size of Afghanistan, has approximately the same type of mountainous terrain, and has 90 million inhabitants.I hope my country doesn't make the same mistakes they did in 2003 when they became involved in the US invasion of Iraq
The Israeli military has spent the last five days creating amenable conditions for either contingency. On June 16, it destroyed upward of 70 Iranian air defense platforms and mobile missile launchers. To date, it has claimed to have taken out 120 launchers, a third of Iran’s capability, which accounts for the shrinking size of the salvos Iran has unleashed in retaliation: Since this campaign started, Iran has fired 370 missiles, whereas it fired more than half that number in a single night on Oct. 1, 2024, during the last direct confrontation with Israel. While it’s certainly the case that Israel is expending its own air defenses, particularly its Arrow interceptors, to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, it still has ongoing U.S. help on land and at sea in the Mediterranean. So far, even Iranian strikes on apartment buildings and now a major hospital have not swayed Israeli public opinion against a campaign long in the making.
The largest casualty is conventional wisdom. No assessments produced on the feasibility of attacking Iran in years past envisaged Mossad operatives constructing a three-story drone warehouse in southern Tehran, right under the noses of one of the most formidable intelligence services in the Middle East. Israel probably has hundreds, if not thousands, of assets still in play on the ground scattered across Iran, providing targeting data to Israeli jets and directly sabotaging Iran’s defense and command-and-control systems. Even Iranian officials acknowledge the extent of their enemy’s infiltration, with one suggesting kamikaze drones installed on local rooftops and activated remotely.
Also unforeseen by even the most imaginative military analysts is that in less than a week, Israel managed to achieve in Iran what Vladimir Putin has failed to do in three-and-a-half years in Ukraine: establish total air supremacy. U.S. aircraft would now enjoy operational freedom in any hypothetical intervention, without their own suppression of enemy air defenses, which would have lengthened any such intervention and eaten into the American arsenal.
No doubt this is a tantalizing prospect for Trump. The New York Times reports that he is awestruck by Israel’s achievements after watching them unfold in real time on Fox News and is increasingly desperate to claim some of the credit. And though his MAGA coalition is being torn in half by the will-he-or-won’t-he debate now raging, and though he badly wants a Nobel Peace Prize he stands little chance of acquiring, Trump may well calculate that his legacy could now involve doing at low cost what four successive administrations (including his first one) could not: terminating the most prolonged national security preoccupation of the post-Cold War era.
So far, Israel’s coercive messaging to the White House, that nothing succeeds quite like success, appears to be working. “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” Trump posted on social media, either out of hubris or in a nod to as-yet-undeclared U.S. intelligence and logistical support for Operation Rising Lion, as Israel’s war is known. In a further sign that he may be leaning toward the kinetic option, Trump told reporters that his demand of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom he has vaguely threatened to assassinate, is “very simple – unconditional surrender. That means I’ve had it. I’ve had it. I give up, no more. Then we go blow up all the nuclear stuff that’s all over the place there. They had bad intentions. You know, for 40 years they’ve been saying death to America,
We seem to be going about it the wrong way as Iran is now contemplating leaving the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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