Tag: Iran

US braces for Iranian response: a ‘tit for tat’ assault?

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials on Monday braced for Iran to respond to the killing of its most powerful general, noting heightened military readiness in the country and preparing for a possible “tit-for-tat” attempt on the life of an American military commander.

President Donald Trump ordered the Jan. 2 strike against Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, after the death of an American contractor in Iraq. Now, as the massive demonstrations of Iran’s public mourning period for Soleimani come to a close, officials believe the next steps by America’ longtime foe will determine the ultimate course of the latest crisis.

While officials say American intelligence isn’t clear on whether Iran’s latest military moves are designed to bolster Tehran’s defenses or prepare for an offensive strike, the U.S. is continuing to reinforce its own positions in the region, including repositioning some forces. One official said the U.S. anticipated a “major” attack of some type within the next day or two. Continue reading.

Iran vows to enrich uranium “without restrictions”

Axios logoIran’s government announced Sunday that it would no longer abide by any limits on its enrichment of uranium, according to Iranian state TV.

Why it matters: This could be the final blow to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, raising the risk that Iran will move toward a nuclear weapon. However, Iran has said it will continue to allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and is prepared to return to compliance with the deal if the U.S. removes sanctions.

Context: President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in May 2018, setting off a chain of events that have seen tensions rise to the point where the two countries may now be on the brink of war.

    • European leaders have attempted to mediate in order to keep constraints on Iran’s nuclear program intact.
    • The Trump administration says its goal is to force Iran to negotiate a more comprehensive deal, though that seems a remote prospect given the current realities. Continue reading.

Trump takes gamble with decision to kill Iran military commander

The Hill logoPresident Trump took perhaps the most significant gamble of his presidency in authorizing a U.S. drone strike against a top Iranian commander in Iraq.

The strike killing Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, dramatically escalated the Trump administration’s confrontation with Tehran.

It also marked an unexpected move for Trump, who has campaigned on withdrawing American troops from conflicts abroad and displayed a wariness of overseas military engagements. Continue reading.

Soleimani killing deepens distrust between Trump, Democrats

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) bitterly complained that President Trump left her and other congressional leaders out of the loop before taking out Iran’s top general in a surprise airstrike Thursday.

Trump and his allies seem just fine with that.

Distrust between Trump and Pelosi is at an all-time high. Just two weeks ago, Pelosi led House Democrats in a mostly party-line vote to make Trump just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. Now, Pelosi and Trump’s congressional allies are locked in a standoff over the shape of the Senate impeachment trial, preventing it from moving forward as Trump demands a speedy acquittal. Continue reading

Hear Donald Trump bluff his way through 2015 interview on Iran’s Soleimani: ‘You’re asking me gotcha questions’

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump once bluffed his way through a discussion about the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani — whose killing he ordered Thursday in an escalation of the Middle East conflict.

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” played a clip from Trump’s interview Sept. 3, 2015, with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, who asked the newly minted Republican candidate whether he knew Soleimani’s name.

“Are you familiar with Gen. Soleimani?” Hewitt asked.

“Yes,” Trump said, then began fishing for hints. “Go ahead, give me a little. Go ahead, tell me.” Continue reading

Iraqis Stormed US Embassy As Our Failure There Continues

It’s a matter of official record that Afghanistan has been the longest war in American history, still going on after more than 18 years. But you could make a case that the longest war is really Iraq. We initiated hostilities there in January 1991, and they’ve never really stopped.

You know something has gone wrong when a mob of the people you thought you were helping storms your embassy chanting “Death to America.” It brings back memories from 2003, when Dick Cheney informed Americans that our invading troops would be “greeted as liberators.” Yet the objects those Iraqis were flinging at our diplomatic compound were not flowers.

The protest came after the U.S. carried out airstrikes against sites in Iraq and Syria. They were directed at an Iranian-supported militia that killed an American contractor in a rocket barrage. Iran’s proxy forces have made several attacks on U.S. military facilities in recent weeks, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. “will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy.” Continue reading

Trump Bet He Could Isolate Iran and Charm North Korea. It’s Not That Easy.

New York Times logoThe president assumed economic levers would guide the countries’ national interests. Now, he confronts twin challenges in an election year.

President Trump entered the new year facing flare-ups of long-burning crises with two old adversaries — Iran and North Korea — that are directly challenging his claim to have reasserted American power around the world.

While the Iranian-backed attack on the United States Embassy in Baghdad seemed to be under control, it played to Mr. Trump’s longtime worry that American diplomats and troops in the Middle East are easy targets and his longtime position that the United States must pull back from the region.

In North Korea, Kim Jong-un’s declaration on Wednesday that the world would “witness a new strategic weapon” seemed to be the end of an 18-month experiment in which Mr. Trump believed his force of personality — and vague promises of economic development — would wipe away a problem that plagued the last 12 of his predecessors. Continue reading

Trump threatens Iran over embassy incident, which he calls the ‘Anti-Benghazi’

The Hill logoPresident Trump threatened Iran after demonstrators, including members of an Iranian-backed militia, breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Tuesday.

“Iran will be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities,” Trump tweeted. “They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!”

Trump declared that the embassy in Iraq was safe thanks to the deployment of U.S. military resources and a “rapid response” from the Iraqi government. Continue reading

Trump Followed His Gut on Syria. Calamity Came Fast.

New York Times logoAll the warnings were there. But President Trump’s reliance on his instincts, and his relationships, led him to ignore the consequences of a move that has emboldened Russia, Iran and the Islamic State.

President Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s move to send troops deep inside Syrian territory has in only one week’s time turned into a bloody carnage, forced the abandonment of a successful five-year-long American project to keep the peace on a volatile border, and given an unanticipated victory to four American adversaries: Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State.

Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in the generous description of a senior American diplomat — probably will be debated for years by historians, Middle East experts and conspiracy theorists.

But this much already is clear: Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave. The only surprise is how swiftly it all collapsed around the president and his depleted, inexperienced foreign policy team.

View the complete October 14 article by David E. Sanger on The New York Times website here.

In standoff with Iran, Trump is reaping what he sowed

Washington Post logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo made an inadvertent admission Wednesday while en route to emergency meetings in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The top U.S. diplomat was checking in on Washington’s close regional allies in the wake of a suspected Iranian strike on a major Saudi oil facility. The attack dealt, at least briefly, a crippling blow to Riyadh’s exports, shook up global markets and clouded the region with a new threat of conflict.

Pompeo described the strike on Saudi Arabia as “an act of war” by Iran, a charge vociferously denied by Iran. Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the attack, but U.S. and Saudi officials doubt that claim and stress, as Pompeo did, that it has “the fingerprints of the ayatollah” — a reference to Iran’s supreme leader.

When pressed by reporters traveling with him about the efficacy of Trump’s current approach, Pompeo said something he perhaps didn’t quite intend. “I would argue that what you are seeing here is a direct result of us reversing the enormous failure of the JCPOA,” he said, using the official acronym for the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers that Trump opted to leave.

View the complete September 20 article by Ishaan Tharoor on The Washington Post website here.