What Should We Think About The Trump Administration’s Approval and Cancellation of Iran Strike?
The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had approved of military strikes against Iran. Then, while planes were in the air and ships were in position, called off the attacks. Supposedly the attacks were to be retaliatory strikes for the shooting of a United States unmanned Global Hawk surveillance drone by Iran.
The operation was underway in its early stages when it was called off, a senior administration official said. Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down, the official said. – newyorktimes.com Trump Approves Strikes on Iran, but Then Abruptly Pulls Back
The one thing that both the United States and Iran can agree on is that the surveillance drone was shot down by Iran. There is a dispute as to the cause. Iran says that the drone had violated its airspace while the United States says the drone was in international waters. This is just the latest incident of escalating tensions between the trump administration and the Middle East country. Last week the United States accused Iran of attacking two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Trump previously pulled out of the Iran Treaty that the Obama administration had put in place in defiance of diplomacy experts and international allies.
In a press conference, while sitting next to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump seemed to play down the accusations against Iran in regards to the attack on the US drone. “I think probably Iran made a mistake – I would imagine it was a general or somebody that made a mistake in shooting that drone down,” Trump said. He then followed that statement up when asked what the response from the United States would be with “you’ll find out.” If this incident were a mistake, and at over $220 million per drone it’s an expensive one for the American taxpayer, would it be worth going to war over?
The Trump administration is not known for its transparency or loyalty to facts. CNN.com recently ran an article titled “Donald Trump lies more often than you wash your hands every day“. The Washington Post notes that Trump has told 10,000+ lies since taking office.
In his first 869 days as President, Donald Trump said 10,796 things that were either misleading or outright false, according to The Washington Post’s Fact Checker. Do the math and you get this: The President of the United States is saying 12 untrue things a day. – cnn.com Donald Trump lies more often than you wash your hands every day
Vanity Fair has itemized that list of lies and misleading statements and come to the conclusion that since the midterm elections the frequency of Trumps lies has increased such that he’s telling about 23 lies per day. Anyone outside of Trump’s supporters has a hard time taking in anything this administration says without fact checking first. And more often than not, Donald Trump fails that fact check.
Even the Trump administrations account of the incident with the two oil tankers last week were questioned by several United States allies and disputed by the owners of the tankers.
Both Japan and Germany have requested more concrete evidence to support the Trump administration’s insistence that Iran was behind the twin attacks on the Norwegian-owned Front Altar and the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday. – huffpost.com Pompeo Claims There’s ‘No Doubt’ Iran Attacked Tankers, But U.S. Allies Want Proof
Of particular note here in my opinion is the request by Japan. While Germany hasn’t agreed with many things that Trump has said or or done since taking office, Japan has been fairly quiet in their criticism or skepticism of United States and the Trump administration. So for Japan to request more evidence and not buy the official government account from the Trump administration, one would expect that the evidence presented isn’t as clear and clean as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the administration would have people believe. To be fair, any country would most likely misreport the location of a foreign asset if it had attacked it near its borders. However, the Trump administration’s track record leaves very little in the way of credibility to grasp onto.
Then there is this. I think, as tensions increase with Iran and we draw closer to the 2020 presidential election we must consider this statement made by Donald Trump in this tweet from 2011.
In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2011
In case Twitter embedding isn’t working;
In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2011
All of this casts doubt on the credibility of the Trump administration’s account of not only the oil tanker incident but of the location the drone was at when Iran shot it out of the sky. It’s also fairly well known that there is a facet of the Trump administration and the Republican Party that is and has been interested in conflict with Iran. The last thing we should want, and the last thing I’d be willing to bet most of the American people would want, would be yet another military conflict in the Middle East. One would assume that at the speed in which the news of the Trump administration’s approval of the strike on Iran made it to media that there may be certain forces within the government making an attempt to curtail such action. I don’t believe that this is outside the realm of possibility because, as the New York Times reported, no government officials asked them to withhold their article revealing the approval and cancellation of the strike even considering the recency of this military operation.
We don’t know why Trump called off the strike even after assets had been put in place and planes were currently in the air but let’s hope diplomacy and cooler heads prevail. Another quagmire of a conflict in the Middle East is nothing that we need or can afford.
Additional:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/world/middleeast/iran-us-drone.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/21/united-airlines-halts-some-flights-mumbai-to-avoid-iran-after-drone-attack
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/20/iran-claims-us-drone-shot-down-missile-strike-saudi-arabia-trump-yemen
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-administration-allies-iran-tanker-pompeo_n_5d072ea3e4b0985c419ff17d
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/13/oil-tanker-attacks-will-inflame-conflict-between-the-us-its-allies-and-iran
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/10/politics/donald-trump-lies-fact-check/index.html
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/trump-has-told-more-than-10000-lies-since-being-inaugurated-washington-post
Jaylon Carter is a blogger, social media marketing consultant, former Congressional Campaign Media & Communications Director, national labor union vice block leader, and a Hip Hop artist who performs under the stage name Timid (@timidmc).
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