19:52
I've Had It Podcast ā¢ 2 weeks ago
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New Republic ā¢ 2 weeks ago
Trump Just Made the World Much More Dangerous
The U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran began only hours ago, but thereās already one clear lesson for the rest of the world: If you have a nuclear weapon, you are safe from potential U.S. attack, and if you donāt have a nuclear weapon, you are vulnerable. In 2018, President Trump violated a multilateral nuclear agreementāthe Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iranāthat was working. Less than a decade later, he has decided with no sound legal or military justification to launch a barrage of military strikes with the apparent aim of toppling the Iranian regime. This is the clearest but by no means only example of a country without a nuclear weapon falling victim to illegal American military attack. The long-term consequences will likely be a large-scale increase in the number of countries that possess nuclear weapons, something that will undermine American and global security for generations to come.Even before the United States detonated the first nuclear weapon in 1945, it sought to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, recognizing that the more countries that have these capabilities, the more threatened the U.S. and global peace and security would be. That reality led the U.S. over the past 80 years to build up a global system of alliances, treaties, and legal norms that for the most part was successful in preventing the widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. There are perhaps 50 countries in the world capable technically of building nuclear weapons, but only nine possess such weapons. They are the U.S., Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Indeed, more countries started nuclear weapon programs and then eventually gave them up than ever built nuclear weapons. This massive nonproliferation success story is unlikely to survive Americaās attacks against Iran, and the future effort to limit proliferation is as cloudy as the true justification of Trumpās bombing of Iran, and what happens after the bombing is over.Iran is just the latest example of a country without nuclear weapons being targeted by American military force. There are multiple examples where countries tried and failed to build nuclear weapons, such as Iraq, or else voluntarily gave up those capabilities and still fell victim to American military action, such as Libya. This contrasts with a country like North Korea, which illegally acquired nuclear weapons and has successfully avoided American coercion or military action. And while Ukraine never had operational control or possession of Soviet nuclear weapons, Ukraineās decision in 1994 to cooperate with the West and facilitate the return of Soviet nuclear capabilities to Russia in exchange for Russian, U.S., and British security guarantees eased the way for Russiaās invasion of the nonnuclear country.A number of global factors, including but not limited to the Trump administrationās disdain for U.S. allies and alliances in general, have fueled concern over the past several years that U.S. friends and alliesālong convinced they did not need nuclear weapons of their ownāmay choose to go nuclear. Countries in Europe and in East Asia are openly discussing whether they need their own nuclear weapons in order to compensate for the loss of credible American security assurances.As long as the U.S. appeared serious about wanting to negotiate a new nuclear agreement with Iran, the global nonproliferation system stood a chance. Now that it is beyond any doubt that Trump has rejected diplomacy and seeks to forcibly eliminate the regime in Iran, the potential demand for nuclear weapons among U.S. adversaries is also likely to grow. This is the future that the U.S. has long sought to avoid. President John F. Kennedy predicted in the 1960s that as many as 25 countries might develop nuclear weapons in the coming decades. It was that dangerous reality that led the U.S. and the Soviet Union to negotiate the nuclear nonproliferation treaty allowing peaceful nuclear technology to be shared with states that agreed to remain nonnuclear. One reason the U.S. pursued this path was that every country that builds nuclear weapons is another potential threat to the United States and its allies, every arsenal is a potential target for theft, and every leader of a nuclear weapon state has to get every nuclear weapon decision right every single time. The U.S. military is incredibly well funded and well trained. It is more than capable of destroying any target that the American president designates for destruction. But we should not mistake tactical success for a strategic win. In attempting to eliminate the alleged regional threat that Iran poses, Trump is inviting an even greater threat to the world. For there is simply no more dangerous world than one filled with nuclear weapons. As they spread, the danger of their use will continue to increase and the demand for the U.S. and others to take military action preemptively to prevent proliferation or to attack nuclear capabilities will also continue to grow. In this future, there will be deadly escalations and miscalculationsāand eventually the evisceration of the long-held taboo against the use of nuclear weapons.
ZNet ā¢ 2 weeks ago
Itās the Trump Administration Thatās Threatening the World ā Not Iran
President Donald Trumpās Pentagon is reportedly preparing a potential military assault on Iran. Washington and Tehran are set to resume Omani-mediated talks on Thursday, but the threat of war is rising nonetheless. This month, the White House and Pentagon have repeatedly met with Israeli leaders who are lobbying against a deal with Iran and are in favor of launching an attack on [...]
Semafor ā¢ 2 weeks ago
Trump sidelines Republican Congress on Iran strikes
Democrats are calling for votes on war powers, but all signs point to the GOP going along with Trumpās latest foreign intervention.
Semafor ā¢ 2 weeks ago
Iran attack is Trump's riskiest energy bet yet
āThe name of the game is to move as much oil away from the Strait of Hormuz as possible right now.ā
Hasan Abi ā¢ 2 weeks ago
šŗUS AND ISRAEL STRIKES IRANšŗWORLD WAR EPSTEINšŗIRAN RETALIATESšŗBURGERREICHšŗ
New Republic ā¢ 2 weeks ago
Donald Trumpās Lawless Regime-Change War in Iran: No. Not in Our Name.
My cell phone rang at 3 a.m. I looked down to see that it was my wifeās Aunt Jan calling. She lives on the West Coast and is a bit of a night owl. I wondered if maybe she called by mistake, so I didnāt pick it up; I decided to wait and see if she left a message, which would signal intent. A minute or so later, sure enough, the little voicemail icon popped up. So I listened. I thought youād want to knowāthe bombing has started. I called her back gratefully. Yes, I sure did want to know.Right now, as I compose this sentence, itās four-and-a-half hours later, and I imagine people waking up across the Eastern United States to start their Saturdays: moms nudging their kids to get them ready for their basketball or soccer games, dads getting a jump on that trip to Home Depot, the sales clerks and others who have to work on Saturdays rousing themselves and preparing for their days. And I picture them wiping the sand out of their eyes and picking up their phones or maybe flipping on the kitchen-counter radio and thinking: He did what?!?Itās so Donald Trump to do this in the middle of the night. It appears that Israel started bombing Iran around 1:30 a.m. East Coast time, and U.S. forces began about 30 minutes later. But 1:30 a.m. E.T. is 10 a.m. Tehran timeāthe Iranian people were up and about, and military bases were presumably humming and fully staffed. The people he most surprised here were his employers, the citizens of the United States.And why would he want to do that? āOur objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people,ā Trump said in a brief (by his standards, anyway) video posted on Truth Social at 2:30 a.m. āIts menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world.ā Later, addressing the āproud people of Iran,ā he said that āthe hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Donāt leave your home. Itās very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.ā But why now, and in this way? Iām not in Trumpās brain, but having regrettably spent numberless hours this last decade trying to plumb that brainās moldy depths, I hazard the educated guess that he wanted to make the whole thing as outrageous to normal opinion as he could. That is, he knows the people who support him will back whatever he does whenever he does it. Thereās little question that at Mar-a-Lago, Fox News HQ, Bari Weissās house, and other such nexuses of laughter and forgetting, they woke up dancing a little jig. Trump knows he can count on that.But the people he sees as enemies: The New York Times, the radical-left lunatics, those pinheads at Yale, Princeton, MIT, and the other universities that āWarā Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday were off-limits now to military personnel because they are āfactories of anti-American resentmentā ā¦ Trump wanted to double, triple the outrage among that set. Well, as might or might not again be said over the course of Operation Epic Fury, as this attack has been named: mission accomplished.So here we are. Iāll make three more quick-ish observations and otherwise leave you to your Saturday.First: Um, wasnāt this the antiwar president? How many times did Trump say, from 2015 forward, that he was against all these wars? Back in 2016, that it was Hillary Clinton, not him, who was the warmonger. That he was smarter than that. That the Iraq War, in particular, was dumb. Here he is on Meet the Press in August 2015, nary three weeks after descending that escalator: āAnd, as you know, for years Iāve been saying, āDonāt go into Iraq.ā They went into Iraq. They destabilized the Middle East. It was a big mistake.āTrump scored endless political points, and won more than a few votes, by promising Americans repeatedly that he wouldnāt start wars. And now, what has he done? Heās launched another preemptive regime-change war, Americaās second this century, if youāre counting; and heās launched it against a country three times the size of Iraq and with a far more powerful army. Iraq, which was supposed to be over in weeks and pay for itself, took about four years to stabilize and cost north of $2 trillion. Iran, by the way, is the seventh country heās bombed, and we know very well that Cubaās on the list too. You and I have always known that his word is worthless, but there are still people out there whoāll be shocked to learn heās been lying. Oh well, better late than never.Second: To put it mildly, to have done this with Israel is not, from a global perspective, a good look. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made Israel one of the leading pariah nations in the world. In fact, google āpariah nation,ā and see which country turns up most. I know Jonathan Greenblatt would ascribe that to antisemitism, and thereās surely an element of that among many who see Israel in that light. But the vast majority of liberal, humanist, decent world opinionāthe sort of opinion Israel used to courtāascribes Israelās low status to its, and Netanyahuās, actions. Just Friday, Gallup released a poll. For the first time this centuryāand therefore probably everāa majority of Americans declared themselves more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than to Israel, by five points. Netanyahu is the author of that. And early signs here indicate that heās still at it: The Iranian news agency (take it as you will) says that Israel hit a girlsā elementary school in Iran, killing 50 people. This operationāa joint regime-change war against Iran with the United Statesāhas been Netanyahuās most fervent dream for years. Itās hard to imagine that in capitals across the Middle East and indeed across Europe, it will be seen as anything other than Bibi having dragged Donny into his personal revenge fantasy.Third: I caution against making predictions about quagmires. Who knowsāthe U.S. military is quite formidable and good at what it does, so maybe in two weeks or so, the Iranian regime will cut a deal. It already essentially tried to bribe Trump with āinvestment opportunities.ā I would have thought that would have done the trick. Maybe Trump is just holding out for a little more. Or maybe whatās in those Epstein files is worse than we know.Or maybe the regime will actually fall. That would certainly be something to celebrate, in the short term, until we see what replaces it. But without making predictions about all that, we can confidently make certain other predictions: MAGA will forget all about those antiwar promises; this war will be embraced by phony patriots as righteous, as Godās command, as all illegitimate wars are; and the domestic attacks on āenemies of freedomā will start soon, as soon as today. Which is all the more reason for the millions of us who see through all that to get out on the streets and say no, not in our name.
44:44
Breaking Points ā¢ 2 weeks ago
K&S React: TRUMP LAUNCHES REGIME CHANGE IRAN WAR
Drop Site News ā¢ 2 weeks ago
As Trump Launches āMassiveā Regime Change War, Iran Strikes Back at U.S. Bases and Vows Not to Capitulate
Diplomacy was weaponized as an “instrument of deception,” an Iranian official tells Drop Site. Tehran promises to inflict losses on the U.S.
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