This appeared a few hours ago:
Analysis:
Trump was holding back on Iran. Then he took a phone call
The Islamic Republic has become a lot weaker recently, and the US president and Benjamin Netanyahu know it. Both gave victorious press conferences on Saturday.
Jessica Gardner United States correspondent
Updated Jun 22, 2025 – 2.41pm, first published at 2.34pm
Washington | Last Thursday, US President Donald Trump gave himself a two-week option on bombing Iran, but by Saturday evening (Sunday AEST), the job was done.
What changed in those 48 hours? Was Trump handed new intelligence? Did Iran rebuff his fortnight window to negotiate? Did he finally snap over the Trump Always Chickens Out label?
His reasons for drawing the US into another war in the Middle East are perhaps many. He certainly didn’t give a detailed explanation in his brief address to the nation, warning instead of more attacks if Iran didn’t “make peace”. But what is known is that he received a tense phone call beforehand from Benjamin Netanyahu.
US media reported that Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke with Israel’s prime minister, along with Defence Minister Israel Katz and military chief Eyal Zamir.
Israel was incensed that Trump could waste the opportunity to move against Iran’s crown jewel nuclear sites by giving it more time.
At the behest of Israel, probably angering voters (and some Republicans) who supported his promise to end US entanglement far from home, and very likely sparking Iranian retaliations, Trump made his move.
Iran is a repressive regime that holds little regard for the hopes, dreams and freedom of its 92 million citizens. Its rulers have pledged to destroy Israel and have threatened “death to America”. All of this has been true for decades.
The difference now is that Iran has been significantly weakened. The most recent barrage from Israel, which caught it unaware, wiped out top-ranking military and science personnel. And the regional militias Iran funds in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen have been cut down by Israel’s unflinching attacks over the past 18 months, which have also led to widespread civilian deaths.
Iran’s stocks are down, and Trump and Netanyahu know it. Both gave victorious press conferences on Saturday night.
Nuclear weapons intelligence
The other factor that has changed, but accounts vary, is how far away Iran was from possessing a nuclear weapon. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” Netanyahu said on June 13 after Israel’s first strikes. “It could be a year. It could be within a few months.”
Iran was “weeks away” from creating a nuclear weapon, Trump said on June 18, without offering any evidence.
In March, Trump’s national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was “at its highest levels” and “unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons”. But she also said US intelligence suggested Iran had not decided to build a nuclear bomb.
Trump, on June 21, said that she was “wrong”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in May that Iran had amassed enough uranium enriched to potentially make nine nuclear bombs if it undertook further enrichment. But the watchdog also noted its monitoring efforts had been hamstrung by Iran’s refusal to co-operate.
While Trump danced around the prospect of an attack in the past week, some pundits mused on the similarities with George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. That deadly military intervention was in response to incorrect intelligence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Iran has been conducting clandestine nuclear enrichment operations since the 1990s, which the regime has assured were for energy production, even if much of the globe did not trust it. The most troubling facility was Fordow, located deep in a mountainside reachable only by US-owned bunker-busting bombs, and the right fighter jets to carry them.
In his Saturday night address following the strikes, Trump said Fordow, and two other sites, Natanz and Isfahan, had been “obliterated”. That will make it challenging to ascertain exactly what was going on deep underground and cloud the basis for the operation.
What we know for sure is that this is not the end.
Trump did not shy away from that in his Saturday address. “Remember, there are many targets left,” he said. “Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we’ll go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill.”
Trump may characterise these operations as a simple in-and-out, but by joining the Middle East’s latest conflict, he has lit a match in one of the globe’s most combustible regions.
After styling himself as a peacemaker who was more interested in ending wars than starting them, the unpredictable president has escalated one.
Here is the link:
So here we are in the middle of another war in the Middle-East:
I fear no good can come from all this and it really is time for everyone to stand back and take a few deep breaths! The implications of all this could be pretty bad if we don't work to settle things down, and fast!
Peace has to be re-established ASAP.
Let us see how it plays out in the next few days:
David.
2 comments:
Those to idiots have just created two more generations of troubles. The other Arab nations can’t be too pleased. Fundamentalist, militias and groups like IIS and the Taliban will rise from this mess, not something Eygpt, Saudi Arabia, Irag or the gulf states want. Trump is so incompetent and easily played.
For all the corruption, perceived cruelty and what not, we really should focus on this administrations shear incompetence.
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