President Trump approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for downing an American surveillance drone, but pulled back from launching them on Thursday night after a day of escalating tensions.
As late as 7 p.m. Thursday, military and diplomatic officials were expecting a strike, after intense discussions and debate at the White House among the president’s top national security officials and congressional leaders, according to multiple senior administration officials involved in or briefed on the deliberations.
Officials said the president had initially approved attacks on a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries.
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.
The abrupt reversal put a halt to what would have been the president’s third military action against targets in the Middle East. Mr. Trump had struck twice at targets in Syria, in 2017 and 2018.
It was not clear whether Mr. Trump simply changed his mind on the strikes or whether the administration altered course because of logistics or strategy. It was also not clear whether the attacks might still go forward.
Asked about the plans for a strike and the decision to hold back, the White House declined to comment, as did Pentagon officials. No government officials asked The New York Times to withhold the article.
Two scenarios on this: Scenario One, this is Trump's super ham-fisted attempt at screaming "Hold me back" while motioning at his guys to do so before taking a swing at an MMA fighter at a bar. Occam's razor, and we'll be at war the next time Iran so much as breaks wind.
Scenario Two however makes a lot more sense.
Amid increased tensions between Iran and the U.S., Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the U.S. that a military conflict with Iran would be “catastrophe” and said that Iran was observing its commitments under the Iran nuclear deal.
Speaking during his annual phone-in event, Putin said that he was concerned by the shooting down of an American drone by Iran this week and worried that the U.S. had no ruled out using military force against Tehran in the ongoing crisis between the two countries.
“I will say it straight, it would be a catastrophe, at a minimum for the region,” Putin said, adding it could lead to a new mass exodus of refugees.
What is far more likely is that as with Venezuela, Trump was talked into this but the Russians, having compromised the hell out of us, responded immediately on the hotline and Trump's boss Vlad told him no as this was going down, and in order to save face, Trump concocted this pullback story and leaked it to the press so he can be the big hero.
Our incoherent and dangerous foreign policy that very nearly started a shooting war with Iran was short-circuited last night because the one goddamn person Trump listens to is one of the worst autocratic crooks on Earth, and it's bad for business when one of his client states is bombing another.
That's it. That's the answer to the mystery of the "sudden pullback".
But there's one more mystery...the leaks for this story landed quickly enough and were confirmed quickly enough that the NY Times dropped this story last night, maybe a few hours after this was all called off.
Did Trump leak this himself all in order to save face after Putin's warning, or did Bolton leak all this in order to force Trump's hand? Or did somebody else leak this, like intelligence agencies? Or maybe it was Russia?
Or maybe it was more than one of these, which is why it got confirmed and published so quickly.
That's just as much the story as Trump's "pullback".
We deserve to know both stories.
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