Trump builds towards a war with Iran.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/us/s ... -iran.html

Could Trump Use the Sept. 11 War Law to Attack Iran Without Going to Congress?

Talk of purported Iran-Qaeda ties is raising questions about whether the Trump administration is laying the groundwork to claim that it needs no new legal authority to take military action.

Brian Hook, the senior State Department official on Iran issues, said that “we will comply with the law” in regard to military action against Iran.

In public remarks and classified briefings, Trump administration officials keep emphasizing purported ties between Iran and Al Qaeda. Some lawmakers suspect that the executive branch is toying with claiming that it already has congressional authorization to attack Iran based on the nearly 18-year-old law approving a war over the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Pressed to say on Wednesday at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing whether the administration thinks the Sept. 11 war law could be used for military action against Iran, Brian Hook, the senior State Department official on Iran issues, was coy, saying that “we will comply with the law” without saying what the administration interprets “the law” to be. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been similarly evasive on the topic.

Against that backdrop, some lawmakers who think the Sept. 11 war law cannot be legitimately stretched to include Iran have proposed amending the annual defense authorization act to bar the administration from making any such claim.

What is the Sept. 11 war law?

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress enacted a law that authorized a military response against whatever nations, organizations or persons the president “determines” planned, authorized, committed or aided the attacks, or who harbored such organizations or persons. At the time, that seemed to mean Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan.

But as years passed, the law — which is commonly called the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or A.U.M.F. — has been stretched by presidents of both parties to justify attacks against other groups that it deemed to be effectively part of or associated forces of Al Qaeda, like a Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, the Shabab in Somalia and the Islamic State.

Is there an argument that the war law also covers Iran?

One such argument might focus on whether Iran’s actions before the Sept. 11 attacks amount to aiding or harboring Al Qaeda. Although Qaeda members largely got in and out of Afghanistan via Pakistan, the report by the 9/11 Commission said there was “strong evidence” that Iran also facilitated such travel across its territory, including by several of the hijackers. In 2011, a group of Sept. 11 victims persuaded a federal judge in New York to rule that such assistance made Iran culpable in the attacks.

Another might focus on recent Iranian actions. There have been murky reports for years of Qaeda members living in Iran — often in detention or effectively under house arrest, but sometimes with greater freedom of travel. In 2016, under the Obama administration, the Treasury Department placed sanctions on three men it described as Qaeda members it said were in Iran.

“If Iran has, in fact, been harboring Al Qaeda operatives, especially recently, then the A.U.M.F. by its terms plausibly authorizes the president to use force against Iran,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who ran the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel for a year under President George W. Bush.

He cautioned that even if the Sept. 11 war law could be invoked, it would satisfy only the domestic law requirements for an attack and leave open a separate international law problem: The United States would also seem to need permission from the United Nations Security Council or a self-defense rationale to attack Iran.

But once the two countries were engaged in an armed conflict, Mr. Goldsmith said, the United States could lawfully strike nuclear installations with a military dimension. Still, he said, if that is the only sort of attack the Trump administration has in mind, that would mean any invocation of purported Qaeda links to justify the conflict would seem “pretextual.”

Why else would interpreting the war law to cover Iran be disputed?

Nobody can plausibly contend that when Congress enacted the law in 2001, lawmakers understood themselves to be authorizing a war against Iran in 2019. The 9/11 Commission report also said it found no evidence that Iran was aware of Al Qaeda’s planning for those attacks. And Iran lost that 2011 lawsuit by default because it did not bother to send lawyers to court to contest the plaintiffs’ claims.

Moreover, Iran’s government is run by Shiite Muslims, while Al Qaeda and its affiliates are Sunni Muslims who consider Shiites to be apostates. There is no public evidence that Iranian forces and Al Qaeda carried out joint operations, and Qaeda-linked terrorists have attacked Shiite shrines and other targets, including inside Iran.

Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who investigated and has written extensively about Al Qaeda, said that Iran was a menacing actor whose activities do pose a threat to American national security interests and to regional stability in various ways, but a relationship with Al Qaeda is not one of them.

Citing letters that showed hostility toward Iran that were seized in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, Mr. Soufan compared recent discussion of Iran-Qaeda links to misleading hype about Iraq-Qaeda links before the 2003 invasion. One example: stressing that Bin Laden’s son Hamza lived for years in Iran without mentioning the context: He was a prisoner.

“I think what is happening now is we are witnessing cherry-picked intelligence in order to manipulate a particular narrative,” Mr. Soufan said.

Brian Egan, who was the top National Security Council and State Department lawyer during President Barack Obama’s second term, said that he was aware of no intelligence through January 2017, when he left government, that would justify interpreting the Sept. 11 war law to cover acts of war against the Iranian government.

“I don’t see any basis for using the A.U.M.F. to instigate a military conflict against Iran based on the things I know,” Mr. Egan said.

What standards must be met for Trump to say he can use the Sept. 11 war law against Iran?
There are no clear ones. Congress did not write into the law any specific criteria that must be met before the president may “determine” that a foe is sufficiently linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. And it is doubtful that a court would hear a lawsuit challenging any such claim. In 2016, a judge dismissed a similar case challenging Mr. Obama’s decision to stretch the Sept. 11 war law to cover the Islamic State.

Shalev Roisman, a Harvard law lecturer and former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer who recently wrote a law review article denouncing the lack of any internal executive branch procedures for how and when a president may “determine” that facts exist, said he doubted the Trump appointees running the Office of Legal Counsel would second-guess the president if he said he saw sufficient Iran-Qaeda ties.

Does Trump need to claim he has congressional authority to attack Iran?

That may depend on which lawyers the president chooses to ask.

Although the Constitution says Congress decides whether to declare war, executive branch lawyers have asserted that the president, as commander in chief, can unilaterally order attacks under a claim of anticipatory self-defense or if doing so would serve American interests — at least where the anticipated nature, scope and duration of hostilities are limited.

And Attorney General William P. Barr harbors unusually broad views of a president’s power to unilaterally start even major wars on his own. In 1991, he told President George Bush that he could launch the Persian Gulf War without congressional authorization.

While this is undoubtably being pushed by the likes of Bolton (and probably Netanyahu), I'd bet good money that a major factor in Trump's thinking is "They'll never dare impeach/vote out a wartime President!" Plus it will create a pretext for more Presidential powers and Islamophobia. Never mind that this could wreak destruction on the Middle East, on global stability, on America's reputation and on the economy that will make Iraq look like a minor skirmish.

B-b-b-b-but Hillary is a warmonger! At least Trump will keep us out of foreign wars!"

[Gandalf]

This is what happens when you leave silly and vague laws on the books.

[The Romulan Republic]

It turns out that he actually approved a limited strike, and the operation was underway when, for reasons best known to the Donald, he suddenly decided to call it off:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/worl ... drone.html

WASHINGTON — 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., 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.

The retaliation plan was intended as a response to the shooting down of the unmanned, $130 million surveillance drone, which was struck Thursday morning by an Iranian surface-to-air missile, according to a senior administration official who was briefed on the military planning and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential plans.

The strike was set to take place just before dawn Friday in Iran to minimize risk to the Iranian military and civilians.

The possibility of a retaliatory strike hung over Washington for much of the day. Officials in both countries traded accusations about the location of the drone when it was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile launched from the Iranian coast along the Gulf of Oman.

Mr. Trump’s national security advisers split about whether to respond militarily. Senior administration officials said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; John R. Bolton, the national security adviser; and Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, had favored a military response. But top Pentagon officials cautioned that such an action could result in a spiraling escalation with risks for American forces in the region.

Congressional leaders were briefed by administration officials in the Situation Room.

The destruction of the drone underscored the already tense relations between the two countries after Mr. Trump’s recent accusations that Iran is to blame for explosions last week that damaged oil tankers traveling through the strait, the vital waterway for much of the world’s oil. Iran has denied that accusation.

Iran’s announcement this week that it would soon breach one of the key limits it had agreed to in a 2015 pact intended to limit its nuclear program has also fueled tensions. Mr. Trump, who pulled the United States out of the 2015 pact, has vowed that he will not allow Tehran to build a nuclear weapon.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump insisted that the United States’ unmanned surveillance aircraft was flying over international waters when it was taken down by an Iranian missile.

“This drone was in international waters, clearly,” the president told reporters on Thursday afternoon at the White House as he began a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. “We have it all documented. It’s documented scientifically, not just words.”

Asked what would come next, Mr. Trump said, “Let’s see what happens.”

Iran’s government fiercely disputed the president’s characterization, insisting that the American drone had strayed into Iranian airspace. Iran released GPS coordinates that put the drone eight miles off the country’s coast, inside the 12 nautical miles from the shore that Iran claims as its territorial waters.

Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in a letter to the Security Council that the drone ignored repeated radio warnings before it was downed. He said that Tehran “does not seek war” but “is determined to vigorously defend its land, sea and air.”

Congressional Democrats emerged from the president’s classified briefing in the Situation Room and urged Mr. Trump to de-escalate the situation. They called on the president to seek congressional authorization before taking any military action.

“This is a dangerous situation,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “We are dealing with a country that is a bad actor in the region. We have no illusions about Iran in terms of their ballistic missile transfers, about who they support in the region and the rest.”

Iran’s destruction of the drone appeared to provide a boost for officials inside the Trump administration who have long argued for a more confrontational approach to Iran, including the possibility of military actions that could punish the regime for its support of terrorism and other destabilizing behavior in the region.

A Times analysis of a video and images publicly released by the U.S. Defense Department indicates that an Iranian patrol boat removed an object from a tanker in the Gulf of Oman on June 13 that may have been a limpet mine.CreditCreditU.S. Dept. of Defense
But in his public appearance, Mr. Trump initially seemed to be looking for a way to avoid a potentially serious military crisis. Instead of directly accusing the leaders of Iran, Mr. Trump said someone “loose and stupid” in Iran was responsible for shooting down the drone.

The president said he suspected it was some individual in Iran who “made a big mistake,” even as Iran had taken responsibility for the strike and asserted that the high-altitude American drone was operating over Iranian air space, which American officials denied.

Mr. Trump said the episode would have been far more serious if the aircraft had been a piloted vehicle, and not a drone. It made “a big, big difference” that an American pilot was not threatened, he told reporters.

Last year, Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of the 2015 nuclear pact with Iran, over the objections of China, Russia and American allies in Europe. He has also imposed punishing economic sanctions on Iran, trying to cut off its already limited access to international trade, including oil sales.

Iran has warned of serious consequences if Europe does not find a way around those sanctions, though it has denied involvement in the attacks on tankers near the vital Strait of Hormuz. On Monday, Iran said it would soon stop abiding by a central component of the nuclear deal, the limit on how much enriched uranium it is allowed to stockpile.

Both Washington and Tehran said the downing of the drone occurred at 4:05 a.m. Thursday in Iran, or 7:35 p.m. Wednesday in Washington. The drone “was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile system while operating in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz,” the United States Central Command said in a statement. “This was an unprovoked attack on a U.S. surveillance asset in international airspace.”

Iran’s ability to target and destroy the high-altitude American drone, which was developed to evade the very surface-to-air missiles used to bring it down, surprised some Defense Department officials, who interpreted it as a show of how difficult Tehran can make things for the United States as it deploys more troops and steps up surveillance in the region.

Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, the Air Force commander for the Central Command region in the Middle East, said the attack could have endangered “innocent civilians,” even though officials at Central Command continued to assert that the drone was over international waters. He said that the closest that the drone got to the Iranian coast was 21 miles.

Late Thursday, the Defense Department released additional imagery in an email to support its case that the drone never entered Iranian airspace. But the department incorrectly called the flight path of the drone the location of the shooting down and offered little context for an image that appeared to be the drone exploding in midair.

It was the latest attempt by the Pentagon to try to prove that Iran has been the aggressor in a series of international incidents.

[What we know and don’t know about Iran shooting down an American drone.]

Iran’s foreign affairs minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said in a post on Twitter that he gave what he said were precise coordinates for where the American drone was targeted.

“At 00:14 US drone took off from UAE in stealth mode & violated Iranian airspace,” he said in a tweet that included coordinates that he said were near Kouh-e Mobarak. “We’ve retrieved sections of the US military drone in OUR territorial waters where it was shot down.”

Mr. Trump’s comments on Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office reflected the longstanding tension between the president’s desire to be seen as tough on the world stage and his campaign promise to make sure that the United States did not get tangled in more foreign wars.

The president has embraced a reputation as someone who punches back when he is challenged. Only months into his tenure, Mr. Trump launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an air base in Syria after a chemical weapon attack.

But he has often talked about ending American involvement in long-running conflicts abroad, describing his “America First” agenda as having little room for being the world’s police force. In a tweet in January, he said he hoped that “Endless Wars, especially those which are fought out of judgement mistakes” would “eventually come to a glorious end!”

According to Iranian news media, a foreign minister spokesman there said that flying a drone into Iranian airspace was an “aggressive and provocative” move by the United States.

Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said crossing the country’s border was “our red line,” the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported.

“We are not going to get engaged in a war with any country, but we are fully prepared for war,” Mr. Salami said at a military ceremony in Sanandaj, Iran, according to a translation from Press TV, a state-run news outlet. “Today’s incident was a clear sign of this precise message, so we are continuing our resistance.”

Iranian news media said the drone had flown over Iranian territory unauthorized, and reported that it had been shot down in the Hormozgan Province, along the country’s southern coast on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Both the United States and Iran identified the aircraft as an RQ-4 Global Hawk, a surveillance drone made by Northrop Grumman.

“This was a show of force — their equivalent of an inside pitch,” said Derek Chollet, a former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs during the Obama administration, speaking of Iran’s decision to shoot down the drone.

James G. Stavridis, who retired as a four-star admiral after serving as the supreme allied commander at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, warned that the two countries were in a dangerous game that could quickly spiral out of control. He described Iran’s downing of the drone, which costs about $130 million, as a “logical albeit highly dangerous escalatory move by Iran.”

So, Iran now has proof positive of America's hostile intent, but also evidence that our President will waffle, giving them incentive to try to push the brinkmanship even further and call his bluff. Beautiful.

Jesus Motherfucking Christ. I honestly feel that the military has a patriotic duty to ignore this lunatic piece of shit's orders, since the Cabinet lacks the integrity to invoke the 25th. Amendment.

[mr friendly guy]

Any one else getting strong Gulf of Tonkin vibes with the oil tanker incident with Iran.

[The Romulan Republic]

Any one else getting strong Gulf of Tonkin vibes with the oil tanker incident with Iran.

Lots of conspiracy theories are flying around of course. I'm waiting for more evidence before drawing any conclusions.

In a way, it doesn't really matter who attacked the tankers. Trump will use it as an excuse for his tough guy posturing, and tensions wouldn't be so high to begin with if he hadn't decided to scrap the treaty because Obama wrote it. So one way or another, this is on Trump, and the war loving assholes like Bolton who are advising him.

[Lonestar]

Any one else getting strong Gulf of Tonkin vibes with the oil tanker incident with Iran.

No. Iran 100% attacked the tankers.

But that can still be true and it not worth a bombing campaign/invasion.

[Solauren]

No. Iran 100% attacked the tankers.

But that can still be true and it not worth a bombing campaign/invasion.

Apparently, Trump agrees with you!
Trump Cancelling Strike on Iran was both a warning and an offer to negotiate...

It's even on his twitter. Apparently, when told the projected casualties on IRANS side, he said that level of retaliation was appropriate.

[The Romulan Republic]

No. Iran 100% attacked the tankers.

But that can still be true and it not worth a bombing campaign/invasion.

Apparently, Trump agrees with you!
Trump Cancelling Strike on Iran was both a warning and an offer to negotiate...

It's even on his twitter. Apparently, when told the projected casualties on IRANS side, he said that level of retaliation was appropriate.

You take something Trump says at face-value?

First off, there's no way he wouldn't have been told the likely casualties in the planning stages (well, unless this is another case of his own people keeping him out of the loop because he can't be trusted with intelligence), which suggests that either he is lying (real shocker there) or he wasn't paying attention in the briefing.

Also, I have a hard time seeing Donald Trump of all people suddenly deciding that brown lives matter.

My guess? He did this just to show he could- that he had the power to bomb Iran, and the power to spare them, on his personal whim.

Also- Pelosi claims that not only was the decision to strike not sent before Congress (obviously), but that she received no notification whatsoever from the White House, and that it had already happened before she heard about it.

[Ziggy Stardust]

No. Iran 100% attacked the tankers.

But that can still be true and it not worth a bombing campaign/invasion.

What's the actual proof, incidentally? All of the stories I've seen gloss over this. There's references to the limpet mines being similar to Iranian models, and other vague allusions to "biometric information", but I haven't seen any (public) information that's really solid one way or the other.

[Solauren]

No. Iran 100% attacked the tankers.

But that can still be true and it not worth a bombing campaign/invasion.

Apparently, Trump agrees with you!
Trump Cancelling Strike on Iran was both a warning and an offer to negotiate...

It's even on his twitter. Apparently, when told the projected casualties on IRANS side, he said that level of retaliation was appropriate.

You take something Trump says at face-value?

I believe I have determined part of your intersocial problems in the political discussions TRR.

Your sarcasm detector isn't just broken, I think it's been reprogrammed.

[The Romulan Republic]

Apparently, Trump agrees with you!
Trump Cancelling Strike on Iran was both a warning and an offer to negotiate...

It's even on his twitter. Apparently, when told the projected casualties on IRANS side, he said that level of retaliation was appropriate.

You take something Trump says at face-value?

I believe I have determined part of your intersocial problems in the political discussions TRR.

Your sarcasm detector isn't just broken, I think it's been reprogrammed.

Apologies for the misunderstanding. Sarcasm is notoriously hard to convey or to read in text, unfortunately. Especially when so many people say far worse absolutely seriously.

[FaxModem1]

Business Insider

Trump's story on why he stopped a military strike against Iran at the last minute doesn't add up, experts say
Ellen Ioanes and John Haltiwanger 20h
rouhani donald trump iran us war conflict
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and US President Donald Trump. Sergei Chirikov/Pool via REUTERS; GOL/Capital Pictures/MediaPunch/AP
Analysis banner

President Donald Trump tweeted Friday morning that he called off a military strike against Iran 10 minutes before it was set to go over concerns about casualty estimates and proportionality.
Experts raised concerns about the process leading up to the ultimately halted strike if Trump's decision was indeed based on last-minute information about civilian casualties.
"It's about as far from normal as you can get," said Ned Price, a former National Security Council spokesperson under President Barack Obama who said the Pentagon normally informs the president of potential civilian casualties at the beginning of briefings.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
President Donald Trump on Friday tweeted that he made a game-time decision to halt a military strike against Iran over last-minute information about civilian casualties, leading to questions over whether Trump was properly briefed on the operation based on standard White House and military protocol.

"We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it," he wrote, adding that the loss of life would not be "proportional" to Monday's attack on a US drone.

But experts are raising concerns about Trump's recounting, saying that typically, a concept of operations, or CONOPs, for any type of military action would include discussion of casualty estimates early in the process. This assessment up front can highlight legal concerns and the possibility it could provoke a retaliation.


Sam Vinograd, the senior adviser to the national security adviser under President Barack Obama, tweeted Friday that, "having been part of military CONOPs briefings, they always include an assessment of casualties on both sides at the front end."

Vinograd later tweeted, "Any responsible NSC process would have included an intel assessment of what Iran is currently up to AND how they would respond to US strikes" and that the military and intelligence community "painstakingly" assess potential civilian casualties.

Ned Price, the former spokesperson for the National Security Council under Obama, told INSIDER that Trump's tweet indicates a process that is "about as far from normal as you can get."

"The Department of Defense tends to include information on expected casualties as one of the topline points," he said, echoing Vinograd's point that a casualty assessment should have been one of the first things discussed when planning a military operation.


Read more: The US and Iran are still on a military collision course, despite Trump's calling off airstrikes last minute

"The fact that Trump had to ask underscores my fear that there's absolutely no process, even when it comes to the most important questions of war and peace. It's another data point that Bolton is filtering information before it gets to Trump, which almost certainly speaks to how we got to this point," Price said, referring to national security adviser John Bolton.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from INSIDER.

Trump's Iran strategy has been unpredictable, particularly since the attacks on a Japanese tanker and a Norwegian tanker in the Gulf of Oman on June 13. But while Trump's decision not to go through with the strike was arguably a good one, the volatility of his process is still cause for concern.


Whether Trump had previously been told the casualty estimate and changed his mind at the last minute, or he didn't learn the numbers until bombers were in place, a last-minute decision — and his tweets about it — point to an uncoordinated effort behind a potentially massive regional conflict.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday was asked if the president should have been informed about civilian casualties before he gave the go-ahead for the strike. "That's something you'd have to ask the White House, but I imagine — it would make sense, if you are considering options, that you know what the consequences are before you make a decision to go forward," Pelosi said.

Read more: Trump made the right call by not pulling the trigger on Iran after it shot down a US drone, former officials say

"I think no process can survive a mercurial president." Ivo Daalder, the former US Ambassador to NATO and the current president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, told INSIDER.


On Friday afternoon, Trump clarified his account of the aborted strike, telling NBC's Chuck Todd that he hadn't given final approval to the strikes and that planes were not in the air, "but they would have been pretty soon" when he made the decision to back down. Trump told Todd that he asked for a casualty estimate at that point.

Ryan Goodman, the former special counsel to the Department of Defense under Obama, tweeted that Trump's story "doesn't add up."

"Is Trump suggesting the Pentagon brought him a plan without having those figures?" he tweeted, referring to casualty estimates.

"I don't believe that anyone told him that 150 people were going to die — it's too precise a number," Daalder said, telling INSIDER he thought that casualty estimates would have come up in the process.


Daalder said Trump has been uncomfortable with recent military escalation, repeatedly signaling that he doesn't want to go to war with Iran.

"I just think he stepped back. That is his pattern. He speaks loudly and carries a small stick," Daalder said. "The fact that he actually constructed that entire tweet thread suggests that he was trying to create a new narrative."

There are a couple of possibilities here:

A. Trump wasn't properly briefed(VERY doubtful)
B. Trump didn't pay attention when being briefed
C. Trump didn't read the brief until just a few minutes beforehand.

Or some combination thereof. Just what kind of shitshow are we having for leadership here?

[The Romulan Republic]

The shittiest.

I think you leave out Option D though: Trump was briefed, and this is all so much theatre, with him ordering a strike and then cancelling it just to confuse people/show everyone that he can.

[The_Saint]

And there's the possibility of Option E: Trump WAS briefed but the brief given had been ... "edited" by the likes of Bolton (or others) for own purposes.

I've give 50/50 odds on Option D or E. Trump may well not have paid attention but either he or someone else would have a final situation in mind they were trying to engineer.

[Solauren]

Option F: Trump was briefed, wasn't paying attention, thought it was something minor, someone told him what he agreed to, and he went 'Ya know what, I'm not in the mood to deal with that."

[Elheru Aran]

Option F: Trump was briefed, wasn't paying attention, thought it was something minor, someone told him what he agreed to, and he went 'Ya know what, I'm not in the mood to deal with that."

^ most likely scenario imo. He's apparently notorious for not paying attention during briefings. A character quality we all think is great in Presidents, I'm sure...

[Lonestar]

Jesus Christ why are you guys taking at face value a strike was actually ordered.

This is like when Kim talked about nuking Guam. It's obvious bluster. He's saying a strike was ordered and then he pulled back because he's really a nice guy. The order never went out and the people in a position to dispute it won't.

[Lonestar]

What's the actual proof, incidentally? All of the stories I've seen gloss over this. There's references to the limpet mines being similar to Iranian models, and other vague allusions to "biometric information", but I haven't seen any (public) information that's really solid one way or the other.

Beyond the video of the riced-up Boston Whaler going back to it?

The answer is that it fits much better than some strange false flag that the US is behind it, not the least because Trump doesn't really need a "reason" to bomb Iran if he wants to.

[Dalton]

Jesus Christ why are you guys taking at face value a strike was actually ordered.

This is like when Kim talked about nuking Guam. It's obvious bluster. He's saying a strike was ordered and then he pulled back because he's really a nice guy. The order never went out and the people in a position to dispute it won't.

All the reporting I've seen says that there were planes already in the air, but given the propensity for this administration to fabricate bullshit to "leak" to journalists, I wouldn't be surprised if this was just the usual maladministration song-and-dance. Do you have any confirmation that there was never a strike ordered?

[Gandalf]

The answer is that it fits much better than some strange false flag that the US is behind it, not the least because Trump doesn't really need a "reason" to bomb Iran if he wants to.

Doesn't need a reason politically or legally?

[Tribble]

The answer is that it fits much better than some strange false flag that the US is behind it, not the least because Trump doesn't really need a "reason" to bomb Iran if he wants to.

Doesn't need a reason politically or legally?

Politically, legally or mentally. For all we know he just flipped a coin when he found out about it.

[Coop D'etat]

Look, this isn't complicated. Trump creates a crises where there isn't one to get the create for "fixing" them. You don't have to attribute any grand designs or internal intrigues beyond that. If he ordered planes in the air, it probably was for the purposes of recalling them to say he stopped the attack.

[The Romulan Republic]

Look, this isn't complicated. Trump creates a crises where there isn't one to get the create for "fixing" them. You don't have to attribute any grand designs or internal intrigues beyond that. If he ordered planes in the air, it probably was for the purposes of recalling them to say he stopped the attack.

You'd think more people would have clued in by now to the fact that Donald Trump routinely does wild contradictory bullshit as a deliberate tactic.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Beyond the video of the riced-up Boston Whaler going back to it?

How does that video prove Iranian involvement? Seriously, I asked for the evidence in good faith, could you just explain what the significance of it without being an ass? All the video seems to my naive eyes to prove is the type of boat that was used. What in the video is conclusive?

The answer is that it fits much better than some strange false flag that the US is behind it, not the least because Trump doesn't really need a "reason" to bomb Iran if he wants to.

I never said or implied anything about it being a false flag, specifically. But if you haven't noticed this administration has a tendency to spew its vitriol everywhere and without much principle for whether it's correct or not. Hell, it's a long-standing American tradition (see the so-called "Axis of Evil") to arbitrarily blame countries we don't like based on tenuous evidence, so you'll have to excuse my well-founded, fact-informed skepticism.

[TimothyC]

Beyond the video of the riced-up Boston Whaler going back to it?

How does that video prove Iranian involvement? Seriously, I asked for the evidence in good faith, could you just explain what the significance of it without being an ass? All the video seems to my naive eyes to prove is the type of boat that was used. What in the video is conclusive?

The boats both match one of the types that the Iranians have been building in quantity, and then made a b-line right back to the Iranian coast. Also, unless they planted the charges/mines in the first place, and knew what they were, I doubt they would be so cavalier in their removal from the hull of one of the ships.