Vance, Trump’s Inner Circle Were Pushing for the Iran War From the Beginning

He says Trump cannot blame the war on the Israelis, because “whether he likes it or not, he will be held responsible.”

Retired U.S. Army Col. Douglas MacGregor said in an interview on Tuesday that the prevailing claim has been that the Israelis misled President Donald Trump into the disastrous Iran War — and had the president listened more to his advisers like Vice President JD Vance, he may have never gone to war.

“But the truth is that there’s a mountain of evidence that, like President Lyndon Johnson, Trump and his inner circle, including Vance, were really driving military action and escalation from the beginning,” he said, citing his sources.

He said Trump seemed to reject the advice from anyone in or out of uniform who said the war would turn into a boondoggle.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, the host of Judging Freedom, said if there was a member of Trump’s team who was opposed to the war, they lacked the “personal fortitude” to say anything.

MacGregor said Trump and his administration incorrectly believed that Iran could fall by the use of air power alone, and he said he believes this war will turn out to be the end of the political careers of those involved.

He said Trump cannot blame the war on the Israelis, because “whether he likes it or not, he will be held responsible.”

MacGregor reminded Napolitano that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not care if the Iran war destroys the economic lives of millions of Americans because he has one goal, and that is complete dominance over the Middle East, and he cannot achieve that without the U.S. military.

“In order to disengage from this tragedy, at some point, we are going to have to divorce the Israelis in some way, and I think Netanyahu is going to hang on as long as he can, but it’s going to be necessary,” he said. “Even the puppets on the Hill, as well as in the White House, are going to have to back away from Israel.”

Danny Citrinowicz, who served 25 years in IDF intelligence, posted:

Iran will not hand Trump a victory picture, because they are Iran.

And Trump will not settle for anything short of the appearance of victory, because he is Trump.

If such ambiguity could perhaps have been manufactured in the early days of the war, it becomes far harder as the ceasefire drags on and the reality sets in that the campaign failed to achieve its stated objectives. The longer this persists, the more difficult it becomes to create a situation in which both sides can plausibly claim success.



That leaves the administration facing two deeply unattractive options: launch a military move and declare victory, or continue waiting for internal developments inside Iran that are unlikely to materialize on their own.

Strategic Deadlock

Phil Gordon, an American diplomat and international relations scholar, also posted:

Ten weeks in the strategic failure is undeniable. The risk now is that having missed the opportunity to declare victory after the first few weeks Trump can’t accept defeat and humiliation so will keep looking for the next quick fix, thereby likely only making things worse.

TRENDPOST: Vance, who would be nothing if not for Peter Thiel’s sponsorship, will try to distance himself from the Iran War when he tries and fails to run for president in 2028.

But Vance made it clear right out of the gate, as Trump’s pick for VP, that he was in favor of more serious strikes on Iran.

He said that the U.S. needs to stop with little pinpricks against Iran, and “punch Iran hard.”

“We need to punch Iran hard. That’s what Trump did with Qasem Soleimani. That action actually brought peace by checking the Iranians,” he said, according to Channel 7. “If you want to check the Iranians, you need to withdraw their oil money, and enable Israel and the Sunni countries to work to counter Iran.”

https://trendsinthenews.substack.com/p/macgregor-vance-trumps-inner-circle