Reports Claim U.S. Preparing for ‘Prolonged’ War of Attrition Against Iran
Reuters reports, based on ‘inside information’, that Trump is preparing for a large-scale military operation against Iran that could last weeks or even months.
This news comes as Trump is sending a second aircraft carrier to the region. Recall that during Desert Storm and the 2003 Iraq War, the US had six aircraft carrier groups (CSGs) operating in the region, writes Simplicius .
But rumors are already swirling that there are problems with this. In a new interview, Colonel Daniel Davis claims that Larry Johnson’s Navy sources told him that a serious “classified problem” had already prevented the USS George H.W. Bush from crossing the Atlantic, forcing its last-minute replacement with the Gerald R. Ford (0:50 seconds):
This might sound far-fetched until you realize that senior Navy officials have been warning for months that Trump’s tampering with the aircraft carriers raises serious concerns about the integrity of these aging behemoths:
The admiral said keeping the aircraft carrier, which has just been deployed to the Middle East, at sea could cause major maintenance implications and strain on the crew.
The decision to send the Ford Carrier Strike Group (CSG) from the Caribbean to the Middle East was made after the Navy’s top officer said he would “resist” such an order again due to concerns about the crew’s welfare and the ship’s condition after such a long deployment. The aircraft carrier departed Norfolk last June for the Mediterranean. It was later sent to the Caribbean last October by President Donald Trump to…
Even more troubling is the fact that Trump is reportedly considering sending “commando teams” — or ground troops — into Iran, presumably to launch another Venezuela-style invasion.
Options being considered by US President Donald Trump include military action targeting Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile capability. US officials say he is also considering options involving the deployment of US commandos to attack certain Iranian military targets. – NYT
If you’re still wondering what the precise purpose of such an operation would be, Trump himself doesn’t seem to know. In a must-see video, a reporter finally asks him the crucial question: what’s the point of attacking Iran if the US had already destroyed that country’s nuclear program during the “Operation Midnight Hammer” attacks on Fordow?
As I said, Trump’s response is a must-see and demonstrates the despicable criminality of the US’s lawless geopolitical “last hurrah”:
As usual, Trump has no principled answer—he’s sticking to his tactic of playing both sides, wanting the best of both worlds. He wants us to believe in his “miraculously” executed attacks on Fordow, but at the same time, he wants us to accept the absurd, contradictory idea that Iran needs to be bombed even further to reduce its nuclear potential.
In reality, we all know what the attacks would really mean: simply create chaos to destabilize the Iranian government, sow more unrest, and attempt to create a “critical mass”-like situation of social panic that can be further exploited by co-conspirators like Israel.
The good news is that this could be one of Trump’s threatening ploys aimed at forcing Iran into concessions in the negotiations. At the time of writing, there are new reports that Iran is willing to cooperate to some extent and open certain cooperative projects related to oil and gas development in Iran to US companies:
While no source is cited, a pro-Iranian account claimed:
Iran will open certain economic sectors to US companies as part of an upcoming deal
The deputy foreign minister has stated that Iranian oil and gas fields and mining investments will be opened to US companies
Tehran also plans to purchase more than 100 passenger jets
Total economic activity could exceed $500 billion
This deal appeared to be bolstered by recent comments from Bob McNally, a prominent Washington DC energy consultant, who in a recent speech nearly salivated at the prospect of US anarcho-extortionist vulture capitalists moving into Iran, whose oil and gas fields he believes hold far greater plunder potential than Venezuela’s.
His colonialist-tinged speech outlined the new American doctrine and paradigm, which Rubio also developed at the Munich Security Conference. Rubio’s speech caused a new uproar because it appeared to be a call for American-European “civilization” to retake the reins of global domination. Ben Norton writes :
This is insane.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio just delivered one of the most explicitly pro-colonialist speeches I’ve heard in the 21st century.
The American empire wants Europe to help recolonize the global south.
Rubio’s speech:
This is the path that President Trump and the United States have embarked on. It is the path on which we here in Europe ask you to accompany us. It is a path we have walked together before and one we hope to walk together again.
For five centuries, until the end of World War II, the West was expanding—its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers, all traveling from its shores across the world to cross oceans, settle new continents, and build vast empires that stretched across the globe.
But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it shrank. Europe lay in ruins. Half lived behind an Iron Curtain, and the rest seemed soon to follow. The great Western empires had entered a terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and anti-colonial uprisings that would reshape the world and, in the years to come, drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swathes of the map.
Against that backdrop, then as now, many began to believe that the era of Western dominance had ended and that our future was doomed to be nothing more than a feeble and lifeless echo of our past. But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice—and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together then, and this is what President Trump and the United States intend to do again now, together with you.
And that’s why we don’t want our allies to be weak, because that weakens us. We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary is ever tempted to test our collective strength. That’s why we don’t want our allies shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and heritage, who understand that we are heirs of the same great and noble civilization, and who are willing and able to defend it alongside us.
And that’s why we don’t want allies to rationalize the broken status quo instead of recognizing what’s needed to restore it, because we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly stewards of the West’s gradual decline. We’re not seeking to separate, but to revive an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history. What we want is a renewed alliance that recognizes that what has plagued our societies is not just a series of bad policies, but a sense of hopelessness and complacency.
An alliance—the alliance we want—is one that isn’t paralyzed by fear: fear of climate change, fear of war, fear of technology. Instead, we want an alliance that runs boldly into the future. And the only fear we have is the fear of the shame of not leaving our nations prouder, stronger, and more prosperous for our children.
What Rubio appears to be doing is compressing the West’s cultural decline as a result of globalism and the resulting mass migration into a new ideological call to action, designed to justify the US’s erratic retraction of MAGA promises and continue the neoconservative plunder of the Global South.
One obvious place this clumsy idea fails: the neoconservative disruption and destabilization of the Middle East was one of the fundamental causes of the waves of unbridled mass migration that swept across Europe in the 2000s—from Iraq and Libya, to Syria, and so on. How can one pontificate about the loss of European or “Western” culture while simultaneously advocating for the continued plundering of the Middle East that fuels this cultural erosion?
The other major problem is that Rubio’s post hoc justifications contradict Trump and the earliest core principles and promises of the MAGA movement. As Prof. Joe Siracusa told Sputnik :
While the White House initially stated it wanted to “avoid protracted conflict,” the “shift from risk-averse to highly unpredictable points to a more dangerous and erratic course for global stability,” Siracusa said, noting that Rubio’s job now is to “rationalize a worldview that doesn’t really exist.”
Another way to simplify it: the Trump administration campaigned on a non-interventionist, “America first” policy, but then something happened . That something seems obvious: Trump received a “call” from Miriam Adelson on behalf of Israel, and here we are.
Now Trump’s cronies, like Rubio, are forced to concoct sloppy after-the-fact rationalizations to make it sound as if this new “doctrine” was always the plan; it wasn’t. Trump was simply “turned” by Israel—whether by kompromat or other means—and is now forced to pull the wool over our eyes as to why the US should continue with the “spread ofdefending Western culture” around the world.
This fact is easily deduced from Trump’s statements, such as in the earlier video where he searches for an excuse for attacking Iran again. He can’t think of a valid reason because there isn’t one: he’s simply following orders.
“Iran must be destroyed, you sayherdCitizens, what to say – we don’t care what reasons you come up with. Just make sure it sounds somewhat convincing.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to consider alternative options to strangle Iran:
It is part of a larger Western initiative against the Global South, such as the initiative being developed and tested by the UK and its European partners to completely cut off Russia’s economic lifelines:
All this while the US seized two more tankers – Veronica III and Aquila II – all the way in the Indian Ocean, again reportedly linked to Venezuelan oil. It is clear that the Western order intends to escalate its piracy as a last resort to cut off the economic lifelines of the Global South, because the West has no other way to compete; all these other beautiful post-hoc rationalizations and sophistical moral-philosophical sciolisms are merely futile attempts to create a “legally sound” framework for what is essentially pure piracy and criminal aggression against sovereign states.
That’s why I’ve said before that China, Russia, and Iran will slowly be forced into closer maritime alliances to protect the global economic arteries:
Now, the latest news is that Israel may act alone against Iran, and that Trump has given them the green light. This, of course, puts Iran in a difficult position, because even if the US doesn’t attack Iran directly, it will certainly help Israel with fuel, weapons, air defenses to block Iranian retaliation, and so on. This gives Iran a clear incentive to attack US assets anyway as a deterrent, to reduce the overall capabilities of the “coalition” carrying out the hostile attacks.
This would essentially be Israel’s ploy to lure the US into an open conflict: simply attack Iran unilaterally, and when the American vassal is forced to help, it will be directly drawn into the conflict against its will.
One thing is certain: the likelihood of Trump launching a large-scale and sustained attack likely extends only until the start of the midterm election season. This is likely why Netanyahu has just made his sixth emergency visit to the US to plead his case, even though some reports claim Trump has rebuffed him—at least for now.
Everyone’s back is against the wall: for Trump, it’s a last hurrah. For Iran, the “regime” is considered weakened and vulnerable. We now have to wait and see whether Trump’s risk-taking will lead him to open Pandora’s box once and for all, leaving Iran no choice but to pull out all the stops, or whether diplomacy will prevail. But even if a compromise is reached, Israel holds the wild card, and a desperate Netanyahu could unilaterally attack Iran, creating a new flashpoint in the region.