Is the U.S. at war with Iran, or not? Opinions vary.
Another perspective on Why He Did It.
Amazing. NYT has more confirmation that Trump’s decision to bomb Iran was motivated in large part by the way the Israeli strikes were “playing” on Fox News, which drove him to want credit for it
— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) June 23, 2025 at 6:47 AM
I suspect this is pretty much it. You can read the story here — Shifting views and misdirection: How Trump decided to strike Iran.
Mary Trump wrote, “Donald is still no doubt stinging from the acronym recently coined to mock his inability to follow through on anything—TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out.” So he did the typical chickenhawk thing and put others in danger to show how tough he is. Further,
It is long past time that we stop imputing some deeper or reasonable motives to Donald Trump. Despite being depraved and cruel, much like his cohort Benjamin Netanyahu, he is driven by the most primitive impulses that center almost solely around protecting his fragile ego from humiliation (about which he has a pathological terror) and himself from the reality that he is a complete fraud.
See also Pentagon Worked Up ‘Ruse’ to Fool Iran on Strikes Because They Feared Trump Would Give It Away on Social Media: NYT. The military people were genuinely worried Trump would sabotage his own bombing mission by blabbing the plans on social media.
And, as usual,, Trump keeps stepping on his own talking points.
President Donald Trump’s top national security officials spent much of Sunday insisting his administration doesn’t want to bring about the end of Iran’s government, only its nuclear program. Then Trump left the door open for exactly that.
“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
J.D. Vance tried to argue that the U.S. wasn’t at war with Iran, just it’s nuclear weapons program. Which is stupid, but at least Vance is smart enough to understand that in the long run it will be better for the Trump Administration to argue that it hasn’t unilaterally declared war on Iran. But Trump has been blathering about “regime change” for the past couple of days.
We all see the parallels with the invasion of Iraq. But some things are different. Bush-Cheney-Rove, aided by right-wing media, spent more than a year before the actual invasion on a relentless propaganda campaign that falsely tied 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. All true American patriots were supposed to hate Saddam and support taking him out. Right now if you lined up a hundred random Americans and asked them who is the leader of Iran, probably most would not know his name (Ali Hosseini Khamenei) or know anything about him beyond his being “some ayatollah.” And many wouldn’t know even that much. Further, Iran hasn’t done anything to us lately. Not for a long time.
I expect the Republican Party and MAGA supporters to fall in line, but if the situation in Iran escalates and draws U.S. troops into more conflict, I suspect most Americans will not be happy about it or support what Trump is doing. If it stops with just the Saturday bombing raids, probably everyone will move on to the next disaster. But if Trump pushes this further, I don’t see the American people rallying around him. And he may not understand that.
In other news: Next Trump will be claiming that he wrote the Gettysburg Address.
Leavitt: “Nobody knows what it means to accomplish peace through strength better than President Trump. He is the one who came up with that motto and that foreign policy doctrine.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 23, 2025 at 8:39 AM
If “peace through strength” sounds familiar, that’s probably because it’s been said a lot. Starting with the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century CE. Ronald Reagan used to say it a lot also.
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Robert Hubbell concluded the same thing, that Trump wanted credit for it. But there's more:
Jeffries was supposed to be the heir apparent to Nancy Pelosi. Instead, he's more like the idiot son who was handed the keys to the family business and proceeded to wreck it with incompetence (much like a couple of failsons whose names I refuse to utter).
Jefferies is a clown, always has been. He talks in that phony cadence trying to emulate Dr. King I quess? Complete phony politician has NO CLUE. It was a big mistake putting him at the top of leadership.
Uh, how could the minority leaders of the two houses of Congress shut down Congress?
The fault here lies not with the Democrats, but with my fellow white Americans, and my fellow male Americans, for electing Drumpf and his Elephascist Party (fka GOP), thereby voting for their vacuum-skulled prejudices, rather than their actual self-interest–or else refusing to vote at all.
"Peace… through superior firepower." – The Holographic Salesman (Vincent Schiavelli), Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Arsenal of Freedom" (S1E21)
It's quite amusing to watch the pro-Israel bobble-heads attempt to cheerlead another war in the middle east against a country that has not attacked us. They want to parrot the WH propaganda but diaper don keeps stepping on his own message and they ask the questions like "is this conflicting with earlier statements"? Of fucking course it is, Stump can't help but lie it's been ten goddamn years of lying, the man is a convicted felon and a rapist he always lies? Poor little CNN and msnbc seem befuddled that he is sending mixed messages, unfuckingbelievable!
Love the post titles over the past week.
>>>chefs kiss<<<
Dang, things move fast. currently it's Schrödinger’s Peace. Lets see if this is a 12 day war or 12 minute peace..
Digby at Digby's Blogspot has an article "Tactical Success, Strategic Failure" citing an arms expert, largely on what I have been griping about. Iran has the fuel to make 9 or so nukes. There's every reason to expect that enriched fuel is intact.
Watch where the cease-fire leads, if it holds. What does Israel want regarding verified proof of Iraq's nuclear impotence? Who goes to Iraq to do inspections? Who gets the enriched uranium that (I presume) Israel will not allow Iraq to keep? If/when Iraq says everything was destroyed and is inaccessible, what then?
Iran is not going to surrender. (My bet.) If Israel says you don't have to surrender, you just have to open up to our inspections whenever/wherever we want to poke around, and Iran gives an abscene and anatomically impossible reply, who invades and holds all that territory to try to pull Iraq's fangs? Otherwise, Iraq has the capability and time to build a number of bombs.
This is not close to being over.
Right now if you lined up a hundred random Americans and asked them who is the leader of Iran, probably most would not know his name (Ali Hosseini Khamenei) or know anything about him beyond his being “some ayatollah.”
I only saw an excerpt of Tucker Carlson's interview with Ted Cruz but the ignorance was astounding. I wonder if Cruz would know who the Supreme Leader is. Would he know there is a Supreme Leader?
Come to that, if you gave Cruz a map of Africa, could he find Iran?
(Hint Ted: Iran is not in Africa).
Worse than that, ask either of them Tucker or Teddy, to name three things the average Iranian finds revolting in western culture of today. James Clavell's fictional but historically based novel Whirlwind could get them at least some basics about the area and its varied population. Often cited as the possible cradle of western civilization its people now seriously reject and have revolted against, historically recent changes or branches of western culture.
On second thought, they might need to start with How to Avoid Culture Clashes Made Simple. Then they might have the proper prerequisite skill set to understand Whirlwind.
I am so glad we have an overabundance of august, earnest leaders who do not act on emotional impulse and make decisions based on sober analysis of the context and ramifications of a situation and that will lead to a stable and overall beneficial result.