Can Trump Still Avoid War with Iran?

Guest Post by Pat Buchanan

Can Trump Still Avoid War with Iran?

A more fundamental question arises: If the United States was not attacked, why is it our duty to respond militarily to an attack on Saudi Arabia?

President Donald Trump does not want war with Iran. America does not want war with Iran. Even the Senate Republicans are advising against military action in response to that attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities.

“All of us (should) get together and exchange ideas, respectfully, and come to a consensus — and that should be bipartisan,” says Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch of Idaho.

When Lindsey Graham said the White House had shown “weakness” and urged retaliatory strikes for what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls Iran’s “act of war,” the president backhanded his golfing buddy:

“It’s very easy to attack, but if you ask Lindsey … ask him how did going into the Middle East … work out. And how did Iraq work out?”

Still, if neither America nor Iran wants war, what has brought us to the brink?

Answer: The policy imposed by Trump, Pompeo and John Bolton after our unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

Our course was fixed by the policy we chose to pursue.

Imposing on Iran the most severe sanctions ever by one modern nation on another, short of war, the U.S., through “maximum pressure,” sought to break the Iranian regime and bend it to America’s will.

Submit to U.S. demands, we told Tehran, or watch your economy crumble and collapse and your people rise up in revolt and overthrow your regime.

Among the 12 demands issued by Pompeo:

End all enrichment of uranium or processing of plutonium. Halt all testing of ballistic missiles. Cut off Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Disarm and demobilize Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq. Terminate support for the Houthi rebels resisting Saudi intervention in Yemen.

The demands Pompeo made were those that victorious nations impose upon the defeated or defenseless. Pompeo’s problem: Iran was neither.

Hezbollah is dominant in Lebanon. Along with Russia and Hezbollah, Iran and its militias enabled Bashar Assad to emerge victorious in an eight-year Syrian civil war. And the scores of thousands of Iranian-trained and -allied Shiite militia fighters in the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq outnumber the 5,200 U.S. troops there 20 times over.

Hence Tehran’s defiant answer to Pompeo’s 12 demands:

We will not capitulate, and if your sanctions prevent our oil from reaching our traditional buyers, we will prevent the oil of your Sunni allies from getting out of the Persian Gulf.

Hence, this summer, we saw tankers sabotaged and seized in the Gulf, insurance rates for tanker traffic surge, Iran shoot-down a $130 million U.S. Predator drone, and, a week ago, an attack on Saudi oil production facilities that cut Riyadh’s exports in half.

This has been followed by an Iranian warning that a Saudi attack on Iran means war, and a U.S. attack will be met with a counterattack. We don’t want war, the Iranians are saying, but if the alternative is to choke to death under U.S. sanctions, we will use our weapons to fight yours.

America might emerge victorious in such a war, but the cost could be calamitous, imperiling that fifth of the world’s oil that traverses the Strait of Hormuz, and causing a global recession.

Yet even if there is no U.S. or Saudi military response to Saturday’s attack, what is to prevent Iran from ordering a second strike that shuts down more Arab Gulf oil production?

Iran has shown the ability to do that, and, apparently, neither we nor the Saudis have the defenses to prevent such an attack.

A more fundamental question arises: If the United States was not attacked, why is it our duty to respond militarily to an attack on Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia is not a member of NATO. It is not a treaty ally. The Middle East Security Alliance or “Arab NATO” chatted up a year ago to contain Iran — of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states — was stillborn. We are under no obligation to fight the Saudis’ war.

Nor is Saudi Arabia a natural American ally.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman runs an Islamic autocracy.

He inserted himself into first position in the line of succession to the throne of his father, who’s in failing health. He locked up his brother princes at the Riyadh Ritz Carlton to shake them down for billions of dollars.

He summoned the prime minister of Lebanon to the kingdom, where the crown prince forced him to resign in humiliation. He has ostracized Qatar from Arab Gulf councils. He has been accused of complicity in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.

With his U.S.-built and bought air force, the Crown Prince has made a hell on earth of Yemen to crush the Houthis rebels who hold the capital.

The question President Trump confronts today:

How does he get his country back off the limb he climbed out on while listening to the Republican neocons and hawks he defeated in 2016, but who have had an inordinate influence over his foreign policy?

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War Pigs
War Pigs

President Donald Trump does not want war with Iran.

Yes he does.

Yet even if there is no U.S. or Saudi military response to Saturday’s attack, what is to prevent Iran from ordering a second strike that shuts down more Arab Gulf oil production?

This assumes Iran did the first strike. No evidence they did.

CCRider
CCRider

In other-truer-words, will TPTB tell their stooge in the white house how it is on war with Iran and the american people to stick their precious democracy up their asses (until the next election).

Vote Harder
Vote Harder

Israel did 9/11 to ensnare USA into destroying Iraq.
Israel did attack on Saudi (possibly WITH Saudi compliance) to ensnare USA into destroying Iran.

Which is why,
Why has this crazy tribe been kicked out of every country on Earth?
COMPLETE LIST OF JEWISH EXPULSIONS (1,031)

M G
M G

I remember the first time I viewed the antics of Iran fighting with Iraq in 1986.

30 years sgo.

We joked about extracting oil from parking lots and saving flying hours.

Why aren’t we doing that?

Donkey
Donkey

What?

M G
M G

In the 80s the King requested surveillance by US to protect Saudi oilfields. We kept 3 or 4 AWACS jets.there in Riyadh, with several crews and a full maintenance team.

For years. At one point we celebrated a million flying hours there watching the silly war there.

It would have cost less to nuke the region and extract the oil in protective clothing.

By the way we favored.Iraq…until Saddam invaded Kuwait.

Fleabaggs

MG.
Right you are. Of course it would have cost less. That’s why it was never done. Cost Less!! My God Woman!!! Have you gone daft? And yes he was our man on the job. We made him what he was from a two bit gangster to keep the Shia under control. I still remember the film clips of April G. giving him the go ahead to attack Kuwait.

Lebowski
Lebowski

NO MG is surely NOT right He’s a sheeple

Fleabaggs

Lebowski
You fukkin dikwad, read what I said asshole. I said nothing about why we killed him. Yesterday you were trashing Mark. Today you’re calling me a sheeple. Piss off faggot.

Anonymous
Anonymous

And sand bagged Iraq about Kuwait before they attacked.

Lebowski
Lebowski

WRONG again Saddam threatened to sell his oil in Euros That’s the reason NOT the ridiculous socalled country Kuwait

Donkey
Donkey

Must be some type of inside joke. I didn’t get…”extract oil from parking lots”.

22winmag w/o tagline

If it cost less it would have been done.

Nukes are FAKE.

22winmag w/o tagline

Pat, please cut the A team vs. B team crap.

You’re the biggest disinfo writer on the planet.

Iran is Zio controlled and all wars are timed, managed, and resolved at the highest levels.

Trump reads the fucking teleprompter.

You write softball columns about status quo newsbytes.

Fleabaggs

A new Holocaust denial book is out by the son of famous violin player Yehudi Menuhin(A Jew) “Tell the truth and shame the Devil”. Review is up on Russia Insider today . Written by Gerard Menuhin.

Rabbi Herschel Liebowitz-Bergblatstein
Rabbi Herschel Liebowitz-Bergblatstein

No. Definitely not. I had Jared tell Ivanka to cry and demand air strikes.

Works every time.

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