Still Counting Down

The usual suspects are continuing to insist that war on Iran is baked in. For example, in an interview that was posted at 5:29pm on Friday evening, John Kiriakou—a former CIA whistleblower—stated:

Kiriakou: I have a friend--former CIA officer--who was at the White House this morning, talking to *his* friends, and he says that a decision has been made to attack Iran on Monday or Tuesday. The president, yesterday, gave the Iranians ten days to accept our proposals for an end to their ballistic missile program, an end to their uranium enrichment program, an end to supporting groups in the Middle East like Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis. But he’s done this before. He’ll give you ten days, he’ll give you two weeks, and then he’ll just attack two days into it. He thinks that that keeps people off balance.

And so he [Kiriakou’s friend] said that there are battle lines, that the anti-war forces are JDVance and Tulsi Gabbard. That’s it. He said that the pro-war people are led by Marco Rubio and include Pete Hegseth and now the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I stopped him on that point this morning, and I said: ‘Wait a minute! During the Iraq war, at the start of the Iraq war, the most stridently anti-war component was the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They were always the last ones who wanted to attack. Because they know what war is!’ And he said, ‘Ah, but you forget--Trump has replaced *all* of the Joint Chiefs this year, in the past twelve months.’ Which I had forgotten. Any of these four star generals who had worked their way up through the ranks, but had served under Biden, he fired all of them. All of ‘em. He promoted people who he knew would be politically loyal.

Q: Do you think this is to distract from the current scandal?

Kiriakou: Probably, yeah.

Personally, I discount any of that talk about the Joint Chiefs. Every president puts political loyalists in place. If Biden had wanted a war—say, in Ukraine against Russia—the guys Trump later fired would have been on board with that. Right. That’s exactly what happened. Apolitical professionals don’t rise in the military to that level.

Larry Johnson is saying similar things today.

DONALD TRUMP’S PROBLEMS IN THE MIDDLE EAST (AKA WEST ASIA) ARE MOUNTING

I assume that LJ’s information is coming through Kiriakou in some way, since their friends. LJ again stresses the time constraint of the phases of the moon—the need to attack in the next day or so to take advantage of darkness. If it doesn’t happen now, there will be a wait, and that presents logistics problems.

On the other hand, LJ offers a slender reed of hope that foreign relations problems could help derail war:

But there is another wrinkle that may force Trump to postpone: Fourteen Muslim countries — which include all of the countries the US claims as allies — along with three major Islamic organizations, are furious with Trump because of the intemperate remarks of US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Huckabee, during his conversation last Tuesday with Tucker Carlson, said it would be acceptable for Israel to exercise control over territories belonging to Arab States, including the occupied West Bank.

That stupid remark has ignited an inferno of outrage from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkiye, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, the State of Palestine, along with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Talk about bad timing.

However, most observers—and that includes LJ—believe there are so many preparations for war in train that there’s just no going back—the station is behind and the locomotive is in motion. One example that hasn’t received much attention has to do with Trump, during the past week, boasting about how well things are going in Syria and openly stating that he basically put the ex-ISIS guy in power there. That should be taken together with reports of the release of as many as 15K ISIS fighters from Syria into Iraq. There are reports that Iran is rushing forces to its western border in anticipation of an ISIS invasion as an Anglo-Zionist proxy.

Meanwhile, as in the case of the SCOTUS, Trump is reported to be flummoxed by people who stand on principle. He’s had Witkoff on TV telling us that he doesn’t understand why Iran hasn’t “capitulated” yet.

LJ gets the last word:

If you’re on the east coast of the United States, you will know by 4pm whether or not Trump has decided to start World War III. Sleep well.