Trump Temporarily Averts War With Iran, But Still The War Machine Marches On Strong

Donald Trump’s decision to avoid further escalation with Iran following an Iranian attack on US airbase in Iraq may have temporarily averted an imminent open war with Iran, but at the very same time the President continues to push the warmongering propaganda and ‘maximum pressure’ campaign which led us to the brink of war in the first place.

Credit must be given where credit is due, and it cannot be denied that that this is the second time in the past year that Trump has had the opportunity to strike Iran and chose to pull back from that option, the first case being the cancellation of planned strikes in response to the US drone shot down over Iran.

So I am forced to conclude that at least to some degree Trump does not want war with Iran, at least not right now before the election. Because it cannot be denied that the recent events provoking this most recent escalation were part of a meticulous plan to push the US into war, and that following Iran’s revenge strikes, all the pieces had fallen perfectly into place and were ready for Trump to pull the trigger, but then he didn’t.

As Gareth Porter explained in his excellent piece documenting the orchestrated provocations meant to propel us into war with Iran,Pompeo’s Gulf Of Tonkin Incident:

Like the crucial steps toward public acceptance preceding the U.S. invasions of Vietnam and Iraq, the assassination of Qassem Soleimani was aimed at building popular support for war on Iran. Not only the justification, but the assassination itself were part of a broader strategy to grease the skids into war.

The Soleimani ploy has apparently failed, however, thanks to the carefully prepared Iranian response, which did not provoke Donald Trump to raise the stakes further. At least not yet.

But that won’t stop the neocon push for this war now, just like Trump’s cancellation of the planned strike on Iran following the downing of a US drone over the summer didn’t stop them then. And so Porter concludes: Now Pompeo will have to come up with a new deception to try to provoke U.S.-Iran war.

And he most certainly will, but it isn’t just Pompeo behind this push to take out Iran, with Israeli PM Netanyahu also a major orchestrator of this Zionist agenda.

Jake Morphonios of Blackstone Intelligence documents this in a short new video, comparing his predictions in 2017 of what the run up to open war with Iran would look like, with the recent events of 2019 into the new year. He was right on point, and clearly the assassination of Soleimani was meant to serve as the catalyst to kick off this intended conflict, an operation which have Israeli fingerprints all over it and may well have been carried out jointly with the Mossad.

Whether Trump is aware of it or not, from day 1 his policy and decisions have facilitated the Zionist, neocon, banker-sponsored agenda to take out Iran. From the nuclear deal withdrawal, to the starvation sanction campaign, to the assassination of Soleimani, it was all part of an agenda designed to lead to war on Iran.

So just because Trump appears to have averted war for the time being, doesn’t mean the agenda has changed. For at the very same time as Trump appears on the surface to ‘deescalate’, he is also doubling down on his ‘maximum pressure’ campaign and ramping up the warmongering propaganda, continuing the very same Iranian policy which led us to the brink of war in the first place.

As I said in my last post, a continuation of this approach to Iran with all the crippling sanctions and threats will inevitably lead to war eventually. It is akin to constantly poking someone in the eye while claiming you want to be their friend, and then when they demand you stop, you threaten to blow their head off and whine about how they hate you and don’t want to be your friend.

This Trump policy is discussed in a recent show on The Gray Zone focused on the US response to Iran’s attack.

One interesting thing to note from the above show that was new to me, was that Aaron Mate mentioned recently speaking with Colonel Wilkerson, who also attested to seeing the DOD memo right after 9/11 highlighting the plan to take out 7 countries in 5 years, which General Wesley Clark made famous by revealing its contents in a Democracy Now interview - in 2007 I believe. This confirms the testimony of the General, and is just more confirmation that this plan to topple Iran has indeed been in the works for decades, that Afghanistan and Iraq were just the beginning, and that the entire Middle East policy since 9/11 has revolved around taking out these 7 countries, exactly as has been taking place over the past 20 years.

But despite having temporarily averted war with Iran, the President's rhetoric signals the agenda leading to an Iran war really hasn't changed at all. Trump's response to Iran's attack was focused around 'preventing Iran from seeking a nuclear weapon', the claim they are seeking one being a baseless charge that runs counter to all the available evidence indicating Iran is in fact not seeking such a weapon. This WMD nonsense is straight from the Israeli playbook, from Netanyahu himself, who has repeatedly lied about WMDs in both Iraq and Iran to get America to fight Israel's wars for them.

Trump may have deescalated rising tensions which were on the verge of exploding into open war with Iran, but he is equally at fault for causing those very same escalations which almost led to a war in the first place! It was Donald Trump who ordered the attack on Iraqi Forces in both Iraq and Syria which targeted 5 bases and killed over 30 fighters who were on the front line of the battle to eradicate remaining ISIS presence in Syria. It was Trump who authorized continued attacks against Iraqi PMU targets in Iraq for several days following the initial large-scale attack. And it was Trump who ordered the assassination of Qassem Soleimani while he was on a diplomatic mission in Iraq, an unprecedented escalation which directly led to Iran's retaliation, and Trump who even threatened to target Iranian cultural sites (a war crime) and respond 'disproportionately' if Iran did dare to retaliate. Then Trump finally backed down and 'deescalated' when Iran took action.

But it cannot be ignored that the actions leading up to this 'deescalation' were good business for the Military Industrial Complex, significantly boosting stocks for Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northtrop Gumman overnight following the assassination of Soleimani.

Trump may have temporarily averted a new war with Iran, but the imperial war machine marches on. An average of 121 bombs are being dropped every day under the Trump Administration, which is one bomb every 12 minutes, and a sharp increase from Obama's 34 per day, which was already far more than the 24 per day dropped under the Bush reign. As News Click points out: "This shows that even though American presidents are all war criminals, Trump is the most vicious of them all."

So did he really pull the US back from the brink of war with Iran because he opposes the war, and seeks peace for the region as he claims? Or is he simply playing political games ahead of the 2020 presidential election?

Trump may have temporarily averted a new war with Iran, but the imperial war machine marches on. The Israeli Air force carried out airstrikes against Syria early Friday morning local time in the border region the US had just bombed last week, seemingly carrying on the aggression campaign against anti-ISIS forces right where Trump left off. According to South Front, "Iraqi sources claimed that the targeted arms shipment belonged to Kata’ib al-Imam Ali, a main member of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU)."

Despite Trump's temporary deescalation, the intense and absurd western propaganda campaign against Iran continues to intensify, with Donald Trump himself taking part. Trump now claims Qassem Soleimani wanted to blow up the US Embassy in Baghdad, still lacking even a shred of evidence that he was in any way behind the Iraqi Embassy protests at all; while the Pentagon said on Thursday that the Iranian strikes on US airbases which caused zero casualties 'were intended to kill US personnel'.

Fox News reported that:

Pentagon officials believe that the more than a dozen missiles launched at two bases in Iraq housing U.S. forces Tuesday night were designed to kill Americans, but the Iranian efforts were thwarted by the military's Early Warning Systems, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Wednesday.

A quick look at the satellite imagery showing the location of the targeted sites which were hit quickly debunks this seemingly absurd claim, and an IRGC commander officially announced that the strikes were intended to cause no casualties on the American side, adding that they could have targeted the barracks and killed 500 US troops if that had been their intention. Instead they hit aircraft tents and hangers. This Iranian assertion is supported by the fact that Iran took additional steps to avoid US deaths by warning Iraq, who then gave the US a heads up, so this claim of 'Early Warning Systems' is utter nonsensical propaganda. Iran was the early warning system! But if they admitted that, it destroys the narrative that Iran was attempting to kill US troops.

But on marches the propaganda wing of the imperial war machine, now also claiming 'certainty' that Iran shot down the Ukranian passenger airliner which went down following the Iranian strikes, without any actual evidence indicating this is even the most likely scenario. But why wait for an investigation when you can jump to blame Iran without evidence proving your claims?

And additionally, despite the Iraqi government demanding the US to leave its country, the US occupation is now openly refusing, clearly showing themselves to be just that: an illegal occupation force in an unwanted foreign territory in violation of international law. I guess you could still say Trump did 'deescalate' the tensions in the region though, but somehow they still manage to continue to escalate.

Trump may have temporarily averted war with Iran, but the imperial war machine marches on strong. In the end, it is entirely irrelevant whether or not Trump wants a war with Iran, because his Zionist puppet-masters and banker buddies do want a war with Iran; and that is not going to change, nor will the US foreign policy agenda. Whether he wants it to or not, whether it is his own agenda as well, or if he is rather just a useful idiot and current puppet for the job, the war machine will march on, and the agenda stays the same. Iran is still the target, and that hasn't changed.