A little too late as you reap what you sow Trump, while wagging the dog

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Tulelakenews.com Todays News: January 9, 2020

A little too late as you reap what you sow Trump, while wagging the dog short version

‘He has no ability to negotiate’: Trump said in 2011 that Obama would start a war with Iran to get re-elected

Trump says Iran appears to be 'standing down' after strike

Trump reiterated his position that “Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon” and called for new nuclear negotiations to replace the 2015 nuclear deal from which he withdrew the U.S.

Trump also announced he would ask NATO to become “much more involved in the Middle East process.”

Sen. James Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee told reporters Wednesday that he spoke with Trump Tuesday evening after the Iranian strike and said the president indicated his desire to reopen negotiations with Iran.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the country had “concluded proportionate measures in self-defense." But speaking on Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the strike was not necessarily the totality of Iran's response.

“Last night they received a slap,” Khamenei said in a speech. “These military actions are not sufficient (for revenge). What is important is that the corrupt presence of America in this region comes to an end.”

Democrats called on Trump avoid military escalation with Iran.

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the administration needs to quickly “extricate us from what could lead into a full-fledged war with terrible casualties.” Engel said he feared the situation ”spirals out of control."

The fallout for Trump's order to kill Soleimani has been swift.

Iran announced that it would no longer be bound by the 2015 nuclear agreement and vowed to retaliate against the U.S., its allies and American interests. Iraq's Parliament also voted to expel U.S. troops from Iraq, which would undermine efforts to fight Islamic State militants in the region and strengthen Iran's influence in the Mideast.

The counterattack by Iran came as Trump and his top advisers were under pressure to disclose more details about the intelligence that led to the American strike that killed Soleimani.

Top Senate Democrats, citing “deep concern” about the lack of information coming from the Trump administration about the Iran operation, called on Defense Department officials to provide “regular briefings and documents” to Congress.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the senators said in a letter Wednesday that the White House’s classified War Powers notification to Congress was “generic, vague, and entirely inconsistent in its level of detail” compared with the norm.

“While recognizing the need for operations security, we similarly believe there is a requirement to be transparent with the American people about how many troops this Administration plans to deploy in support of contingency plans,” wrote Schumer, Sen. Dick Durbin and the Armed Services Committee’s Sen. Jack Reed to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

They also registered their “grave concern” with Trump’s comments on targeting Iranian cultural sites and asked for clarification. They said they expected a response by Friday.

One lawmaker who has read the classified notification that Trump sent Congress after the U.S. air strike that killed Soleimani said the two-page document did not describe any imminent planned attacks or contain any new information. The lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the classified document, said the letter gave a historic account of attacks that have been reported publicly.

The Trump administration’s justification for killing Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top military commander, has subtly shifted since last Thursday. But the implications of that shift have profound implications in terms of the legality of an American action that has dramatically ratcheted up tensions in the Middle East.

“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the statement said. “This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.”

That claim was echoed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who went on CNN on Friday and cited intelligence indicating Soleimani’s continued existence posed an “imminent” threat that put “dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk.”

“This was an intelligence-based assessment that drove our decision-making process,” Pompeo said.

But four days later, Pompeo has stopped talking about intelligence of an “imminent threat” to justify the strike. Now, he’s mainly relying on the talking point that Soleimani had American blood on his hands and therefore had to go.

During a news conference on Tuesday, Pompeo was asked to share some specifics about the threat Soleimani posed. He responded by talking about Soleimani’s alleged role in an attack in Iraq that left an American contractor dead last month.

“We know what happened at the end of last year in December, ultimately leading to the death of an American,” Pompeo said. “So, if you are looking for imminence, look no further than the days that led up to the strike that was taken against Soleimani.”

But as Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) alluded to on Twitter in response to Pompeo’s comments, news reports and vague claims about Soleimani’s possible role in future attacks is not the same thing as an “imminent threat.”

“The administration appears to be completely abandoning their previous claim that the killing was ordered to prevent specific attacks about which they had intelligence,” Beyer wrote.

The shift from what Pompeo said last Friday to what he said on Tuesday — a change that first became noticeable during a string of TV appearances on Sunday in which he tried to distance himself from the “imminent threat” talking point — has been echoed by the president himself.

During a radio interview with Rush Limbaugh on Monday, Trump said Soleimani “should have been taken out a long time ago” — a claim at tension with the idea that he posed an immediate threat.

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