Following Trump’s attacks on Iran, an admin official tells Rolling Stone, “The intelligence assessments have not really changed”

After Donald Trump’s decision to strike three Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday, administration officials are barely bothering to pretend the unprecedented — and potentially calamitous — attacks were motivated by new intelligence suggesting Iran was on the brink of having nuclear weapons.

Just months ago, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress, in her opening statement, that the U.S. intel community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and had not reauthorized its nuclear weapons program.

While Trump recently publicly disputed Gabbard’s testimony, according to two administration officials with knowledge of internal deliberations in recent weeks, the president’s decision to strike was not driven by any new U.S. intelligence on Iran.

  • @[email protected]
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    1118 days ago

    Really nice knowing that Nuke country #1 is governed by absolute senile murderous freaks for over at least 10 years now

    • pachrist
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      118 days ago

      It describes the past 30 years of the USA’s Middle East policy. At least it’s consistent?

  • @[email protected]
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    1918 days ago

    They weren’t based on vibes, they were based on orders. Trump’s foreign handlers told him what to do and he did it.

  • @[email protected]
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    1218 days ago

    Vibe Warfare. Where Skynet doesn’t have control of the military, but everyone does what it says anyway.

  • @[email protected]
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    116 days ago

    Iran’s theocratic regime aside (which the US is largely responsible for creating), why exactly are the US (and a handful of other countries) somehow more worthy of having nukes than others?

    It’s some bullshit if you ask me.

    The question of “do we really want X country having nukes?” seems to come off as: “it’s okay for country Y (the US) to have nukes”.

    I for one, am not a fan of anyone having nukes, but if we’re not planning on getting that number to zero, not sure how it’s justified to say a certain country doesn’t deserve them, other than maybe North Korea who are completely unhinged, but how can we draw the line? The USA is literally just committing acts of war because they’ve unilaterally decided that Iran has nukes, without evidence, and that means they’re justified in doing pre-emptive strikes.

    I don’t think any country is ever justified in pre-emptively striking another without extremely strong evidence.

    I’m thoroughly unconvinced that any war the US has fought other than World War II has been justified.

  • @[email protected]
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    1418 days ago

    Wasn’t the picture of 1970s Iranian women (dressed like US 1970s women) just floating around a couple months along with the attached comment stating “pictures of places before Muslim rule floating around means the US is about to bomb them” or does that just happen every year

    • Chris
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      4218 days ago

      Iran was a liberal democracy before the US helped topple it and install the Ayatollah.

      The US is complicit in all the violence they did to their people.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness
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        4618 days ago

        Not quite. It was a liberal democracy until the US helped topple it and install the Shah, who was then toppled by Khomeini.

          • @[email protected]
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            818 days ago

            It really shouldn’t be surprising that the US liberal democracy got toppled by a dictator when we seem to love such foreign policy.

            • @[email protected]
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              1018 days ago

              Yeah. The problem with American democracy is that they loved capitalism more than democracy and that is bad

    • @[email protected]
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      418 days ago

      He’s trying to get ahead of a mob and call it a parade.

      See how his last one went to figure out how this will go.

    • @[email protected]
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      10118 days ago

      Seemed pretty obvious that Bibi wanted Trump to win and intentionally stalled Gaza ceasefire agreements to make Biden/Harris look bad.

      This may have been Trump returning his end of the bargain (or Trump is just a shortsighted and stupid piece of shit).

      • @[email protected]
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        718 days ago

        Well Biden/Harris could have pulled the plug for doing that. Instead they let Netanyahu publicly humiliate them by defying any requests, knowing they would send more weapons as a reward.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 days ago

          They really couldn’t. They were caught between a rock and a hard place.

          Which is why Musk was able to dump over $70 million in exactly opposite attack ad messages to both Jewish and Muslim communities inside the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.

          If they pulled military aid on Ukraine, one of the most powerful lobbyists in a close election would’ve unleashed their funding, and Republicans too would have labeled Harris and Biden as Antisemitic. Netanyahu would have publicly stated that, “Democrats are putting Israeli citizens at risk from terrorist attack by leaving us defenseless!” In the worst case scenario, Netanyahu – already proven to be a psychopath who ignored obvious intelligence of an impending attack once – could have possibly staged a false flag attack similar to Putin’s past actions, and that would’ve sealed the deal. The public media would’ve labeled Biden/Harris as antisemitic and incompetent.

          It’s why they literally had to toe the line between protecting Israel (because the inertia Israel has in our society, sadly), but also seek a peace deal and publicly advocate for a 2-state-solution, as Harris did. The media landscape was not favorable to Democrats, which is why they had limited cards to play.

      • @[email protected]
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        518 days ago

        Seemed pretty obvious that Bibi wanted Trump to win and intentionally stalled Gaza ceasefire agreements to make Biden/Harris look bad.

        And biden/harris fell for it. they looked weak and complicit because they’re democrats and that’s their brand.

        • @[email protected]
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          718 days ago

          More accurately, his girlfriend is, he’d probably be consider an asset. An important distinction on whether you protect them when they’re in trouble.

            • @[email protected]
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              18 days ago

              Maxwell’s Dad was an interesting guy if you read up on him. The dude had a lot of enemies via his business dealings and him being a literal spy for MI6/Mossad. Some believe Mossad even assassinated him, but I don’t really believe it.

              • @[email protected]
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                218 days ago

                The fact that the shit had just hit the fan regarding Maxwell’s looting of his employees’ pension plans probably had more to do with his suicide.

        • @[email protected]
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          118 days ago

          Epstein may have sold (or volunteered) intel both to Mossad and to US three-letter agencies. I don’t know if that made him a Mossad agent.

          • @[email protected]
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            18 days ago

            I thought Ghislane was the Mossad contact, wasn’t her father actually in Mossad leadership? Epstein was the ‘party’ boy, gag, and Maxwell was operations?

    • @[email protected]
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      718 days ago

      This is the Democratiic parties election platform 2024 (see P82/P83):

      Through aggressive diplomacy backed by U.S. military power, the Administration has worked alongside our allies and partners to deter and defend against Iran and its terrorist surrogates. President Biden has postured U.S. military forces in the region and authorized precision airstrikes on key Iranian-linked targets tied to attacks against U.S. troops to deter further aggression by Iran. President Biden has also continued to protect the American people from terrorism, authorizing military strikes that took out ISIS emirs and the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In response to brazen attacks by Iranian-linked Houthi forces against international commercial shipping, U.S. naval vessels in the Red Sea, and Israel, President Biden ordered military strikes, alongside key allies, against Houthi targets and organized Operation Prosperity Guardian, a coalition of more than 20 nations committed to defending international shipping and deterring Houthi attacks.

      When Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones against Israel in April 2024, President Biden led an unprecedented defensive coalition – together with partners from Europe and across the Middle East – to defeat the attack, protect Israel, and stop the spread of a wider war. Through direct defensive action by the U.S. military and its partners, Iranian munitions did not cause significant damage, demonstrating both America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel and our unrivaled ability to leverage growing regional integration among U.S. partners to counter Iranian aggression.

      All of this stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency. In 2018, when Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attacked the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq Trump’s only response was to close our diplomatic facility.

      They are literally calling Trump “weak” for not engaging militarily enough. There is no indication Biden would not have jumped at the first order from Netanyahu to do his bidding, like he did all the years before.

    • Konala Koala
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      18 days ago

      How about making that “Deport Trump to Iran and tell their president this is the asshole who gave the order to attack the nuclear facilities in your country, and then leave them and get the hell out of there while leaving them to do whatever the hell they want with him”

    • @[email protected]
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      4218 days ago

      Who uses bank accounts anymore? They probably bought a bunch of $TRUMP. Doesn’t every US President have their own private currency?