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Monday, June 23, 2025

23: Iran

Shifting Views and Misdirection: How Trump Decided to Strike Iran When Israel began its assault on Iran, President Trump kept his distance. But within days he was on a path that led to an extensive bombing mission aided by political and military ruses. ........ Mr. Trump had been under pressure from the noninterventionist wing of his party to stay out of the conflict, and was having lunch that day with one of the most outspoken opponents of a bombing campaign, Stephen K. Bannon, fueling speculation that he might hold off. .......... It was almost entirely a deception. Mr. Trump had all but made up his mind to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the military preparations were well underway for the complex attack. ......... different factions of Mr. Trump’s allies jockeyed to win over a president who was listing in all directions over whether to choose war, diplomacy or some combination. ......... Outsiders tried to divine which faction was ascendant based on whom Mr. Trump met with at any given time. Mr. Trump seemed almost gleeful in telling reporters that he could make a decision “one second before it’s due, because things change, especially with war.” ........ “Everyone should evacuate Tehran!” he wrote on Monday last week on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns. The following day, he posted that he had not left a meeting of the Group of 7 in Canada to broker a Middle East cease-fire but for something “much bigger.” ......... These public pronouncements generated angst at the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command, where military planners began to worry that Mr. Trump was giving Iran too much warning about an impending strike. ....... They built their own deception into the attack plan: a second group of B-2 bombers that would leave Missouri and head west over the Pacific Ocean in a way that flight trackers would be able to monitor on Saturday. That left a misimpression, for many observers and presumably Iran, about the timing and path of the attack, which would come from another direction entirely. ........ Refueling tankers and fighter jets had been moved into position, and the military was working on providing additional protection for American forces stationed in the region. ........... the president and his team “successfully accomplished one of the most complex and historic military operations of all time” regarding Iran’s nuclear sites. She added that “many presidents have talked about this, but only President Trump had the guts to do it.” ......... He marveled to advisers about what he said was a brilliant Israeli military operation, which involved a series of precision strikes that killed key figures in Iran’s military leadership and blasted away strategic weapons sites. Mr. Trump took calls on his cellphone from reporters and began hailing the operation as “excellent” and “very successful” and hinting that he had much more to do with it than people realized. ......... Later that day, Mr. Trump asked an ally how the Israeli strikes were “playing.” He said that “everyone” was telling him he needed to get more involved, including potentially dropping 30,000-pound GBU-57 bombs on Fordo, the Iranian uranium-enrichment facility buried underneath a mountain south of Tehran. .......... The next day, the president told another adviser he was leaning toward using those “bunker buster” bombs on Fordo, while taking pride in both the bomb’s destructive power and the fact that the United States is the only country that has the bomb in its arsenal. ........ At the same time, the president’s team was closely monitoring how their most prominent supporters were reacting on social media and on television to the prospect of the United States joining the war in a more visible way. ............. They paid close attention to the statements of Tucker Carlson, the influential podcaster and former Fox News host, who was vehemently opposed to the United States joining Israel in taking on Iran. Mr. Trump became infuriated by some of Mr. Carlson’s commentary and started complaining about him publicly and privately. ............. While polls showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans did not want the United States to go to war with Iran, most Americans also did not want Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. ............. The president was closely monitoring Fox News, which was airing wall-to-wall praise of Israel’s military operation and featuring guests urging Mr. Trump to get more involved. Several Trump advisers lamented the fact that Mr. Carlson was no longer on Fox, which meant that Mr. Trump was not hearing much of the other side of the debate. .......... he told them that Israel would be foolish to try to assassinate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. .......... he said, if the United States were to strike Iran, the goal should be to decimate its nuclear facilities, not to bring down its government. ......... begun refining attack plans on the Fordo facility and other Iranian nuclear sites that military planners had drawn up years ago. ........ B-2 stealth bombers, based at Whiteman Air Base in Missouri, are the only warplanes capable of delivering the GBU-57 bombs without detection by Iranian radar. B-2 bomber pilots have done extensive rehearsals for extended-range missions like the one before them — crossing the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, refueling multiple times before syncing up with fighter jets for the final flight leg into Iran. ...........

But even as the military planning was being conducted in secrecy, each of Mr. Trump’s social media posts seemed to be telling the world what was coming.

............. The president, said one military official, was the “biggest threat to opsec,” or operational security, that the planning faced. ......... By Tuesday, June 17, Mr. Trump had largely made up his mind to strike Iran. But he took his coercive diplomacy to a new level, issuing menacing threats over social media......... “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” he posted on Truth Social, adding, “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there — We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.” He demanded, in all-caps, “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” ............ By this point, several people in the anti-interventionist camp of Mr. Trump’s advisers realized they most likely could not prevent the president from hitting the Iranian nuclear facilities. So, they turned their focus on trying to ensure the American war did not spiral into an expansive “regime change” war. ......... That day, June 17, Vice President JD Vance posted a long series of posts on social media that many within the anti-interventionist camp interpreted as him seeding the ground for a potential U.S. military operation and preemptively defending the president’s likely decision. ........... Even as Mr. Trump was posting his own hawkish statements, he was becoming annoyed as he watched pundits on television telegraph his likely strike against Fordo. He was infuriated when The Wall Street Journal reported that he had already given a green light to putting the pieces of the operation in place but had not given the final order. ......... On Thursday, Mr. Trump was joined for lunch at the White House by Mr. Bannon, one of the most prominent critics of U.S. involvement in Israel’s war with Iran. Some wishful thinkers in the anti-interventionist camp interpreted the meeting as a sign that Mr. Trump was getting cold feet. ......... indicating that he had given himself up to two weeks to make a decision, a time frame he often invoked for decisions on complex issues when he had no clear plan. ......... But within hours, around 5 p.m. on Friday, Mr. Trump ordered the military to begin its Iran mission. Given the 18 hours it would take the B-2s to fly from Missouri to Iran, he knew he still had many more hours to change his mind, as he did at the last minute in 2019, when he ordered airstrikes against Iranian targets and then aborted them.

What does regime change mean? Trump comments on Iran leadership “It’s not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on June 22. ........ After the U.S. carried out airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear sites on June 21, Trump took to Truth Social the following day to signal his openness to new leadership in Iran, breaking from comments made by his vice president and secretary of state earlier that day.

US asks China to stop Iran from closing Strait of Hormuz “They want to negotiate, we’re ready to negotiate. They want to get cute and do things that are dangerous, we have responses available that are devastating.” ........ The Iranian Parliament on Sunday approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz after the United States bombed nuclear sites in Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, the last of which is located inside a mountain ...... Approximately 20 million barrels, or 20 percent of global consumption, flowed through the strait in 2024.

Cuomo, Mamdani neck and neck in final NYC mayoral poll New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has effectively drawn even with former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor and surpasses him in the final round of a ranked-choice simulation ....... In the eighth round of voting, once all the other candidates were eliminated, Mamdani came out on top, beating Cuomo 52 percent to 48 percent. ...... The latest findings point to continued momentum for Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has emerged as the leading progressive choice in the Democratic race to succeed Mayor Eric Adams (D), who is running as an independent. In the last Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill survey, taken in May, Cuomo led Mamdani 35 percent to 23 percent. ........ “Over five months, Mamdani’s support has surged from 1% to 32%, while Cuomo finishes near where he began,” said Spencer Kimball, Emerson College Polling’s executive director. “In the ranked-choice simulation, Mamdani gains 18 points compared to Cuomo’s 12, putting him ahead in the final round for the first time in an Emerson poll.”

Decoy flights and seven B-2 stealth bombers - how US says it hit Iran's nuclear sites American bombers went "in and out and back without the world knowing at all", US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters.......... It all began just after midnight when Secretary Hegseth joined US President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and elite Pentagon staff in the Situation Room at the White House to watch as a fleet of aircraft departed an American airbase in rural Missouri. ........ The subsonic jets, which travel just below the speed of sound, flew over the Atlantic Ocean loaded with powerful "bunker buster" bombs capable of penetrating concrete over 18m (60ft) deep. ......... But the world wasn't watching - yet. All eyes were facing west, towards the Pacific Ocean, following reports bombers had been sent to the US island territory of Guam........ "While the deployment is not being officially connected to discussions around the US joining Israel's war on Iran, few will doubt the link," the BBC wrote at the time. ........ Those military planes don't show up on flight tracking websites ........... When the fleet made it to the Middle East, sometime around 17:00 EDT (22:00 BST), it was joined by support aircraft that helped protect the bombers by sweeping in front of them to look for enemy fighters and surface-to-air missile threats, in what Gen Caine called a "complex, tightly timed manoeuvre". ........... "Israeli dominance over Iranian airspace primed the pump for American bombers to operate with impunity" ............... While Iran has confirmed the attacks, it has minimised the extent of the damage ......... more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles were launched from a US submarine stationed in the Arabian Sea towards the nuclear site near Isfahan, a city of about two million people. ......... While the nuclear facility there is hundreds of kilometres inland, the submarines were close enough to enable the cruise missiles to impact at roughly the same time as the stealthy B-2s dropped their "bunker buster" bombs over the other two nuclear sites ......... the US was able to provide "a coordinated surprise attack on multiple sites" ........ The MOP bomb is able to drop through about 18m (60ft) of concrete or 61m (200ft) of earth before exploding, according to experts. This means that although it's not guaranteed success, it is the only bomb in the world that could come close to impacting the depth of tunnels at the Fordo facility - thought to be 80-90m (262-295ft) below the surface. ......... It was the first time the "bunker buster" bombs were ever dropped in a real combat operation. ....... a total of 14 MOPs dropped on Fordo and a second nuclear facility at Natanz ......... After the planes spent 18 hours in the air, all the targets were hit in just about 25 minutes before they exited Iran at 19:30 EDT (00:30 BST) to return to the US ......... In total, about 75 precision guided weapons and more than 125 US aircraft were used, and Secretary Hegseth claimed the mission provided "powerful and clear" destruction of Iran's nuclear capabilities. ......... "Despite the success of the operation tactically, it is unclear if it will achieve the goal of permanently setting back Iran's nuclear program."

US strikes on Iran trigger protests internationally
Trump speculates about regime change in Iran after US strikes
Israel says it struck Tehran's Evin prison and Fordo access routes The Israeli military has struck Tehran's notorious Evin prison and damaged parts of the facility, which holds many political detainees, Iran's judiciary says. ....... CCTV footage showed an explosion at one of the prison's gates ......... Israel's defence minister said it was hitting "regime targets and agencies of government repression" across Tehran, including Evin. ......... Iranian ballistic missiles also struck various locations across Israel on Monday. ....... Iran's health ministry says Israeli strikes have killed around 500 people so far, although one human rights group has put the death toll at 950....... Iranian missile strikes on Israeli cities have killed 24 people, according to Israeli authorities.......... As the planes approached Fordo and Natanz, the fighter jets swept in front of the bombers and fired strikes meant to suppress any surface-to-air missiles that Iran might muster ......... He suggested that the war could end with this one-off mission if Iran would give up its nuclear program and negotiate. ........ By Sunday afternoon, however, American officials had tempered the optimism of the night before, saying that Iran’s nuclear facilities might have been severely damaged, but not entirely destroyed. ........

Mr. Vance acknowledged that there are questions about the whereabouts of Iran’s stock of near-bomb-grade uranium.

....... “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’” he wrote, “but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???”

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