After President Donald Trump entered Israel’s war against Iran by ordering the U.S. military to bomb three of Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear sites, and Iran responded by launching missiles at a U.S. military base in Qatar resulting in no casualties, Trump announced on June 23 that a shaky ceasefire had been reached that could end the 12-day war. Israeli missile strikes and Iranian counter-attacks in the conflict killed more than 600 Iranians and 28 Israelis, with hundreds more injured on both sides.
On June 13, Israel began an intense bombing campaign against Iran, targeting the Islamic republic’s nuclear sites and military infrastructure, assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, and key figures in Iran’s military and intelligence leadership. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Iran was just weeks away from building a nuclear weapon, that assertion was contradicted by Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who testified before Congress in March that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapons program. Reports indicate that Iran likely removed enriched uranium and other equipment from the targeted sites before they were attacked by U.S. B-2 bombers.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Phyllis Bennis, director of the Institute for Policy Studies’ New Internationalism Project, who talks about President Trump’s order to launch U.S. air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities without the authorization of Congress. A decision, like President George W. Bush’s launch of America’s disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq, appeared to ignore intelligence that did not support the rationale for war.
We’re hearing the same things we heard from Colin Powell about “We break it, we own it. We have to be responsible for it. So regime change is going to have to be on the agenda.” It’s an extraordinary thing that these memories not only seem to have disappeared from all these people, but they have the expectation that none of the rest of us remember it either. That somehow this is all new and fresh. The idea that this is a terrible government and the people will welcome us with rice and flowers. Remember that one? That was a Rumsfeld line. “They will welcome us with rice and flowers.” How many times now have we heard that the people of Iran hate their government and they will rise up and support any U.S. bombing campaign? Well, it turns out that people are not so keen about another country coming and bombing their own country, killing their neighbors, destroying their homes and then believing somehow that that’s what leads to a happy population that is delighted to have a new U.S. chosen leader.
So right now at this moment, it seems that the idea of going further militarily and trying to carry out a military decapitation, if you will, of the leadership in Iran is not on the agenda. That could change within the hour. We’re seeing these kinds of flip-flops at breathtaking speed with no idea where it comes from. When President Trump says, as he has now said three or four times when people have questioned him about Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, the NDI, the top-ranking intelligence officer of the entire so-called intelligence community who has testified in Congress and who has essentially cut her political teeth in opposing these kinds of wars and in specifically saying that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, his answer was, “I think she’s wrong.” On another occasion, he said, “I don’t believe her.”
And somehow nobody in the press challenges him and says, “Wwll, excuse me, Mr. President, but she is in charge of our intelligence community. Where are you getting your information? Where does your counterintuitive information come from? If you have better intelligence than our intelligence community, shouldn’t you be sharing it with them? Shouldn’t you be sharing it with us? Where are you getting that information?”
None of that exists. It’s something that the president seems to just make up whole cloth. No one around him has indicated that they have any familiarity with any other countering intelligence. He just decided he doesn’t like it, so he’s not going to abide by it. He’s not going to build his policies on the actual intelligence. He’s going to do something else. What it is, we don’t know. He’s now bragging about a ceasefire. We’ll see. We’ll see whether there is a real ceasefire or not. So we just don’t know where any of this leads at this point.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Phyllis, just a last thought from you on really the root cause of why we’re in this situation today, why the world faces this crisis. It’s clear to many in this country and the world that this entire conflict is the responsibility of one man, Donald Trump, who unilaterally tore up the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) nuclear agreement in 2018 that was negotiated by the Obama administration with partners of European nations, Russia and China in 2015. We would not be here today if that agreement was not unilaterally abrogated by one Donald Trump.
For more information, visit the Institute for Policy Studies’ New Internationalism Project at ips-dc.org/new-internationalism.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Phyllis Bennis (26:17) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
For the best listening experience and to never miss an episode, subscribe to Between The Lines on your favorite podcast app or platform.
Or subscribe to our Between The Lines and Counterpoint Weekly Summary.
