MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said on her show Monday evening that it appears the Trump administration is bound and determined to provoke a war with Iran, even going so far as to blame the Iranians for an attack another group has claimed credit for.
Having already claimed Iran bombed oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, the White House is also saying that Iran was behind a bombing in Afghanistan that wounded four members of the U.S. military.
Here’s the problem: The Taliban has claimed credit for the attack in Afghanistan. That led Maddow to remark:
“That’s an attack for which someone else entirely, the Taliban, claimed responsibility. The Trump administration is nevertheless saying, ‘No, we think that was Iran, too.'”
All of this, Maddow then added, feels a great deal like a rush to war on the part of President Donald Trump. And that certainly appears to be the case, as the Defense Department said yesterday it’s sending 1,000 additional troops to the Middle East:
“This latest announcement about 1,000 U.S. troops heading over, this follows a series of increasingly dramatic accusations from the Trump administration that seem to be intended to put us on a war footing with Iran.”
Even Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Maddow noted, seems ready to start a conflict with Iran:
“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was questioned sharply about that this weekend by Margaret Brennan on CBS News. She pointed out to him that the Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack and there’s been no evidence put forward by the administration to back up their new assertion that secretly it was really Iran who did that and that’s one of the reasons we need to be on this newly aggressive footing toward Iran. Secretary of State insisted that he can’t share the evidence, he can’t share any intelligence that gives him such confidence that Iran is actually really responsible for that attack. Not to mention all of the other attacks they put on this list to bolster the public perception that we are on some sort of escalating march to war with Iran that they are starting.”
Sounds an awful lot like what the Bush administration said in the weeks before it invaded Iraq in 2011: We have proof, but we can’t show it to you, so you’ll just have to trust us.
Trump has no one to blame for this escalation but himself. He tore up the Iran nuclear agreement and has surrounded himself with ultra right-wing hawks like National Security Adviser John Bolton. He’s also trying to deflect attention away from his low approval ratings and the fact that he may be on the verge of being impeached.
Don’t be surprised if the United States is in a full-scale war with Iran before the summer is over with.
Rachel Maddow lays out how the Trump administration is blaming Iran for attacks that other groups have already claimed credit for. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/mArkUjor0m
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) June 18, 2019
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