President Donald Trump continued to insult his intelligence chiefs during an upcoming Super Bowl interview with Face The Nation host Margaret Brennan on Sunday, going so far as to claim his own people think Iran is a “wonderful kindergarten,” whatever that means.
Earlier this week, Trump lashed out at his own intelligence officials after they testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iran is complying with the nuclear deal Trump withdrew from last year despite his claims that the Iranians are in violation of it.
In fact, Iran has been complying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action achieved by former President Barack Obama since implementation, which is why the other signatories of the deal remain committed to it despite U.S. pressure to abandon it.
During an interview that will air on Sunday prior to the Super Bowl, Trump continued throwing the intelligence community under the bus by once again insisting that ISIS is nearly completely destroyed and said that he intends to go by his “own counsel” instead of listening to the experts.
“You have the caliphate almost knocked out,” Trump claimed. “We will be announcing in the not too distant future 100 percent of the caliphate, which is the area — the land — the area, 100. We’re at 99 percent right now, we’ll be at 100.”
“My intelligence people, if they said in fact that Iran is a wonderful kindergarten, I disagree with them 100 percent,” Trump continued. “It is a vicious country that kills many people. We were in many, many locations in the Middle East, in huge difficulty. Every single one of them was caused by the number one terrorist nation in the world which is Iran. So when my intelligence people tell me how wonderful Iran is — if you don’t mind, I’m going to just go by my own counsel.”
In fact, Iran is not responsible for every act of terrorism that caused us to get involved in the Middle East. It’s like Trump is trying to blame them for 9/11, which was actually committed by Saudi nationals, and is the reason why the United States went to war in Afghanistan.
And Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, nor CIA Director Gina Hapsel, ever called Iran a “wonderful kindergarten.”
What they did say is that Iran is complying with the nuclear agreement and that Trump’s withdrawal and sanctions are causing Iran to consider violating it to pursue a nuclear weapon.
“We do not believe Iran is currently undertaking the key activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device,” Coats said. “While we do not believe Iran is currently undertaking the key activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device, Iranian officials have publicly threatened to push the boundaries of JCPOA restrictions if Iran does not gain the tangible financial benefits it expected from the deal,” Coats continued.
Haspel agreed with that assessment.
“At the moment technically they are in compliance but we do see them debating amongst themselves as they fail to realize the economic benefits they hoped for from the deal,” she said.
No one is saying that Iran is not doing bad things in the Middle East, but the JCPOA prevented them from pursuing a nuclear weapon that could be used in acts of terrorism against the United States and our allies. That was the whole point of the deal, and it had been a goal long sought by our government, the State Department, our military and our intelligence community. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the deal for no reason only makes the United States and the world less safe and making bizarre claims such as accusing his intel officials of believing Iran is a “wonderful kindergarten” only further demonstrates that Trump has no clue what he’s doing. And that makes him more of a threat to national security than the Iranians ever were.
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