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Long thread, sorry, has been coming since autumn 2016, when I tried to explain to many undergrads what Brexit means, and the election of Trump. And added that when Trump would find a PM in BoJo there would be war over Iran. I've got those students as witnesses. And written record
At a news roundtable in 2014 Pompeo claimed that military strikes could be highly successful in destroying Iran’s nuclear capacity: “It is under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity. This is not an insurmountable task for the coalition forces.”
In April 2015, Senator Cotton told USA Today that he was confident military strikes would be effective and “air and naval bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities would in fact work.”
Following Donald Trump’s election, Cotton told the Washington Post in an interview that the United States has a “credible military option” with respect to Iran, analogizing to past Israeli and U.S. air strikes in the Middle East.
In private Pompeo disagreed with a detailed CIA briefing that he received Spring 2017, which concluded that Iran was complying with the Iran Deal and that the deal made it substantially harder for Iran to build an atomic weapon.
He reportedly wasn’t impressed, saying: “Good…But we know they’re cheating anyway—we’re just not seeing it.”
When Pompeo released 470,000 documents obtained in the Bin Laden raid, his aim was to create the public perception of a link between Iran and Al Qaeda.
The documents, however, “do not alter the fundamental and longstanding understanding of the consistently tense, and occasionally openly hostile, relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda."
Later on in 2017 Cotton stated that "Iran now is by all accounts about a year away from getting a nuclear weapon...I don’t think we can wait eight to thirteen years."
In December 2017, the White House created a plan to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with then CIA Director Mike Pompeo. "This move would likely carry significant implications for the administration’s Iran policy, which might shift toward a more aggressive posture."
In December 2017 too, the Iranian American Council was very clear: "Trump’s Muddled Iran Policy Is Headed For Failure...Not surprisingly, Trump’s National Security Strategy is full of hostile bluster and rhetoric with shockingly little substance".
In May 2018, Pompeo unveiled the administration's "Plan B" for countering Iran, "a new framework that's going to address the totality of Iran's threats".
In his visits to Israel and the Persian Gulf in the summer of 2018, Pompeo reassured his audiences that the United States is determined to maintain “maximum pressure” on Iran and to make Iran pay for its regional behavior.
In Dec 18, Pompeo condemned the Security Council for its failure to restrain Iranian missile tests: “The US is going to continue to be relentless in building a coalition of responsible nations who are serious in confronting the Iran regime’s reckless ballistic missile activity.”
In May 2019, the Trump administration this month ordered the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group, bombers and Patriot missiles to the Middle East, citing intelligence about possible Iranian preparations to attack U.S. forces or interests.
On 2 June 2019, the Trump administration has tightened economic sanctions on Iran, ordered 1,500 additional troops to the Persian Gulf and revised military plans against Iran.
Today, 13 June, the US blames Iran for attacks on oil tankers. Surely a future PM Boris Johnson will be very willing to provide 'evidence' #historyrepeats
When in 2016 Iran’s military captured ten American sailors after they mistakenly strayed into Iranian waters, Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif jumped on the phone in minutes and worked out the sailors’ release in hours. #justsaying
