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Kyle Orton
@KyleWOrton
, 16 tweets, 8 min read Read on Twitter
So ...

■ Obama never would do anything to hinder #Iran, let alone strike directly

■ Even on PJW's terms, Trump can hardly claim credit for sparing people from orders he gave, BUT

■ Trump never gave orders to attack; this is messaging in search of a summit and "better deal"
DoD prepared contingencies for strikes on #Iran, and Trump turned them down when asked for approval.

Some officials got the impression on the day Trump supported strikes, but in the middle of that day he also said Iran's attack could be an "accident". washingtonpost.com/politics/i-sto…
Note: nothing got past the planning stage.

Trump never gave an order to attack #Iran that was revoked.

The administration's spinning it that way in the aftermath via the controlled leak is part of the attempt to gain leverage without actually doing anything to get to new talks.
This is also important to point out: Trump claimed that while #Iran would pay no military price for its attacks on the U.S./allies over the last ten days, new sanctions had been imposed. They have not.

Lack of a clear strategy is to say the least of it.
Again, what Trump wants is a summit and a "better deal" with #Iran:

"Trump … indicated he was … willing to quickly reach a deal with Iran that he said would bolster the country’s flagging economy. 'We will call it "Let's make Iran great again".'" reuters.com/article/us-mid…
Trump confirms: he simply did not give the order to go ahead, he never gave an order for military action against #Iran that was revoked.

Trump here also undoes the after-the-fact attempt to pressure Iran via the leak indicating Trump came *this close* to striking them.
Trump told NBC on 21 June that the narrative of a revoked order is mistaken; there were no planes in the air and no order was given to strike at #Iran because he thought it was "disproportionate" to kill people in retaliation for downing an unmanned drone. nbcnews.com/politics/polit…
On "Meet the Press" today, Trump said he'd meet #Iran's leaders with "no pre-conditions". All he wants is "They cannot have a nuclear weapon. It's not about the straits", i.e. regional subversion. "You know, a lot of people covered it incorrectly." axios.com/trump-iran-nuc…
Trump has previously said he would meet #Iran's leaders with "no preconditions", e.g. here in July 2018. reuters.com/article/us-ira…
The Iranians claimed in SEPT 2018 that the Trump people "send us messages every day" asking for negotiations [reut.rs/2RsokuG] and have claimed that Trump asked eight times to meet Rowhani on the sidelines of the UN in SEPT 2017 [nyti.ms/2L4mSyJ]
SEPT 2018: "Trump does not want a war … Trump is simply seeking to upstage [Obama] … Trump might have cut that deal a year ago, if only Iranian officials had said yes to his multiple entreaties to meet, so many that the Iranians 'thought it was a joke'." thedailybeast.com/team-trump-fea…
Trump reportedly told Bolton at the outset, "I'm not going to let you start a war with Iran," or "I know in your last job, you wanted to start a couple wars. I'm not going to let you do that," depending on the account. #pt
It's almost certainly Bolton that Trump is referring in these reported remarks in @WSJ: "'These people want to push us into a war, and it's so disgusting,' Mr. Trump told one confidant about his own inner circle of advisers. 'We don’t need any more wars'." wsj.com/articles/trump…
May 2019: Trump: "What they should be doing is calling me up ... we can make a deal ... we just don't want them to have nuclear weapons ... and we would help put them back into great shape ... I want them to be strong ... very much like North Korea". realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/…
15 May 2019: "Trump prefers a diplomatic approach to resolving tensions ... Trump 'wants to talk to the Iranians; he wants a deal' and is open to negotiation with the Iranian government, the [senior administration] official said." washingtonpost.com/world/national…
"Trump was set to meet with Swiss government officials on [16 May 2019] in an effort to open a communications channel with Iran. ... Last week, the White House contacted Swiss officials and gave them a phone number for Iran to call Trump directly." timesofisrael.com/trump-swiss-le…
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Kyle Orton
@KyleWOrton
Whatever the details of this attack in the Gulf of Oman, the essentials are plain enough, as with the rocket attack on the Saudi airport, Fujairah, and the rest of it. #Iran is demonstrating that it can do as it pleases without incurring meaningful reprisals from U.S./allies.
For all the talk of "maximum pressure", all the sanctions and the threats from U.S. officials, the reality has long been obvious: where it matters, on the ground in the northern Middle East, #Iran runs the show, and does so without the U.S. really even trying to inconvenience it.
Putting aside the sheer confusion of the Trump policy and messaging on #Iran (just look at this ) the focus on the sanctions was always bizarre. Cash is fungible and IRGC is (relatively) cheap to run. Once the U.S. opted out of hard power, that was that.
Read 3 tweets
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Kyle Orton
@KyleWOrton
July 1979: Ibrahim Yazdi, foreign minister of the new Islamic Republic of #Iran, is interviewed by BBC. An extremely unctuous man (and one soon purged for being too "moderate"), he lies about the governance structure, Khomeini's responsibility for Hoveyda's murder, and much else.
Immediately after the revolution, several figures from the Liberation Movement of Iran—Ibrahim Yazdi (FM), Mehdi Bazargan (PM), Sadegh Ghotbzadeh (later FM)—were given leading positions. LMI had given Khomeini access to a larger audience; once they were unneeded they were purged.
The U.S. Embassy takeover in NOV 1979 was precisely to force Bazargan—who had done more than perhaps anyone to manipulate U.S. AMB Sullivan, convincing him to help usher the Shah out and Khomeini in—to resign. Khomeini felt Bazargan was reducing hostilities with America too much.
Read 6 tweets
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Kyle Orton
@KyleWOrton
July 1978, NYT: SAVAK is both ubiquitous and ineffective; "many" #Iran protesters "express pro-American sentiments" and credit Jimmy Carter with forcing the #Shah's liberalization program [which began before Carter took office]; Bazargan quoted throughout cia.gov/library/readin…
September 1978: Gregory F. Rose suggests that the #Shah's government and secret police operated a more repressive system than the KGB in the Soviet Union. cia.gov/library/readin… This was the kind of nonsense being widely printed at the time.
September 1980: CIA report on the "disappearance" of Imam Musa al-Sadr; doesn't know much and even now has not redacted huge parts of it: cia.gov/library/readin…
Read 5 tweets

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