America First – We Hardly Knew Ye

The Donald called Fed Chairman Powell a “numbskull” last week and deservedly so. But to paraphrase an old adage, when the cap fits said numbskulls tend to wear it themselves.

Surely, that’s where we are this morning upon Israel’s reprehensible attack on Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities and decapitation of its military and scientific leadership. Self-evidently, the attack was well known to Trump and tacitly greenlighted by him during the course of several conversations this past week with Netanyahu himself.

And that’s no armchair surmise. The Donald has been yapping like a banshee this morning telling one and all reporters that the attack fits like hand-in-glove to his “art of the deal” maneuvers. It may look like more war but its actually just part of the Donald’s brilliant pursuit of peace. Says he.

Thus, he told CNN’s Dana Bash that he had given Iran 60 days to capitulate to his demands regarding a new nuke treaty, and yesterday was day 61. The implication, of course, is that he gave them fair warning and therefore Tehran needed a 2X4 between the eyes for failing to satisfy the Great Dealmaker on the Potomac on a timely basis.

Likewise, ABC’s Trump-hating Jonathan Karl also got a heads up to the effect that –

I just spoke to President Trump and asked him about the Israeli attack on Iran. Here’s what he told me: “I think it’s been excellent.  We gave them a chance and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come. a lot more.”

Moreover, just in case the message through these ordinarily hostile reporters wasn’t clear, the Donald let loose on social media a fusillade of bombast, bravado and sheer juvenile depravity that has never before been issued from the Oval Office in such raw and unfiltered form.

No, MAGA fanboys, these aren’t the art-of-the-deal words of even a blustering real estate developer from the backstreets of Queens. Indeed, we can’t imagine even in the Queens that you would expect an amicable cancellation of your plumber’s bill after you put a contract out on his brother-in-law.

And yet and yet. What in the hell is the Donald doing bringing America to the brink of yet another Forever War against a country that is in no way, shape or form a threat to the Homeland Security of the United States?

Indeed, the whole Iranian imbroglio is a direct repudiation of the entire America First proposition. Iran’s capacity to inflict military harm on the US homeland amounts to zero, nichts, nada, nugatory, nein and nyet. So why is POTUS giving bellicosity a new name by threatening that American weapons will be used to wipe Iran from the face of the earth?

For want of doubt, here are the facts about Iran’s nonexistent military threat to the American homeland. First, it has no blue water Navy such as aircraft carriers or world-scale cruisers, destroyers and attack submarines.

Instead, its Navy operates almost exclusively in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea and consists of a mix of small, coastal patrol boats including corvettes, frigates and mini submarines, totaling at most 100,000 tons of displacement. That figure is just 2% of the 4.5 million tons of Blue Water capacity embedded in the US Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers, 70 destroyers, 22 cruisers and 66 attack submarines, among others.

Secondly, Iran also has no long range bombers at all with a range of more than 2,800 kilometers. Even then its most advanced longer-range aircraft, the Su-24MK, is for the most part not operational, owing to lack of spare parts and maintenance. Only 20 of possibly 40 of these longer range aircraft are currently believed to be air worthy combatants.

Finally, while it does have upwards of 1,400 to 2,700 short and medium range missiles, none of these have the range to come anywhere near the continental US. That’s because the distance between Tehran and Washington DC, Chicago and Denver is 10,050, 10,300 and 11,100 kilometers, respectively, but Iran posses zero intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of spanning that distance.

In fact, the range on its numerous short range (SRBM) and medium range (MRBM) missiles is only 300 to 2,000 kilometers. That is, the maximum extent of Iran’s military attack perimeter is not even the Strait of Gibraltar, which is 5,000 kilometers from Tehran!

Iran’s Inventory Of Short And Medium Range Ballistic Missiles

Sources: Estimates are derived from U.S. Central Command (2023 testimony by Gen. Kenneth McKenzie), Iran Watch, CSIS reports, and posts on X. Quantities are approximate due to Iran’s secretive program.

So when we say zero military threat to the US homeland we mean exactly that. The only thing Iran can really threaten is a limited number of US bases, military personnel and naval ships that Washington has foolishly put in harm’s way in the middle east, Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Mediterranean.

Yet and yet. All of those military assets are about the operations of Empire, not the military security of the American homeland situated between the great ocean moats.

So what we really have unfolding in front of our very eyes is a real world demonstration of the folly of Empire, global alliances and allies and the related costly, unnecessary military footprint that spans the globe. Indeed, even as we write American lives at these unnecessary middle east military locations are being put in harms’ way by a decision in Washington to help Israel intercept the Iranian missiles that have been launched by Tehran in response to Israel’s foolish attack – with weapons also supplied and largely funded by Washington.

The very idea that Netanyahu had no choice but to preemptively attack Israel because it faces an existential threat from a purported imminent Iranian “breakout” of nuclear weapons is not merely a blatant lie; it’s unadulterated horse shit.

Exactly 90 days ago, in fact, the one utterly honest official in the vast US intelligence community, Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, made it very clear that there is no Iranian “breakout” that even remotely justifies Israel’s blatant act of war:

“We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Supreme Leader Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,”

So there is no way in god’s green earth that the above declaration has changed in three months, thereby purportedly necessitating last night’s attack. To the contrary, the attack was “preemptive” alright, but what was being pre-empted was the slight possibility that the sixth negotiating session between the White House and Iran scheduled for this weekend might have led to a “breakthrough” of another kind – that is, a pathway to a detente between Washington and Tehran.

So there you have it. The decades long Israeli lie about Iran’s nuclear ambitions was in danger of being exposed and discredited for all the world to see. So once again the tail of a reckless “ally” wagged the dog of Washington’s War Machine into yet another chapter of death and mayhem.

Moreover, Tulsi Gabbard’s forthright report of three months ago was just yet another reiteration of what the national intelligence community has been consistently saying since 2007. That’s when the National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) issued at that time caught even George W. Bush short just as he was on the verge of attacking Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons sites in 20o8.

To remind, these periodic NIEs represent a consensus of all 17 US intelligence agencies on salient issues. And on the matter of Iran’s nuclear weapons program the 2007 edition could not have been more unequivocal:

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program…

Moreover, the documentary proof of that statement was thoroughly investigated by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) after the 2015 Obama nuke deal. The latter gave the IAEA full access to Iran’s facilities and records. Its report then re-validated that the Iranian weapons program was indeed disbanded in 2003.

Likewise, there is the aforementioned matter of “Dubya’s” memoirs. Near the end of his term in office, George W. Bush was under immense pressure from his vast stable of neocon warmongers to authorize a bombing campaign against Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. But once the 2007 NIEs came out, even our “mission accomplished” President in a bomber jacket was caught up short, as he confessed in his memoir, Decision Points.

Most revealingly, he complained bitterly that the NIE “tied my hands on the military side” and called its findings “eye-popping.”

Spelling out how the 2007 NIE had kept the US bombers at their bases, President Bush concluded with this kicker:

“But after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”

Well, yes. But even if Dubya couldn’t make the case, the neocons never stopped trying until they found their mark in Donald J. Trump. And that gets us to the current fraught moment, which follows inexorably upon Trump’s foolish cancellation of Obama’s nuke deal during his first stint in the Oval Office – notwithstanding the fact that the IAEA had affirmed repeatedly that Iran was complying with the agreement.

Indeed, it is worth recalling the completely bogus reasons giving for the 2018 action by Trump because the same lies and distortions stand behind the White House’s current posture of green-lightening and supporting Netanyahu’s dangerous aggression.

In this context, it should be evident to all except blind MAGA fanboys that on most issues the Donald knows little and studies less. Instead, he just declares things to be so, whether true or not; and more often than not to be the fruit of “bad deals” made by his predecessors.

But when it comes to Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the Donald’s first term whopper was just plain risible. He called it the very worst deal in history including England’s so-called surrender at Munich.

Of course, that was absolutely irrelevant because Iran is not remotely comparable to Nazi Germany. In fact, Iran is a nearly bankrupt country that has no capability whatsoever, as we have shown, to threaten the security and safety of the citizens of Spokane WA, Peoria IL or anywhere else in the USA.

Its $425 billion GDP is the size of Indiana’s; its 500,000 man military is only slightly larger than the US national guard (now occupied elsewhere); and its $25 billion defense budget amounts to just 2.5% of US defense spending.

And unlike Hitler at Munich who got most of what he wanted, the Iranians at Lausanne (where the Obama deal was negotiated) gave up almost all of what they had. That is, they made huge concessions on nearly every issue that makes a difference including the number of permitted centrifuges at Natanz, the status of the Fordow and Arak nuclear facilities, the disposition of their enriched uranium stockpiles, the intrusiveness and scope of the inspections regime and on the matter of Iran’s so-called “breakout” capacity.

While every signatory of the non-proliferation treaty has the right to civilian enrichment, Iran had agreed to reduce the number of centrifuges by 70% from 20,000 to 6,000 and actually did so after the deal took effect. Moreover, it effective enrichment capacity had been reduced by significantly more because the remaining Natanz centrifuges consisted exclusively of its most rudimentary, outdated equipment – first-generation IR-1 knockoffs of 1970s European models.

Not only was Iran not allowed to build or develop newer centrifuge models, but even those remaining were permitted to enrich uranium to a limit of only 3.75% purity. That is to say, to the generation of fissile material for power plants that is not remotely capable of reaching bomb grade concentrations of 90%.

Equally importantly, the agreement eliminated enrichment activity entirely at Fordow. The latter was Iran’s only truly advanced, hardened site that could withstand an onslaught of Israeli or US bunker busters, and it was agreed that zero enrichment activity would take place there, subject to full IAEA inspection.

Instead, Fordow became a small time underground science lab devoted to medical isotope research and crawling with international inspectors. In effectively decommissioning Fordow and thereby eliminating any capacity to cheat – what Iran got in return was at best a fig leave of salve for its national pride.

And yet and yet. Even that was too much for the Israelis hardliners, who bombed the Fordow labs to smithereens last night—just to make sure.

The disposition of the heavy water reactor at Arak was even more dispositive. For years, the War Party had falsely waved the bloody shirt of because “plutonium”. That is, the civilian nuclear reactor being built there was of Canadian “heavy water” design rather than GE or Westinghouse “light water” model. Accordingly, when finished it would have generated plutonium as a waste product rather than conventional spent nuclear fuel rods.

In truth, the Iranians couldn’t have bombed a beehive with the Arak plutonium because you need a reprocessing plant to convert it into bomb grade material. Needless to say, Iran had no such plant, no plan to build one, and no prospect for getting the requisite technology and equipment.

But even that bogeyman was dispatched by the Obama nuke deal that the Donald saw fit to shit can the first time around. The 2015 deal required Iran to destroy or export the heavy water reactor core of its existing plant and replace it with a core that cannot produce material which can be reprocessed into weapons grade plutonium. All of these requirements were subject to rigorous international inspection and, in fact, were actually complied with before Trump cancelled the deal.

As to its already extant enriched uranium stock piles, including some 20% medical-grade material, 97% of this material was to be disposed of, and that requirement was complied with, too. Iran ended up retaining only 300 kilograms of its 10,000 kilogram stockpile—an amount that could be readily stored in the Donald’s wine cellar at Mar-a-Lago.

The deal’s real clincher, however, had been Iran’s agreement to what amounted to a 20-year cradle-to-grave inspection regime encompassing the entire nuclear fuel chain. International inspectors were allowed to visit Iran’s uranium mines and milling and fuel preparation operations; its enrichment equipment manufacturing and fabrication plants; and the storage facilities for its centrifuge rotors and bellows production.

Beyond that, Iran had also agreed to and had complied with a robust program of inspections to prevent smuggling of materials into the country to illicit sites outside of the framework facilities. That encompassed imports of nuclear fuel cycle equipment and materials, including so-called “dual use” items which are essentially civilian imports that could be repurposed to nuclear uses, even peaceful domestic power generation.

In short, even a Houdini could not have secretly broken-out of the box contained in the 2015 agreement and then confronted the world with some kind of fait accompli threat to use the bomb.

To do so would have required diversion of thousands of tons of domestically produced or imported uranium and the illicit milling and upgrading of such material at secret fuel preparation plants. It would also have involved the secret construction of new, hidden enrichment operations of such massive scale that they could house more than 10,000 new centrifuges. It would have also required the building of these massive spinning arrays from tens of thousands of components smuggled into the country and transported to remote enrichment operations – all undetected by the massive complex of spy satellites overhead and covert US and Israeli intelligence agency operatives on the ground in Iran.

Finally, it would have required the activation from scratch of a weaponization program which has been dormant according to the aforementioned US National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) for more than a decade. And then, that the Iranian regime – after cobbling together one or two bombs without testing them or their launch vehicles – would nevertheless have been willing to threaten to use them sight unseen.

Needless to say, to have shit-canned the 2015 agreement you needed to be a raging, certifiable, paranoid boob, at best. Or something very different than the America First champion so loudly advertised by the Donald himself.

There simply was no way that the Iranians could have broken out of the control box established by the 2015 nuke deal. And even if they had managed to defy these immensely prohibitive constraints and get one or a even a few nuclear bombs, what in the world would they do with them?

Drop them on Tel Aviv? That would absolutely insure Israel’s navy and air force would unleash its 200 nukes and thereby incinerate the entire industrial base and major population centers of Iran.

At the end of the day, the idea that deterrence would fail even if a future Iranian regime were to defy all the odds, and also defy the fatwa against nuclear weapons issued by their own Supreme Leader, amounts to one of the most preposterous Big Lies ever concocted.

So in cancelling the deal, what Trump really did was embrace the immense tissue of unwarranted demonization of Iran that the Empire Firsters had fabricated over the  course of three decades. And now after unilaterally abrogating the 2015 deal and slapping brutal sanctions on Iran that has left its economy badly bruised, it is claimed that in recent months the Iranians have not complied with the agreement Trump canceled, and have therefore been sanctioned by the IAEA,

Well, for crying out loud, why would they?! Iran isn’t living up to the letter of the Nuclear nonproliferation treaty perhaps because Israel, which isn’t even a signatory and which has some 200 odd nukes illegally, has threatened to obliterate even the remnant of a civilian nuclear program that Tehran still possesses.

Indeed, seven years later Trump is repeating the same errors by green-lighting the Israeli attack rather than doing the one thing that has been in the so-called “tool kit” of the White House all along.

The fact is, Trump could have told Netanyahu that if he proceeded with the attack right in the middle of his negotiations to revive the nuke deal, then the $4 billion per year of US aid would be cut off, no munitions or spare parts would be supplied to the IDF and the US would introduce in the UN a resolution condemning any Israeli attack.

Needless to say, that would have stopped this chapter of the Forever Wars cold. But, instead, we are now stumbling into a far more dangerous conflagration than ever before – all on the basis of the “breakout” lie that has been promulgated by the neocons and Israel Firsters for decades now.

As a reminder, he is a time line of the hoary lie that has been repeated over and over again from as early as 1995. The claim that a Iranian nuke was just around the corner via this NYT story was a blatant lie that has never stopped replicating.

Indeed, the above was just the beginning. It’s gone on and on and on for the last thirty years.

And now we have the Washington War Machine lining up behind a reckless attempt to defend that lie – just before Israeli’s own best friend ever in the Oval Office might have stumbled into a deal with Iran that would have finally marked this Big Lie’s final demise.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.