How is it possible that the White House doesn’t know what everyone paying attention seems to know? And why is the administration still listening to the same people who lost Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iran Round One?
As both sides escalate strikes on civilian and military targets, the Pentagon is boosting the number of military aircraft in the Middle East, according to the Washington Post. “The US is planning for a wider war,” an unnamed US official told the paper, while warning that the American military effort would be limited by dwindling air defense interceptor and missile supplies, which had been actively used up during the previous stages of the war.
“We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that,” the official told the Post. Military experts cited in the report said Washington remains unprepared for potential ground operations inside Iran–an option US President Donald Trump has refused to rule out.
On Friday, Axios reported that Washington had notified Israel that it was sending dozens of additional refueling planes ahead of a possible expansion of operations against Iran. According to the article, Trump was presented with several new military options, including strikes on Iranian power plants and further attacks on nuclear sites to bury Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium even deeper.
Saeid Golkar, an expert on Iran’s security services, told the Wall Street Journal that the situtation risks getting completely out of hand. “This escalation is rapidly intensifying and getting out of control,” he said. “There is a risk we will go back to a total war even if neither side wants it.”
A CNN analysis suggested that “a decisive US military victory over Iran seems a distant prospect.” In echoing remarks, Sina Toosi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, warned that a ground operation “in extreme summer heat… against a fully mobilized military and a population that has largely rallied around the war effort, would be an extraordinary gamble practically guaranteed to be a historic disaster.”
As we saw at the presentation of the World Cup trophy yesterday, Trump doesn’t seem to understand when it’s time to get off the stage.
Roth Note: Narcissist-in-Chief Trump seems to have to involve himself in everything. We elected a Caesar and got a fool. As for the reader who may remain in the Trump cult, I will acknowledge that some good things for the American people have resulted from his presidency, but suspect them being more accidental than intentional. They seem to me mostly done in order to appeal to Trump’s vanity.
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