PresidentDonald Trumphas been warning Iran for weeks thatan American "armada" of warshipswas on the way, trying to leverage the threat of military strikes into a deal for Iran to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons.
Trump casts the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to the Middle East. He's probably right about that.
But Trump also insiststhat his last military strikes on Iran, eight months ago, "obliterated" the country's nuclear program. And his White House team denounced as "fake news" reports that the June strikes on three sites only set back Iran's nuclear program "by a few months."
Just this past week, Trump twice spoke of Iran's nuclear program as a thing of the past, while also threatening new military strikes to destroy what he claims to have already destroyed.
Which Trump are we supposed to believe here? And – yes – I think not believing either version is an option.
The president used his Feb. 19 introductory speechat the first meeting of his ironically named new "Board of Peace"to brag about America's "magnificent" B-2 bombers, which wereused in the June 21 strikeson three Iranian nuclear facilities.
"It went into Iran and it totally decimated the nuclear potential,"Trump said of the bombers. "When it decimated that, all of a sudden, we had peace in the Middle East."
So, job done, right? Not so fast.
Trump,speaking later that day to journalists on Air Force One, said he was setting a "pretty much maximum" deadline of 10 to 15 days for Iran to make a deal, while flatly refusing to say whether the goal of military action would be to eliminate the country's nuclear program.
If he sticks to that timeframe – always a crapshoot with this impulsive president – America will have a deal or a war with Iran by March 6 at the latest. That could give Trump some time to get his story straight.
Source: Drudge Report
