Sources Briefed on Iran War Say U.S. Has No Plans for What Comes Next |
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Sources Briefed on Iran War Say U.S. Has No Plans for What Comes Next
“The administration doesn’t have a clue. They do not have an actual, real rationale, endgame, or plan for the aftermath of this.”
The Trump administration’s war on Iran is reckless and ill-planned, four government officials briefed on the attacks told The Intercept.
Even in classified briefings, Trump administration officials laid out no clear vision for the U.S. war on Iran or its aftermath, the sources said.
“The administration doesn’t have a clue. They do not have an actual, real rationale, endgame, or plan for the aftermath of this,” one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters, told The Intercept.
“There is no thought process into what any of this means long term,” said another. “It’s not coordinated regime change. It’s just ‘bomb them until they’re less of a threat.’”
Asked about the administration’s plan for Iran after the war, that official responded: “Whatever.”
Internal criticism of the attacks comes as President Donald Trump teased that the war could go on “forever” despite promising his administration would avoid Middle East “forever wars.” Trump has floated the idea of de facto American rule of Iran through a puppet regime, similar to the leaders who have run Venezuela since the U.S. attacked that country and kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro, in January. “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect scenario,” Trump said on Sunday. “Leaders can be picked.”
“I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela,” Trump told Axios on Thursday.
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Officials predicted that the war would have negative consequences for decades, echoing the results of the last U.S. ouster of an Iranian leader. One of the sources, who has experience in the Middle East and talked to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity, likened this conflict to the 2003 Iraq War, which was also illegal, ill-planned, and resulted in decades of regional instability.
Trump has repeatedly called for an Iranian uprising in the wake of the U.S. attacks. “The hour of your freedom is at hand,” he declared on Saturday. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” But behind closed doors, the U.S. has made it clear that support for would-be Iranian revolutionaries isn’t certain — or even likely. In classified briefings, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the U.S. might intervene to support the Iranian people if an opportunity for ushering in democracy presented itself, but that the U.S. was primarily focused on a discrete set of tactical goals to degrade Iran’s military power, two of the government officials told The Intercept.
One of the sources briefed on the attacks evoked the 1953 coup in which the U.S. and British governments toppled Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The overthrow of Iran’s first and only democratically elected government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his dreaded secret police, SAVAK. “Trump’s history only goes back as far as the revolution. But 1979 started in 1953. And this [war] goes back to that [coup],” the source told The Intercept, referencing the 1979 Iranian revolution.
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Trump has also referenced the 1979 revolution, but not the anti-American backlash that fed it. “You go back 37 years, really 47 years, close........