The Biden administration plans to station Marines on commercial ships in the Persian Gulf. This could trigger war with Iran, but most of the mainstream U.S. press is not paying attention.
Seven U.S. foreign policy hawks, with decades of disaster behind them, are urging the Biden administration to threaten a military attack on Iran.
An AIPAC letter aimed at keeping Biden from returning to the Iran deal got only 43 signatures, which shows that Biden has the political capital he needs to reenter the deal. But he has shown a timidity, born of attacks by the rightwing Israel lobby, and won’t even lift sanctions for humanitarian purposes related to the pandemic, as he urged Donald Trump to do a year ago.
You can watch the cable news networks for hours without stumbling across a single report about Iran. Which means that if the U.S. and Israel do attack before 12 noon on January 20, or if a tragic accident amid the tightened tensions in the regions triggers an outbreak of violence, the American public will have no idea of what just happened.
Trump is trying to tie Biden’s hands against returning to Iran deal with “spider web” of sanctions that Democratic hawks won’t reverse, says Sina Toossi of National Iranian American Council. And Israel may take it into its own hands to try to kill the deal in the transition period. “I’m worried that Israel and Saudi Arabia might view the rhetoric from the Trump administration as a green light for Israel to launch a strike on Iran,” Toossi says.
Neither the US political establishment nor the people want a war with Iran, and Donald Trump knows it’s a political disaster. But 9 years ago Obama was seen as untrustworthy on Iran, and the lead reporter on the Middle East Jeffrey Goldberg goaded him to attack Iran with a report that Israel was going to attack Iran, a report that proved false.