By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
Remember when Donald Trump said on the campaign trail that Jared Kushner would play no part in his second term?
Now, his “advice” is reportedly guiding our country into war.
Donald Trump’s decision to order airstrikes against Iran will hinge in part on the judgment of Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, about whether Tehran is stalling over a deal to relinquish its capacity to produce nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the matter.
The president has not made a final determination on any strikes, as the administration prepares for Iran to send its latest proposal this week, ahead of what officials have described as a last-ditch round of negotiations scheduled for Thursday in Geneva.
Those talks will be led by Witkoff and Kushner, whose assessment on the likelihood of a deal will shape Trump’s calculus. If there is no deal, Trump has told advisers he is considering limited strikes to pressure Iran and, failing that, a far larger attack to force regime change.
A US official said on Monday that Witkoff was part of the group advising Trump on his decision about how to proceed with Iran and had been involved in all meetings related to the matter.
Trump has received multiple briefings on military options, the people said, including most recently on Wednesday in the White House Situation Room. He has also solicited views from a broad range of officials in the West Wing in recent weeks on what he should do with Iran.
The other main advisers include the vice-president, JD Vance; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; the CIA director, John Ratcliffe; the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth; Gen Dan Caine, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.
Vance has presented both sides of the argument for airstrikes. But he has pressed Caine on the possible risks, not least because he has been far less confident about the likelihood of success with attacking Iran than he was about the operation to capture the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.
The way this is framed to make Vance look good makes me think that he, or perhaps someone in his circle of influence, leaked it.
Caine’s concern has centered on the low stockpile of anti-missile systems, the people said. After Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites last year, the US fired 30 Patriot missiles to intercept Iranian counterattacks, the largest single use of those missiles in US history.
Those counterattacks were limited in scope. But, this time, Iran has vowed to retaliate as hard as possible in response to any US attack, and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned last week that he had the ability to sink a US warship.
Caine has come across as more vocal about his concerns inside the Pentagon than when he has briefed Trump, in what officials have privately speculated as an effort to not appear to be advocating for a particular course of action, a person familiar with the matter said.
There was a report published earlier this month in an outlet called Modern Diplomacy claiming Iran can now track US stealth fighter jets using a Chinese-supplied radar system. In theory, that could give them a short window to potentially shoot them down.
I’m rather skeptical.
Regardless, Iran showed in the Twelve-Day War that they’re willing and able to strike Israel directly in response to US/Israeli aggression, and so far they’ve given no indications they’re going to “capitulate.”