Is Iran Nuke Deal in Offing?
June 26—Sources close to the White House say they believe that an acceptable deal to formally end Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions could be reached quickly, as President Donald Trump announced yesterday that there will be a new round of talks between the U.S. and Iran next week.
“We’re going to talk to them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement. I don’t know,” Trump said at a press conference following the annual NATO summit at The Hague. “I could get a statement that they’re not going to go nuclear. We’re probably going to ask for that, but they’re not going to be doing it anyway.”
Trump then reiterated: “We may sign an agreement, [but] I don’t care if I have an agreement or not.”
The sources say that Trump very much does care about reaching an agreement to "put a cap" on what has happened. While the president believes that the combination of Israeli and then U.S. bunker-busting strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have effectively destroyed Iran's nuclear weapons program, "getting a deal in place would end all the chatter about what Iran might or might not do in the future and whether it would try to rebuild the program," said a source.
Netanyahu’s Preemptive Strike and Trump’s Response
According to these sources, and others with contacts in the government of Israel's messianic Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, Trump did believe that a deal was possible with Iran prior to the Israeli June 13 attack. These sources say that Bibi thought that if a deal were signed, it would take his planned crusade against his biblical enemy, the Persian Empire, off the table, so he concocted evidence that the Iranians were playing games with Trump and were actually moving to make a bomb on a rapid schedule. Bibi presented this to Trump on June 12 and said that he was going to attack Iran's nuclear sites the next day, even while Trump was still talking about a new round of talks slated for that Sunday. “Do I have a choice?” Trump sarcastically asked Bibi, who said the attack was in planning for months and would completely destabilize and neutralize the country. Trump did not tell Netanyahu to call it off.
But Trump was advised by other senior hands that his own suspicions were correct, a source reported, “that this messianic lunatic was not after the destruction of the Iranian nuke program, but the destruction of Iran as a nation. He wanted to bomb it back to the Stone Age and then go in with troops, using the nuclear program as a pretext. Trump does not support that, and this governed his future actions. In Trump's mind the only way to stop Bibi was either to present the world with a signed deal, or for the U.S. to surgically go in and take out the nuclear sites with the bunker busters. He tried to get the deal, but it was reportedly blocked by the Ayatollah Khamenei.
“So, he ordered the strike, while refusing Bibi's plan for joint strikes and missions,” the source continued. “Trump intended his action to be a one-on and then exit stage left. Trump gambled that Iran would not follow the Ayatollah and order a major killing strike on the U.S. in retaliation; when they responded by first warning the U.S. of their strike, Trump could now move to box in Bibi and declare what he called the 12-day war over. Bibi tried up to the last minute to sabotage the ceasefire, but he could not, and his crusade against Iran, for the time being, is over.”
Putin’s Role and the Moscow Channel
None of this would have worked without the approval and coordination of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump, through various channels, made sure Putin knew that he was not trying to destroy Russia's strategic ally Iran or set a precedent to go after other members of the BRICS alliance. Putin had already told Trump that he supported efforts to prevent Iran from developing a bomb; Putin knows his history and that it was the U.S. and the lunatic “great game” player and Russophobe Zbigniew Brzezinski who put the Islamic fundamentalists in power in Iran as a potential weapon against the then-Soviet Union; one could never quite be sure who they would use those weapons against. Putin offered Trump his services in securing a deal with Iran and has pledged that Russia would be a guarantor of a new deal, and that it would provide Iran with enriched non-weapons-grade uranium for peaceful use.
The Russians said all the right things about the attack on Iran, but they did not say they would come to Iran's defense. In fact, when Iran sent a delegation to meet with Putin following the U.S. strikes, he refused their request for military assistance and weapons to fight the invader, with Putin reportedly pointing out that no one invaded them. Instead, he strongly urged them to go back to the negotiating table with Trump and his chief envoy Steve Witkoff, who had recently spoken with Putin. He said they must accept a fair deal. He urged Iran to make a measured response to the U.S. attack, while doing what they could in force against Israel.
Soon after the talks in Moscow, Iran offered a measured 14-missile attack on the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, giving the U.S. a heads-up warning of the attack. Hours later, Trump declared the war over and put a ceasefire in effect, which Bibi had to accept.
Development as Deterrence
Trump knows and has been told that you can't stop a nation's nuclear ambitions by military action. It is now too easy to build a weapon as long as you can get enriched weapons-grade uranium from somewhere. “Smart kids with a computer could do it,” the source said. “The way you stop bomb making is to make peace more attractive. So, you negotiate ways to make that happen. Iran really needs the sanctions to end, and they will if a deal is struck. Peace is development, and Trump wants to see Iran and Israel both participate or benefit from development in the region. Can it happen? Well, I guess we are going to see, and it drives all those asshole geopolitical strategists, the neo-con anti-Russian, anti-China crusaders crazy.”
Trump wrote June 24 on social media that “China can now continue to purchase Oil from Iran,” and he didn’t clarify his meaning June 25 other than to say “they’re going to need money to put that country back in shape. We want to see that happen.”