We’re now at war with Iran, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, because Benjamin Netanyahu told us he was planning to attack Iranian targets, and we needed to protect U.S. interests in the Middle East from retaliatory attacks from Tehran.
That’s the claim to self-defense: an ally was preparing to launch an illegal war, so, you know.
“We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters on Monday, after a briefing with congressional leaders, some of whom – Democrats, and a handful of Republicans – are raising constitutional issues.
Because the Constitution requires the president to get congressional approval before launching a war.
We’re now being led to believe that the obviously well-orchestrated military action in Iran was just us winging it out of a notion that there was self-defense involved.
Uh, huh.
ICYMI
- The Keystone Kops are in charge of the Iran war planning: No reason to be alarmed
- Alon Ben-Meir: Trump, Netanyahu are chasing an illusion in Iran
It’s becoming increasingly clear that, while the military action was planned out well in advance, nobody has a handle on what the objectives are.
The Trump regime is giving any number of rationales, depending on the person delivering their version – from the simple self-defense claimed by Rubio, to preventing the Iranians from continuing work on nuclear weapons development, to regime change.
The legal issues involved – on the nuclear weapons issue, Donald Trump claimed, early and often, that a round of attacks in June had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities, so that one is suspect; on regime change, no, you can’t just go in and decimate the leadership of a rival country because you want to.
Those are the issues with international law.
Domestically, we’ve got the constitutional issue, that the president can’t go to war without the consent of Congress, though the toothpaste is out of the tube now.
The world, meanwhile, unfortunately, is burning – the Iranian leadership, far from having been neutralized, is attacking U.S. and Israeli targets throughout the Middle East, targeting embassies, military bases and infrastructure assets, including data centers and energy facilities.
The Iranian military has also attacked ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which is significant because a fifth of all oil traded globally passes through that narrow entry into the Persian Gulf.
“The Strait of Hormuz is closed,” said Iranian Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari.
This has sent crude-oil prices soaring – currently to $77.02 per barrel, up $12 a barrel, 18.5 percent, since Thursday.
Gas prices in the U.S. are following suit; GasBuddy has the average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. at $3.09 a gallon on Tuesday, up 15 cents a gallon from just a day ago.
ICYMI
And: there is no end in sight, because the Trump regime hasn’t articulated what the endgame is, largely because it doesn’t seem to know.
It’s hard to imagine that there was nobody in the Trump inner circle who couldn’t have foreseen this.
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Chris Graham
