They just decided to ignore it and dare the people to do something about it:
After President Donald Trump’s decision to strike three Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday, administration officials are barely bothering to pretend the unprecedented — and potentially calamitous — attacks were motivated by new intelligence suggesting Iran was on the brink of having nuclear weapons.
Just months ago, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress, in her opening statement, that the U.S. intel community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and had not reauthorized its nuclear weapons program.
While Trump recently publicly disputed Gabbard’s testimony, according to two administration officials with knowledge of internal deliberations in recent weeks, the president’s decision to strike was not driven by any new U.S. intelligence on Iran.
“There is no intel,” says one of the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “Nothing new, that I’m aware of… The president is protecting the United States and our interests, [but] the intelligence assessments have not really changed from what they were before.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, confirmed Saturday night that American intelligence assessments on Iran have not changed. “I was briefed on the intelligence last week. Iran posed no imminent threat of attack to the United States,” he wrote on social media. “Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon.”
We’ve been down this road before and not that long ago. But even Bush and Cheney spent a year trying to gather international and domestic support for the invasion of Iraq and even got an authorization to do it from the congress. The manipulation of the intelligence and the massive propaganda campaign worked temporarily but didn’t last as reality bit. And considering that it happened right after 9/11 when the whole world was freaked out and the president had a very high approval rating, Bush a lot more room to maneuver anyway.
None of that is happening right now. Trump is an unpopular lame duck, surrounded by amateurs and sycophants, and nobody really knows why he’s doing this. He doesn’t either, unless it’s just a “wag the dog” move or a way to consolidate his power in the U.S. both of which may be true. Whatever the case, this whole thing is likely to go sideways in any number of directions because Trump is a fool and may have actually emboldened the right wingers in Iran and that’s not a good thing.
He really shouldn’t be saying stuff like this if he doesn’t want just that:
