Jumat, 21 Juni 2019

Trump abruptly cancels military strike against Iran - CBS This Morning

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BqKg8zNvSY

2019-06-21 15:11:56Z
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Trump Stopped Strike on Iran Because It Was ‘Not Proportionate’ - The New York Times

President Trump said Friday morning that the United States military had been “cocked and loaded” for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would probably die in the attack.

The president said in a series of tweets just after 9 a.m. that he was prepared to retaliate against three sites in Iran for that country’s shooting down an American drone, but that he was “in no hurry.” He indicated that the death of 150 Iranians would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

[Iran crisis: What happened and what you need to know.]

It was unclear why Mr. Trump would have been getting information about possible casualties so late in the process of launching military action. Such information is typically discussed early in the deliberations between a president and national security officials.

Mr. Trump called Iran a “much weakened nation” because he decided to withdraw from the nuclear agreement negotiated by his predecessor and because of the sanctions that his administration had imposed. He also suggested that new sanctions had been imposed on Iran on Thursday night, but he did not elaborate.

“Sanctions are biting & more added last night,” he tweeted. “Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”

The president’s decision to abort the strikes in favor of increased pressure on Iran through sanctions is in line with the advice he has received from some of his top advisers about the effectiveness of choking off Iran’s access to the globe’s financial networks.

During deliberations about the strikes in the Situation Room on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued that sanctions were having a powerful effect by slashing Iran’s revenues oil sales, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Pompeo favored some kind of pinpoint, military response to the drone strike, the official said. But the secretary of state also stressed to Mr. Trump that the sanctions were having the long-term effect that the administration had hoped.

Mr. Trump’s tweets on Friday suggested that Mr. Pompeo’s arguments may have influenced his decision to back down from the strikes.

Administration officials, including military commanders, did not issue public statements Friday morning to clarify the internal deliberations or the president’s actions. But one person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said he was pleased with Thursday night’s events because he liked the “command” of approving the strike, but also the decisiveness of calling it off.

Reaction to the president’s actions came swiftly on Friday, suggesting that the aborted strike could exacerbate divisions on national security within the Republican Party between those agitating for more aggressive action and others deeply opposed.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chairwoman of the Republican Conference and one of the top Republicans in the House, lashed out Friday at Mr. Trump’s decision, comparing his actions to former President Barack Obama’s public waffling over striking Syria over its chemical weapons attacks in 2013.

“The failure to respond to this kind of direct provocation that we’ve seen now from the Iranians, in particular over the last several weeks, could in fact be a very serious mistake,” Ms. Cheney told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, in an interview.

Ms. Cheney did not fault Mr. Trump directly, but she made it clear she was deeply concerned about his retreat from a strike.

She said leaders must “recognize that weakness is provocative, and that a world in which response to attacks on American assets is to pull back, or to accept the attack, is a world in which America won’t be able to successfully defend our interests.”

Critics of the president, including Democratic politicians, said the episode was evidence of a dangerous lack of steady deliberations at the White House during a crisis that could lead to a military confrontation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, blasted Mr. Trump after The New York Times reported his decision to order strikes and then pulled back.

“Donald Trump promised to bring our troops home,” Ms. Warren wrote late Thursday night on Twitter. “Instead he has pulled out of a deal that was working and instigated another unnecessary conflict. There is no justification for further escalating this crisis — we need to step back from the brink of war.”

David Rothkopf, the author of two histories of the National Security Council, said on Twitter that the fact that Mr. Trump “blinked” in the face of Iran’s aggression was “not a sign of restraint so much as evidence of indecision and bumbling — the situation remains very dangerous and prone to accidental escalation and/or spinning out of control.”

Representative Ted Lieu of California, a fierce critic of the president, tweeted that “@realdonaldtrump has no idea what he is doing, especially in foreign policy.”

Mr. Lieu added: “Also very troubled we are reading about these high level US decisions about Iran in the media. The national security leaks from the Trump Administration are mind boggling.”

The dispute over the location of the drone when Iran shot it down Thursday morning continued for a second day. Iran’s government released photographs Friday morning of what it said were fragments of the high-altitude surveillance drone, saying that the pieces were retrieved from Iranian territorial waters. Iran has insisted it shot the drone down after it violated the country’s airspace.

To bolster its claims, Iran late Thursday released video of what it said was the moment its air defense system shot down the drone. The Defense Department countered with images of the drone’s flight path showing that it never entered Iranian airspace, though the images offered little context for an image that appeared to be the drone exploding in midair.

Still, there remained doubt inside the United States government over whether the drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, this one flown by a military aircrew, did violate Iranian airspace at some point, according to a senior administration official. The official said the doubt was one of the reasons Mr. Trump called off the strike — which could under international norms be viewed as an act of war.

The delay by United States Central Command in publicly releasing GPS coordinates of the drone when it was shot down — hours after Iran did — and errors in the labeling of the drone’s flight path when the imagery was released, contributed to that doubt, officials said.

A lack of provable “hard evidence” about the location of the drone when it was hit, a defense official said, put the administration in an isolated position at what could easily end up being the start of yet another war with a Middle East adversary — this one with a proven ability to strike back.

There were virtually no European allies stepping forward on Thursday to back the Trump administration, heightening the fear that it could find itself in an intractable war with only Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel for allies, officials said.

After the military was ordered to stand down on Thursday evening, it was initially put on a 24-hour hold for possible strikes, a move that would have allowed Mr. Trump to quickly revive them, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussions.

But the hold has been lifted, according to the official, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations about possible military actions. Mr. Trump could still launch a strike relatively quickly if he ordered the military to do so, the official said.

The Iranian government on Friday denied a report by Reuters that Mr. Trump warned Iran about an imminent attack Thursday night by sending a message to Tehran’s leaders through contacts in Oman. A senior administration official said the Pentagon did propose sending such a message but that John Bolton, the national security adviser, rejected the idea. It was not clear why Mr. Bolton objected.

This is not the first time that the United States and Iran have had conflicting accounts of American military actions near Iran.

On July 3, 1988, the Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser, shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people. The Defense Department initially denied that the Vincennes had shot it down. Then the Pentagon said that the Vincennes was in international waters and that the jet was descending toward the ship in a threatening manner. The Defense Department also said it radioed the plane repeatedly in warning.

The first two assertions turned out to be false and the last assertion irrelevant because the Navy was using a frequency rarely checked by passenger jets. In 1996, the United States, expressing “deep regret,” agreed to pay $61.8 million to the families of the people on the plane.

Also on Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency order barring American airlines from flying in airspace controlled by Iran over the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The F.A.A. said the order was because of “heightened military activities and increased political tensions.”

Several carriers, including United Airlines and Lufthansa, a German airline, quickly suspended routes that fly through that airspace. United flies from Newark, N.J., to Mumbai along a route that takes the plane over Iran.

Mr. Trump made his decisions about a military strike Thursday night without the advice of a permanent defense secretary, the senior civilian official presidents usually lean on during times of such crises.

The position has been formally vacant since Jim Mattis left at the end of 2018, declaring in his resignation letter that Mr. Trump deserves “a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours” about how to treat allies with respect, and other issues.

Patrick M. Shanahan, the Pentagon’s deputy, had been serving as the acting secretary but withdrew from consideration for the post this week amid revelations about his divorce and an ongoing F.B.I. investigation into episodes of family violence.

Mr. Shanahan has not yet left the position, but he will be replaced over coming days by Mark T. Esper, the secretary of the Army and a former Raytheon executive, who the president said would take over as acting secretary of defense. Mr. Trump plans to nominate Mr. Esper to permanently serve as defense secretary, according to administration officials.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/politics/trump-iran-attack.html

2019-06-21 14:56:05Z
52780317816762
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Trump Stopped Strike on Iran Because It Was ‘Not Proportionate’ - The New York Times

President Trump said Friday morning that the United States military had been “cocked and loaded” for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would probably die in the attack.

The president said in a series of tweets just after 9 a.m. that he was prepared to retaliate against three sites in Iran for that country’s shooting down an American drone, but that he was “in no hurry.” He indicated that the death of 150 Iranians would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

[Iran crisis: What happened and what you need to know.]

It was unclear why Mr. Trump would have been getting information about possible casualties so late in the process of launching military action. Such information is typically discussed early in the deliberations between a president and national security officials.

Mr. Trump called Iran a “much weakened nation” because he decided to withdraw from the nuclear agreement negotiated by his predecessor and because of the sanctions that his administration had imposed. He also suggested that new sanctions had been imposed on Iran on Thursday night, but he did not elaborate.

“Sanctions are biting & more added last night,” he tweeted. “Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”

The president’s decision to abort the strikes in favor of increased pressure on Iran through sanctions is in line with the advice he has received from some of his top advisers about the effectiveness of choking off Iran’s access to the globe’s financial networks.

During deliberations about the strikes in the Situation Room on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued that sanctions were having a powerful effect by slashing Iran’s revenues oil sales, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Pompeo favored some kind of pinpoint, military response to the drone strike, the official said. But the secretary of state also stressed to Mr. Trump that the sanctions were having the long-term effect that the administration had hoped.

Mr. Trump’s tweets on Friday suggested that Mr. Pompeo’s arguments may have influenced his decision to back down from the strikes.

Administration officials, including military commanders, did not issue public statements Friday morning to clarify the internal deliberations or the president’s actions. But one person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said he was pleased with Thursday night’s events because he liked the “command” of approving the strike, but also the decisiveness of calling it off.

Reaction to the president’s actions came swiftly on Friday, suggesting that the aborted strike could exacerbate divisions on national security within the Republican Party between those agitating for more aggressive action and others deeply opposed.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chairwoman of the Republican Conference and one of the top Republicans in the House, lashed out Friday at Mr. Trump’s decision, comparing his actions to former President Barack Obama’s public waffling over striking Syria over its chemical weapons attacks in 2013.

“The failure to respond to this kind of direct provocation that we’ve seen now from the Iranians, in particular over the last several weeks, could in fact be a very serious mistake,” Ms. Cheney told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, in an interview.

Ms. Cheney did not fault Mr. Trump directly, but she made it clear she was deeply concerned about his retreat from a strike.

She said leaders must “recognize that weakness is provocative, and that a world in which response to attacks on American assets is to pull back, or to accept the attack, is a world in which America won’t be able to successfully defend our interests.”

Critics of the president, including Democratic politicians, said the episode was evidence of a dangerous lack of steady deliberations at the White House during a crisis that could lead to a military confrontation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, blasted Mr. Trump after The New York Times reported his decision to order strikes and then pulled back.

“Donald Trump promised to bring our troops home,” Ms. Warren wrote late Thursday night on Twitter. “Instead he has pulled out of a deal that was working and instigated another unnecessary conflict. There is no justification for further escalating this crisis — we need to step back from the brink of war.”

David Rothkopf, the author of two histories of the National Security Council, said on Twitter that the fact that Mr. Trump “blinked” in the face of Iran’s aggression was “not a sign of restraint so much as evidence of indecision and bumbling — the situation remains very dangerous and prone to accidental escalation and/or spinning out of control.”

Representative Ted Lieu of California, a fierce critic of the president, tweeted that “@realdonaldtrump has no idea what he is doing, especially in foreign policy.”

Mr. Lieu added: “Also very troubled we are reading about these high level US decisions about Iran in the media. The national security leaks from the Trump Administration are mind boggling.”

The dispute over the location of the drone when Iran shot it down Thursday morning continued for a second day. Iran’s government released photographs Friday morning of what it said were fragments of the high-altitude surveillance drone, saying that the pieces were retrieved from Iranian territorial waters. Iran has insisted it shot the drone down after it violated the country’s airspace.

To bolster its claims, Iran late Thursday released video of what it said was the moment its air defense system shot down the drone. The Defense Department countered with images of the drone’s flight path showing that it never entered Iranian airspace, though the images offered little context for an image that appeared to be the drone exploding in midair.

Still, there remained doubt inside the United States government over whether the drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, this one flown by a military aircrew, did violate Iranian airspace at some point, according to a senior administration official. The official said the doubt was one of the reasons Mr. Trump called off the strike — which could under international norms be viewed as an act of war.

The delay by United States Central Command in publicly releasing GPS coordinates of the drone when it was shot down — hours after Iran did — and errors in the labeling of the drone’s flight path when the imagery was released, contributed to that doubt, officials said.

A lack of provable “hard evidence” about the location of the drone when it was hit, a defense official said, put the administration in an isolated position at what could easily end up being the start of yet another war with a Middle East adversary — this one with a proven ability to strike back.

There were virtually no European allies stepping forward on Thursday to back the Trump administration, heightening the fear that it could find itself in an intractable war with only Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel for allies, officials said.

After the military was ordered to stand down on Thursday evening, it was initially put on a 24-hour hold for possible strikes, a move that would have allowed Mr. Trump to quickly revive them, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussions.

But the hold has been lifted, according to the official, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations about possible military actions. Mr. Trump could still launch a strike relatively quickly if he ordered the military to do so, the official said.

The Iranian government on Friday denied a report by Reuters that Mr. Trump warned Iran about an imminent attack Thursday night by sending a message to Tehran’s leaders through contacts in Oman. A senior administration official said the Pentagon did propose sending such a message but that John Bolton, the national security adviser, rejected the idea. It was not clear why Mr. Bolton objected.

This is not the first time that the United States and Iran have had conflicting accounts of American military actions near Iran.

On July 3, 1988, the Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser, shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people. The Defense Department initially denied that the Vincennes had shot it down. Then the Pentagon said that the Vincennes was in international waters and that the jet was descending toward the ship in a threatening manner. The Defense Department also said it radioed the plane repeatedly in warning.

The first two assertions turned out to be false and the last assertion irrelevant because the Navy was using a frequency rarely checked by passenger jets. In 1996, the United States, expressing “deep regret,” agreed to pay $61.8 million to the families of the people on the plane.

Also on Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency order barring American airlines from flying in airspace controlled by Iran over the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The F.A.A. said the order was because of “heightened military activities and increased political tensions.”

Several carriers, including United Airlines and Lufthansa, a German airline, quickly suspended routes that fly through that airspace. United flies from Newark, N.J., to Mumbai along a route that takes the plane over Iran.

Mr. Trump made his decisions about a military strike Thursday night without the advice of a permanent defense secretary, the senior civilian official presidents usually lean on during times of such crises.

The position has been formally vacant since Jim Mattis left at the end of 2018, declaring in his resignation letter that Mr. Trump deserves “a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours” about how to treat allies with respect, and other issues.

Patrick M. Shanahan, the Pentagon’s deputy, had been serving as the acting secretary but withdrew from consideration for the post this week amid revelations about his divorce and an ongoing F.B.I. investigation into episodes of family violence.

Mr. Shanahan has not yet left the position, but he will be replaced over coming days by Mark T. Esper, the secretary of the Army and a former Raytheon executive, who the president said would take over as acting secretary of defense. Mr. Trump plans to nominate Mr. Esper to permanently serve as defense secretary, according to administration officials.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/politics/trump-iran-attack.html

2019-06-21 14:41:01Z
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Trump Stopped Strike on Iran Because It Was ‘Not Proportionate’ - The New York Times

President Trump said Friday morning that the United States military had been “cocked and loaded” for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would likely die in the attack.

The president said in a series of tweets just after 9 a.m. that he was prepared to retaliate against three sites in Iran for that country’s shooting down an American drone, but that he was “in no hurry.” He indicated that the death of 150 Iranians would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

[Iran crisis: What happened and what you need to know.]

It was unclear why Mr. Trump would have been getting information about possible casualties so late in the process of launching military action. Such information is typically discussed early in the deliberations between a president and national security officials.

Mr. Trump called Iran a “much weakened nation” because he decided to withdraw from the nuclear agreement negotiated by his predecessor and because of the sanctions that his administration had imposed. He also suggested that new sanctions had been imposed on Iran on Thursday night, but he did not elaborate.

“Sanctions are biting & more added last night,” he tweeted. “Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”

The president’s decision to abort the strikes in favor of increased pressure on Iran through sanctions is in line with the advice he has received from some of his top advisers about the effectiveness of choking off Iran’s access to the globe’s financial networks.

During deliberations about the strikes in the Situation Room on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued that sanctions were having a powerful effect by slashing Iran’s revenues from the sale of oil, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Pompeo favored some kind of pinpoint, military response to the drone strike, the official said. But the secretary of state also stressed to Mr. Trump that the sanctions were having the long-term effect that the administration had hoped.

Mr. Trump’s tweets on Friday suggested that Mr. Pompeo’s arguments may have influenced his decision to back down from the strikes.

Administration officials, including military commanders, did not issue public statements Friday morning to clarify the internal deliberations or the president’s actions. But one person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said he was pleased with Thursday night’s events because he liked the “command” of approving the strike, but also the decisiveness of calling it off.

Reaction to the president’s actions came swiftly on Friday, suggesting that the aborted strike could exacerbate divisions on national security within the Republican Party between those agitating for more aggressive action and others deeply opposed.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chairwoman of the Republican Conference and one of the top Republicans in the House, lashed out Friday at Mr. Trump’s decision, comparing his actions to former President Barack Obama’s public waffling over striking Syria over its chemical weapons attacks in 2013.

“The failure to respond to this kind of direct provocation that we’ve seen now from the Iranians, in particular over the last several weeks, could in fact be a very serious mistake,” Ms. Cheney told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, in an interview.

Ms. Cheney did not fault Mr. Trump directly, but she made it clear she was deeply concerned about his retreat from a strike.

She said leaders must “recognize that weakness is provocative, and that a world in which response to attacks on American assets is to pull back, or to accept the attack, is a world in which America won’t be able to successfully defend our interests.”

Critics of the president, including Democratic politicians, said the episodewas evidence of a dangerous lack of steady deliberations at the White House during a crisis that could lead to a military confrontation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, blasted Mr. Trump after The New York Times reported his decision to order strikes and then pulled back.

“Donald Trump promised to bring our troops home,” Ms. Warren wrote late Thursday night on Twitter. “Instead he has pulled out of a deal that was working and instigated another unnecessary conflict. There is no justification for further escalating this crisis — we need to step back from the brink of war.”

David Rothkopf, the author of two histories of the National Security Council, said on Twitter that the fact that Mr. Trump “blinked” in the face of Iran’s aggression was “not a sign of restraint so much as evidence of indecision and bumbling — the situation remains very dangerous and prone to accidental escalation and/or spinning out of control.”

Representative Ted Lieu of California, a fierce critic of the president, tweeted that “@realdonaldtrump has no idea what he is doing, especially in foreign policy.”

Mr. Lieu added: “Also very troubled we are reading about these high level US decisions about Iran in the media. The national security leaks from the Trump Administration are mind boggling.”

The dispute over the location of the drone when Iran shot it down Thursday morning continued for a second day. Iran’s government released photographs Friday morning of what it said were fragments of the high-altitude surveillance drone, saying that the pieces were retrieved from Iranian territorial waters. Iran has insisted it shot the drone down after it violated the country’s airspace.

To bolster its claims, Iran late Thursday released video of what it said was the moment its air defense system shot down the drone. The Defense Department countered with images of the drone’s flight path showing that it never entered Iranian airspace, though the images offered little context for an image that appeared to be the drone exploding in midair.

Still, there remained doubt inside the United States government over whether the drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, this one flown by a military aircrew, did violate Iranian airspace at some point, according to a senior administration official. The official said the doubt was one of the reasons Mr. Trump called off the strike — which could under international norms be viewed as an act of war.

The delay by United States Central Command in publicly releasing GPS coordinates of the drone when it was shot down — hours after Iran did — and errors in the labeling of the drone’s flight path when the imagery was released, contributed to that doubt, officials said.

A lack of provable “hard evidence” about the location of the drone when it was shot down, a defense official said, put the administration in an isolated position at what could easily end up being the start of yet another war with a Middle East adversary — this one with a proven ability to strike back.

There were virtually no European allies stepping forward on Thursday to back the Trump administration, heightening the fear that it could soon find itself in an intractable war with only Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel for allies, officials said.

After the military was ordered to stand down Thursday evening, the military was initially put on a 24-hour hold for possible strikes, a move that would have allowed Mr. Trump to quickly revive them, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussions.

But the hold has been lifted,, according to the official, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations about possible military actions. Mr. Trump could still launch a strike relatively quickly if he ordered the military to do so, the official said.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/politics/trump-iran-attack.html

2019-06-21 14:17:31Z
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Trump Stopped Strike on Iran Because It Was ‘Not Proportionate’ - The New York Times

President Trump said Friday morning that the United States military had been “cocked and loaded” for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would likely die in the attack.

The president said in a series of tweets just after 9 a.m. that he was prepared to retaliate against three sites in Iran for that country’s shooting down an American drone, but that he was “in no hurry.” He indicated that the death of 150 Iranians would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

[Iran crisis: What happened and what you need to know.]

It was unclear why Mr. Trump would have been getting information about possible casualties so late in the process of launching military action. Such information is typically discussed early in the deliberations between a president and national security officials.

Mr. Trump called Iran a “much weakened nation” because he decided to withdraw from the nuclear agreement negotiated by his predecessor and because of the sanctions that his administration had imposed. He also suggested that new sanctions had been imposed on Iran on Thursday night, but he did not elaborate.

“Sanctions are biting & more added last night,” he tweeted. “Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”

The president’s decision to abort the strikes in favor of increased pressure on Iran through sanctions is in line with the advice he has received from some of his top advisers about the effectiveness of choking off Iran’s access to the globe’s financial networks.

During deliberations about the strikes in the Situation Room on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued that sanctions were having a powerful effect by slashing Iran’s revenues from the sale of oil, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Pompeo favored some kind of pinpoint, military response to the drone strike, the official said. But the secretary of state also stressed to Mr. Trump that the sanctions were having the long-term effect that the administration had hoped.

Mr. Trump’s tweets on Friday suggested that Mr. Pompeo’s arguments may have influenced his decision to back down from the strikes.

Administration officials, including military commanders, did not issue public statements Friday morning to clarify the internal deliberations or the president’s actions. But one person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said he was pleased with Thursday night’s events because he liked the “command” of approving the strike, but also the decisiveness of calling it off.

Reaction to the president’s actions came swiftly on Friday, suggesting that the aborted strike could exacerbate divisions on national security within the Republican Party between those agitating for more aggressive action and others deeply opposed.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chairwoman of the Republican Conference and one of the top Republicans in the House, lashed out Friday at Mr. Trump’s decision, comparing his actions to former President Barack Obama’s public waffling over striking Syria over its chemical weapons attacks in 2013.

“The failure to respond to this kind of direct provocation that we’ve seen now from the Iranians, in particular over the last several weeks, could in fact be a very serious mistake,” Ms. Cheney told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, in an interview.

Ms. Cheney did not fault Mr. Trump directly, but she made it clear she was deeply concerned about his retreat from a strike.

She said leaders must “recognize that weakness is provocative, and that a world in which response to attacks on American assets is to pull back, or to accept the attack, is a world in which America won’t be able to successfully defend our interests.”

Critics of the president, including Democratic politicians, said the episodewas evidence of a dangerous lack of steady deliberations at the White House during a crisis that could lead to a military confrontation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, blasted Mr. Trump after The New York Times reported his decision to order strikes and then pulled back.

“Donald Trump promised to bring our troops home,” Ms. Warren wrote late Thursday night on Twitter. “Instead he has pulled out of a deal that was working and instigated another unnecessary conflict. There is no justification for further escalating this crisis — we need to step back from the brink of war.”

David Rothkopf, the author of two histories of the National Security Council, said on Twitter that the fact that Mr. Trump “blinked” in the face of Iran’s aggression was “not a sign of restraint so much as evidence of indecision and bumbling — the situation remains very dangerous and prone to accidental escalation and/or spinning out of control.”

Representative Ted Lieu of California, a fierce critic of the president, tweeted that “@realdonaldtrump has no idea what he is doing, especially in foreign policy.”

Mr. Lieu added: “Also very troubled we are reading about these high level US decisions about Iran in the media. The national security leaks from the Trump Administration are mind boggling.”

The dispute over the location of the drone when Iran shot it down Thursday morning continued for a second day. Iran’s government released photographs Friday morning of what it said were fragments of the high-altitude surveillance drone, saying that the pieces were retrieved from Iranian territorial waters. Iran has insisted it shot the drone down after it violated the country’s airspace.

To bolster its claims, Iran late Thursday released video of what it said was the moment its air defense system shot down the drone. The Defense Department countered with images of the drone’s flight path showing that it never entered Iranian airspace, though the images offered little context for an image that appeared to be the drone exploding in midair.

Still, there remained doubt inside the United States government over whether the drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, this one flown by a military aircrew, did violate Iranian airspace at some point, according to a senior administration official. The official said the doubt was one of the reasons Mr. Trump called off the strike — which could under international norms be viewed as an act of war.

The delay by United States Central Command in publicly releasing GPS coordinates of the drone when it was shot down — hours after Iran did — and errors in the labeling of the drone’s flight path when the imagery was released, contributed to that doubt, officials said.

A lack of provable “hard evidence” about the location of the drone when it was shot down, a defense official said, put the administration in an isolated position at what could easily end up being the start of yet another war with a Middle East adversary — this one with a proven ability to strike back.

There were virtually no European allies stepping forward on Thursday to back the Trump administration, heightening the fear that it could soon find itself in an intractable war with only Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel for allies, officials said.

After the military was ordered to stand down Thursday evening, the military was initially put on a 24-hour hold for possible strikes, a move that would have allowed Mr. Trump to quickly revive them, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussions.

But the hold has been lifted,, according to the official, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations about possible military actions. Mr. Trump could still launch a strike relatively quickly if he ordered the military to do so, the official said.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/politics/trump-iran-attack.html

2019-06-21 14:10:36Z
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'Wolf Pack' found guilty of rape by Spain's Supreme Court - CNN International

The men were convicted of sexual abuse, the court said, but cleared of gang rape charges in December 2018 for their attack on a teenage girl, which happened at the 2016 running of the bulls in Pamplona.
Prosecutors had called on the Supreme Court to upgrade their conviction, in a case that shocked the nation.
Protests in Spain after 5 men are cleared of rape in 'wolf pack' case
Defendants Jose Angel Prenda Martinez, Angel Boza Florido, Jesus Escudero Dominguez, Antonio Manuel Guerrero Escudero and Alfonso Jesus Cabezuelo Entrena -- known as the Wolf Pack after the name of a WhatsApp group they spoke on -- recorded cellphone video of their encounter in July 2016 with the woman, then 18.
Antonio Manuel Guerrero Escudero received an extra two years, as he was also found guilty of robbery.
The men were originally cleared of rape on the grounds that Spanish law requires evidence of physical violence or intimidation to prove the charge, a stipulation that has since been brought into question.
According to court documents, WhatsApp messages circulated to the group by one of the defendants included "us five are ****ing one girl," "there is more than what I'm telling you," "a ****ing amazing trip" and "there is video."
Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets and called for a change in the law over the course of the case.

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/21/europe/spain-wolf-pack-rape-verdict-intl/index.html

2019-06-21 13:49:00Z
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Trump's Iran strikes U-turn underscores war and peace dilemma - CNN

The White House's abrupt decision Thursday night to pull back on retaliatory strikes on Iran that had already been orderedunderscores how Tehran's downing of a US drone leaves Trump with no risk-free options.
"We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not....proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone," Trump tweeted Friday morning, explaining his actions.
But the whipsaw decision -- and lack of foresight about potential casualties -- underscores the challenges facing Trump, who prefers to rule from his gut.
Each conceivable military or diplomatic response is likely to provoke a further Iranian escalation that would deepen the increasingly grave standoff.
The President is caught between Republicans demanding a hawkish response, Democrats warning he could "bumble" into war and Iranian policy hardliners on his own national security staff who welcome the confrontation. There is no obvious outcome that gives him the clear political win that is a frequent motivating force behind his foreign policy ventures.
Asked which way he would turn on Thursday, Trump told reporters, "You'll find out" -- without giving any sign he had settled in his mind on US retaliation.
Attacks on a handful of targets, including Iranian missile batteries but the operation, were set but the operation was called off as it was about to begin, a US official with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN. It was not immediately clear whether Trump approved the operation before changing his mind or if he stopped short of giving final presidential approval and decided against proceeding further with the strikes, which were first reported by the New York Times, or whether some other significant event took place in the region that is not yet publicly known about shifted his calculation.
It's often been remarked in Washington that Trump has been lucky not to face a sudden, serious national security emergency so far in his presidency. Well, his luck has now run out -- though he will get little sympathy from critics who long predicted his hard line Iran policy would precipitate exactly this scenario.
The worsening crisis will subject his chaos-riddled administration to an unprecedented test of cohesion. Trump may need to call on allies he has spent months insulting. His trashing of truth and an amateurish public relations effort to build a case against Iran may undermine his chances of selling potentially dangerous action to the American people.

Which way will Trump turn?

Trump and Bolton debate how to deal with Iran as Pompeo 'triangulates,' officials say
Usually, a good guide to Trump's future action on foreign policy is to identify the course that will most swiftly benefit him politically.
But the current crisis appears to draw two aspects of the President's personal interests into conflict.
Avoiding foreign entanglements is a core principle of Trumpism. The President doesn't even want US in peacetime deployments in allied nations, let alone at war in the Gulf.
But even a "proportional" US military response, like shooting down an Iranian drone or attacking the base that fired the missile that brought down the US aircraft, would likely force the Islamic Republic to up the stakes considerably again. Trump would inevitably be drawn deeper into the quicksand of the Middle East.
The President also has his own image and credibility to consider.
Failing to respond to Iran's escalation would add to a growing impression that Trump's "fire and fury" rhetoric and strongman persona rarely translates into action. He knows that foreign powers such as China, North Korea and Russia are watching carefully. He'd hate to to look weak heading into meetings at the upcoming G20 summit in Japan with Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
This is a much sharper quandary than when Trump fired cruise missiles into Syria in 2018 after a chemical weapons attack to enforce a red line that former President Barack Obama let slide.
Then, Trump savored a quick political payoff after one-upping Obama, looked tough and knew there was little risk of retaliation that could endanger Americans or deepen the crisis.
None of those easy wins are on offer with Iran.
"He has got a very difficult decision to make," said Jeh Johnson, a former Obama secretary of Homeland Security who was also a top Pentagon lawyer, on "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."
"His instincts are no foreign engagements yet someone took an action against our forces there and the President has an obligation to protect forces deployed in the Gulf, in the Strait."
"He is wrestling with a tough decision. It is much easier to start one of these fights than to end one," said Johnson.

A classic Presidential conundrum

Trump downplays Iran tensions after drone shot down
For perhaps the first time, Trump is being forced to agonize over a classic presidential problem -- one that has no good outcomes and ends up on the President's desk because everyone else has failed to solve it.
Trump often has a deeply idiosyncratic concept of the US national interest -- when he takes it into consideration at all on a thorny foreign policy question.
But this is different. American lives may well rest on his response. The nation could be sliding towards a major war with a power that is far more capable than Iraq -- which managed to bog down US troops for a decade. A prolonged conflict with Iran could unleash geopolitical and domestic forces that could destroy his presidency if it goes wrong.
Trump leads from the gut, disdains detail and often appears to handle crises by saying or doing whatever it takes to get to the end of the day. This building crisis requires study, strategic thinking three, four or five steps ahead and an evaluation of the cascade of consequences that could unfold from any course of action.
National security emergencies often stretch an administration to its limits and require a unity of purpose and inter-agency cohesion that Trump has gone out of his way to undermine.
So far, in the hours since an Iranian missile brought down the $110 million surveillance drone over the Gulf of Oman, Trump has been -- perhaps surprisingly -- slow to pull the trigger.
He has controlled his impulsive instincts in an out-of-character show of restraint from a man who Hillary Clinton said should be kept from the nuclear codes as he could be baited by a tweet.
Trump, as other Presidents would have done, sought to buy himself time and political space ahead of Situation Room meetings with military and political advisers. He prudently brought congressional leaders into the loop.
He suggested the incident could have been the work of a "loose" rogue general, dismissing the Washington consensus that Iran was deliberating ratcheting up its leverage to test him.
"I find it hard to believe it was intentional," Trump said.
It was unclear if the President was speaking after seeing intelligence that suggested divides in the Iranian chain of command or was positing a scenario that could offer him a way out of escalating the confrontation with Iran.
One clear problem for Trump is that while he may wish to de-escalate tensions with Iran, there may be little incentive for Tehran to cooperate.
That's because US sanctions under Trump's maximum pressure campaign have strangled the Iranian economy and caused serious deprivation amid the population.
Recent incidents, including the downing of the drone, attacks on shipping in the Gulf of Oman, and the Islamic Republic's warning that it will break international limits on uranium enrichment, appear to be an attempt to impose consequent costs on the US.
So without an alleviation of sanctions -- that Washington is in no mood to offer or a significant offer from Trump to bring Iran to the table -- it may be locked into its current course.
Even then, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said that Trump's decision to pull out of Obama's nuclear deal means Washington can never be trusted in a dialogue again.

Trump could 'bumble into war'

Iran shoots down US drone aircraft, raising tensions further in Strait of Hormuz
Unusually, Trump's mood on the day after the drone attack appeared to be more in tune with that of Democrats than the Republican senators who rarely break from the President.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi emerged from an administration briefing of top congressional leaders looking grave. She said she didn't think Trump wanted war but added: "The high-tension wires are up in the region. We must de-escalate."
Pelosi later went to the White House to meet Trump along with the top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and other congressional leaders from both parties.
"The President may not intend to go to war here but we're worried that he and the administration may bumble into a war," Schumer told reporters after the meeting.
But the President is already under pressure for a robust military response from Republicans.
"I would encourage forceful action to stop this behavior before it leads to wider conflict," said South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump's closest friends on Capitol Hill.
"Doing nothing has its own consequence. If you do nothing, the Iranians see us as weak," Graham said, calling for strikes against Iranian naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida tweeted that while the administration did not want war with Iran, "it has also made clear that it will respond forcefully to an attack."
Washington buzzed with speculation on Thursday about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump's national security adviser John Bolton who are seen as drivers of the tough US Iran policy.
Critics charge the pair, who replaced officials who opposed Trump's decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, with creating the crisis through their advice to Trump.
But Brian Hook, the US special envoy for Iran, this week insisted that despite Iranian provocations, the administration's policy was working and had weakened Iran.
He fueled an impression that parts of the administration welcome the showdown, after disputing the notion that the Iran deal had at least frozen the question of an Iranian bomb for a decade.
"Rather than wait for all of these things to come to pass in 10 years when Iran is stronger, we have pulled that forward," Hook told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Wednesday.
"I truly believe that everything we are seeing today is inevitable," he said.
This is one problem that will not be solved with a tweet and is asking questions of the President that he has never faced before.
This story has been updated.

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/21/politics/donald-trump-iran-presidency/index.html

2019-06-21 13:43:00Z
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