IS TRUMP A LIABILITY IN HIS OWN WAR?
Trump's loose lips may be undermining the war against Iran he and Netanyahu started
As the war in Iran expands—the US and Israeli air forces and navies have detailed schedules, as of Wednesday March 4, of what targets to hit inside Iran and when—there is increasing concern in the American intelligence community about President Donald Trump’s inability to differentiate between what is secret intelligence information and what is not.
After the killing by air strike of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday, Trump was widely quoted this week as saying that “most of the people we had in mind” as possible future leaders of Iran “are dead.” He said that whoever takes over Iran could be “as bad or worse” than Khamenei.
Before the attacks on Iran commenced, US and Israeli operatives inside the country worked intensely under deep cover to recruit future leaders of Iran from various groups, including, perhaps, from inside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that is responsible for protecting the Ayatollah. The president apparently spoke without recalling that this fact is top secret.
I have been told Trump’s casual comment has led to a Revolutionary Guard witch hunt to search out the insiders who may have been dealing directly or indirectly with Israeli or American intelligence agencies. Trump has also talked casually, clearly in response to a suggestion from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, about bringing “in the Kurds” to help in what is beginning to look like a long-term war to end the religious regime that still remains standing in Tehran. There is no evidence that the president or his immediate advisers were aware that the Kurds, who once controlled an area in what is now northwest Iran, have never given up on their ambition to gain sovereignty as they’ve also struggled for land inside Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
The Kurds were described to me by one experienced US intelligence insider as being “massed at the border” right now, “armed and ready.” Bringing in the Kurds, he said, “was one sure way to guarantee ethnic civil war.” The American, who was pleased that Trump was elected after the foreign policy calamities of the Biden administration, was dismayed by the president’s recent lapses in judgment. “How do we protect ourselves from people like him?” he asked.
