{"id":1944,"date":"2021-01-03T19:43:50","date_gmt":"2021-01-03T19:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/codir.net\/?p=1944"},"modified":"2021-01-03T19:43:52","modified_gmt":"2021-01-03T19:43:52","slug":"17-days-and-counting-to-trumps-departure-yet-signs-of-a-planned-us-led-attack-against-iran-mount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/codir.net\/?p=1944","title":{"rendered":"17 Days and Counting to Trump\u2019s Departure, Yet Signs of a Planned US-Led Attack against Iran Mount"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>The United States flew strategic bombers over the Persian Gulf on Wednesday, December\u00a030, for the third time since the second half of November. According to\u00a0Haaretz, senior officers in the Israel military have met in recent days with their counterparts at US Central Command, aiming to tighten the links between the two armies against Iran. This string of American military force deployments to the Gulf region has only intensified speculation that that US President Donald Trump plans to \u201cgo out with a bang\u201d and take military action against Tehran before President-elect Joe Biden enters office on January\u00a020.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Friday, December 18, Israel\u2019s Defense Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz met with the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley who had arrived in Israel for a two-day visit a day earlier. During his visit, Milley met with a number of top Israeli military officials, including the army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi. Hours later Milley met with Israel\u2019s far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<a href=\"http:\/\/maki.org.il\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/2021-01-03.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An obviously relaxed and confident Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confers with the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, December 19, 2020. In the center is the Israel military\u2019s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi. Even the mask can\u2019t hide Netanyahu\u2019s satisfaction. Woe to us all if Israel\u2019s arrogant and corrupt prime minister gets his way in the end.&nbsp;(Photo: GPO)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Communist weekly&nbsp;<em>Zo Haderech<\/em>&nbsp;has written in its recent issue that, at the end of the Trump\u2019s presidency, the Middle East is riddled with signs of imminent war. \u201cThe last few days saw reports of B-52s making their way from North Dakota to the Gulf, of an Israeli submarine passing in the Suez Canal and of Trump\u2019s intention to deliver one final blow against Tehran,\u201d the paper noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One senior US military officer said the flight on Wednesday this week of two Air Force B-52 bombers was in response to signals that Iran may be planning attacks against US-allied targets in neighboring Iraq or elsewhere in the region in the coming days. Today, January&nbsp;3, marks exactly a year since Trump ordered the targeted assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in drone air strike near the Baghdad International Airport. Therefore, the Americans speculate that the Iranian\u2019s likely could use the anniversary of Soleimani\u2019s murder to commemorate their hero\u2019s death and more fully retaliate for it, something they only did very symbolically, with no American losses, a year ago. Just over a week ago, on December&nbsp;23, Trump tweeted: \u201cSome friendly health advice to Iran: If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible. Think it over.\u201d It is in this fashion that the Americans rely on the short term memory of world public opinion to camouflage heir own imperialist aggression in the closing days of the Trump presidency, as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office. (Biden has stated numerous times that he favors renewing US participation in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that the Trump administration withdrew from.) Naturally the aim of Trump\u2019s treachery is to goad the Iranian\u2019s into making a move militarily that would justify, in the eyes of the current US administration, a major strike against Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities in and around Tehran. As Trump is a well tutored student of Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose No. 1 strategic goal is to neutralize Iran\u2019s \u201cnuclear threat\u201d against the State of Israel, both teacher and pupil are well aware that this is their last chance to execute such potentially calamitous aggression before Trump leaves the White House and is deprived of his role as Commander in Chief of all American forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wednesday\u2019s bomber flight comes just over a week after an Israeli submarine openly sailed south through the Suez Canal on its way to the Persian Gulf, in a show of force against Iran. The move was approved by Egypt\u2019s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, yet another member in the US\u2019s anti-Iranian axis, according to the&nbsp;<em>Kan<\/em>&nbsp;Israeli public broadcaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Israeli submarine reportedly surfaced and began heading towards the Persian Gulf. Israeli intelligence sources said the move was meant to \u201csend a message\u201d to Iran. In addition, last week, the Israeli military spokesperson Hidai Zilberman told the Saudi Arabian&nbsp;<em>Elaph<\/em>&nbsp;news outlet that Israel was tracking Iranian movements around the region and that Israeli submarines were quietly \u201csailing everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week, a US Navy guided-missile submarine made an unusual transit of the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Earlier in December, a pair of B-52 bombers from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana flew what the military calls a \u201cpresence\u201d mission over the Gulf, the second of three since Trump\u2019s defeat in the US presidential election.<\/p>\n<div class=\"share-this\">\n                    <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share\"\nclass=\"twitter-share-button\"\ndata-count=\"horizontal\">Tweet<\/a>\n                    <script type=\"text\/javascript\"\nsrc=\"http:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\"><\/script>\n                    <div class=\"facebook-share-button\">\n                        <iframe\nsrc=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fcodir.net%2F%3Fp%3D1944&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=200&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=21\"\nscrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;\noverflow:hidden; width:200px; height:21px;\"\nallowTransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe>\n                    <\/div>\n                <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The United States flew strategic bombers over the Persian Gulf on Wednesday, December\u00a030, for the third time since the second half of November. According to\u00a0Haaretz, senior officers in the Israel military have met in recent days with their counterparts at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1946,"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944\/revisions\/1946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codir.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}