*What*, exactly, contradicts the opinion that the expanded war beginning in Feb 2026 was based on false Israeli intelligence?
OK, let's start with the NY Times piece. It was written by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman who are pimping their new book
Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Trump, the emperor - let that sink in first.
It begins with this: "In a series of Situation Room meetings, President Trump weighed his instincts against the deep concerns of his vice president and a pessimistic intelligence assessment". No mention of Bibi or Mossad or Israel. Just Trump instincts and his advisors.
The story starts off with a highly-classified meeting in the White House situation room that somehow these book-writing NY Times reporters were privy to through leakers inside this again highly-classified meeting. In fact, they had so much detail of this meeting that they knew what chairs Bibi and every person in the meeting sat and what chair Trump would take. Imagine that.
In this meeting, Netanyahu offered an overall assessment based on a four-part presentation - killing the Ayatollah, crippling their ability to wage war, inciting a popular uprising, and overthrowing the government. In the presentation, Bibi gave his assessments on how each part could be achieved. Now the key part here is that Trump hadn't even arrived yet. Bibi was delivering his assessment to Trump's advisors. So, once Trump arrived, here is what his advisors told him:
When Mr. Trump joined the meeting, Mr. Ratcliffe briefed him on the assessment. The C.I.A. director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister’s regime change scenarios: “farcical.”
At that point, Mr. Rubio cut in. “In other words, it’s bullshit,” he said.
Mr. Ratcliffe added that given the unpredictability of events in any conflict, regime change could happen, but it should not be considered an achievable objective.
Several others jumped in, including Mr. Vance, just back from Azerbaijan, who also expressed strong skepticism about the prospect of regime change.
The president then turned to General Caine. “General, what do you think?”
General Caine replied: “Sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling.”
Mr. Trump quickly weighed the assessment. Regime change, he said, would be “their problem.” It was unclear whether he was referring to the Israelis or the Iranian people. But the bottom line was that his decision on whether to go to war against Iran would not hinge on whether Parts 3 and 4 of Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation were achievable.
Let's focus on parts 3 & 4, the ones you refer to as "lies". I find that a bit harsh. It will never be known if the plans of those parts would have worked since they were rejected. But it definitely did not qualify as a "lie". Bibi believed it could be done. And he is still pushing for it even if the US is not. But for the sake of argument, let's say he was. Let's say that Bibi had a crystal ball that could see into the future, and he knew there was no way possible to overthrow the Iranian government. Yet he said we could anyway. That would qualify as a lie because he was pushing a narrative he knew to be false. But without that crystal ball, I simply cannot conclude that this was the case.
Now consider again your statement:
We got involved in this expanded war based on the lies told by Netanyahu and Mossad on Feb 11 when they presented their "evidence" that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could quickly dismantle the Iranian government.
These authors (using their day job at the NY Times to push their anti-Trump book)
stated unequivocally that Parts 3 and 4 (i.e. the ones you call "lies") were soundly rejected. And since they were rejected, you cannot make the case that Trump went to war based on something already rejected. You can't have it both ways,
@Right_in_Virginia .
