From: slider@anashram.com

President Donald Trump considered launching a strike against Iran's main nuclear facility last week before senior advisers talked him out of the dramatic action, according to two new reports.

Trump asked top national security aides including Vice President Mike
Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Acting Defense Secretary
Christopher C Miller and Chairman of Joint Chiefs Mark Milley about the potential strike at a meeting in the Oval Office last Thursday, the New
York Times reported Monday, citing four current and former US officials.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8956013/Trump-talked-launching-missile-strike-Irans-main-nuclear-site-advisers-week.html

The meeting took place a day after international inspectors informed
United Nations members that Iran had significantly increased its stockpile
of nuclear material.

Trump's advisers ultimately dissuaded him from launching a strike by
warning that such action could trigger a wider conflict with Iran, the
Times sources said.

They said any strike, either by missile or cyber, would likely have
targeted Iran's main nuclear enrichment facility, Natanz.

A separate source confirmed Times' account of the meeting to Reuters,
saying: '[Trump] asked for options. They gave him the scenarios and he ultimately decided not to go forward.'

The aides said to have discouraged the president from attacking Iran
included secretary of state Mike Pompeo and acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller, who is holding the top Pentagon job after Trump
fired Mark Esper last Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, a watchdog for the UN, reported in
a confidential document last Wednesday that Iran's uranium stockpile is
now 12 times larger than the limit set under the nuclear accord Trump
pulled out of in 2018.

The agency said that as of November 2 Iran had a stockpile of 2,442.9
kilograms (5,385.7 pounds) of low-enriched uranium, up from 2,105.4
kilograms (4,641.6 pounds) reported on August 25.

The nuclear deal signed in 2015 with the US, Germany, France, Britain,
China and Russia, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), allows Iran only to keep a stockpile of 202.8 kilograms (447 pounds).

The IAEA reported that Iran has also been continuing to enrich uranium to
a purity of up to 4.5 percent, higher than the 3.67 percent allowed under
the deal.

Natanz, also called the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant, is located about 200
miles south of Tehran. Most of the complex is underground and it is
subject to monitoring by IAEA under the nuclear accord.

In its latest report the IAEA also said that Iran had barred its
inspectors from accessing another site where there was evidence of past
nuclear activity.

The officials who spoke to the Times said Trump reacted to the IAEA report
by asking his aides about what options he had to respond to Iran's nuclear expansion.

They said Pompeo and Milley outlined the risks of military escalation, and
that officials left the meeting with the impression that Trump had been dissuaded from launching a missile attack.

But, they said Trump may still be looking into ways to strike Iranian
assets and allies, including militias in Iraq, the Times reported.

President-elect Joe Biden has said he intends to revive the nuclear accord
when he takes office in January, but that plan could be thrown into
jeopardy if tensions between the US and Iran escalate in Trump's final
weeks in the White House.

The Times reported that national security officials within and outside the Defense Department have grown increasingly concerned that Trump may take actions against Iran or other adversaries before the end of his term.

During the meeting last Thursday, Trump's advisers reportedly acknowledged
that Biden would be taking over the White House next year, even though
Trump himself has refused to concede.

The advisers questioned whether the Trump administration should retaliate against Iran before Inauguration Day because of Biden's intention to
return to the nuclear accord, sources told Fox News.

### - (slider sucks air noisily through his teeth...) he's getting
desperate now alright??

the idea that he might have attacked 'china' seemed perhaps a little far fetched considering china 'can' (and most likely would) hit back hard! a million fried americans wouldn't look too good on his already terrible
record, whereas iran is a soft target by comparison? (i.e., the worst they might do is just give some of your soldiers a bit of brain damage? sarcasm
heh)

trumpy here perhaps considering messing up any chances for biden of again forming any future nuclear accord with iran - as he's announced doing - in favour of forcing a war...

and he's just crazy enough to do it too!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)