The Wall Street Journal is reporting that President-elect Donald Trump is “weighing options” when it comes to launching a preemptive strike on Iran after he assumes office next month. The Wall Street Journal report comes on the heels of several from the Israeli media, who say that Israel’s government and military are also planning to strike Iran.
Just days after Bashar Al-Assad’s Syrian government fell to U.S./Israeli-backed “rebels” linked to ISIS and Al Qaeda, multiple reports have claimed that Israel and the United States alike are reviewing plans for strikes against Iran.
According to The Wall Street Journal, incoming President Trump is concerned that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon and use it against Israel (a claim that’s been used to stoke war hawkishness for decades), and now, he’s “weighing options for stopping” them from doing so.
Those options, The Journal went on, “include the possibility of preventive airstrikes.”
“Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent calls that he is concerned about an Iranian nuclear breakout on his watch, two people familiar with their conversations said, signaling he is looking for proposals to prevent that outcome.”
Since the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s government in Syria, several Israeli media outlets have also reported that Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli military leadership are considering strikes of their own against Iran.
“The Israel Defense Forces believes that following the weakening of Iranian proxy groups in the Middle East and the dramatic fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, there is an opportunity to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, military officials said.” reported The Times of Israel.
The ramping up of pro-war rhetoric toward Iran in both Israel and the United States comes not just in the immediate aftermath of Syria’s collapse, but as American intelligence and political figures on both sides of the aisle have spent months claiming that Iran is plotting to assassinate President Trump and other high-profile members of his incoming administration and the wider United States government. This is despite the known links of attempted Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private equity sector.
Iran has even been blamed for the rash of apparent unidentified drones flying over New Jersey, with Rep. Jeff Van Drew making the baseless claim that the drones are coming from an Iranian “mothership is off the east coast of the United States of America.”
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