Discussion

The Real Intelligence Failure in Iran

api: I’ve come to think that the costly quagmire is the point. It’s predictable and that’s why it’s done.

SmirkingRevenge: I think it's mostly that the leaders in the current administration are very stupid and full of hubris - so they genuinely thought they could just decapitate Iran's leadership and the survivors would quickly capitulate.Given the situation with the strait, it's clear they were caught off guard that the Iran regime has survived a transition (for now) and is fighting back.

Fricken: No, that's just cope. Trump is speedrunning US insolvency and having a great time doing it.

fabian2k: Trump isn't even pretending to have a consistent, plausible reason to attack Iran. He never even set an actual strategic goal beyond blowing stuff up. It doesn't really matter what the intelligence said, since it had nothing to do with Trump's decision.What happened was entirely predictable, as the article says. Iran using the Strait of Hormuz as leverage was an obvious consequences of putting them into a sufficiently precarious position.

comrade1234: > America’s spies had told President George W. Bush that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted a nuclear-weapons program and that Iraq possessed biological weapons and mobile production facilities, as well as stockpiles of chemical weapons.That's not true at all. The intelligence community reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction but then the White House got involved in the analysis and brought politics into it and changed the reports.

tomasphan: In the case of Iraq, they lied on purpose to support the invasion. In the case of Iran, Trump just ignored the intelligence. I do think the intelligence community is capable. For example, they warned of the Russian invasion weeks before it happened when all other European countries said it wouldn’t.

srean: Did the personal portfolios of US stakeholders gain?Trump and his ilk likely care about that more than what effect it has on the US.

srean: Yup. People were being pressured. Fired. To get them to state what the Bush administration wanted them to state.

SanjayMehta: Later on the "White Helmets" were shown to be a psyop. But good luck finding any mainstream news source to support this.

padjo: It's certainly making all that Venezuelan oil seem economically viable.

cbg0: There are much easier ways to manipulate the stock market and enrich yourself when you have high office, starting a war after you've campaigned against wars isn't the logical step.

srean: I don't think so. Much easier. Much easier to get away with.Administration charged with insider trading and corruption charges, that's not a very remote possibility. President and administration charged with treason -- quite remote.

V__: Especially Cheney pushed hard for this, ignored the intelligence communities assessments, then got his own source, a burned source, Ahmed Chalabi to fabricate reasons for an invasion.

ImPostingOnHN: My online friend SexSlayer69 told me the earth was flat but good luck finding any mainstream news source to support that either.It's everyone against you and me, man! Journalists, scientists, governments, everyone!!

jen729w: I remember the march in London. A staggering number of people. Makes a mockery of any modern-day ‘protest’.Made not a jot of difference. In Tony went anyway. Shame.

guzfip: > Makes a mockery of any modern-day ‘protest’.> Made not a jot of differenceYeah, that’s probably why.

lordnacho: Superficially, the article is right, intelligence services didn't get this wrong, and the administration made a bad decision despite having a good appraisal to hand.But really, it's a values failure.Wanting to make decisions that are good for America, and good for its friends, is a value. Putting people you are supposed to represent ahead of yourself used to be the kind of thing people would say mattered. It used to be a thing that leaders tried to demonstrate that they had carefully considered their decisions.Once you have an administration that puts itself ahead of everything else, this whole thing makes sense.This administration is full of insecure people who want to show how strong they are. You can see it in how they talk, and the constant stream of memes coming from the WH. It's incredibly juvenile, stuff like having Trump portrayed with a sixpack, beating up his enemies.Strongman regimes have a tendency to try to steal the blind, to use a poker concept: bully the opposition into giving you a concession, by making super aggressive moves. Like picking pennies off a train track, most of the time you will win and the opponent will back down, EVEN if on paper the opponent tends to have the better cards, because a rational opponent will appreciate putting a lid on risk. This last bit is really important, because it means the bully learns that he can win despite rejecting advice.So you can go around sucker punching people until it stops working, and there's a decent chance Iran is where it stops working. If it's not Iran, it will be the next thing, because they can't stop.And to get back to values, too many Americans are unwilling to take responsibility for their country's actions. If you look at what causes discontent with the current Iran situation, it is things like gas prices. In other words, self-interest, still.

srean: Cuba is already lined up. If they feel confident they would try on India because India often does not do what it is told. They have almost got that region under their thumb, except for India. Impressed by Srilanka though.North Korea is another but I don't think they will dare to make that move.

pjc50: Yes - oddly parallel to the VDV decapitation attack on Ukraine. Supposed to be a quick win, now a quagmire, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dead Russians.

swingboy: Maybe by 'America's spies' they mean Mossad?

zozbot234: Calling this a mere "intelligence failure" rather than runaway idiocy from our policymakers is putting it way too charitably.

ceejayoz: Uh huh, sure.There does seem to have been a psyop. With them being the target.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Helmets_(Syrian_civil_wa...

sheikhnbake: It should also be mentioned that a significant amount of Iraq's chemical weapons were given to Iraq by the US. Iraq destroyed the munitions they hadn't already used in Iran or against the Kurds. Then UNMOVIC was sent to Iraq to inventory and account for all of the destroyed munitions. The head of the UN team repeatedly reported that the inventory of destroyed munitions and verification of compliance with UN mandates was a matter of months. The invasion of Iraq was announced shortly after.

ahartmetz: Colin Powell's WMD dog and pony show in front of the UN council looked really fishy at the time, as if it was being sabotaged by the people who had to make up all that bullshit. Of course, that didn't matter neither because GWB simply WANTED to invade.Side note: Colin Powell always seemed like one of the more reasonable people in the Bush administration, and he had the decency to later criticize and apologize for his own actions.

k310: It is to take attention away from Epstein. The illicit sex, blackmail, and money laundering empire is the largest in recorded history, and in one person's mind, worth "Weapons of Mass Distraction" and outright war crimes to cover up. The same can be said of destructive and nonsensical actions taken since January 2025.Massively overplayed by unchecked power.

gregw2: I throw out this observation more to be provactive than persuasive, but I wonder about it myself...Trump's moves all tend to increase inflation in a plausibly deniable way.Inflation is infamously unpopular but appears an easy way for the wealthy class to get away with extending government spending without admitting/pursuing austerity which was political suicide under Carter.The wealthy shelter in their land and stock portfolios which keep growing unlike cash and also benefit from said spending while ordinary people pay the extra regressive tax that is inflation.

srean: Easier to repay loans. Who has lots of that to repay ?

srean: I don't think it's idiocy. It's self interest of his and his cronies.

LastTrain: Just stop. You think MAGA are going to give two shits about affidavit and testimony in the Epstein files? What is actually playing out in front of our eyes is worse than whatever might be in those files - focus on what we actually know instead of a pig in a poke. Be outraged that troops were deployed in American cities. Be outraged about masked federal agents abducting and killing American citizens without even an investigation. Be outraged about war crimes. Fuck the Epstein files.

grafmax: Joe Kent (the director of counterterrorism who recently resigned to protest the war) stated that US intelligence gathering in the Middle East is lacking, that the US has extensive intelligence sharing agreements with Israel, that the US relies on Israel’s superior intelligence in the Middle East, and Israel uses its position to bias US foreign policy in the region to further Israel’s geopolitical aims in the region - in this case attacking Israel’s adversary, Iran, even though it’s not in the US interest to do so. It seems that Trump really has thought this would be an open and shut war. The US does not gain by the war; nor does most of the world; nor do the Iranian citizens being bombed. Israel furthers its geopolitical strategy of destroying its neighbors, because that’s how its leadership defines security (and stays out of jail). One of the most obvious stupidities propagated in all this is the notion that Iran has been a regime waiting to be toppled by dropping bombs on its citizens, its schools, universities and hospitals.

SanjayMehta: Get well soon.

SanjayMehta: Wikipedia is compromised. Search for Vanessa Beeley's work.

srean: Iran has been on the receiving end of those weapons of mass destruction. They have lost 30 to 50 thousand people to those US bankrolled chemical weapons attacks and its still an openly grieved unhealed wound.I am surprised that the lay American gets so surprised that they do not like the American administration so much.Add to that the fact that US upended their parliamentary democracy with a sponsored coup, that the US shot down one of their domestic passenger jets in flight with no apologies forthcoming.

greenavocado: When campaign contributors tell policymakers to jump, they ask, how high? Our policymakers are completely captured by a shadow government of individuals who are at odds with the interests of Americans. Occasionally their interests will coincidentally align with the people's interests, but the link is not intentional, because they don't serve the people any more than necessary to get elected, at which point, they serve the shadow government

lordnacho: What would the interest be in India? I don't think it figures much in the American consciousness, contrary to Iran or Cuba.

cogman10: He very clearly thought he could just take out the supreme leader and Iran would ultimately appoint a servile replacement that'd kiss his ass.That's why this has gone so wrong. He can't articulate further goals because he didn't expect this to be anything other than a 10 day conflict with Iran begging for the US to stop punishing them.That is to say, he accomplished his objective on day one, but that didn't produce the results expected. And now because everything is fucked, he keeps escalating because if he pulls back now it will be a clear loss. We are basically fighting a war now because a narcissist can't admit he fucked up.

josefritzishere: This is a somewhat disengenuous article. Initially the Whitehouse couldn't even explain why they were attacking Iran. They responded as if they didn't expect to be asked. Then they gave nonsense answers. Then eventually, Marco Rubio said the U.S. had attacked at the behest of Isreal. Nothing in those answers is about foreign intelligence, or strategy, or even something resembling a plan. The word plan imples the US has a goal. It does not. Isreal has a goal. The US is merely a conveyance.

zozbot234: Unless that self-interest involves "wanting to watch the world burn" as we trigger an almost fully unprecedented oil and commodity crisis that tanks the economy way worse than 2008 ever was, I'd say Hanlon's razor fully applies here.

srean: Watch their personal portfolios. Of course not an easy thing to do.If this will stop, it will do so because of the threat to Kushner's investments in the ME.

srean: Ensuring unchallenged access to the Indian Ocean is a big deal and access to Indian market under US favorable terms and conditions.

wat10000: Everything is a distraction from everything else. Flood the zone.

ndsipa_pomu: I'm still waiting for Blair to be sentenced for his war crimes

pjc50: I think this is being overstated by Indians who would like to think that India is more important to the US than it is; other than H1B discourse, I think the US has largely forgotten India exists.Invading nuclear-armed India (from where?? Pakistan?) would be a completely insane thing even by Trump standards. It's a plan that disintegrates on contact with a map.

srean: Not necessarily with invasion to start with. First would be destabilisation. It's neighbors are not doing too well lately. Many of them imploded within a short time span.India can do what to the US with its nuke ? It's a deterrent for China.

griffzhowl: In the UK the main deception was the farcical Iraq Dossier, aka "the dodgy dossier", put together by Blair's propaganda chief Alaister Campbell. Colin Powell had seen it before release but not sure what role it played in the UShttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier