May 21: ‘U.S. Officials’ Keep Leaking Against Israel
Bibi endorses Trump plan; MAGA influencers and lobbyists; Golden Dome
SUBSCRIBE NOW to Tablet to continue reading The Scroll after June 1. You’ll also get full access to Tablet’s website, the print monthly, and more.
The Big Story
Stop the presses: “New” U.S. intelligence suggests that there is a “chance” that Israel could strike Iran’s nuclear facilities—a scenario that would become “more likely” if the United States and Iran reach a deal that leaves Iran’s nuclear program intact.
But wait—isn’t this public knowledge, and in line with months of official communications from the Israeli leadership, not to mention dozens of anonymously sourced stories in the U.S. and Israeli press? Well, yes. But the alleged strike preparations were nonetheless the big scoop from CNN on Tuesday evening, in a story citing “multiple U.S. officials familiar with the latest intelligence.” According to those officials, “intercepted Israeli communications and observations of Israeli military movements”—i.e., classified U.S. signals intelligence—“could suggest an imminent strike.” What are those “military movements?” Nothing terribly impressive: “the movement of air munitions and the completion of an air exercise,” according to the officials.
Lest there be any doubt about the purpose of the leaks, here’s CNN:
Such a strike would be a brazen break with President Donald Trump, U.S. officials said. It could also risk tipping off a broader regional conflict in the Middle East—something the U.S. has sought to avoid since the war in Gaza inflamed tensions beginning in 2023.
Which, translated into the language of social media, looks like this:
So the strikes would be a “betrayal of” and “brazen break” with Trump, who said in April that it wasn’t possible for Israel to “drag” the United States into war with Iran, because “if we don’t make a deal, I’ll be leading the pack.” And what better outlet for the MAGA faithful to leak to than CNN?
The language sounded pretty familiar, so we checked the last major U.S. news story on Israel’s plans for an impending strike on Iran. Here was The New York Times in mid-April (emphasis ours):
In a meeting this month—one of several discussions about the Israeli plan—Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, presented a new intelligence assessment that said the buildup of American weaponry could potentially spark a wider conflict with Iran that the United States did not want.
Of course, reading these stories, you’d be completely unaware there was a change in the U.S. government this year, since the language about a “wider conflict” and “regional conflict” is exactly the same as under Biden.
But OK, Israel is preparing for a potential strike. We assume the United States is too, since, according to every statement from the administration since taking office, Trump is committed to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons—through kinetic means if necessary.
For instance, there’s been a lot of talk about U.S. deployments at the Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean. In March, the United States deployed six B-2 “Spirit” stealth bombers—capable of dropping the 30,000-pound bunker busters necessary for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities—to the island, in what nearly all observers regarded as a clear signal to Iran. Those bombers left earlier this month, replaced by four B-52 heavy bombers and six F-15E “Strike” Eagles—a slightly less threatening deployment that has led to some speculation that attack plans are off. But as Bradley Bowman, the director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Scroll, “A lot of the folks hyperventilating about Diego Garcia may not understand that the United States has the capability to launch any bomber attack it needs to—B-2s, B-52s, or B-1s—from the Midwest of the United States. Those bombers can arrive in Iran plus or minus 60 seconds.”
“America has the muscles,” he said. “The question is, are we willing to throw a punch?”
Bowman was skeptical that the Trump administration would order a strike before exhausting diplomacy with Iran (a new round of talks was announced Wednesday), but he thinks the administration is in “a much better place” in the negotiations than it was a few weeks ago. He attributed that in part to Republicans in Congress “making clear what they believe is acceptable and unacceptable” from a deal. He added, in response to arguments that the United States should wash its hands of Iran and the Middle East to focus on “great-power competition” with China or Russia, that these nominally separate theaters are effectively connected.
“If you’re a China hawk, you’ve got to be an Iran hawk and a Russia hawk,” Bowman said. “Or if you’re an Iran hawk, you’ve got to be a China hawk and a Russia hawk. Because it’s just a matter of time until Moscow starts to pay back its IOUs to Tehran for the help Iran has provided Putin in his war in Ukraine. That’s going to make the Iranian military more capable. And we’re seeing Chinese investment and diplomatic support that is going to make Iran more immune to U.S. sanctions pressure. An Iran that is more militarily capable and more immune to sanctions pressure is a bad, bad situation.”
—Park MacDougald
The Rest
→Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday (quoted in The Times of Israel) that he is “ready to end the war” under “clear conditions,” including that “all the hostages come home, Hamas lays down its arms, steps down from power, its leadership is exiled from the Strip … Gaza is totally disarmed, and we carry out the Trump plan.” The “Trump plan,” we assume, is the relocation of Gazans, their replacement with “world people,” Washington’s assumption of a “long-term ownership position in Gaza,” and the development of the Gaza Strip into a “freedom zone” and/or “the Riviera of the Middle East,” to quote some of Trump’s various comments on his proposed future for the territory. (Whether anyone in the Trump administration besides Trump himself has any interest in those proposals is, of course, an entirely separate question.) Netanyahu also said that the purpose of the current operation is to “complete the war” and that when the operation is over, “all of Gaza’s territories will be under Israeli security control.” On the other hand, Bibi said he was ready for a “temporary ceasefire to free hostages,” so we’ll see.
→Subscribe to Tablet today to continue receiving The Scroll after June 1.
→A warning from Raheem Kassam, cofounder of the podcast “War Room,” about the social media hall of mirrors:
→On Tuesday, Trump unveiled his plans to construct a Golden Dome missile defense shield over the United States, modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome. In a press conference at the Oval Office, Trump said the system will cost $175 billion and should be operational “in less than three years,” with the capability of intercepting missiles fired from anywhere in the world. Trump didn’t offer much detail on how the system would work—and his cost estimate may be wildly optimistic—but previous reporting from The War Zone suggests that the Golden Dome would involve the deployment of space-based interceptors capable of downing enemy missiles during their initial boost phase, well before they achieve maximum velocity or approach U.S. territory. (In effect, this would represent a modern version of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.) These interceptors would be supported by an expanded array of early-warning and tracking satellites. The below graphic, from the Defense Intelligence Agency, may be tough to read (especially if you’re on your phone), but the illustration should give you a sense of the kinds of missile threats from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea that the Golden Dome is meant to address:
Read more about it here: https://www.twz.com/space/trumps-golden-dome-missile-shield-what-we-just-learned-and-its-implications
→Trump met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa today in the White House, and the result was the strangest scene to come out of the new administration since the February meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For background: Ramaphosa was visiting in a bid to “reset the strategic relationship between the two countries” following the United States’ decision last week to grant refugee status to Afrikaners—white South Africans of primarily Dutch ancestry—facing what the U.S. State Department said was “racial discrimination” at the hands of the Black majority. Asked by a South African journalist what it would take to convince him that there was no “white genocide” in South Africa, Trump allowed Ramaphosa to speak and then had his aides queue up a four-minute video presentation of Black South Africans, including the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, calling for violence against whites and expropriation of their property:
Claims that violence against South African whites constitutes a “genocide” are, of course, hyperbolic, but given South Africa’s sponsorship of equally bogus genocide accusations against Israel at the International Court of Justice, we won’t be shedding many tears about the unfairness of it all.
→The Federal Trade Commission may be planning to investigate doctors and medical providers for knowingly deceiving parents about the benefits of “gender-affirming” treatments for minors, The Daily Wire reports. According to an internal FTC memo obtained by the outlet, the commission plans to hold a one-day workshop in July on “transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers”—a step that is often a prelude to the commission initiating legal action. “There is now considerable reason to believe that the doctors and medical providers pushing [gender-affirming care] on minors are knowingly deceiving parents by exaggerating [gender-affirming care’s] ‘benefits’ and downplaying its harmful side effects,” reads the memo. As The Scroll has previously reported, internal communications leaked last year from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which issues “best practices” recommendations for insurers and health-care providers, showed WPATH members privately expressing concerns about the group’s recommended treatments, including hormone therapy and surgery. They worried the treatments were not only were less effective than publicly advertised but also were being provided to children too young or developmentally disabled to understand their long-term consequences, by doctors with minimal training in the relevant fields. Later reporting revealed that the Biden administration had pressured WPATH to bury concerns that life-altering surgeries, such as breast removal, might be inappropriate for children, for fear that Republicans might “pounce” on such findings.
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scrollletter@protonmail.com.
The moral of the story is to treat anything from CNN or Axios either a great deal of skepticism
Trump made the South African chicomm/Islamist controlled leader look like a fool. Well done.