The Trump Regime Wants a War with Iran

One month after Donald Trump announced that the United States now regards Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a foreign terrorist organization, the Trump Regime is sending an aircraft carrier and a bomber task force to the Middle East, a provocative gesture defended by National Security Advisor John Bolton as a necessary response to a "number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings" from Iran.

However, as Julian Borger notes at the Guardian, "It was unclear on Sunday night what Iranian actions Bolton was referring to." He continues:

There have been no recent incidents in the Persian Gulf where U.S. and Iranian navies are routinely in close proximity and the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was already bound for the Gulf a month before Bolton made his announcement.

However, the tone of Bolton's declaration looked likely to escalate tensions in the region, and it comes days after the Iranian government expressed concern that Bolton and other hawks were seeking to draw the Trump administration into a new war.

In a written statement, Bolton said the ships and planes were intended "to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force."

"The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces," the statement said.

It's a tough sell that you aren't "seeking war" at the same time you're engaging in provocative military gestures and threatening to use "unrelenting force" in response to any perceived attack.

Especially when the National Security Advisor has long been an advocate of that war: In 2015, Bolton penned an op-ed for the New York Times bluntly headlined: "To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran."

Now we're meant to believe that he isn't actively seeking war, in his role as advisor to a president who once tweeted:

Polls are starting to look really bad for Obama. Looks like he'll have to start a war or major conflict to win. Don't put it past him!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2012

On the day Donald Trump tweeted that, President Barack Obama's approval rating was 50%. Trump's is currently four points lower.