It Looks Inevitable That Trump Will Strike Iran

Sources tell HuffPost that the diplomatic effort to avert war is slipping.

With the U.S. poised to attack Iran, diplomatic attempts to broker a deal appear to have withered. Israeli and Arab officials successfully united earlier this month to convince President Donald Trump to refrain from attacking Tehran, fearing a regional bloodbath. But earlier this week, a Gulf official who is familiar with discussions among U.S. officials told HuffPost the chances of avoiding a strike stood only at 50%. The odds look even worse heading into the weekend.

The U.S. has amassed forces that Trump calls an “armada” in the region and he is considering possibly striking a wider range of targets than the U.S. did in its attack on Iranian nuclear facilities last summer, a U.S. official and another source familiar with administration conversations told HuffPost. The assault could include political targets, potentially even Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which would likely invite heavy Iranian retaliation and kill future diplomatic prospects.

Trump says the alternative to the strikes are negotiations, but he and his aides have laid out preconditions for talks that few believe Iran is willing to meet. They want Tehran to first commit to limiting its uranium enrichment, ballistic missile program and support for militias across the Middle East. Trump and his aides, frustrated with attempted diplomacy last year, feel Iran should make extensive concessions, arguing it has no other option given the immense pressure it is under, the U.S. official and the other source said. Iran badly wants relief from U.S. economic sanctions, but its leadership is also wary of Trump and of negotiating from a position of weakness, after the government faced its biggest popular uprising in years and brutally suppressed it, killing thousands.

The result, said Ali Vaez, an analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, is that “Iran’s ceiling sits below America’s floor.”

“I think it’s more likely than not that we do something very shortsighted within the weekend,” said Reid Smith, the vice president of foreign policy at Stand Together, an organization founded by the right-wing billionaire Charles Koch that advocates for a more restrained U.S. position in global affairs.