Trump Was Told Americans Would ‘Very’ Likely Die in His Illegal Iran War
The president keeps saying his war will be “easily” won. Now that it’s started, few around Trump think that will be the case.
In the months-long run-up to Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran, the president was repeatedly briefed by senior administration appointees and intelligence officials about the wide range of scenarios in which Americans and others could likely die, if Trump were to start a new war and the Islamic Republic were to retaliate, two sources familiar with the matter and three others briefed on it tell Zeteo.
The range included smaller-scale possible death tolls over the course of shorter, days- or weeks-long military engagements, or greater numbers of US casualties if the conflict grew protracted.
The two people familiar with the matter say that the gaming out of different scenarios included so many possibilities of how the regime in Tehran could kill American soldiers, potentially roil the global economy, or inflict other forms of damage, that many US officials did not mince words: It would be “very” likely, both sources say, that Americans would get killed days or weeks in, if Trump went ahead.
“It’s in a lot of [internal] documents, we also wrote it down a lot,” says one of the people briefed. If you are Trump, or Vice President JD Vance, or Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, or their colleagues, “you can’t really say you didn’t know,” this source adds.
In other words: Trump’s government at the highest levels had largely assessed that this would not be easy, to put it mildly.
This weekend, Trump went ahead, all while claiming lately that the fight will be won “easily.”
Yet, Trump also readily acknowledged that Americans may die due to his decision to launch a war against Iran, in partnership with Israel.
“My administration is taking every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region. Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill,” Trump declared in a video on Truth Social. “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future.”
The president, whose approval rating is hovering near the dismal mid-30s, is dragging the nation and its armed forces into yet another regional bloodbath when an overwhelming majority of American adults say they do not want this. For someone who likes to brand himself the “peace president,” this is merely the latest blitz in Trump’s already lengthy record of waging war over the past year, both abroad and at home.
The explicit stated goal of Trump’s war in Iran is regime change – even though Trump and his top officials have long professed to oppose regime-change wars in the Middle East.
Moreover, Trump and top administration officials have struggled in recent days to decide on what the mission or preferred end in Iran would even be.
The president on Saturday urged Iranians to “take over your government,” once the bombing stops. “It will be yours to take,” he claimed. “This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
Speaking with Axios on Saturday, Trump also claimed: “I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs].’”
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, suggested Saturday afternoon that the US-Israeli strikes had successfully eliminated Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. “There are many signs that Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei is no longer alive,” Netanyahu said in a televised address.
Israeli officials have said that Khamenei’s body was recovered under rubble caused by an airstrike in Tehran. Iranian officials have disputed this.
It is unlikely that the Iranian supreme leader’s assassination would end the ongoing conflict; in fact, there are reasons to believe it would inflame the war further, and also accelerate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s power grabs in the regime. Indeed, elements in Trump’s own intelligence community think it’s quite likely that Khamenei would be replaced by someone, or something, worse.
At least 201 people have been killed in Iran as a result of the strikes, according to NBC News. An Iranian state news agency said that dozens were killed in a strike on a girls school.
According to the US military, despite “hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks,” there have been no US casualties so far, PBS has reported.
The Trump-Vance administration is framing its illegal act of war as a “preemptive strike.”
The only thing it “preempted” for certain was a congressional vote on a War Powers Resolution set for this week, led by Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie.
Speaking about Trump and his team’s knowledge that Americans could die from their launch into war, Khanna tells Zeteo: “They have betrayed their core promise of ‘America First’ and no more Americans risking their lives in wars in the Middle East.”
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No more talk.
Impeach the bastard.
What we know so far is that more than 100 Iranian school girls have been killed. Apparently, these are the enemies that justified violations of international and domestic law. I just heard France’s representative address the Security Council. He shamed his country and the institution by completely blaming Iran for the situation. He said not one word about the roles of Israel and the U.S. He said not one word about the murders by Israel and the U.S. of Iranians in the strikes. He is as loathsome as most of the worst of the United States’ politicians. So much for France.