{"id":50969,"date":"2020-02-05T20:22:50","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T01:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50969"},"modified":"2020-02-05T20:22:55","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T01:22:55","slug":"iran-war-was-closer-than-you-thought-trump-admits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50969","title":{"rendered":"Iran War Was &#8220;Closer Than You Thought&#8221;, Trump Admits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/trump-candid-remarks-war-iran-was-closer-you-thought\">Iran War Was &#8220;Closer Than You Thought&#8221;, Trump Admits<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In what the administration has described as an &#8220;off-the-record lunch&#8221; on Tuesday, President Trump told television anchors hosted at the White House that&nbsp;<strong>war with Iran was \u201ccloser than you thought,\u201d<\/strong>&nbsp;according to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/trump-says-war-with-iran-was-closer-than-you-thought-11580857178?mod=hp_listb_pos4\"><em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s an annual tradition for the president to host television anchors from major networks just ahead of the State of the Union address, which was delivered last night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The private luncheon&nbsp;marks the first time the president gave&nbsp;<strong>candid remarks confirming the US stood very close to entering another major war in the Middle East<\/strong>, which was on the heels of the Jan.3 assassination of IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani and subsequent Iranian &#8216;retaliatory strike&#8217; on Jan.8 against a US base in Iraq.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com\/s3fs-public\/inline-images\/trumpwariran.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>During that time in early January the hashtag WWIII was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/world-war-iii-trending-twitter-iran-hawks-rejoice\">trending on Twitter<\/a>, along with countless social media viral memes warning the US stood on the brink of major war with Iran.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In apparent confirmation that the public&#8217;s fears were justified, the WSJ describes further of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/trump-says-war-with-iran-was-closer-than-you-thought-11580857178?mod=hp_listb_pos4\">president&#8217;s off-the-cuff comments<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong>The president\u2019s comment on Iran came after one attendee asked him how close the U.S. came to going to war with Iran<\/strong>&nbsp;earlier this year, after the U.S. killed a top Iranian military commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Iran responded with a missile barrage on Iraqi bases housing U.S. and allied military forces. The Iranian strikes didn\u2019t result in any U.S. deaths.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>And further, the report notes:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Mr. Trump didn\u2019t elaborate on why war with Iran was \u201ccloser than you thought,\u201d the people said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/s3\/files\/inline-images\/trumpwariran.jpg?itok=FoR9t0rz\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iran War Was &#8220;Closer Than You Thought&#8221;, Trump Admits In what the administration has described as an &#8220;off-the-record lunch&#8221; on Tuesday, President Trump told television anchors hosted at the White House that&nbsp;war with Iran was \u201ccloser than you thought,\u201d&nbsp;according to&nbsp;The Wall Street Journal. It&#8217;s an annual tradition for the president to host television anchors from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[441,522,827,4318],"class_list":["post-50969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-united-states","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50970,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50969\/revisions\/50970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}