Amidst the US-Iran negotiations, Alastair Crooke says, Iran is not incentivized to end the war. Instead, it seeks to upend America's hegemonic dominance of the region — and "break the paradigm."

Chris Hedges: The Trump administration and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire and two weeks of negotiations, which began in Islamabad following six weeks of warfare. The basis of the negotiations will be a 10-point proposal put forward by Iran, not Trump’s vaunted 15-point plan, that include a call for cessation of all hostilities in the region, including in Lebanon where Israel has been carrying out punishing airstrikes, reparations paid to Iran, the release of billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets, a withdrawal of U.S. military bases in the region, the lifting of all sanctions on Iran, and a permanent and formalized end to hostilities. The agreement calls for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s daily oil and gas shipments are transited.

Iran, however, has so far refused to open the Strait, insisting that Israel’s attacks on Lebanon must first end and the billions in frozen assets must be repatriated to Iran. 

While Iran has clearly suffered devastating blows to its infrastructure, manufacturing, and military assets, including naval and air assets, while it has seen senior leaders, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, assassinated, none of the objectives set out by Israel in the US have been met. The Iranian regime remains in power. It controls the Strait. It retains significant missile and drone stockpiles, and it still possesses enriched uranium.

Iran is the clear winner of Operation Epic Fury. The US is indisputably in a weaker position than when the war began. Trump has, at the same time, caused incalculable damage to America’s moral reputation by taking part in an unprovoked attack on Iran and openly advocating war crimes, including a call to obliterate Iranian civilization and take out civilian infrastructure, including power plants. He squandered an estimated $39 billion on the war, costs that will be felt at home, especially with rising prices. The global economy remains in crisis, and even if hostilities do not resume, it will take months to recover.

Iran, most importantly, is now the indisputable master of the Strait, charging tankers $2 million to transit through the Strait. It has a stranglehold on the global economy. The new Iranian leadership, centered around the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is more defiant and intransigent than the old leadership killed by Israel and the U.S. in targeted assassinations. This is bad news for the U.S. and especially Israel.

US and Israeli strikes killed more than 1,700 Iranian civilians, including 254 children. Three million Iranians have been displaced from their homes, along with one million Lebanese. Add to these numbers the two million Palestinians displaced by the genocide in Gaza. Six million people rendered homeless.

Joining me to discuss the war on Iran is Alistair Crooke, a former British diplomat, who served for many years in the Middle East working as a security advisor to the EU Special Envoy to the Middle East, as well as helping lead efforts to set up negotiations and truces between Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian resistance groups. He was instrumental in establishing the 2002 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. He is also the author of “Resistance, the Essence of the Islamist Revolution”, which analyzes the ascendancy of Islamic movements in the Middle East.

I’ll just begin, Alistair, with a very broad question. Where are we at this moment?

Alastair Crooke: It’s a very broad question. It’s a very good question because this is not really clear at the moment. First of all, although we call it a ceasefire, it is not really a ceasefire, in the sense that a ceasefire normally has some prior understandings that underpin a ceasefire. We do have a halt of, if you like, military activities across, or supposed to be across, all fronts. Although in the introduction you pointed out that Israel was attacking Lebanon causing many deaths and casualties in the process in a deliberate act to exclude Lebanon from the whole process.

What’s happening at the moment is that there are two delegations in Islamabad. They are not meeting directly; they are meeting indirectly. They are quite big delegations because there are delegations of experts that are involved in this process. It is hinged on the 10-point plan or framework that Iran insisted there should be. The precondition for the meeting to take place was that the United States should agree that this was an acceptable basis for discussion. The Americans agreed to that.

Now, where we are at the moment is, as I understand it from Islamabad, is that nothing really very much is happening. There are the general discussions, but the Iranians believe that the United States have not fulfilled some of the undertakings they gave to Pakistan. Particularly, there seems to be hitches on the release of the frozen assets. And there are other elements that are taking place that are not very clear at the moment. I think it would be better to describe this, particularly from an Iranian point of view, this was an effort, if you like, to have at least a halt in the military side of the war to explore whether there was any room for maneuver, politically.

I mean we call that in the Middle East a Hudna rather than a ceasefire. It’s a temporary truce, if you like, really to explore if there is political will to move forward. And as I understand it, at this moment, that is not clear. So, it’s not clear whether the negotiations will continue past today or whether they will end today.

I don’t think that there is any great expectation of an agreement, certainly from the Iranian side. And I think that we may find that we finish the day with nothing really solid emerging from this. And the continual prospect that there will be military action initiated by Israel either again in Lebanon, where Israel is insistent that it should not be included in this process and that this is quite separate and that they’re in discussion with the Lebanese government in order to have the demilitarization, the disarmament, of Hezbollah, and that’s a separate issue and can’t be included.

The Iranian position is very simple. It’s going to be either a ceasefire for all or a ceasefire for nobody. If the Israelis insist that Lebanon is outside of these agreements and outside of these discussions, then in that case Israel can be outside of these discussions and Iran will continue the war on Israel.

So, I think it’s unclear how far we are going to get, but the expectations, as I hear or judge from there, are not very optimistic that something will emerge. And it’s not surprising. I mean, I don’t think it’s surprising. I’m sure it isn’t surprising to you because there are enormous contradictions in this whole process. 

They are the differences in the interests of the United States and of Iran and what Iran’s objectives are, which are very poorly understood, I believe, in the United States and poorly understood more generally in the West, how serious they are, the objectives for this war.

I mean, in a nutshell, the objectives of Iran are to blow up the existing paradigm. That is a revolutionary objective, to blow it up completely in order that they can escape, if you like, from the cage in which they’ve been held for 48 years, surrounded by US military forces, besieged by tariffs, by restrictions, UN resolutions, political isolation, economic, cultural, if you like, boycott. 

So, this is what they are trying to break out from. It’s not the same cage that the Hamas and the Palestinians are in in Gaza, which has got a literal fence and drones and monitoring of it, but Iran is intent on breaking the paradigm. And the key to breaking that paradigm, of course, is the Hormuz and their control of the Hormuz, which is the centerpiece of their strategic objectives.

Chris Hedges: Do they have the capacity, in your view, to break that paradigm?

Alastair Crooke: Yes, I think they have moved in that direction. I noticed what you said in the introduction about the devastation that had been visited on Iran, and I know this will seem counterintuitive to many of your listeners, but in fact Iran has emerged from this one month of war or so in a much stronger position than it did from the ‘12-Day War’ in June. It is in a much stronger position.

There is a lot of propaganda on all sides in this war, but there are some things that one can say very clearly that Iran has affected enormous damage on American bases in the Gulf area. It has destroyed all the radar abilities. I think altogether something like seven radars have been destroyed in the first phase of the war. They have not only destroyed that, they have complete control over the Hormuz and they have still, at this time - of course, Iran doesn’t have an air force and therefore cannot have air dominance, but instead of which they have created missile dominance over the airspace of the whole region, including Israel. 

The damage to their missile capabilities has been grossly overstated by the old tactic of just counting, this goes back to Vietnam, counting air strikes. And one of the things that has been most notable in this period is before the war, Iran bought from China a huge number of decoys -decoy planes, decoy missiles - and one of the things, not only are they very effective in their appearance, but I didn’t know until recently, is they have a heat source in them. So, they are hot. And so of course that shows up on the American sensors and the Israeli sensors as a real target, a real plane, a real missile when it’s really only a decoy.

The missile systems are buried deep in mountains. A main missile is 800 meters under a granite mountain. It has a whole railway system in the mountain and that carries the missiles from the cities, from the magazine, along a railway track to an entrance. A door opens, the missile is fired from the railway line, and then the door shuts. And, although it’s been bombed innumerable times, part of that 16,000 strikes we have made on Iran, it still functions. Half an hour after the airstrike, the missile comes out and continues. The mountain is getting slightly damaged and black, but nothing is affecting the missile cities.

Their command system is functioning, thanks to the mosaic decentralization of command, disbursement of command. It’s created almost a sort of mechanical structure that snaps into action as soon as Iran is attacked or as soon as there is an attempt at a decapitation strike. I mean they started instituting this after what they saw in 2003 with the American attack on Baghdad that they had to find a way of countering this and countering the air attacks that took place in Baghdad.

So, I mean, it’s impossible to give precise figures, but I believe that the number of deaths in Tehran are probably less than in the ‘12-Day War’. They did this simply by - they learned from the ‘12-Day War’ -empty every public building completely. So, universities, everything, are completely empty. All the government offices are empty. And so, Israel has been destroying those, counting those up as a huge damage caused to Iran.

And the most significant thing, I would say, is the financial aspect of it. In the first month of this war, Iran has earned double from its oil sales and tankers, double what it has earned in any month for several years past. It’s earned double. If you take just one case about a week ago last Sunday, there were five tankers loading in Kharg with 7.7 million barrels of oil. That, on one day, earned Iran 850 million dollars in the sales. Then, of course, they are earning from 2 million from every tanker and vessel that passes through Hormuz as part of the toll that they are insisting that ships have to pay.

So, the economic situation is, one can calculate from these figures, not just me but others have done that, that on this basis, Iran could earn a little short of a trillion dollars a year through the control of the Hormuz. But it doesn’t stop there. And I will explain why, because it’s also about supply lines. It controls supply lines - helium, sulfuric acid, all of these essential elements to our supply lines for manufacturing technical items and also for manufacturing chips and things. The chip factory in Taiwan is almost at a standstill now because they need helium and they need liquified gas in order to make chips. So, supply lines, food, fertilizer. This is it.

If you compare it to what happened with China when Trump imposed a huge tariff on China, 155%, I think, at one point it was. And the presidency said, “Well, okay, but I’m putting some restrictions actually on rare earths and other commodities. And so that’s going to be what you’re going to have to do without.” And of course it changed. And so, really that the Chinese tactic is also part of the Hormuz structure. It’s not just the sale of oil, not just the tolls, but it is about supply lines, and it is also something much more complicated, which is the insistence that the cargos be paid in Yuan.

And this is a part of, if you like, the attempt to deculture the whole of the GCC area, which has always been the central hub of dollar hegemony. This is the center of the petrodollar, and it was encouraged from ‘73 when it started to keep the oil price up because all of the proceeds go to Wall Street. Wall Street then leverages it in the financial world. And so, you have in the Gulf States a highly financialized type of economy with all of the data centers and others there. 

And Iran is telling the Gulf states, “If you want to enjoy a relationship with Iran, you have to get rid of Microsoft, Amazon. You have to get rid of these. What do you need? This huge 30 billion data center in the UAE. You have to get rid of this.” This is, if you like, part of, I wouldn’t call it a cultural revolution because it’s a financial cultural revolution that the Iranians are seeking to establish. That’s what I mean by breaking the paradigm. 

I’m sorry it’s a complicated explanation, but it’s bigger than just can ships go up or down. It’s a much bigger, more ambitious plan than is properly appreciated.

Chris Hedges: Some people have described this as the equivalent of our Suez Crisis. That was 1956 when the British and the French, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. They tried to take it back. It was a fiasco. They had to retreat, well, along with the Israelis. Would you agree?

Alastair Crooke: Yes, I would say it’s the same because there’s really, if anyone knows the geography of Hormuz, I mean the literal what it looks like, the landscape of Hormuz, it’s very evident that there is no way that the Americans, as things stand, this has been planned for a long time by the Iranians. 

The whole of that Hormuz sea-line is bordered by caves. It’s cliffs, and in those cliffs are anti-ship missiles. Under Hormuz, they have submersible drones. 

We haven’t seen them used yet, but these submersible drones have tunnels under the Hormuz’s waterway so that the drones can come out under sea, not visible, can’t be seen by anyone. They have lithium batteries that can last for four days. They have the ability to loiter, and they have AI capacity to then choose and select targets. Then they have surface drones, very highspeed drones with explosives.

And what is unnoticed, but is crucial to this, is they have these mini submarines, two-man submarines, small submarines, but they can operate in the shallow waters of the Hormuz Strait and the Hormuz Waterway. And they are equipped with anti-ship missiles and also with these drones too. It would be a suicide to try and put a landing craft down the Straits. 

The Straits themselves are under fire control because on the other side of Hormuz that is a sort of bend around the peninsula and then behind that are mountains and they are riddled with caves and emplacements of artillery. So, the whole of the Hormuz Straits, you don’t need to have drones or missiles, they control it by artillery fire. It’s within range. And that exists right up to Kharg Island. So, any ship trying to go up this waterway will be sunk or damaged and told to leave.

And if you land forces on the Iranian side, how do you get them there? How do you sustain them? How do you resupply them? How do you exfiltrate them? You’re going to land them on Iran. It’s desolate, that part of Iran. There are no forests. There are in other parts of Iran, but this is just desolate. And Kharg Island is a very small place. I’ve been to Kharg Island. It is just a small, flat area where the terminal for the pipelines from inside Iran come and load tankers.

If you take it, what is that going to do? And anyway, even if you stop the Iranian oil from flowing to Kharg, then all Iran has to do is to close Hormuz for three, four weeks and the pain in terms of oil price, inflation, markets, valuations, will be felt very quickly. So, it’s going to be very hard to see. This is one of the aspects of these negotiations is the United States has very few cards to play and has one huge disadvantage, which is that ultimately, as we saw in terms of Lebanon, the key player in this is not in Islamabad and that is Israel. 

And Israel, overall, has been very clear. We follow the Israeli press very closely, the Hebrew press. And their aim in the attack on Lebanon was first of all, to force more time from Trump in order to continue the attack on Hezbollah. Just to be clear, if a few Hezbollah have been killed in this, there been hundreds and altogether many more hundreds of casualties of ordinary Lebanese civilians who have got nothing to do with Hezbollah.

They’re trying to keep it apart by coming to an arrangement with the Prime Minister of Lebanon. That this is a separate issue. We’re going to negotiate the disarmament of Hezbollah with them. Therefore, it’s not part of the issue. And as I say, the Iranian position is very, the equation is very clear. The equation is: it’s a ceasefire on all fronts or it’s a ceasefire on none. And that’s what they will be saying to the American delegation in Islamabad.

Chris Hedges: Doesn’t Israel seek through Lebanon? Trump initially agreed that a ceasefire in Lebanon was part of the deal, then he had a phone call with Netanyahu and immediately backtracked. I also want to note that when Israel carried out this massive attack, I think over 10 minutes, there was no warning. I think the numbers of civilian dead are up to 2,000. I mean to describe it as a terror attack is probably not far. But it seems that this is Israel’s, and you’re right, Israel is not in Islamabad, but it was also not a party to the ceasefire agreement brokered by Pakistan. Is this Israel’s tool to essentially sabotage any kind of agreement?

Alastair Crooke: Yes, it’s very clear that, and from the Hebrew press it’s expressed. For example, Alon Ben David said, “Of course, you know, the attempt now to insist on the disarmament of Hezbollah is likely to provoke a civil war in Lebanon.” But then adds afterwards, “But that’s been the aim all along.” And similarly, I noticed that, I think it was yesterday, the deadline for the disarmament of Hamas has ended. So, if Israel decides to leave Lebanon quiet for the moment, it’s just as likely that we’re going to see a massive military operation in Gaza and in the West Bank again.

The objective is quite clear when you read the Hebrew press. And these are serious political correspondents. We’ve been following them for years. We know the ones who are close to the leadership and the ones who are in the opposition. And the ones that are close to the leadership are very clear, “We want the war to continue.” And in public opinion, that is also the case. 93 % of the Jewish residents in Israel want the war to continue.

So, this is what is being pursued, how to put the pressure on Trump to continue the war because they want Iran destroyed, not just into some sort of agreement on nuclear issues or something. They want it destroyed. They want to set up a whole series of ethno-sectarian mini-states on it - Baluchi State, Kurdish State, Azeri State, whatever - set them at odds with one another and have a completely weakened Iran. 

So, Iran is not going to go back into that paradigm. Why should it under any circumstances? They can see that and now they are in the process of trying to make a strategic push, a shift to change that paradigm and to get out of this and to have sanctions lifted.

One of the points of the Hormuz exercise is because people are paying tolls and those tolls are, if you like, breaking the sanctions siege on Iran. And that’s the only way you get your tankers out. And increasingly, states are coming and agreeing and trying to make arrangements with Iran, particularly Asian states. Of course, India and Pakistan, but also South Korea, Japan, they’re all making arrangements to pay the toll and to be able to access energy through Hormuz.

So, I mean it is breaking, in a small way, but breaking the sanctions. But they want sanctions lifted completely. And they are using the Yuan, the imposition of the Yuan, and also the attempt to tell all of the Gulf States that they have now to abandon their close economic ties with the United States if they want to have a relationship with Iran. And it’s not just the American bases, but it’s also the Microsoft, the Amazon, that part of the structure that has created an environment, an economic culture of the whole Gulf which is inimical to Iran.

Chris Hedges: I know this is a difficult question, but how do you read the Trump administration? Do you think that they are aware of how cornered they are?

Alastair Crooke: No. I don’t think so. I think this has been a complete misreading, first of all, of the nature of Iran. I think they thought that Iran was a house of cards and was going to collapse. We saw that very clearly from the New York Times account of the 11th of February meeting, which incidentally is only half the story because we were following in the Hebrew press on the 29th of December when Netanyahu came and had the summit at Mar-a-Lago with Trump, it was there that he laid down very clearly to Trump first and he said, “Forget the nuclear issue. You’re not to pursue that. You have to concentrate on the one issue, we have to end the missiles, end them because the Iranians are not just replacing them, they are creating an entirely new umbrella, a new paradigm. 

And if it isn’t done, they will be inviable. We won’t be able to attack them again in the future. So, you have to put that as your first priority and not the nuclear issue.” “And if you try to get out of this by doing the nuclear issue,” Netanyahu told him, quote from many sources in the Hebrew press, “We won’t give you a kosher certificate for that. We’re not going to accept another sort of JCPOA type solution. So, and if you don’t have that, you won’t have the support of the right in the United States. So, you have to do this and there has to be this attack on Iran.” 

And according to all of the newspapers, that was agreed in principle on the 29th of January, well before the 11th of February meeting that the New York Times has described. And again, during that it is clear Trump was convinced this was going to be a very short war, days at most, you know, one weekend, started on Saturday and by the time markets open on Monday, the Supreme Leader would be dead and the whole thing would be moving toward a regime change in Iran And it very clearly hasn’t happened that. In fact, something quite different is happening. It’s very hard to describe this correctly. This isn’t wishful thinking on my part, but it’s quite clear to me that there is a spirit of the Iranian revolution in its new form has come back, particularly amongst the young.

You can see it when Trump threatened to end the Iranian civilization, everyone streamed out onto the bridges, onto the nuclear power station and said, “Okay, here we are. If you’re going to kill us, you kill us.” I mean, this reflects a deep readiness to accept sacrifice, personal sacrifice, in the interests of your community, in the interests of Iran as Iran, a civilization, a symbol of civilization. 

So, there is a powerful thing, particularly amongst the young people now. They are much more fired up after the killing of the Supreme Leader and much more fired up. Young women, boys, men, it is something that is quite important and in my belief is having an effect not just in the region, which it is, the success of Iran in this period, but in Russia and I’m told in China too. The Chinese thought Iran would manage, but they’ve been quite surprised at the success that Iran has had and its planning, its thinking, and the asymmetric war that they’ve been planning for two decades. So, it’s having an effect in China and in Russia too.

Chris Hedges: Just as a footnote, we should add that the Persian civilization is 7,000 years old. It’s lasted a lot longer than the American experiment. But does the Trump administration, at this point in Islamabad, realize that they don’t have many options left? That Iran is basically holding all the cards? Or do you think that they are foolish enough to get sucked back into a resumption of the war?

Alastair Crooke: I think, first of all, the most important element in this, of course, is Israel because it is quite likely that Israel will pursue the war. Whether it will do it first of all by Lebanon or whether it will do it in Gaza or it will do it directly, but as far as they’re concerned, the war is unfinished business.

Now, this is a paradox, a real paradox, because at the same time that I’m saying 93 % pursue and support war on Iran and the destruction of Iran in the polls. It’s even higher on the right, this is an average, the 93%. At same time I’m saying that there are signs of great distress inside Israel too. The chief of staff of the army has said, “IDF is on the point of collapsing.” He went to the last security cabinet meeting and he said, “I’ve got 10 red lights for you gentlemen because we cannot survive with this. We are losing heavily, many men in Lebanon.” They had, in that very short period they were there, nearly 100 Merkava were destroyed.

Chris Hedges: This is the Israeli battle tank you’re referring to.

Alastair Crooke: Yes, sorry, the main battle tank and many of them with their crew. Some crew got up, many did not. They’re losing troops when they tried to invade and form a buffer line in Lebanon. They were routed.

There is a new Hezbollah. It has gone dark. You don’t see it. The Israelis complain they’re like ghosts. They appear and they vanish and you don’t see them again. They’ve evolved. They’ve changed it and they fire their missiles straight across to Tel Aviv. So, there’s a big fight in Israel because the defense minister wants a buffer line. They want to level all the houses for 7-8 km in the south of Lebanon, just destroy them like Gaza, and have that as a buffer line. 

And the defense staff say to him, “This is stupid. What are you doing this for because Hezbollah has most of its missile capacity north of the Litani?” The Litani is a river that divides Lebanon about just less than halfway to the North and they have them north of it. The South has always been seen as more of Shia preserve.

And this is where the crisis is. On the one hand, the population wants the war to go on. On the other hand, the military side in Israel are saying very clearly, “We have achieved none of our objectives in Iran. We haven’t seen the state collapse. It wasn’t a house of cards. We don’t believe there can be a color revolution in Iran. We haven’t ended the nuclear process. We haven’t got the enriched uranium back. We haven’t caused any real damage. They still are able to fire missiles at us regularly and with very damaging effects. 

So, we have failed in Iran. And we have failed clearly. We all thought that Hezbollah had been completely decapacitated by the killing of its leadership and Hassan Nasrallah. And now we find that, actually, they’ve emerged even more effectively than they were. Very effective, new leaders and new structures. And in Gaza, who’s running Gaza? It’s Hamas still running Gaza, and they are re-equipping and they are re-preparing for another conflict with Iran. So, all of this has failed and there’s going to be no grand victory.”

So, there is this great confrontation, and it could be that it is Israel that calls for a ceasefire first, just as they did in the ‘12 Day War, after four days started asking for it. So, it’s possible because of the strains and the strains on ordinary people. Yes, they support the destruction of Iran wholeheartedly, yet they are not ready to go on going down to the shelters and spend every night for 10 hours in a shelter, day after day after day, and so the strains on the civil population are great.

So, I can’t give you a very simple answer as to what’s going to happen from all of this, but don’t forget there are elections coming up. And Netanyahu still has a court case which is about to resume, I think, tomorrow, and he has to win these elections to avoid the outcome of the court case, which might mean imprisonment. And so, he’s desperate to keep the war in Iran going, to keep the fantasy now or the imaginary victory of a war in Iran. And partly that was what he was doing in Lebanon. He is saying, “Look, okay, we haven’t won against Hezbollah, but look, we can really hit them. And we hit them.”

So, it’s very complicated, the situation in Israel, as a consequence, and very complicated in the United States. I mean, I’m speaking to you from Europe and you’re in the United States, but you will well understand. I mean, the problem is that Trump needs to clear the decks if he can before the summer because the midterm elections are coming. 

The economic situation could turn very nasty. As I say, within even three weeks, the supply line shortages may show up. The price of oil is still high, the price of gasoline is high and so an economic crisis in the debt markets or elsewhere, because we know very clearly that there’s been a huge move out of the dollar, people seeking other forms of secure assets at this uncertain time. Certainly, we see that in the Gulf. I mean, much of the money has been moving out of the Gulf but not back into the dollar, it’s been moving into Yuan and going to China. And Russia has been pursuing this and telling the Europeans, “If you want any Russian oil or gas, you have to pay in Yuan.”

And now European banks are not giving Panda loans. Deutsche Bank, a major bank, is now saying, “Well, we’re not giving dollar loans. Now we are issuing bonds. Panda bonds in Yuan, either a digital Yuan or classical Yuan.” And things are changing and the process geopolitically is shifting. And Iran is gradually, in its small way, emphasizing and working on these rifts in the geopolitical structures to gain leverage for their main demand, which is, “We want the paradigm over. We’ve had 48 years of being in a cage and we are breaking out.”

Chris Hedges: If the ceasefire talks break down, how likely do you think it is that the United States will resume its aerial campaign against Iran?

Alastair Crooke: From what I understand, the Iranians don’t think that America is about to resume the war. America. They think Israel is a different case. But they don’t think America is likely to resume the war because they don’t really have any cards to play. Already, the Iranians have pushed the naval assets 1,000 kilometers from the coastline by firing drones as warning and pushing. So, the carriers have been pushed beyond the range of their deck strike aircraft to be able to overfly Iran without refueling, and you can’t refuel over your target. It’s not an advisable thing to do. They pushed that up. They’ve destroyed most of the bases in the Gulf states. Heavy damage. The radar systems have been destroyed. Some of the AWACS have been disabled.

Apart from the ability to just simply blindly bombard basically civil infrastructure - houses, residences, hospitals and things like that - in Tehran and elsewhere, all, by the way, not necessarily by aircraft flying over it because they largely don’t, these are standoff weapons, cruise missiles, others that are used to do these attacks. So, what’s really left to the United States militarily to do that would be a game changer? What? Bomb again Nantaz?

The only thing that is particularly worrying is in this period, Nantaz, the nuclear facilities that was bombed in June by President Trump, has been bombed again by Israel. But Israel has also put into a missile very close to Bushehr. And just so your viewers are clear about it, Bushehr is a working nuclear-powered power plant, which is a joint venture with Russia. So, it’s half-staffed with Russians. About, I think, 135 of them have now been withdrawn. But then there was another missile, which actually hit Bushehr. Not much damage, a little damage. But what’s the signal coming from Israel, from that, on the nuclear target? And I think the signal is not so much to Iran, but to the United States.

Chris Hedges: And what are they saying to the US?

Alastair Crooke: Keep the war up or else we might decide that we are going to resort to practical nuclear weapons.

Chris Hedges: All right. Great. Thank you, Alastair. And I want to thank Milena, Sophia, and Max, who produced the show. You can find me at chrisedges.substack.com.   

-The Hedges Report

Alastair Crooke is a former British MI6 intelligence officer and diplomat who is currently the founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, which advocates for engaging with political Islam. With decades of experience in the Middle East, he is a noted author and commentator on geopolitics and has been involved in negotiating with groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. 

"This Depraved Idiot Is Out of Control": With Middle East in Flames, Trump Eyes "Next Conquest"

 

 Donald Trump said late Wednesday that the American military is already looking ahead to its “next conquest” as the Middle East remains embroiled in a deadly military conflict that Trump and his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unleashed six weeks ago.

In a late-night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said US forces will remain “in place” and “around” Iran until a “real agreement” is reached to end the war, as the two-week ceasefire the president and Iranian leaders announced late Tuesday hangs by a thread due to Israel’s massive bombardment of Lebanon.

After threatening a “bigger, and better, and stronger” assault on Iran if peace talks collapse, Trump said the US military is “Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest”—even as senior administration officials expressed concerns that the president’s declarations of victory in Iran were premature.

Branislav Slantchev, an international relations expert who teaches political science at the University of California San Diego, wrote in response to Trump’s post that “this depraved idiot is out of control.” “We cannot live this way,” added journalist Marisa Kabas.

Trump, who has bombed more countries than any other president in modern US history despite campaigning on “no new wars,” did not name any potential targets of the American military’s “next conquest” in his Wednesday night post. But the president has lobbed threats against Cuba and Greenland repeatedly in recent months, threatening to seize both island nations by force. Last week, Trump asked Congress to approve a $1.5 trillion military budget for the coming fiscal year—a request that included tens of billions for new battleships and fighter jets.

During a speech at a Saudi-backed investment summit in Miami last month, Trump touted the US military’s illegal attacks on Venezuela and Iran before declaring, “Cuba is next.” “Pretend I didn’t say ⁠that,” the president added.

In a separate Truth Social post Wednesday night, Trump hit out at NATO and characterized Greenland, in all-caps, as a “BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE.”

Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, argued that Trump is “lashing out because his war on a whim did not result in the hoped-for ‘Venezuela’ in Iran but a historic debacle instead.”

The Intercept’s Nick Turse reported last month that amid the Iran war, a top Pentagon official “revealed that US wars in the Western Hemisphere are also expanding, unveiling an effort dubbed ‘Operation Total Extermination.’”

Joseph Humire, the Pentagon’s acting assistant secretary for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, told lawmakers that the US military “supported ‘bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border’” in early March, according to Turse.

“The US–Ecuadorian campaign has already strayed into Colombia after a farm was bombed or hit by ‘ricochet effect’ on March 3, leaving an unexploded 500-pound bomb lying in Colombia’s border region,” Turse reported. 

“In addition to his wars in the Western hemisphere, Trump has also launched attacks on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during his second term—most of them sites of US conflicts during the war on terror.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

him!

“He’s becoming more unstable by the day"

Donald Trump cannot erase from Americans’ memories his recent displays of emotional and mental unfitness, which ended in strategic defeat. The issue is not whether he will be forced from office — his Republican toadies for now will make sure that never happens so long as they are in control — but whether he should be.

Democrats who make the case that Trump has irreversibly revealed his unfitness to lead do the country and our democracy a service. If nothing else, they highlight the utter irresponsibility of Trump’s lapdogs in Congress in leaving him in control of the armed forces, including nuclear weapons.

“Donald Trump has blown past every requirement to be removed from office. And it’s getting worse,” said Rep. John Larson (D-CT), who filed articles of impeachment this week. “He’s becoming more unstable by the day. His profane and sacrilegious Easter Sunday and subsequent threats, including ‘a whole civilization will die’ and ‘open the Strait…or you’ll be living in hell’ not only foreshadow war crimes, but put our security at risk.”

While Larson urged Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s Cabinet to act, he is not banking on that. He vowed “to help build a clear and undeniable record of Donald Trump’s corruption, high crimes, and violations of the Constitution, so that when the moment comes, whether in this Congress or the next, we are prepared to act decisively and uphold the rule of law.”

He is hardly alone. Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) also said she would file articles of impeachment. Beyond that, Axios counted at least 85 Democrats (mostly House members) who spoke out on Tuesday to urge he be removed via the 25^th Amendment or impeachment. The reason for impeachment did not vanish with the ceasefire (about which Trump is wildly lying), as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) explained: The President has threatened a genocide against the Iranian people, and is continuing to leverage that threat.

He has launched a massive war of enormous risk and of catastrophic consequence without reason, rationale, nor Congressional authorization — which is as clear a violation of the Constitution as any. Each day this goes on, the risk and criminality of these actions escalate for our nation and the world.

Moreover, this administration’s self-enrichment, insider trading, and pure corruption off this chaos — from cryptocurrencies to predictive trading markets to bribe “settlements” — has placed the Trump administration’s pursuit of personal wealth squarely against the wellbeing of our nation and its people.

All of these incidents, and plenty more, have clearly driven our country past the threshold for impeachment or invocation of the 25th amendment. We cannot risk the world nor the wellbeing of our nation any longer. None of these considerations should be partisan, but shared in good faith by Americans of all backgrounds who care for the safety and stability of the United States.

AOC makes a critical point: While Trump plainly violated the Constitution in launching and conducting the war, the risk is enormous that he will do even worse as time passes. (That’s an entirely reasonable conclusion, whether you believe he has dementia or simply conclude with age, he is less able to cope when the walls close in). This would be a prophylactic impeachment necessary to remove a ticking time bomb (excuse the metaphor) that could go off at any time.

After the ceasefire’s announcement, other House Democrats echoed AOC’s call for impeachment. “Temporary ceasefire or not, Trump already committed an impeachable offense,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) tweeted. “Congress needs to get back to work and remove him from office before he does more damage to our country and the world.” Likewise, Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) tweeted: “Just because a President announces he’s agreed to a two week ceasefire moments before he threatened to commit war crimes, does not mean he is suddenly fit to serve.”

Why raise impeachment if it is not attainable now? For one thing, Democrats need to be on record warning the country that Trump’s continued occupancy of the Oval Office endangers all Americans. In ignoring unmistakable signs of his mental, emotional, and moral infirmity, Republicans assume full responsibility for all debacles that one can reasonably anticipate for the remainder of his term (e.g., further wars and war crimes, increasingly extreme incitement against judges).

Without reference to previous corruption and wrongdoing, to impeach solely based on how he has handled Iran provides at least four separate and wholly sufficient grounds for impeachment:

1.) Violation of the Constitution in taking the country to war without congressional consent.

2.) Violation of international law (and thereby U.S. law via the Supremacy Clause) in threatening genocide.

3.) Unforgivable malfeasance in ignoring all warnings about the risk of Iran’s retaliation and capture of the Strait of Hormuz; and

4.) Stunning capitulation that endangers our national security and ignores his obligations as commander-in-chief.

Somehow, he actually celebrates handing Iran — a brutal regime, sworn enemy of the United States, and international scofflaw he has identified as “evil” — the Strait of Hormuz, without restrictions on Iran’s uranium enrichment or missile programs, and without support for regional proxies. In doing so, he either misrepresents or doesn’t understand what he gave away.

Major General (Ret.) Paul Eaton argues that unconstitutionally cutting out Congress was the genesis of the horrors that followed. “A congressional debate would have forced this administration to articulate a strategy, define objectives, and present metrics for success — the basic elements of any military campaign,” he argues.

Without that debate, we went to war with the ability to blow things up and no coherent idea of why we were blowing them up.... A war that cannot define its own purpose cannot be won.

Eaton, like numerous experts (“Iran has survived this war battered but sounding triumphant, and it has good reason to be”) well-versed in the Middle East and this “strategic fiasco”, concludes: “This was a net loss for the United States.” Indeed, this is an egregious, entirely predictable, and wholly avoidable loss that will put us at a significant economic and geopolitical disadvantage for years to come.

In sum, the undaunted, unwavering, and uncompromising patriots who warned in advance of the dangers of this unconstitutional folly and continue to advocate for Trump’s removal deserve our thanks and praise. This is a debacle of historic proportions; let Republicans defend keeping a madman in office for another 2 ½+ years. We salute them and encourage others to join the “Get him out of there!” chorus.

The Contrarian is reader-supported. To add your voice to this chorus and help keep the opposition movement alive and engaged, please join the fight by becoming a paid subscriber.

 

The automatic military draft registration takes effect in December

 

Young, eligible men will be automatically registered for the military draft pool starting in December as part of a measure tucked into the annual defense policy bill Congress signed into law late last year. Men ages 18 to 26 must already register for selective service in case a draft is required. The last time a draft was in effect was February 1973, during the Vietnam War.

Automatic registration is already in place in 46 states and territories, according to the Selective Service System’s 2024 report. The SSS proposed a rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs late last month to implement the practice nationwide.

The nationwide measure has no connection to the ongoing war with Iran and was passed with bipartisan support months before the current conflict with the country. But the Trump administration has declined to rule out the possibility of putting US troops on the ground, and the war has led to renewed attention on the draft policy. Here’s what you need to know about automatic Selective Service registration.

Who will be registered and how will it work?

According to the National Defense Authorization Act, which Trump signed into law in December, the automatic registration will apply to male US citizens and “every other male person” in the country between the ages of 18 and 26. The mandatory registration applies to green-card holders, refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented men. Those on non-immigrant visas are exempt.

Currently, in states that haven’t enacted automatic registration, men must register “within 30 days of (their) 18th birthday,” according to the SSS website. The agency “accepts late registrations up until” a man’s 26th birthday.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

It is a felony to not register for selective service and can result in the loss of certain benefits, like some student loans and federal jobs. It’s also a violation of the Military Selective Service Act, which could lead to imprisonment up to five years and a fine of up to $250,000.

Some places, like Arizona and Delaware, and Washington, DC, automatically register eligible men when they apply for driver’s license or another form of state identification. Meanwhile, in New York, the application for driver’s license includes a section that allows eligible men to register for selective service.

According to the SSS’ 2023 report, over 60% of registration came from state motor vehicle departments. Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, who sponsored the automatic selective service language, told CNN in a statement, “Making registration automatic, not only saves taxpayer dollars by eliminating the need to advertise but finally ensures that young men are not unknowingly penalized.” In the statement, Houlahan stressed that the measure has bipartisan support.

The NDAA passed with bipartisan votes in the House and Senate.

What happens in a draft?

Congress would have to approve of a draft before one ever took place. And not all registered men would be enlisted to serve. There would be a lottery, in which birthdays and numbers are randomly chosen. People whose 20th birthdays fall in the year of the draft would be the first to get induction orders, followed, in order, by the following age groups: 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 19 and those who are more than six months past their 18th birthday.

People who are selected would be allowed to make a request for exemption or deferment. All men remaining would then go through “physical, mental, and moral evaluation” and those who demonstrate that they are fit to serve will be selected for service, according to SSS.

-CNN

The National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 doesn’t even mention the First Amendment or the fundamental right of Americans to organize and protest

 

With the mainstream media distracted by the made-for-TV drama of James Comey’s indictment, Trump has signed a little-noticed national security directive identifying “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” views as indicators of radical left violence. Called National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, it’s being referred to as “NSPM-7” by administration insiders.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left wing terrorism,” Trump’s homeland security advisor Stephen Miller said, referring to the issuance.

To the extent that the major media noticed the directive at all, they (even C-SPAN!) incorrectly labeled it an “executive order,” like this week’s designation of “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization. The mainstream media is hopeless in the face of the complexity and secrecy of the national security state. It’s hard to overstate how much different NSPM-7 is from the over 200 executive orders Trump has frantically signed since coming back into office.

An executive order publicly lays out the course of day-to-day federal government operations; whereas a national security directive is a sweeping policy decree for the defense, foreign policy, intelligence, and law enforcement apparatus. National security directives are often secret, but in this case the Trump administration chose to publish NSPM-7 — only the seventh since he’s come into office.)

Previous national security directives have been controversial, even politically earthshaking. In 1980, for example, President Jimmy Carter signed the Top Secret Presidential Directive 59 (“PD-59”) directing new nuclear warfighting policies that persisted until the end of the Cold War. When revealed, PD-59 caused a public furor.

Declassified copy of PD-59 | Carter Library

Similarly, President George W. Bush signed a series of classified national security directives after 9/11, the most famous of which authorized NSA’s unlawful domestic intercepts, a directive that wasn’t publicly revealed until four years later.

In NSPM-7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” President Trump directs the Justice Department, the FBI, and other national security agencies and departments to fight his version of political violence in America, retooling a network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to focus on “leftist” political violence in America. This vast counterterrorism army, made up of federal, state, and local agents would, as Trump aide Stephen Miller said, form “the central hub of that effort.”

NSPM-7 directs a new national strategy to “disrupt” any individual or groups “that foment political violence,” including “before they result in violent political acts.”

In other words, they’re targeting pre-crime, to reference Minority Report.

The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indicia” (indicators) of violence:

anti-Americanism,

anti-capitalism,

anti-Christianity,

support for the overthrow of the United States Government,

extremism on migration,

extremism on race,

extremism on gender

hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,

hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and

hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.

“The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts,” the directive states (emphasis mine).

A “pre-crime” endeavor, preventing attacks before they happen, is core to the post-9/11 concept of counterterrorism itself. No longer satisfied to investigate acts of terrorism after the fact to bring terrorists to justice, the Bush administration adopted preemption. Overseas, that led to aerial assassination by drones and “special operations” kill missions. Domestically, it led to a counter-terrorism campaign whose hallmark was excessive and illegal government surveillance and the use of undercover agents and “confidential human sources” to trap (and entrap) would-be terrorists.

Now, with Donald Trump’s directive retooling the counter-terror apparatus to go after Americans at home, this means monitoring political activity, or speech, as an investigative method to discover “radicalism.” (Contrary to other national security documents all during the post-Watergate era, NSPM-7 doesn’t even mention the First Amendment or the fundamental right of Americans to organize and protest.)

The focus on speech is evident throughout NSPM-7. The directive says that political violence is the result of “organized campaigns” that often begin (with the left) dehumanizing targets in “anonymous chat fora's, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions.”

To give a sense of how broad this formulation is, Trump’s earlier designation of Antifa as a domestic terrorist group was accompanied by a White House fact sheet singling out people who “celebrated” Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last December. As I wrote at the time, this describes a lot of Americans!

Trump’s new national security memorandum also alludes to Mangione but adds to it even larger categories of potential targets.

NSPM-7 is fundamentally a law enforcement directive, and it dispenses with the complications of using the active-duty military or the National Guard in pursuit of political violence. It directs the Department of Justice to focus the FBI’s approximately 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) to the new mission.

The FBI network of task forces comprises over 4,000 members—including FBI personnel and task force officers (or TFOs) from more than 500 state and local agencies and 50 federal agencies, including special agents, police officers, intelligence analysts and surveillance technicians. First established in New York City in 1980 to systematize FBI and NYPD cooperation, today there are task forces around the country, including at least one in each of the FBI’s 55 field offices.

For the Trump White House, the beauty of using an already existing network is that it bypasses Congressional oversight and scrutiny and even obscures federal activity to governors and legislatures at the state level. States, cities, and local police have already signed Memoranda of Agreements with the feds to fight terrorism, and officers are already assigned as task force officers.

NSPM-7 says the JTTFs “shall investigate” potential federal crimes relating to “acts of recruiting or radicalizing persons” for the purpose of “political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights; and the violent deprivation of any citizen’s rights.” It authorizes the JTTFs to investigate individuals, organizations, and funders “responsible for, sponsor, or otherwise aid and abet the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct.”

“The Attorney General shall issue specific guidance that ensures domestic terrorism priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts such as organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder,” NSPM-7 says. Civil disorder?

I don’t want to sound hyperbolic, but the plain truth is that NSPM-7 is a declaration of war on anyone who does not support the Trump administration and its agenda. Yes, it repeats the word “violent” over and over to purport only to go after citizens who are moved to take up arms, but it also directs monitoring and intelligence collection to map and target the new “evildoers,” to borrow a Bush label he took from the Bible just days after 9/11.

The partisan focus couldn’t be more obvious. “The real problem is this: since Charlie [Kirk] was murdered — a friend of mine, assassinated — nothing’s changed on their side,” White House counter-terrorism czar Sebastian Gorka told Newsmax after NSPM-7 was signed. “Not one leader —not one left wing thought leader, member of Congress, Senator — nobody has said we distance ourselves from the violent rhetoric. The left refuses to rid themselves of the justification for violence, and as such, President Trump is taking measures to protect us from the violent rhetoric that becomes snipers and bullets.”

-Ken Klippenstein

"Trump/Republican machinery of hate and suspicion"

Trump’s thought police may already have your name in their database, which is growing — according to Kash Patel — at the rate of around 300% right now. They’re not looking for people who’ve committed crimes, but, rather, for people who they think may commit crimes in the future. Thought and opinion crimes.

Yeah, like in the movie Minority Report, only with an Orwell 1984 twist. You could call it the FBI’s New Political Pre-Crime Center.

We shouldn’t be surprised, as horrific as this is. When wannabe dictators are elected to lead countries and want to end their democracies and impose absolute rule, they typically follow a simple series of steps, sometimes referred to as “The Dictator’s Playbook.” They:

— Purge government institutions of professionals and replace them with yes-men and groveling toadies.
— Strip their political party of anybody who’d even consider challenging them.
— Help friendly oligarchs buy up the nation’s primary media and turn it into a mouthpiece for the new regime, while directing billions in government contracts as recompense to those same men.
— Pack the courts so they and their buddies can crime without consequence while they drain the government of wealth.
— Build a separate, parallel police force loyal first and foremost to Dear Leader they can use to terrify the population and “keep order.” (Schutstaffel, Brownshirts, Blackshirts, Tonton Macoute, Central Nacional de Informaciones, Brigada Político-Social, KGB/FSB, ICE, etc.)

But key to their entire identity and supporting their base of power is their ability to identify “an enemy within” and convince enough of the population that these people represent such a danger to the nation that they must be suppressed. If you’re a democrat or lean that direction, that’s you and me. And that’s now.

Reporter Ken Klippenstein has been on this beat for a while, and his newsletter is well worth the read. He first identified the GOP’s hit list in Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, often referred to as “NSPM-7.” It identifies as potential “domestic terrorist” threats those Americans who espouse:

“[A]nti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, … extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.”

Klippenstein then, three months later, discovered that the Trump regime — specifically, Bondi’s DOJ and Patel’s FBI — was already busily compiling lists of such potential terrorists, sharing the responsibility with some 200 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) working collaboratively with local police departments across America.

And Bondi had instructed them to go back as far as five years in their scrubbing of social media and searching out our thoughts and opinions to find Americans who presumably may oppose Christianity, billionaires, or Tradwives.

But that was just the beginning.

Now, this week, Klippenstein has found that Patel has set up within the FBI a group — including 10 different federal investigative and police agencies — to “proactively” identify those of us who may disagree with their opinions about religion, gender, or capitalism.

The old “Terrorism Screening Center” set up in the wake of 9/11 to look for guys from Saudi Arabia who may want to learn to fly planes without landing them has been shut down and replaced with the “Threat Screening Center.”

And Bin Laden’s guys aren’t the “threat” they’re looking for: it’s those “potential domestic terrorists” who aren’t sufficiently Christian; who oppose the abuses and excesses of the “free market’s” unregulated no-holds-barred monopoly capitalism; and are or have friends who are queer or otherwise support the queer community.

One of the most troubling parts of the entire story is that America’s mainstream media appears to have no interest in this whatsoever, even though it appears right there in Trump’s new budget and is already up and operating within the DOJ and FBI.

And, ironically, reporters — particularly those for what Republicans call “liberal” publications and media outlets — would probably be among Patel’s prime targets. As Klippenstein notes: “Again, all of these developments have yielded virtually zero media attention.”

Which tosses the responsibility for letting Americans know about the new Schutstaffel that, come election time, may well be rounding up or at least “visiting” people on its list, to you and me. America was founded on the idea that your thoughts and opinions are your own, and the government has no business regulating them or punishing you for them. 

Under today’s GOP, Putin is writing our European/NATO foreign policy, Netanyahu is writing our Middle Eastern foreign policy, and now, it appears, the late George Orwell is writing our domestic policy.

The question, then, isn’t whether this is happening — it already is and they’re bragging about it — but whether we’ll tolerate it. If we continue to let the Trump regime and the GOP decide which thoughts and opinions are acceptable and which make you a criminal suspect, we’ve already given up the very freedoms our Constitution was written to protect.

Our answer has to be loud, visible, and relentless: sunlight, outrage, and actions like protesting, contacting our elected officials, and voting before the Trump/Republican machinery of hate and suspicion becomes a permanent new normal in America.

-Thom Hartmann

Killing History: DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) declares the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional

 

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

―George Orwell, 1984

Enacted in 1978, in the wake of Watergate, the Presidential Records Act (PRA) makes all records created or received by the President, Vice President, and their staff in the course of official duties the property of the United States government. They are explicitly not the personal property of the officials whose desks they cross. The law mandates they be transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as soon as a President leaves office.

Remember the stories during Trump’s first term in office about how he would tear his papers up into tiny shreds, forcing his staff to retrieve them and tape them back together? That happened because of the PRA.

The PRA is the law. It’s clear. Presidents are advised about the requirement when they take office. So, the reports that Trump was destroying his records should have been taken as an early warning sign of his utter disregard for the law. Instead, they were treated more like a cute affectation, a sign that this was an outsider who was new to being a political insider. At most, he was a little difficult to work for.

The report in Politico began like this: Solomon Lartey spent the first five months of the Trump administration working in the Old Executive Office Building, standing over a desk with scraps of paper spread out in front of him.

Lartey, who earned an annual salary of $65,969 as a records management analyst, was a career government official with close to 30 years under his belt. But he had never seen anything like this in any previous administration he had worked for. He had never had to tape the president’s papers back together again.

Armed with rolls of clear Scotch tape, Lartey and his colleagues would sift through large piles of shredded paper and put them back together, he said, “like a jigsaw puzzle.” Sometimes the papers would just be split down the middle, but other times they would be torn into pieces so small they looked like confetti.

Trump seems to have learned a lesson from all of this, but it’s the wrong one. That perception may also have been shaped when the National Archives contacted him after he left office to seek the return of classified documents still in his possession. We all know how that ended up. So, this term, Trump had his law firm, the government agency formerly known as the Justice Department, issue an opinion declaring the PRA unconstitutional. You can find it here, running to 52 pages.

“You have asked,” it begins, “whether the Presidential Records Act of 1978 (“PRA” or “Act”) is constitutional.” The answer follows immediately: “We conclude that it is not.” There are two reasons, either of which, standing on its own, would have been sufficient to undo the PRA. The opinion explains that they are “interlocking.” 

The Act “exceeds Congress’s enumerated and implied powers”, and it also “aggrandizes the Legislative Branch at the expense of the constitutional independence and autonomy of the Executive.” In other words, we’re watching another power grab by this administration, a stratagem to expand the power of the executive at the expense of Congress, while claiming it’s the other way around.

That opinion came from the Office of Legal Counsel at DOJ. Part of that office’s job is to provide legal advice to the President and executive branch agencies. It issues formal opinions; reviews proposed executive orders and legislation for constitutionality and resolves legal disputes within the executive branch. Its decisions are authoritative and they bind executive branch employees, not just the folks at DOJ.

The current Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Division is T. Elliot Gaiser. He clerked for a trifecta of Federalist Society hardliners: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Judge Neomi Rao on the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Edith Jones on the Fifth Circuit. He graduated from Hillsdale College, known for its conservative Christian principles. Gaiser became Ohio’s solicitor general in 2023 and was billed by the state’s Republican AG at the time as “a master craftsman of ironclad legal arguments rooted in originalist principles and constitutional restraint.”

Gaiser’s opinion regarding the PRA concludes that it “unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President.” The result is that “the President need not further comply with its dictates.” But the Supreme Court held that a nearly identical law was constitutional almost 50 years ago when President Nixon, upon leaving office, challenged the first version of the PRA. The OLC opinion fails to explain why that case is no longer good precedent. Gaiser seems to have simply, with the stroke of a pen, overruled the Supreme Court.

The American Historical Society (AHA) and American Oversight, a nonprofit that promotes transparency in government, promptly sued. They begin by writing, “This case is about the preservation of records that document our nation’s history, and whether the American people are able to access and learn from that history.” 

They explain that both plaintiff organizations and their members “rely heavily on access to historical records about the inner workings of the federal government to undertake their missions” and that their ability to do their work “will be significantly harmed by Defendants’ actions.”

The AHA explains that if the PRA comes to an end, they will no longer have access to the information that makes it possible for them to “create the historical record of presidential activities,” which would leave them with an “incomplete historical record by which to professionally research, produce scholarship on, and teach U.S. history.” 

They point out that once lost, the records and the opportunity to record history are gone. AHA has some gravitas in this regard: It was their 1910 request to Congress following the discovery that many records from the 1800s were missing that ultimately led to the creation of the National Archives, according to their lawsuit.

The case will be heard by federal District Judge Beryl Howell in the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare that OLC got it wrong and that the PRA is constitutional. They want an injunction that will prevent Trump from taking Presidential records away with him when his time in office comes to an end. The relief they are asking for would explicitly prevent him from relying on the OLC opinion.

The Justice Department will have to defend its opinion in court. Judge Howell has already ruled against the Trump administration in two cases: one involving a law firm Trump targeted by an executive order, and another rejecting the government’s assertion that it could make warrantless immigration arrests in cases where there was no evidence the target was a flight risk. 

Previously, she ruled in 2019 that DOJ had to turn over sealed grand jury evidence from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to House investigators. In her opinion, she called the arguments the administration mustered to oppose releasing the evidence a "farce."

None of these cases presupposes how she will rule in the current one; the issues before her are different. But she has a strong predilection for enforcing the bounds of the executive branch’s constitutional authority—the issue that will be presented here. Intuitively, it makes sense to preserve our history. The question the administration should have to answer here is: Why wouldn’t it?

Back to Orwell: “Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Thank you for supporting Civil Discourse and helping to create a community of well-informed people who care about the future of democracy. Your paid subscriptions make it possible for me to do this kind of analysis consistently—and to keep it accessible for a broader audience.

We’re in this together,

-Joyce Vance