(Seoul = News 1) Reporter Kang Min-kyung = Leon Panetta (87), who served as CIA director and defense secretary in the Barack Obama administration, hit directly over the ongoing war against Iran, calling it a crisis caused by President Donald Trump.
Paneta, who led the beheading of Osama bin Laden, strongly criticized President Trump in an interview with the Guardian, a British daily, released on the 22nd (local time), saying he was in a dilemma without a clear exit strategy.
Panetta pointed out that the Trump administration overlooked the possibility of blocking the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's most certain retaliatory card. "It is not as difficult as rocket science that the strait will be the biggest vulnerability if we go to war with Iran," he said, stressing that it was always discussed first at all National Security Councils in the past.
"(Trump) tends to be naive about how things will go," he said. "It's only the children's job to believe that if you say it, it's done, not the president's job."
His analysis is that this war was wrong from the beginning. The U.S. and Israel succeeded in removing Iran's supreme leader through airstrikes in the early days of the war, but the younger and tougher second son, Mojtava, became the successor, which had the adverse effect of strengthening the the theocracy.
Panetta said, "At a time when the Iranian people wanted to change, (the war) rather made the regime stronger."
The U.S. diplomatic isolation was also cited as a serious issue. Panetta said that President Trump is paying the price for disrespecting and disparaging his allies including NATO, calling them "The tickens are coming home to roast."
In other words, it has become an isolated worker who has no alliance to reach out when he needs help.
In the end, Panetta diagnosed that President Trump has not many options left. He advised that as long as Iran holds the Strait of Hormuz as a hostage, ceasefire negotiations are impossible, and that "we must get out of the illusion of withdrawal after declaring victory."
The only solution, he argued, is to force the U.S. military to open the strait and escort the tanker.
Of course, more casualties and war expansion are inevitable in this process. But he nailed no other alternative to prevent the loss of the U.S. economy and a global recession caused by soaring oil prices.
Reporter Kang Min-kyung ([email protected] )
Trump's true nature is becoming increasingly known to the public.
