Did the US know beforehand about the targeting of Iran's nuclear chief?

The killing of Iran's nuclear programme director has all the hallmarks of one organisation. An organisation which has carried out extra-judicial hits aganst its country's enemies for decades. Mossad. Iran is seen by Israel as an existential threat to its existence. And the recent acceleration of the uranium-enrichment programme, under the supervision of Mohsen Fakhrizadah, the Iranian scientist heading the whole project, will have been viewed by Tel Aviv as a sign of progressive danger. Preemptive action to meet a threat and remove it before it becomes undefeatable is a military concept that has been justified on numerous occasions in the past. The US-lead invasion of Iraq in 2003 was justified on the basis that Saddam Hussein had nuclear, chemical and biological weapons which threatened the region and the world. It turned out to be preemptive action based on false intelligence but the initial argument for action was reasonable, had the intelligence been accurate. The bombing of Serb forces in Kosovo was justified by the West to prevent a humanitarian crisis. The US killing by armed drone in January of Iran's Major-General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, was justified because there was intelligence that he planned further attacks on American forces in the region. Fakhrizadah was not the first Iranian nuclear scientist to be killed, but he was the top man, the founder and father of Iran's nuclear programme. If it was Mossad then I have no doubt that the argument in Tel Aviv would have involved similar language to the argument presented by the US and UK and others for ridding Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction before they could be used in anger. But the timing of this hit has more to do with US/Israel politics than it does about the state of Iran's nuclear programme. In 53 days Joe Biden will be president of the United States and it is difficult to believe that he would sanction such an operation were the Israelis to ask before striking. Israel has always said it will take the necessary action against its enemies - whether the US approves or not. But Tel Aviv will always take Washington and the US president into account when planning an overseas operation like this whether it asks for approval/support or not. So, on the basis that Biden might have disapproved very strongly, the best time to carry out this mission was while Donald Trump was in power. Ergo, that's why it has happened now. So if it was Mossad, did Binyamin Netanyahu tell Trump beforehand? Well, it cannot be a coincidence that on Sunday, six days ago, Bibi Netanyahu (reportedly), Yossi Cohen, the director of Mossad, Mike Pompeo, US secretary of state, and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, met up in a Saudi city on the Red Sea coast. Was that when Israel informed the US that an assassination was imminent? Would Pompeo have raised any objections? It seems doubtful.

Trump has seen the future and it's golf

FIFTY-THREE DAYS TO GO: It's more than three weeks after the US presidential election and still there is no clear-cut acceptance of the result from the encunbent in the White House. But bit by bit the message is getting through. Now, in the latest development, Trump has reluctantly acknowledged that he might be leaving the White House. It must be very very hard for him to realise that he actually lost the election despite getting more votes than any previous Republican president. But now he has accepted that IF the electoral college announces that Biden won, and he lost, he will be out of the big white building. Of course earlier he allowed the transition procedures to go ahead and that was a true breakthrough. But still he fights on in the courts. Hoping for that miracle which he feels he deserves. But even the conservative-biased Supreme Court is not going to go against the grain and declare him the winner. So the future is golf. He should look forward to it. There are a lot of people in America who want legal proceedings to begin against Trump as soon as he has left office. They want the Biden Justice Department to institute investigations into his business dealings, taxes, etc etc. Do I think this is the right way forward? Bring Trump down with court appearances? No I don't. It would be terrible and unnecessarily vengeful for the new administration to go after Trump. He should be left alone and allowed to get on with his life. But if he is allowed to get away with whatever he may or may not have done wrong in his business world, won't he come back in 2024 and start all over again to be the 47th president? I seriously doubt it whatever he and his supporters are saying at the moment. There are too many others who want to stand for the Republican nomination in 2024. Life is going to move on. Trump is not going to remain a potent force for the next four years. By 2022, there will be a new Republican momentum and it won't be led by Trump.

Total confusion over Covid restrictions

Having just got used to the idea that for Christmas three households can get together inside to celebrate, the UK Government announces that London and many other cities will be categorised as Tier 2 locations once lockdown is lifted on December 2. And under Tier 2, two, let alone, three households are barred from meeting inside a house. So, for example, if friends or family are planning to join together for more than the stipulated four days over Christmas period, are they allowed to stay or what if they arrive, say, on December 20 and want to stay till the New Year? Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, announced separately that if people coming from abroad have a test five days after arriving from overseas they won't need to be in self-isolation. But if they arrive in a Tier 2, or worse still Tier 3 area, they won't be allowed to join up with other households anyway, so the relief from self-isolation is meaningless. I don't know whether every other country is announcing contradictory and confusing restrictions or restriction-liftings for this Christmas period. But as far as I can see, I don't know whether to lock my house and stay put like a hermit for the whole of December or have open house!

Strange omissions in Joe Biden's appointments and nominations

The ommissions in Biden's cabinet are more interesting than the names he has already made public. The two obvious ones are defence secretary and CIA director. It's extraordinary that when Biden introduced his chosen national security team for the first time this week there was no mention of who will be his choice for defence secretary, surely one of the most important appointments of all. It had been assumed that Michele Flournoy, a veteran Pentagon official who then set up one of the prestigious think-tanks in Washington, would be a shoe-in for the job but in the Democratic party, especially among the more progressive members of the House and Senate, there is opposition to anyone who at any time worked for one of the giant defence companies because of the fear of being influenced. When she left government, she was a board member of Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company which has extensive ties to the US defence industry. That time embedded with the defence industry could spoil her chances of being selected for a job which she has always wanted. She would of course be the first woman to be Pentagon chief. She knows the Pentagon, how it works and what needs to be done with it. But will Biden pick her? The fact that he left the job vacant and unmentioned when he showed off the rest of his national security team suggests there's a problem. Flournoy might not get it after all. Or if she does she could have a roasting during the confirmation period when she appears before the Senate, from the Democrat members. As or the CIA job, there's talk of Mike Morrell, formerly acting director and deputy director. While Morrell was a good man, it would seem strange for Biden to turn to him, a veteran who has in many ways done his time at the CIA and moved on. Perhaps Biden might consider hanging on to Gina Haspell, Trump's appointee. This might be controversial. But she is CIA through and through and she risked the sack by declining to put her weight behind Trump's desire for a thorough investigation into what the intelligence services were up to when he was standing for president in 2016. That could be seen as a plus point for her if Biden were to consider her. I think it might be an inspired move by the president-elect to keep Haspel in post.

Joe Biden's man for the Iran conundrum

THE TIMES PIECE I WROTE FOR TODAY: Jake Sullivan who is to be appointed national security adviser when Joe Biden becomes president in January must have winced when he read that President Trump had sought military options for attacking Iran’s nuclear plants before leaving the White House. For at the top of Mr Sullivan’s list of priorities as soon as he moves into the West Wing of the White House will be to reengage with Tehran with a view to the US returning to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal from which Mr Trump had unilaterally extracted American participation in 2018. Mr Sullivan, 43 and with a curriculum vitae that makes him the ideal choice for a diplomatic rather than military response to the Iran conundrum , will face a huge challenge not just in Tehran where the anti-US mood has increased under the severe sanctions regime imposed by the Trump administration but also in Congress if the Republicans retain majority control of the Senate. “Assuming the Republicans hold the Senate, the new president will likely run into some strong headwinds on this issue,” a former senior US official said. The Republicans and many Democrats opposed the deal. There is little doubt which direction the president-elect wishes to take on Iran. Mr Sullivan was a behind-the-scenes leading architect of the early stages of the 2015 nuclear deal. A brilliant Yale-educated lawyer and one of Hillary Clinton’s closest aides when she was secretary of state, he lay the groundwork, in secret, for the breakthrough telephone call between President Obama and President Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian leader, in September 2013. The 15-minute call led two years later to the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA) signed by Tehran along with the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, under which phased relief from economic sanctions imposed in 2006 were agreed in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme. Has Mr Trump improved the president-elect’s negotiating position by his decision to impose even tougher sanctions on Tehran? “I think Jake is mindful that the Trump people will have bequeathed the future Biden administration a lot of leverage,” another senior former US official said. However, a simple re-entry into the deal would be tricky, he said, “particularly because the Iranians are so far out of compliance and then you have the Iranian election coming up in June where the hardliners are likely to come back”. “Iran’s behaviour in the region has been so bad that Jake and his colleagues understand that things are not the same as when they left office,” the former official said. “How they traverse this obstacle course will be interesting to watch,” he said.

Trump still rules the Republican party

It's quite extraordinary the hold Donald Trump has over the Republican party despite losing the election. He remains a dominating force. So much so that Republican governors and the grandees of the party - most of them - haven't dared to speak out about Trump refusing to concede to Joe Biden. Every day that passes it gets more and more embarrassing as the man in the White House hunkers down and continues to claim that he won the election and that Biden's victory was false, rigged or just not fair. Some Republicans have spoken out. Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey, was the latest. Others have talked about the importance of a peaceful and smooth transition without actually saying it was high time the president stopped acting like he deserved to be president for ever. Why is this? Simple. Most of them are scared stiff of him and his huge - more than 70 million - supporters who wanted him to have a second term. If they voted, as they did, for Trump, and their Republican governors and senators go around saying Trump should get on with conceding defeat, these voters are going to think twice about voting them back in when their election comes up. So to avoid voters' revenge, they are keeping hush hush quiet which means that Trump will just carry on denying reality and relying on his millions of supporters to back him up. This is going to go on until January 19 2021. Do none of these Republican voters realise how unconstitutional and undemocratic this all is? At some point Republican governors, senators, House representatives, mayors, sheriffs and all must come out into the open and shout, "Thank you Mr President but kindly give it a rest. Biden won." So far, very few of them have had the guts to say it.

It's official, Trump will no longer be @POTUS

It's the acronym which every president of the United States enjoys and exclusively possesses. POTUS is coming down the corridor. POTUS is walking to Marine One. POTUS wants a double hamburger with cheese. POTUS, FLOTUS are en route. The Secret Service spend every day muttering the acronymns into their hidden sleeve mics. It's one of the many things Donald Trump is going to miss. And now just to remind him that he will not be POTUS on January 20 2021, Twitter has officially said that on January 20 @POTUS will be handed over to Joe Biden for his Twitter account. If Twitter says preparations are underway for the transfer of the @POTUS handle from Trump to Biden, Trump must have lost the election. He will still get Secret Service protection of course but they will be muttering something else into their mics. It won't be @EX-POTUS because that would be an acknowledgment by the current president that from January 20 he will be a former president, and he's still fighting against that description in the courts.