Trump Throwing Hegseth Under The Bus?

 From the Daily Mail: "'Pete, I think you were the first one to say, "Let's do it"': Moment Trump suggests unpopular Iran war was his Secretary of War's idea." Excerpt:

    This is the uncomfortable moment Donald Trump appeared to shift blame on to Pete Hegseth, as the US President suggested his Secretary of War came up with the idea of striking Iran.

    Speaking Monday at a conference in Tennessee, Trump said: 'I called a lot of our great people... and I said, "Let's talk. We got a problem in the Middle East. We have a country known as Iran that, for 47 years, has been just a purveyor of terror, and they're close to a nuclear weapon."'

    Turning to Hegseth who was sitting to his right, Trump added: 'And Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. And you said, “Let’s do it, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon."'

For now, Trump is still referring to Israel as a great ally, although it was probably their intelligence and assessments that were relied upon when coming to the final decision to begin hostilities. 

    I don't have enough information to pontificate on whether Iran will capitulate other than noting that strategic bombing, by itself, has never decided a war. Whatever grand strategy there was that the Kurds would join the fight in the north of Iran, or the Iranian people would rise up against the regime, has to be gone by now. Even though Europe needs the oil more than we do, it seems content to let the U.S. do the bleeding on its own. Israel, for its part, is acting the mad dog, killing anyone and everyone with whom we could have negotiated. 

    As for the casus belli, all I can say is that Iran has been only weeks or months from having a working nuclear weapon for almost my entire adult life. And if the goal was to keep an Islamic nation from having a nuclear weapon, then why have we never done anything about Pakistan? 

    But I fear that Trump has lost his focus. He was elected to destroy the Deep State, crack down on immigration, particularly illegal immigration, and bring jobs back to the U.S. These are not mutually exclusive.  And Trump had good starts in both areas, but seems to have floundered and become distracted with this whole Israeli-Iranian thing.