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There are attempts to make US senior official Joe Kent's resignation about antisemitism, which is silly, rather than the war.
Even the elderly British historian Alan Sked, the founder of UKIP, said this resignation is antisemitic, so it's not just the American Israel lobby trying to close this down, but it's still silly.
Things Joe Kent saw happen must have deeply disturbed him.
Josh Paul, a less senior official, resigned from the Biden administration in protest at the US arming the IDF in Gaza but before that has a high ranking US official resigned in protest over a war since the invasion of Cambodia?
Did anyone imagine Iran was an imminent threat to America?
I don't believe it.
Here is Alan Dershowitz, Epstein's lawyer and close associate.
From an article in the Guardian yesterday afternoon.
[An anonymous source, cited by the Guardian, claimed that Mr Powell was also in attendance with a small group of officials but diplomatic sources told the Telegraph that this wasn’t the case.]
Britain’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, attended the final talks between the US and Iran and judged that the offer made by Tehran on its nuclear programme was significant enough to prevent a rush to war, the Guardian can reveal.
...The UK saw no compelling evidence of an imminent threat of an Iranian missile attack on Europe, or of Iran securing a nuclear weapon. This is the first time it has become clear that Britain was so closely involved in the talks, and so had good reason to decide whether diplomatic options had been exhausted and a US attack was necessary.
Instead the UK regarded the attack as unlawful and premature since Powell believed the path remained open to a negotiated solution to the long-running issue of how Iran could reassure the US that it was not seeking a nuclear weapon.
...In the final session of the talks, Iran agreed to a three- to-five-year pause on domestic enrichment, but the US in the afternoon session, after consultations with Trump, demanded a 10-year pause.
In practice, Iran had no means to enrich domestically because of the bombing of its enrichment plants in 2025.
...One Gulf diplomat with knowledge of the talks said: “We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.”
[An anonymous source, cited by the Guardian, claimed that Mr Powell was also in attendance with a small group of officials but diplomatic sources told the Telegraph that this wasn’t the case.]
To remind you of previous US statements.
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State: "We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act."
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, in March 2025: "The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003."
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, in March 2025: "The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003."
An anonymous source, cited by the Guardian, claimed that Mr Powell was also in attendance with a small group of officials.
ReplyDeleteDiplomatic sources told the Telegraph that this wasn’t the case, blaming Oman, which was upset the talks had broken down without a deal, for the leaks.
Oman’s frustrations were laid bare on Wednesday, when Badr Albusaidi, the country’s foreign minister, wrote an article for The Economist, in which he described the war as a “miscalculation” by the US that was having huge effects on the Gulf economies.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for Sir Keir said: “No team of British officials participated in the negotiations.
“The UK supported the approach Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner took and their efforts in pursuit of a negotiated solution.”
While Mr Powell was not at the talks, it didn’t mean he didn’t know what was said in them.
The New Labour veteran is understood to have struck up a friendship with Mr Witkoff, who considers him a trusted adviser on issues including Iran and Ukraine.
The Telegraph saw the two men having breakfast together at Geneva’s InterContinental hotel on the morning of the talks.
Mr Powell, alongside his team of advisers, remained at the hotel throughout that day. The US team was mediating talks between Ukraine and Russia in the same building.
Jonathan Powell and his team in the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva
Jonathan Powell, 3rd left, and his team in the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva during the US-brokered Russia-Ukraine talks
Reports suggesting that the British security chief believed a deal to avert war was possible were accurate, according to multiple sources briefed on the discussions.
But Mr Powell did have reservations over whether any possible agreement would be palatable to Washington, one source said.
The negotiations broke down when Tehran handed over a seven-page agreement, described by US officials as “Swiss cheese” – because of how many holes were in it – to Mr Witkoff and Mr Kushner on the last day of talks.
In the deal, which Tehran called a “needs-based agreement”, the regime pledged to enrich only enough uranium to run a civilian nuclear power station over the next 10 years.
Tehran Research Reactor, which has been running for 59 years, was first thought to be a civil reactor used to build radio isotopes and create medicines for the nation. But in a “Perry Mason moment”, US negotiators are understood to have realised it was being used to enrich uranium to 20 per cent.
This prompted fears in American intelligence that Iran could enrich uranium from 20 per cent to 90 per cent, considered weapons-grade, in as little as a month.