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Staged Deescalation Theory Gains Traction After Iran Telegraphs 'Retaliation' Attacks

From Zero Hedge:

[T]here's currently a surprisingly open level of acknowledgement that this 'retaliation' on US bases was telegraphed and even coordinated between Iran and Qatar (and that yes, the US knew about it). Tehran is saying the same number of missiles were used in the short-lived assault as were used by US bombers against its nuclear facilities. "Iran’s missile attack on a US air base in Qatar was telegraphed well in advance, suggesting Tehran intended a symbolic show of force while offering a way to de-escalate after US airstrikes over the weekend," Bloomberg is reporting. And CNN is currently even saying (based on its correspondent on the ground) that the skies over Tehran have grown quiet, after many days of constant strike waves by Israeli warplanes. The US military is saying all missiles were intercepted over Qatar. Airspace over Bahrain, Kuwait, and Dubai have already been reopened... The same report cites Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East, who points to the obvious: “It feels choreographed and intentional. The Iranians get to tell their population they struck a mighty blow against the US, even if they didn’t, and Trump has the room now to decide not to retaliate.” But the big questions remain: 1) Will Netanyahu and the Israelis play ball with the 'off-ramp' opportunity? 2) Most importantly, where is the estimated 400kg of Iran's enriched uranium now?

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It didn't even work.

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Iran Attack Was Basically a Staged TV Event

From Jeff Childers:

Trump may be tearing a page from Reagan’s historical playbook. I had to dig deep into foreign media, but I finally found the story I was looking for. Amwaj Media (Iraq/Iran) ran a story last night headlined, “Iran given advance notice as US insisted attack on nuclear sites is ‘one-off.’” The satellite picture above shows a line of trucks picking stuff up from Iran’s Fordow nuclear site— the largest of yesterday’s three targets. The photo was taken two days ago— just after the most recent meeting between US and Iranian negotiators. “A high-ranking Iranian political source,” Anwaj reported, “confirmed that the Trump administration on June 21 conveyed that it did not seek an all-out confrontation, and only intended to strike the Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites.” It added, “Importantly, the senior source also confirmed that the targeted sites were evacuated, with most of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium kept in secure locations.” If true — and no one disputes it — this raises the intriguing possibility that the strikes were more politically performative and less warlike than corporate media and the hot takes fear. In other words, this could very well be a paved path, an off-ramp, for making a broader peace deal politically possible. The notion of a ‘trading strikes’ deal is not far-fetched. Trump did it before, during Trump 1.0. He even described the whole thing after the fact. In January, 2020, following the US assassination of Iran’s top general, Soleimani, Iran launched retaliatory ballistic missile attacks on U.S. military bases inside Iraq. But Iran informed the U.S. of these strikes in advance, and aimed outside the perimeters of U.S. forces, demonstrating careful managed escalation and coordination between the two governments. Shortly after, the two sides declared an end to the conflict. If today’s events follow the same pattern, Iran will retaliate with strikes that will show a forceful response without doing significant damage or creating mass casualties, and a larger escalation will be avoided. The timing fits. As I predicted Friday, Israel probably could not have held out for the two more weeks that Trump said he would take “to think about it.” It had to be now.

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Seymour Hersh: Iran Bombing to Start THIS WEEKEND

From Mel on X:

Seymour Hersh is reporting that the American bombing campaign is going to start this weekend. Since Mark Levin has been cool as a cucumber all afternoon, despite Trump’s new “2-week delay,” I think this is probably right. And just like we said, it won’t be limited to the nuclear facilities. They are going to attack all IRGC infrastructure, plus police stations and government facilities housing documents and files. Look at the casual way in which Washington and Israel bicker of who should be installed to run this country of 90 million people. This is the reason these people hate us. And who can blame them?

Hersh also says that very little thought has gone into this transition or how it will be managed. JD Vance suggested the installed leader be a moderate religious figure, but Israel insisted it be a puppet government.

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Trump on the South Lawn tells reporters on possible US strike against Iran: "I may do it, I may not do it. Nobody knows what I'm gonna do."

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Meanwhile, at the Oregon House of Representatives… a drag show on the House floor.

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Crashed Air India Jet Tied to Long-Standing Boeing Whistleblower Warnings

The Air India 787 that went down in Ahmedabad was one of several jets workers said they'd never fly themselves—delivered amid mounting concerns over quality failures at Boeing's Charleston plant.

From Prospect.org:

It’s too early to know exactly what caused the bizarre crash of Air India 171 in Ahmedabad, a western India city of 5.6 million people, just seconds into what was supposed to be a 10-hour flight to London. The pilot reportedly cried “engine failure” in a mayday call to air traffic controllers seconds before the crash into a guest house for doctors, and footage of the plane, which slowly sank with its nose upturned in takeoff position, suggests a sudden loss of power. The 787 Dreamliner has been plagued by engine problems... A now-defunct Norwegian airline claimed in a 2020 lawsuit blaming Boeing for its demise that it had been forced to divert flights and cancel whole routes due to engine problems, and replace the engines on its Dreamliner fleet hundreds of times... But there’s something else: two people deeply familiar with the Charleston 787 plant told the Prospect they had particularly acute quality concerns over planes that were delivered to Air India. Cynthia Kitchens, a former quality manager who worked at the Charleston plant between 2009 and 2016, has a binder full of notes, documents and photos from her frustrating years at Boeing, one page of which lists the numbers of the eleven planes delivered between early 2012 and late 2013 whose quality defects most kept her awake at night. Six of them went to Air India, whose purchases were bolstered by billions of dollars in Export-Import Bank loan guarantees. The plane that crashed was delivered in January 2014 from Boeing’s now-defunct assembly line in Everett, Washington, though its mid- and aft- fuselages were produced in Charleston... [F]ootage filmed by an assembly line worker who wore a hidden camera as went about his day chatting up colleagues, virtually all of whom said they would never allow their family members to fly one of the planes the factory was producing.  “I raised my hand and said, ‘No one who works in this factory wants to fly these planes, I mean, that’s just the truth,’” Kitchens said. A woman she didn’t know, who was wearing a bomber jacket emblazoned with the FAA logo, shot her a scowl. But it was hardly the first time she’d expressed anxiety over the planes’ safety with upper management. Years earlier, she had asked a boss if he would let his children fly on a plane with the litany of flaws and non-conformances he was urging her to “pencil-whip”: “Cindy, none of these planes are staying in America, they’re all going overseas,” he retorted, much to her horror... [E]mployees he interviewed were especially anxious about three planes they had worked on that were scheduled to be delivered to Air India during the first months of 2014. The planes all had serious flaws that required them to be flown to the union assembly line in Everett to be re-worked. The Air India Dreamliner that crashed today took off from the Everett airport en route to Delhi for the first time on January 31, 2014.