{"id":352729,"date":"2026-03-22T19:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T19:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/352729\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T19:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T19:25:07","slug":"nobody-else-is-responsible-trump-to-blame-for-iran-crisis-ex-cia-chief-says-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/352729\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Nobody else is responsible\u2019: Trump to blame for Iran crisis, ex-CIA chief says | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump is stuck between \u201ca rock and a hard place\u201d after three weeks of war in Iran and \u201csending a message of weakness\u201d to the world, Leon Panetta<\/a>, a former US defence secretary and Central Intelligence Agency director, has told the Guardian.<\/p>\n

Panetta, who served in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, recalled that national security officials were always keenly aware of Iran\u2019s ability to create an energy crisis by blocking the strait of Hormuz<\/a>. That very scenario is now unfolding, leaving Trump with no exit strategy beyond wishful thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe tends to be naive about how things can happen,\u201d Panetta, 87, who supervised the operation to find and kill Osama bin Laden<\/a>, said by phone. \u201cIf he says it and keeps saying it there\u2019s always a hope that what he says will come true. But that\u2019s what kids do. It\u2019s not what presidents do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s war began on 28 February with what it hoped would be a knockout blow. A surprise strike by Israel killed Iran\u2019s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The US and Israel soon gained air supremacy. But the longer the conflict has raged, the more that initiative appears to be slipping away<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thirteen US service members and, according to Iranian health officials, more than 1,400 Iranians have been killed while Khamenei was succeeded by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei<\/a>. Trump has struggled to sell the war at home as oil prices rise, his polling numbers fall and his electoral coalition shows signs of splintering. He has fumed at news coverage and sent mixed signals on objectives or when the \u201cexcursion\u201d, as he terms it, will reach a conclusion.<\/p>\n

Panetta said: \u201cWe replaced an old guy, a supreme leader who was near death at a time when the people of Iran<\/a> were willing to take to the streets with the hope that they could ultimately change their way of government. And instead today we have a more entrenched regime, we have a younger supreme leader who\u2019s going to be there a while, and he\u2019s much more of a hardliner than the first supreme leader. That didn\u2019t turn out too well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The regime has retaliated against the US and Israel by effectively closing the strait of Hormuz<\/a>, throwing global energy markets into a tailspin. A fifth of the world\u2019s traded oil flows through the waterway.<\/p>\n

For Panetta, it is a crisis of the president\u2019s own making. \u201cThis is not rocket science to understand that if you\u2019re going to conduct a war with Iran, one of the great vulnerabilities is the strait of Hormuz, and [it] could create an immense oil crisis that could drive the price of fuel sky-high.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn every national security council I\u2019ve been a part of where we\u2019ve talked about Iran, that subject always came up. For some reason, either they didn\u2019t consider that could be a consequence or they thought the war would end quickly and they wouldn\u2019t have to worry about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cWhatever it was, they were not prepared for it and they\u2019re now paying a price because, if there was an escape here for Trump, it would be to declare victory and it\u2019s over and we\u2019ve been able to be successful in all of our military targets. The problem is he can declare victory all he wants but, if he doesn\u2019t get the ceasefire, he\u2019s got nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he\u2019s not going to get a ceasefire as long as Iran is holding the gun of the strait of Hormuz against his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has said he does not plan to put US boots on the ground in Iran but is also sending thousands of marines<\/a> to the Middle East in a possible sign of a coming operation. On Friday he declined to confirm a report by the Axios news outlet <\/a>that he was considering an occupation or blockade of Iran\u2019s Kharg Island to pressure Iran to reopen the strait.<\/p>\n

Panetta said: \u201cHe\u2019s facing a very tough issue, which is: does he go to expand the war by trying to get the strait of Hormuz open so that he can eliminate that leverage and maybe be able to ultimately negotiate with Iran? Or does he just simply walk away and declare victory, although everybody will clearly understand that he\u2019s failed?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very tough position he\u2019s in right now but nobody else is responsible for where he\u2019s at than Donald Trump<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Help is not on the way. Last Saturday, Trump posted that other countries may need to help keep the strait of Hormuz open, the reaction was underwhelming. On Friday, Trump branded Nato a \u201cpaper tiger\u201d without the US and mocked its members as \u201ccowards\u201d<\/a>. He kept allies other than Israel in the dark about his war plans for Iran.<\/p>\n

Panetta commented: \u201cIf you\u2019re planning a war, it\u2019s not a bad idea to talk to your allies. Alliances are important to be able to support any kind of military effort. We\u2019ve learned that lesson going back a long way to world war two. But he [Trump] takes a callous approach to alliances and now he suddenly finds himself in a place where he\u2019s got to turn to allies, to Nato and to others, all of whom he certainly hasn\u2019t treated well in his presidency, to try to help bail him out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former defence secretary added with a chuckle: \u201cThe chickens are coming home to roost.\u201d<\/p>\n

He advises Trump to abandon his magical thinking and \u201cface the fact\u201d that he must use the military to open the strait, neutralise Iranian defences along the coast and deploy ships to escort oil tankers through.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no question there\u2019s going to be lives lost and it\u2019s clearly going to expand the war but I don\u2019t see the alternative. He\u2019s got to do it. He\u2019s talked a great deal about the strength of the United States. This is a test of whether the United States can be able to deal with that situation which otherwise is not only going to prolong the war but create a lot of economic damage to the United States with those soaring fuel prices and cause what some have said is a potential worldwide recession.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panetta added frankly: \u201cThere\u2019s not much choice. You\u2019ve got to do what you have to do and, if you can open the strait, it might give you a better chance to then have a basis on which you can negotiate hopefully some kind of ceasefire. That\u2019s the only way that he can go at this point; otherwise he will clearly have failed to find a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

An ex-army intelligence officer, Panetta was White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration then served as CIA director and the 23rd secretary of defence under Obama. He is now chairman of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy based at California State University, Monterey Bay. His son, Jimmy Panetta<\/a>, is a Democratic member of Congress from California and former navy reserve intelligence officer.<\/p>\n

He is not impressed by the bombastic antics<\/a> of Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host who now occupies Panetta\u2019s old office at the Pentagon. \u201cHe\u2019s not a secretary of defence. He is simply an enabler for whatever Trump wants him to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panetta also condemns a recent run of meme-style videos<\/a> released by the White House that juxtapose war footage with Hollywood films, video games and sporting action, as well as a fundraising email that used a photo of Trump at a dignified transfer of remains of soldiers killed in Kuwait.<\/p>\n

Panetta said: \u201cWhen he or those around him started publishing pictures of football games, raising money by using pictures of our dead coming home at Dover [air force base], and doing the kind of tasteless things that he can do, he\u2019s basically sending a message of weakness, not a message of strength to the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat, unfortunately, is what the world sees right now, and I can see why he\u2019s having problems trying to get allies to be able to respond when they\u2019re not sure he knows what he\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt<\/a>, Panetta has never seen a commander-in-chief shatter norms as Trump does. When a Tomahawk missile hit a girls\u2019 school in southern Iran on the first day of the conflict, killing at least 175 people, most of them children, Trump sought to blame the attack on Iran, claiming its security forces are \u201cvery inaccurate\u201d with munitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny other president of the United States would have recognised the mistake and apologise for what happened,\u201d Panetta remarked. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t do that. It sends an image of America that kind of fits the ugly American image that a lot of people once had of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump is stuck between \u201ca rock and a hard place\u201d after three weeks of war in Iran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-352729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}