CIA and Mossad conflating intelligence to push US into military conflict with Iran: Expert

America’s CIA and Israel’s Mossad are conflating and distorting intelligence to push the United States into a military conflict with Iran, according to Scott Bennett, a former US military psychological warfare officer and political commentator.

Bennett made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Thursday while commenting on a statement by American Muslim Representative Ilhan Omar who has accused the Donald Trump administration of preparing the ground for direct confrontation with Iran using inflated intelligence data.

The lawmaker said on Wednesday that the US intelligence community was making up excuses to justify hostile anti-Iran policies just as it did before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

PressTV-US beating drums of war with Iran: Rep. Ilhan Omar

American Muslim Representative Ilhan Omar has accused the administration of US President Donald Trump of preparing the ground for direct confrontation with Iran using inflated intelligence data.

Bennett told Press TV that “the recent developments between Iran and the United States and Israel are sadly coming to a very potential boiling point and it’s problematic, and ironically one of the few people who have pointed out truth of this is Representative Ilhan Omar.”

“And I think she is very right on and she is accurate when she says certain people are producing false intelligence and manipulating the president into a misdirected, misunderstood confrontation with Iran,” he stated.

“And I think she speaks for the vast majority of Americans who share the same sentiments, who may not agree with her politically, philosophically or religiously, however, the American people sense in their heart that what Ilhan Omar is saying is absolutely true, and that is that  certain people, certain industries, specifically the military-industrial complex and certain war-mongering Zionists, and other parties including Benjamin Netanyahu, and members of the [US] intelligence community and Mossad, and Israel and Britain's MI6, and the United States’ CIA all have been conflating and distorting intelligence and manipulating it to President Trump’s mind and sadly pushing him into a potential conflict by overreaction and other accelerating provocative  counter-measures to Iran’s very understandable and justifiable response to its natural resources being cut off, and economic sanctions strangling them, to the point of a very similar scenario between the United States and Japan in 1940,” he pointed out.

“We remember that the Japanese WWII conflict erupted after the United States cut off oil supplies and rubber supplies from Japan and that resulted in Japan's life-and-death situation, responding with a counterattack in Pearl Harbor. And I think the same military mindsets are looking to set-up a similar scenario in the Strait of Hormuz, with a false flag Gulf of Tonkin attack repeat, or an American ship being falsely attacked by what may seem to be Iranian military sailors or other military units which will be provocative and will facilitate the United States military’s response,” he said. 

“So I think Ilhan Omar is pointing to these possibilities. And the American people have seen them. They have sadly suffered under them, from both of the Gulf of Tonkin and New York 9/11 attacks. And this is something people are waking up to,” the analyst said.

‘Trump maybe doing this as a deal-making mechanism’

“This is also the reason that Donald Trump maybe doing a lot of these actions as a deal-making mechanism. There is a very strong possibility of it and many in the Conservative circles rest upon the conviction that Donald Trump does not want to go to war and this is all posturing for negotiating position so that the Iranian, American JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and other agreements, maybe set to re-negotiate from a position of strength, from Donald Trump’s position,” he said.

“So this is a very distant way, a very positive way of looking at this because it intimates that Donald Trump is in fact separating from John Bolton, distancing himself from him, and blaming John Bolton for the bogged down Venezuela coup, and most likely will be looking towards others in the intelligence community to blame for the Iranian problem,” he added.

“But Ilhan Omar is pointing something that all Americans agree to it that the intelligence Israel has provided about Iranian threats is part of a completely false, propaganda campaign, and Donald Trump unfortunately has been manipulated into overreacting to that. But I think the American people and American Congress are going to stand up to and give Donald Trump a very clear warning that if you wage war on Iran you will not be elected to a second term and worst you may be impeached for violating the war powers’ act,” the expert said.

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