“You’re going to have a fucking war”

• General Mark Milley is said to have warned Trump not to take military action against Iran.
• Milley told Trump “you’re going to have a fucking war” with Iran if the United States strikes, according to a new book.
• The book by Susan Glasser of the New Yorker and Peter Baker of the NYT will be released next year.

US General Mark Milley was concerned that former President Donald Trump would take military action against Iran at the end of his presidency and repeatedly warned him not to do so, according to an article in an upcoming book on Trump’s presidency published in the New Yorker on Friday.

“If you do that you’re going to have a goddamn war,” Milley reportedly told the former president and his foreign policy advisers, who pushed for a missile strike on the Middle Eastern country after Trump took over. lost the 2020 elections.

The subject of Iran was brought up frequently at White House meetings in the months following the race, with Trump “apparently desperate to stay in power,” according to co-author of the book, Susan Glasser of New Yorker. As a result, the New York Times reported in late November that Trump had consulted with senior advisers – including Milley – on potential options to strike Iran’s main nuclear site and that he was ultimately excluded from doing so.

At a meeting where Trump was not present, his advisers again discussed taking action against Iran. Milley asked “why they were so determined to attack the country,” Glasser reports.

“Because they are evil,” said then-vice president Mike Pence.

Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ultimately helped end the prospect of a potential conflict with Iran, according to the book.

On January 3, Glasser reports that Trump held an Oval Office meeting to receive an update on Iran’s latest nuclear activities. Milley, along with then-national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo each informed Trump that any military action against Iran would be impossible at this point.

Trump appeared to heed the warnings and the focus on Iran faded, according to the book.

The book is slated for release next year and is co-authored by Glasser and her husband, Peter Baker of the New York Times. The couple conducted nearly 200 interviews for their reporting on Trump’s time in the White House, according to Glasser.

The United States and Iran have been adversaries for decades, dating back to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the US Embassy hostage crisis that began that same year, but tensions have reached historic highs under Trump.

Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was at the heart of the animosity. His administration used a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, struggling to cripple the Iranian economy through severe sanctions in the hope of eventually negotiating a tougher version of the nuclear pact.

The Trump administration’s strategy has not worked. Instead, Iran has gradually moved away from the 2015 deal, which sought to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon in return for less economic sanctions. Meanwhile, a series of skirmishes in the Persian Gulf involving attacks on tankers, which the United States blamed on Iran, raised fears of further conflict in the region.

In January 2020, Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani. The strike pushed the United States and Iran to the brink of war, prompting a retaliatory missile attack on U.S. troops in Iraq that left dozens injured. The two sides eventually moved away from a larger conflict, but heightened tensions between the United States and Iran continued during the Biden era.