Quote · The MeidasTouch Podcast
Trump Changes Course After Xi Jinping's Warning
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Brad Cooper's Bombshell Memo and Trump's Lies About Munitions
At 9:24 · chapter starts 8:00
The Axios scoop, attributed to what Meiselas calls Trump's 'personal stenographer' Barack Ravid, is damning in its specificity: Brad Cooper, the top US military commander in the Middle East, concluded that the bombing campaign around the Strait of Hormuz had reached the limit of its effectiveness, and that depleting interceptor stocks made any return to large-scale operations a serious strategic risk [1] — Ben Meiselas "US ran out of precision munitions: Top US military commander Brad Cooper recommended stopping the bombing campaign near the Strait of Hormu…" 08:00 . Meiselas reads between the lines of what Wang Yi would have conveyed to Trump: Beijing knows the US is out of munitions, knows the bases are destroyed, and is daring Washington to strike the Bushehr nuclear plant — built by Russia — near the Strait of Hormuz. The dare comes with a guarantee: China and Russia will respond. Against this backdrop, Trump's public Wall Street Journal boast that the US has 'far more munitions than anyone in the world and far more than we need' lands as an obvious lie — one Meiselas says is the biggest tell precisely because Trump opened his mouth to deny it. Iran's IRGC General Ramazan Sharif's public declaration of total victory over the US across military, political, economic, and cultural fields adds humiliation to injury.
Top US military commander Brad Cooper recommended stopping the bombing campaign near the Strait of Hormuz partly because depleting interceptor missiles made resuming large-scale operations a risky option.
The US burned through roughly 80% of some of its precision interceptor missiles during the Iran campaign. Top military commander Brad Cooper quietly recommended stopping the bombing near the Strait of Hormuz because returning to large-scale operations with depleted stocks was simply too risky.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal the US has 'far more munitions than anyone in the world and far more than we need,' directly contradicting military reporting.
