Obama will attack Iran: Trump's 2013 tweet attacking then US President goes viral

As the United States and Israel launched a coordinated strike on Iran on Saturday, a decade-old tweet by US President Donald Trump, in which he predicted that then President Barack Obama would attack Iran, has resurfaced and gone viral across social media.

On Saturday, the United States and Israel launched a coordinated missile strike on Iran, with massive explosions reported across Tehran and multiple other cities in a dramatic escalation that threatens to push the Middle East toward a wider conflict. The offensive, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury,” targeted key government and military establishments, including the offices of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iranian President.

Immediately after the attack, Iran launched retaliatory missile strikes against Israel, and the confrontation expanded further. Iranian ballistic missiles struck several US military installations across the Gulf, including Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, the service centre of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain’s Juffair area, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, and Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Loud explosions were heard and flashes were seen in surrounding areas, according to reports.

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TRUMP'S 2013 VIRAL POST

In a 2013 post on X, widely shared in the wake of the attacks, Trump wrote: “Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!” The resurfacing of the post has drawn renewed attention as military conflict erupts in the region after the US and Israel strikes Iran.

When Obama began his second term in 2013, substantive negotiations with Iran were reportedly stalled. According to a 2016 White House press release, the P5+1 (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China, facilitated by the European Union) made efforts “to engage in serious and substantive negotiations with Iran with the goal of reaching a verifiable diplomatic resolution that would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Things changed after Hasan Rouhani won the Iranian presidential election. A letter from Obama to Rouhani reportedly focused on advancing nuclear negotiations, leading to talks in Oman and subsequent understandings that renewed P5+1 negotiations at the United Nations General Assembly in September of that year.

The 2016 release noted that the P5+1 and Iran had agreed on the Joint Plan of Action, an interim agreement that effectively froze Iran’s nuclear programme while providing some modest sanctions relief to allow both sides to assess each other’s commitment to a comprehensive solution.

However, in his first term, Trump pulled the United States out of the JCPOA in 2018, marking a sharp reversal in US policy toward Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

KHAMENEI MOVED TO SECURE LOCATION

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is believed to have been moved to a secure location following the strikes. The attacks came as diplomatic efforts were reportedly underway between Tehran and Washington concerning a nuclear deal.

Confirming the attacks on Iran, President Trump asserted that Tehran “can never have a nuclear weapon” and said, “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”

The resurfacing of Trump’s old tweet as the current conflict unfolds underscores how past criticisms of foreign policy are being revisited in the context of renewed hostilities between the US, Israel and Iran.

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