Specter of secret documents haunts Trump

Eslam Mohamed

Former US President Donald Trump is seeking to obtain the Republican nomination to run in the next presidential race in 2024 and return again to the White House, but it seems that his previous crises with Iran are haunting him and threatening to prevent him from running in the election, as he is subject to prosecutions on the background of periods of escalation with Tehran.

In Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents, Trump was indicted on seven counts.

CNN quoted the former US president as saying in a leaked recording that he had kept secret military information that had not been declassified.

The network stated that the recording it obtained dates back to a meeting that took place in 2021 after the end of his presidential term, in which Trump said that he could lift the secrecy while he was in the White House, but he could not do so after leaving office.

The recording shows that Trump was aware of the importance of the secret documents that he had in his possession at the Mar-a-Lago resort after leaving the White House.

It is worth noting that the Trump administration had been close to launching a war on Iran in the period after his loss in the US presidential election and before handing over the position to current President Joe Biden.

A report published by The New Yorker highlighted the hidden conflict that took place in the last months of Trump’s term between him and the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, who tried to prevent his country from being drawn into the war. After the results of the presidential election were announced, Milley told those close to him that he feared two nightmare scenarios. The first was that Trump, who refused to admit his electoral defeat, would try to use military force to prevent the transition of power, and the second was fueling a new foreign conflict involving Iran.

Milley was convinced that the United States was then very close to the second scenario, which prompted him since late 2020 to hold daily phone conversations with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In their last meeting on January 3, 2021, Trump was briefed on the latest IAEA reports on Tehran’s nuclear activities, but Milley and Pompeo said that no military action against Iran could be taken anymore, and Trump was eventually forced to agree.