Leaks about Iran keep pouring out of the Pentagon like water from a busted pipe.

Each one arrives with a scarier headline, and the midterms sit just around the corner.

So President Trump went on Newsmax and settled one question the leakers keep stirring up.

Anonymous Officials Dropped a Bomb Plan Right Before the Midterms

CNN broke the story on October 15. Multiple US officials told the network that military planners had drawn up fresh strike packages against Iran, and some of those packages call for the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb.

The military calls it the MOAB. The rest of the country knows it by its nickname, the “Mother of All Bombs.”

According to those officials, the target list includes Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites. One of them is a buried complex known as Pickaxe Mountain, where the US and Israel believe Iran has stashed pieces of its nuclear program.

And the anonymous sources floated a timeline, too. They said the strikes could come before or after the November 3 midterm elections.

Sit with that detail for a second.

Somebody inside the national security apparatus decided American voters needed to hear the words “giant bomb” and “midterm elections” in the same breath, with ballots about to be counted. And that somebody didn’t attach a name to it.

Trump Says the Biggest Bomb in the Arsenal Is Still Just a Bomb

Trump didn’t let the story fester. Talking with Newsmax about the MOAB, he went straight at the panic the report was built to create.

“The mother of all bombs is not nuclear,” Trump said.

He kept going. “This is just an extremely large bomb. It’s like a tiny nuclear bomb, but the mother of all bombs is one big bomb, but it’s not nuclear.”

Only Donald Trump could describe a 21,600-pound explosive as “tiny” anything and still get his point across. But the point landed anyway.

Then came the line that matters most. “I wouldn’t use nuclear. We don’t have to,” Trump said.

Seven words. And he didn’t wrap any of them in lawyer talk or diplomatic fog.

This isn’t a new position for him, either. Back in April, Trump told reporters that nuclear weapons “should never be allowed to be used by anybody.” Months of war coverage, cable panels, and breathless speculation haven’t moved him an inch.

US and Israeli strikes on Iran began in late February. Since then Trump has hammered home one objective over and over, telling reporters, “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.” Keeping the world’s worst regime away from the bomb and refusing to use one himself fit together just fine. That’s the whole idea.

The MOAB carries some history with this President. Trump became the first commander in chief to use it, in April 2017, when US forces dropped one on an ISIS tunnel network in Afghanistan during his first term. Afghan officials said the blast killed 36 ISIS fighters.

It stands as the largest non-nuclear bomb the United States owns. Engineers designed it in large part for the psychological shock of the blast.

But officials quoted in the CNN report doubt the MOAB can reach deep enough to wreck Iran’s buried nuclear facilities. Some of them described it as an option short of restarting full combat operations, a way to shake up the stalemate without launching another all-out air campaign.

Why Trump’s Nuclear Red Line Drives Washington’s War Party Crazy

Washington’s interventionist crowd has spent two decades treating “keep every option open” as polite code for war with no exit. They said it about Iraq. They said it about Libya. And every time, the bill landed on American families who sent their sons and daughters overseas and got body bags and trillions in debt in return.

Trump keeps running the other direction. The White House told CNN the President keeps “all options on the table” to stop Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon. But Trump himself just took the most terrifying option off that table in public, on the record, with the whole world listening. A man hunting for a wider war doesn’t talk that way.

He also announced recently that the US would hold off on new strikes against Iran before the November 3 midterms. At the same time, he said the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz “will remain in full force and effect.” The pressure on the regime stays. American pilots stay out of Iranian skies for now.

So why would someone leak a bomb plan at this exact moment?

Maybe a bureaucrat wanted to box Trump in. Maybe somebody wanted voters spooked about a bigger war heading into November. Nobody can prove motive from an unnamed source, and that’s precisely what makes unnamed sources so handy for the people using them.

Still, the pattern looks awfully familiar. The permanent national security bureaucracy has a long record of leaking against Trump going back to his first months in office in 2017, and those leaks have a funny way of landing when they can do the most political damage.

Military planners draw up options for every scenario imaginable. A Pentagon official made that exact point in response to the report, saying the department plans for a wide range of situations to carry out the President’s direction. A plan sitting on a shelf is just a plan sitting on a shelf.

And the mullahs in Tehran should listen closely too. Trump doesn’t need a nuclear weapon to make the regime miserable, and he said so out loud. A massive conventional bomb, a naval blockade that isn’t going anywhere, and a President who means what he says add up to real leverage.

Leverage ends wars at a negotiating table instead of a graveyard. The neoconservative wing of Washington never quite learned that lesson, and plenty of them would rather this fight drag on for another decade.

The midterms will come and go. The war chatter won’t stop the day after. But the next time an anonymous official or a cable host hints that Trump is itching to go nuclear, his own words are sitting right there on tape.

“I wouldn’t use nuclear.”

Hard to make it much clearer than that.

Sources:
Fox News, “Trump rejects nuclear strikes on Iran as Pentagon reportedly considers ‘Mother of All Bombs’”
CNN, “Exclusive: US considering using ‘mother of all bombs’ against Iran, sources say”
The National News Desk via Local 12, “US weighs using ‘mother of all bombs’ in potential Iran strikes: report”
CNBC, “U.S. reportedly considers use of ‘mother of all bombs’ as Iran vows to fight on”
WVTM 13, “US considering using ‘mother of all bombs’ against Iran, CNN sources say”
The Jerusalem Post, “Trump dismisses possibility of using nuclear weapon against Iran”
ThePrint, “Trump calls reporter’s question on Iran ‘stupid’”