Good news… the US isn’t ‘seeking’ war with Iran. Beyond that, no one knows

The good news is the US isn’t seeking to go to war with Iran. At least that’s what John Bolton, Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor says. The US isn’t seeking war, but is it planning one?

Here’s a breadcrumb trail of facts:

According to Axios, Mr Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo told a closed-door meeting with 15 Iranian-American community leaders on April 22 that the Trump administration is “not going to do a military exercise inside Iran” to expedite a regime change. Axios’s Jonathan Swan said this was the account provided to him by “three sources who were in the room, including one who took detailed contemporaneous notes and shared them with me.”

Okay, so far, so rational.

But there’s more. According to Axios, Mr Pompeo “also sought to distance the Trump administration from a controversial Iranian resistance group that has welcomed John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani as speakers in a private capacity.”

Good. The Mojahedin-e Khalq is neither popular, nor prominent.

So what next? No one knows.

What can be said decisively is the Trump administration is exceedingly hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran and Mr Bolton’s rhetoric has been warlike.

Beyond that, everything is unclear.