The USA and Iran: cautious or reckless, war or peace?

As the President of the USA arrives in Saudi Arabia today (Friday 19th 2017) and on the same day that Iranians elect a new President, there are fears that the USA and its Middle Eastern allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are preparing to ditch the cautious attitude of President Obama for a military confrontation with Iran.

The USA is increasing its military presence in the Middle East as it sees violent intervention and confrontation in foreign countries as a virtue, the inaugural speech in Washington last January having long ago been thrown in the waste-paper bin. It has been announced that the President's son-in-law played a leading role in the negotiation of a Billion Dollar arms contract with Saudi Arabia, but no details on any bribes involved in it have been released.
Moreover, with a long list of failures in domestic policy, the US President may view a foreign policy 'adventure' as his way of proving what a tough guy he is compared to the 'wimp' Obama, but while there may be no direct confrontation with Iran, there is now scope for a proxy war: for Israel to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, while the US supported by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States attacks 'Iranian' targets in Syria, mostly to cut the land-based supply lines from Iran through Iraq to Syria and Lebanon, thereby weakening Iran's influence, much as the Saudis claim to be weakening Iranian influence in the Yemen, even though it was not particularly strong there.

Thus, the USA's aerial attack in south-eastern Syria a few days ago may have been the first strike in the attack on Iran or Iranian-Syrian joint ops, but also signals the extent to which the promise to 'destroy ISIS' was and remains another fatuous remark by an ignorant President who may be extending the USA's presence on the ground in the Middle East but clearly has no idea how to get out or how Iran will respond -not least if Rouhani loses the Presidency to former Republican Guard Ebrahim Raisi.

Crown Prince Mohammed, son of King Salman and in effect the ruler of Saudi Arabia, has publicly stated that Iran is the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East, to the point where he claims it seeks to dominate the region, an argument that owes more to absurdist fantasies than reality, but one based on Iran's support for the Assad regime in Syria, its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the belief that it supports Shi'a minorities in the north-east of Saudi Arabia, with Shia Muslims dominant in Bahrain where there have been tensions with the ruling Sheiks for decades. It seems incredible that the Saudis claim they are fighting 'extremist ideology' when fighting Iran, given that the Wahabi doctrine the Royal Family follows is one of the most extreme forms of Islam in the world today, but they don't really consider the Iranians to be Muslims anyway, and more importantly, their view is in alliance with the view from Israel that Iran is a threat, and is music to the ears of the US President who is surrounded by people who also loathe and detest Iran and have urged him to do something about it.

There is clearly a strange and twisted history involved here. Presbyterian Missionaries first arrived in Persia in 1834 (see below) but one of the first formal engagements the USA had with the Middle East came with the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce that was signed by the USA and Persia in 1857 at a time when the Qajar Shah was fed up with his 'Empire' being bullied by the Russians and the British who fought over Persia as part of the 'Great Game of Empire' that did not end until in 1905 when they agreed to a 'spheres of influence' arrangement, with the Russians given free reign in the north while the British had the south where oil was discovered in 1908. The Qajar Shahs lost power to a new Shah, Reza Pahlavi in 1921, and he tried to revive the relationship with the USA but the Americans did not want to get involved at a time when the British were dominant.

As is now well known, the USA returned to Iran in 1953 two years after the Nationalist Prime Minister, Mohamed Mosadeq nationalized the oil industry -an action that robbed the British of one of their most lucrative sources of money and oil, but which to the USA was engineered through the influence on Mosadeq of the Soviet-backed Tudeh ('Communist') Party. When the Iranian military with CIA assistance overthrew Mosadeq in a coup d'etat in 1953 absolute power was handed to the Shah (the young son of the first Pahalvi who, having supported the Nazis in 1941 was forced to abdicate and exiled to Johannesburg) who ruled until 1979. Most Americans will know that the revolutionary fervour of the times led to the siege of the US Embassy and a hostage situation that was not resolved until Ronald Reagan became President. Much of the USA's bitterness with Iran dates from these events, as Iran was seen as a key Cold War ally at a time when the USA had lost influence to the USSR in Afghanistan further east, and in Ethiopia to the south.

Complicating matters is the presence of American, Presbyterian Missionaries in Persia, arriving in 1834 to work, mostly, among Assyrians and other existing Christian groups. Unfortunately, these missionaries became involved in a massacre at Urmia in Azerbaijan province in the north-west in 1919 as part of the agitations that followed the First World War when there was briefly an independent 'Soviet Republic' in Azerbaijan (google Admiral Raskolnikov for more on this).

Basicallt, just as the Americans cannot forget (can they forgive?) the siege of their Embassy in Tehran, the Iranians don't forget all the 'crimes' committed against them by the Americans.

Obama found a way of bringing Iran into normal diplomatic relations with the world, it would be a pity if this were all to be thrown away in order for tough guys to walk tall and assume they can bomb and kill their way to some imaginary victory. It would merely be the start of more hostilities, and more killing. And one wonders who will be paying the bills for all this war, and who will be cashing in?

Some links here on the prospects for war, the elections in Iran and a paper on American Missionaries in Persia.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/en/o...-rhetoric.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...r-deal/515979/

http://www.mintpressnews.com/inevita...gemony/224644/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7743666.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publica..._the_Great_War

A direct confrontation -as stated-, no.

However the draining the supply lines strategy, while viable, only benefits Israel, not Saudi Arabia, and while they have been casting Iran as a villain in this they wouldn't want to antagonize them publicly, not with Isis still a real threat, that Israel and Saudi Arabia are yet to come in direct conflict with.

Israel won't attack Hezbollah now with so much going in Syria, it puts them on a collision course with Isis if the situation deteriorates and puts a lot of Arab countries in play, even Turkey is starting to become a player and if Israel hastily pushes the limits in Lebanon, the Lebanese government may just ask for Turkish aid even with so much distaste between the two, factor in how big the Russian agenda is and this would screw a lot of people.

Everything hangs on Syria.

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Originally Posted by alreik

A direct confrontation -as stated-, no.
However the draining the supply lines strategy, while viable, only benefits Israel, not Saudi Arabia, and while they have been casting Iran as a villain in this they wouldn't want to antagonize them publicly, not with Isis still a real threat, that Israel and Saudi Arabia are yet to come in direct conflict with.

Israel won't attack Hezbollah now with so much going in Syria, it puts them on a collision course with Isis if the situation deteriorates and puts a lot of Arab countries in play, even Turkey is starting to become a player and if Israel hastily pushes the limits in Lebanon, the Lebanese government may just ask for Turkish aid even with so much distaste between the two, factor in how big the Russian agenda is and this would screw a lot of people.
Everything hangs on Syria.

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I don't agree with much of your post.

First of all, Saudi Arabia wants to weaken Iran as much as it can, so disrupting supply lines from Iran via Iraq to Syria achieves that, this is a win for Saudi Arabia.

Second, ISIS/Daesh does have the capacity to attack Israel -or any country for that matter- but mostly now through small cell or individual opportunists as the so-called 'Islamic state' has lost a substantial number fighters and is losing the end-game in Mosul while Raqqa looks increasingly vulnerable -remnants have already left anyway to establish themselves in Iraq and Syria to see if they can start all over again in the future, and they could have attacked Israel at any time if they wanted to. Thus the threat from ISIS/Daesh is not so different from the kind of attacks we have suffered in the UK, France, Belgium and Germany.

Third, a key difference between then and now, is that for all its faults on the Middle East, the Obama Presidency was cautious whereas the new President, aside from being ignorant on the Middle East in every sense other than the instinctive prospect of making money out of rich people- is surrounded by militants who have already increased the US troop presence in Syria with thousands more sitting in Kuwait waiting for the order to move in; have launched an aerial bombardment in the form of Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian government target, attacked a convoy entering Syria from Iraq via Iran which may have had Iranian personnel on site and thus constitute an indirect strike on Iran (see the Fisk article below), while the US operation in Yemen which led to the death of Navy SEAL Ryan Owens amounts to US involvement there on Saudi Arabia's side against Iran if you believe this war is about eliminating Iranian influence in the Yemen.

Fourth, Syria is now just a playground for international bullies with bad intentions. With the exception of King Abdullah of Jordan, I don't think a single leader of the states who are or have been involved in Syria cares what happens to the Syrian people, they have shown no interest so far in spite of the murder of -200,00? 500,00?- and the displacement of 13 million people with widespread destruction of Aleppo and many small towns. Nobody has a clue how to or even where to re-build Syria when this is over, but plenty are keen to make money and cause people misery from war. One should however note that casualties from the war have been treated in Israeli hospitals, and while Netanyahu is not a humanitarian he can see how a deteriorating Syria could harm Israel.

Step back and look again: ever since Ibn Saud emerged from the Nejd to challenge the Hashemite rule of Mecca and TransJordan in 1921, it has been clear that the Saudi view themselves as the natural successors to the Ottoman Empire in the Arab lands of the Middle East. They retain this romantic vision, even if they know they cannot rule in places like Beirut and Baghdad. Ideologically, they loathe and detest Iran and see all Shi'a communities as a threat to their hegemony. Recruiting the USA into their war is an essential part of the more aggressive strategy Saudi Arabia is pursuing with Crown Prince Mohammed in charge, and now they have found a US administration that shares a desire for war as a spectacular solution to the region's problems, but a strategy that will in fact prolong war and misery even as it puts money in the pockets of arms dealers. And let's face it, Saudi Arabia, for all the billions it has spent on armaments, has never won a war, and performed badly in the field.

Cautious or reckless? At the moment US policy is incoherent and contradictory -when the US Commander-in-Chief met with Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Kyslyak in the White House there was an agreement or an understanding that the US would support the current Russian-sponsored peace talks on Syria being held in Astana, both to acknowledge the Russian role in this war, and to sideline the UN as an organization. But at the same, the attack at al-Tanf in Syria was an attack on Russia's allies there, and the 'joint operations' against Daesh that were discussed in the White House cannot have led to a joint attack as al-Tanf is in a different part of the country, and it is not clear who- Russia or the US- can claim credit if and when Daesh loses power in Raqqa.

Again, when Erdogan arrived in the White House, he was advised by his aides to heap adulation and praise on the Commandante to feed his insatiable vanity, so the Turkish President began by praising the 'legendary triumph' of the Commandante's White House career so far, before demanding the extradition of the man -his former close associate- he blames for the attempted coup last year -Ferthulla Gulen, and insisting the US cannot give military or political support to the Kurds fighting Daesh because they 'terrorists' and terrorists cannot shape political outcomes in the region. The US position is to ignore Turkey on this, but it does maintain the incoherence of US policy, because what do the Kurds in Syria get out of the demolition of Daesh if not the Kudos for being the one political group who did more to fight them head-on in both Syria and Iraq? And, to be candid, what the Kurds want is their own independent state -like the independent Kurdistan that the US vouched for in 1919 before Wilson lost the US election and the US departed from the Versailles conference system.
But if what the Kurds are doing is 'terrorism' it cannot be rewarded with either a de jure state or even an autonomous region though it looks possible in Syria as it has been in Iraq. Turkey will not accept an autonomous Kurdish region on its southern border, though it may have to in the short to medium term.

Fundamentally, the Russians became involved in Syria to protect the Ba'ath Government from being overthrown in a regime change orchestrated/supported/funded from outside the country. If Iraq was a warning signal, Libya was regime change too far. The Russians, in essence, want the US to back them on this aspect of international relations, but although the new Presidency appeared to back off international adventures, it has been lured back into the Middle East with Saudi money and the caution that existed under the Obama Presidency now runs the risk of running out of control.

Two final points: it looks like Rouhani will win a second term in Iran. Normally this would be a great opportunity for the US to mend its relations with Iran and begin a new era of friendship and co-operation, but that now seems hopeless as the US obsession shows no sign of abating. However, Rouhani as a moderate is more likley to restrain Hezbollah in Lebanon and thus prevent them from doing anything to encourage Israel from attacking -and, given that Hezbollah is now better armed than in 2006 and more embedded within the Lebanese armed forces and in towns and villages across southern Lebanon, a new war would in effect be a war against Lebanon, so 2017 may not see a new war there. But, again, if Iran restrains Hezbollah, will Israel's generals be able to restrain Netanyahu?

Always foolish to predict events in the region, but the absence of restraint by certain parties does not make the future look better with the people currently involved.

Some links:
Robert Fisk on the US strike in south-eastern Syria-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7744091.html

US and Turkey
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...n-united-front
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ror/101738542/

Israel and Hezbollah
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/orig...s-war-idf.html

I agree with the info you provided, however the point remains that the USA can't venture to make any kind of over the top confrontation against Iran nowadays (not until the Syrian situation settles for better or worse) for multiple reasons:

- The Obama administration did well yes, out of necessity more than anything, the war on Iraq left the region severely harmed, and harmed the relationship between the U.S and most of the Arab and Muslim populace if not the regimes. Also it put a drain on the US economy itself and is still very much a loathed decision in and out of the country.

- Related to the above point, most Arab states, don't and won't trust in any kind of American intervention again, part of why the Obama administration refused to do anything antagonistic that would be viewed as imperialistic.

- For the same reasons, while Saudi Arabia is keen on casting Iran as a villain in the region, this view is shared by very few else in the Arab and Muslim world, and Saudi Arabia's claim to be the leaders of the Islamic world would be severely decimated if they are in apparent collusion against a major Islamic power for personal gain, like you said, some of the gulf countries who are in economic coalition with S.A share similar ideologies with Iran or don't find a cause for animosity, however hard S.A is trying to make it a Sunni vs Shiaa or convince these countries that Iran is coming for them, the rest of the region would openly mock the Saudis if they participate in any form of open warfare, specially in collusion with Israel and the USA, especially after the Iraq war leave little cause for trust in the US intentions, as much as they mock their -S.A- attempts to make Iran look like a tyrant state now.

- Egypt!!!!!

Egypt is a huge - Arab, Muslim, military, strategic- player, one that the US counts as an ally, one that helped militarily in the first Gulf War, and strategically in the second even against their own population's wishes. The Egyptian media still plays a huge deal in the region, and While Trump can coerce El Sisi with US support for his rule, and S.A with financial support, the situation in Egypt is very complicated, the military still retains a lot of its power, but hardly control over the nation, and the economic crisis and the lack of solutions found for it other than turning Egypt into a plethora of military controlled institutions, make it nigh impossible for El Sisi to plunge the country in a war he'll find very few causes for, historically other than the post-Pahlavi-Sadat relations and how Iran gloated about Sadat's assassination -The Islambouli st. etc- Egypt and Iran's relations are very much on the mend, and they -like the USA did and should- find it better this way, especially with the state of the country.

- The region works in waves, and this is simply not the time for any kind of overt intervention, not by the US, and surely not by most Arab states who can't afford to be called traitors for their fellow muslims and give rise to the same radical ideologies that spawned Isis against them in other countries, or give due cause for the same ideals to rise in the minds of their own citizens if they see their government openly colluding with US and Israel against a major Islamic power, remember that SA and Isis share a lot of the more severe interpretations of Islam there is, and pan Islamism is core to these.

- It isn't in the best interest of the US to antagonize Iran tbh, no reason at all rather than Israeli and SA dreams of power in the region, let them compete peacefully and the US should only play moderator for peace, it's absolutely foolish to do, especially with so many parties in play in Syria and no status quo there established, Trump may be a baby but he won't play the bully-child with the generals and foreign advisors ( bec. he knows nothing about either but has to respect them), any of whom would tell that an incursion against Iran is a folly.

- Trump is keen - for a reason or another - to not antagonize Russia, and Russian interest is that the US doesn't antagonize Iran or interfere with Syria, simply as that.

That's the whole thing, US wouldn't by any logical or rational means engage Iran in a hostile manner, it's just senseless, if they do, I'm going to Canada lol

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Originally Posted by alreik

I agree with the info you provided, however the point remains that the USA can't venture to make any kind of over the top confrontation against Iran nowadays (not until the Syrian situation settles for better or worse) for multiple reasons:
- It isn't in the best interest of the US to antagonize Iran tbh, no reason at all rather than Israeli and SA dreams of power in the region, let them compete peacefully and the US should only play moderator for peace, it's absolutely foolish to do, especially with so many parties in play in Syria and no status quo there established, Trump may be a baby but he won't play the bully-child with the generals and foreign advisors ( bec. he knows nothing about either but has to respect them), any of whom would tell that an incursion against Iran is a folly.
- Trump is keen - for a reason or another - to not antagonize Russia, and Russian interest is that the US doesn't antagonize Iran or interfere with Syria, simply as that.

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The problem with your post, and I understand your points, is that the US is intervening on the ground at a higher level than it was under the Obama administration, which was accused of 'abandoning' Iraq even though the troop withdrawals that took place had been agreed between the government of Iraq and the US when George W. Bush was President.
And, as I pointed out in my post, the US has in fact directly attacked Irania armed forces IF you believe Robert Fisk's report that Iranian service personnel were on the convoy that was attacked near al-Tanf in south-eastern Syria. And again, if the US does not want to antagonise the Russians, then that attack also hit arms for Russia's ally, the Syrian government, which is why I suggested the current policy of the US is incoherent. And yet again, there is a mental block when it comes to Iran, and until the US can get over losing the Shah in 1979 I don't see how they can move on and not take secondary actions to antagonise Iran.

Morally you have to wonder -yes, Iran is a cruel country that executes people in public, but it has a sophisticated culture and some brilliant film-makers, but the Mullah's are still in charge and there is an evident split between the cultured city dwellers and the less well-educated rural communities; and yet Iran is more open to modernizations and change than Saudi Arabia, where people are also executed in public -beheadings that the US President will not be taken to see- or flogged to within an inch of their lives. Not much of a choice on that level, but if a state is going to deal with one without making human rights an issue, why one and not the other?

It is not about a direct attack on Iran, but a proxy war, such as the one Saudi Arabia is -or was- already engaged in via the Assad regime in Syria, given the Kingdom has switched most its resources to the Yemen. I find it hard to believe that neither GW Bush nor Tony Blair were told that regime change in Iraq would be a major boost for Iran in the region, though in Blair's case we know from the Chilcot Enquiry he ignored the advice of experts on Iraq at the time and both he, and Jack Straw who was Foreign Secretary at the time, have claimed to be 'shocked' at the implosion in Iraq that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein. Even if one accepts that there are limits to what the Shi'a communities of the Middle East can achieve, there are no limits to the attempts the Wahabi fanatics in Saudi Arabia will make to maintain their fantasy of restoring the Caliphate, one of the reasons they have been so outraged by the new pretenders in Mosul and Raqqa.

The problem is that while the Saudis can pay others to be effective wreckers -as they did in Syria, as they have done in Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan-, their own military is next to useless, unless you think destroying homes and businesses, creating famine and population displacement as an achievement. Indiscriminate bombing achieves that. The Saudis and the Egyptians fought a war for the best part of eight years in the Yemen between 1962-1970 at the end of which the Imams they backed lost out to the Nationalists, even if the further consequence was the division of Yemen into a nationalist and the so-called 'socialist' South Yemen. In the first Gulf War of 1991 there was an infamous report of a Saudi pilot screaming 'target destroyed, target destroyed' as proof they were engaged, but the US commander in the field, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf in his memoirs made the most telling point about the Saudi contribution to the 'coalition of the willing' when the bill for the war came in and the Saudi king or whoever it was, opened the cheque book, raised a pen and asked 'How much?'

Thus the new US administration can crow about the $20 billion worth of investment in the US infrastructure that has been agreed, presumably because the efforts of the Obama administration to do the same domestically were scuppered by the Republican Congress; and by-passing Congress is a dream come true, if it can be done. The $100 billion deal on arms is not so much an arms contract as a welfare programme to maintain jobs in the US arms industry just as it does in the UK.

If there is a difference between the two, any claims of bribery involved will be more aggressively investigated in the US, whereas in the UK in 2006 when the Serious Fraud Office opened investigations involving BAE Systems as part of the giant al-Yamama contract signed by Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s, Tony Blair intervened to order the Attorney General to shut it down, and it was. The claim was that public exposure of the claims would damage Saudi Arabia's co-operation on intelligence and security issues, but what was not asked was why would the Kingdom refuse to co-operate just because some of its sons had their hands in the pot? As if we didn't know that is how deals are done in Saudi Arabia!
Whatever, the money is rolling in, and the killing goes on.

http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/res...-investigation
https://www.ft.com/content/0ff015e8-...f-0000779e2340

Sir, I find it hard to realize where your post contradicts mine.

Across the last decade I've lived in Egypt ( time of the revolution ), Lebanon, S.A (last year at the peak of the Yemeni conflict) and Iran, plus visits to the UK and US where I live, so what I can tell is pertaining to what I've seen and lived. So let's dissect the countries involved:

S.A, (government not the country), are worried about the future:

- The last of the line of direct descendants of Saud is Salman who is pretty senile, his son has delusions of grandeur/ grand plans, depending on which Saudi you speak to -behind closed doors obviously-

- Those plans are about S.A becoming the leader of the Muslim world, in a Sunni vision, they're worried because the UAE and Qatar have both made huge strides in making themselves a model of an advanced modern gulf country (at least compared to S.A) and becoming powers in the region. S.A is languishing mostly because of their strict laws as much as they are trying to lax them

- The Syrian Alawites, have been a big thorn in S A's side, in any attempt at evoking a conflict with Iran, Iranian influence wasn't usually a huge threat since Saddam was keeping Iran busy, however with the Iraqi chaos, and Iranian involvement in the Yemini conflict, Syria emerged as a problem for S.A. Now with their apparent turmoil, SA is trying to hasten into making the whole Syrian situation, a war of good Muslims vs the Bad ones and sucker people (western governments) into it. Something the Obama administration didn't fall for.

- Saudi Arabia has no military power (as you stated), their army is pretty much mercenary like in structure, all of their modern wars have been made in proxy, something that infuriates M ben Salman the heir apparent, who is attempting to modernize the army and introduce a lot of tech, but still the personnel are abysmal.

- These proxy wars are mostly made through, Egypt, who suffer a huge economic crisis right now, yes their military is still the powerhouse it is http://www.businessinsider.com/the-w...itaries-2017-3, but there is no apparent reason for them to fight in Iran, especially with the military regime there striving to keep control of the country, a country that if the government tries to go to war for no other reason but financial support from S.A, will enter a state of open revolt, since the average Egyptian in a military mandatory draft in wartime is very unlikely to get anything from these financial aides, moreso now with the economic crisis.

- So, the Saudi government is trying to find another proxy, and since the rest of the region has no interest in a conflict with Iran, the economic gulf countries enjoying their relative prosperity in a more modern fashion, and Egypt and Iraq in turmoil, S A is trying to push the agenda that a Syrian resolution, where the Assad regime isn't in power, is only achievable if Iran is to be neautralised, something that again the rest of the world has no interest in and has -wisely- avoided.

- Again, S.A can't stake a claim to be the leading Islamic state, when they instigate a war against a major Islamic state, whatever their faction is, much less with all the distrust in the Arabic and Islamic countries' populations about the motives in USA and Israeli intentions after the Iraq war.

The USA:

- Absolutely nothing to be gained, Iranian relationships are on the mend and rise, since Obama's administration, which also pushed Saudi interests to the side, but kept good relations at least, at the time of Obama's latest visit, most of the Saudi populace were happy or indifferent about it, the rulers were cautious or a bit hostile since he was paying no heed to their agenda.

- The increased ground forces are made in an effort to stem the rise of Isis, and hopefully to defeat the Assad regime, a regime that the US doesn't want for two reasons: it champions Russian power in the region, and it's a dictatorial regime that people have revolted against, which naturally champions US cause, a defeat of Assad is a win for the US, and SA too, but the US is not on a collision course with Iran on it, the US doesn't have a problem with Shia'a or not, they are there for Assad and Isis only.

- Strategically let's look at this, how do you make war on Iran?
Naval/ Aerial route : incredibly useless on the long term, just look at Iran's map, a very narrow way to fight them through the persian gulf, a gulf full of oil that many other countries share, countries that may share Iranian ideologies, and Pakistan won't ally itself with the US vs Iran.

Land route: through where: Afghanistan? not enough if feasible, Iran has very strong relations with the rest of central Asia, so that's East and North and South, which leaves only the Western side, so how are you gonna navigate through Syria, Isis, and Iraq again to land in Iran?

- Strategic ramifications: if Iran is attacked by the US, Russia will intervene, this is simply an intro into WWIII, something the US government and army will want to not happen, even if it means deposing Trump altogether.

- Again there is no basis or benefits to a conflict in Iran, especially since great diplomatic efforts helped with monitoring the nuclear threat, other than the oil fields, a lot of the people in the world have learned the lesson from Iraq.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7747741.html

Apparently this moron is hellbent on erasing anything good Obama did for some billions of dollars, what a joke. The world just keeps surprising you..

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Originally Posted by alreik

Apparently this moron is hellbent on erasing anything good Obama did for some billions of dollars, what a joke. The world just keeps surprising you..

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But there are no surprises as the whole point of this administration is to reject everything the USA used to stand for, and to promote greed and violence everywhere, and bury human rights and individual liberty in the graveyard of liberal fantasy.

So the Oaf of Office crawled on his hands and knees to suck dick in Riyadh and in exchange for a billion dollars excused the Saudi family business of any involvement in 9/11, the creation of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan -the crucible of al-Qaeda- thousands of extremist madrasas in Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan, perpetrator of disgusting anti-Jewish diatribes in the 'educational literature' available to children in Saudi-funded schools in the UK, and on and on and on. It does not even matter that he condemns Iran for supporting the Assad regime when in fact its most crucial backer is Russia, a state beyond criticism -for what reason?
So distorted was this worthless rubbish that as Robert Fisk has asked, also in the Independent-
“We are adopting a principled realism, rooted in common values and shared interests,” Trump told the Saudis and the leaders of another fifty Muslim nations on Sunday. But what on earth are those values? What values do the Americans share with the head-chopping, misogynist, undemocratic, dictatorial Saudis other than arms sales and oil?
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-a7747856.html

But do not be surprised at all, because it is almost 40 years exactly -minus one day- since President Carter at Notre Dame University on the 22nd of May 1977 re-affirmed the USA's belief in human rights-
Carter promised change, and during an address at Notre Dame University on May 22, 1977, he sketched out his vision for the future of American diplomacy. He began by noting the “great recent successes” in nations such as India, Greece, and Spain in bringing about democratic governments. These successes had renewed America’s confidence in the strength of democracy and would now “free” the United States from the “inordinate fear of communism” that once led America to ally itself with brutal dictators who agreed to help fight the communist menace. What was needed in the “new world” that America faced was “a policy based on constant decency in its values and on optimism in our historical vision.” Carter then outlined the steps he was taking to strengthen this “commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy.” America’s foreign policy, he concluded, should be “rooted in our moral values, which never change.”
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...o-human-rights
https://history.state.gov/milestones...0/human-rights

Yet again, the world is ashamed of the USA. But not surprised.

I hope beyond hope that this is actually just massaging the egos of the Sheikhs and robbing them blind, I hope that the hawks and generals have done their homework and know this to be foolish or at least let the Arabs and Israel fight Iran in proxy, a direct conflict is the start of WWIII, no way Russia will let the US have a beachhead on the Caspian or such a presence in Central Asia.

The problem with proxy wars, indeed wars in general, is that once the fighting starts, it creates its own agenda, and thus departs from the political aims that started it. Once external powers decided to promote their own agenda in Syria, Syria itself was lost, nobody in the country had control of the war or the political agenda, just as Syria cannot survive in the interim without Russian military support, and for the longer term, nobody knows. I also think the point about proxy wars or limited wars, as sometimes called, is that it prevents a 'World War III' -the two previous world wars were so called because of their geographical reach, but they were also total wars which consumed entire economies and populations, whereas these days the armies of the USA and Russia, for example, are a small proportion of the population as a whole who go about their business unaffected by war regardless of where their troops are fighting.

What is different this time is that the USA has explicitly abandoned human rights as an international cause, even as an aspiration. Stephen Miller wrote the speech, we are told, and it is thus part of the 'new order' that we are led to believe was ushered in last January. Yet the same people who coined phrases like 'radical Islamic terrorism' and who told us Saudi Arabia was the bad guy, when face to face with the people they despise, rolled over on their backs and made a mockery of everything they claim to believe, in the process discarding decency at all levels to dance with dictators and grab their money.

Honestly this is a bit sickening, the guy was in showbiz, he at least knows when someone is brown nosing him, he can't possibly believe that he "is a unique character capable of the impossible" or that the Sheikhs love him for his personality, I really hope he's just selling them words, letting them think they bought him with gold medals and then laughs all the way to the bank, at least that's smart politics.

This "administration" doesn't care about human rights, because it is a long term investment, it doesn't give any kind of immediate gratification for someone who isn't thinking of building something, they want spoils of war now and think that's how they get it, they gave Saudi Arabia a lifeline when it was in tatters, they were being outdone in the civilized race and didn't have anything but checkbooks to wave around for strategy and proxy wars, he just gave them a claim and cause.

As was widely reported before his announcement, the President has refused to (re-) certify the USA's commitment to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], also known as the Iranian Nuclear Deal, which means that Congress will have to make the decision where the expectation is that it will maintain the USA's current position. In international terms, the announcement means nothing as the USA is a signatory to the JCPOA and supported Security Council Resolution 2231 and cannot unilaterally walk away from the agreement, though clearly if the President wants to make a fool of himself that is his problem, for example, calling the JCPOA 'the worst deal ever negotiated' which merely underlines his pathetic ignorance of history.

The simple fact is that the President's own staff believe what he chooses not to, that Iran has abided by the terms of the agreement, and even in Israel where Benjamin Netanyahu has vigorously encouraged his mate in the White House to scrap it, his view is not shared by Israeli Generals and Mossad who also recognise Iran's fidelity to the agreement.

On the negative side the decision raises questions about the USA as a trustworthy partner in international agreements, if this President is going to scrap them or walk away from them not because of any intrinsic flaw in them, but simply because the agreements were signed by President Obama.

Perhaps the key to all this is not policy at all, but the manipulation of headlines and tweets that are aimed at the President's voter base, where he makes a public statement that appears to claim a decision has been made that fulfills a campaign promise when the reality is that instead of negotiating with Congress, the President makes his announcement, then leaves it up to Congress to either endorse or reject it. If they endorse it (and so far they have not) it is because they are on his side, if not then it proves how rotten they are.
A good example of this deliberate lying was provided by Mike Huckabeee who tweeted

@POTUS keeps promise & pushes back on Iran deal that should never have been made. Appeasement no longer US policy.

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) October 13, 2017

even though 'the promise' has not been kept, but it appears the truth is of no importance anymore, and the President and his supporters can say anything they like to prove they are winning.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stavros

As was widely reported before his announcement, the President has refused to (re-) certify the USA's commitment to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], also known as the Iranian Nuclear Deal, which means that Congress will have to make the decision where the expectation is that it will maintain the USA's current position. In international terms, the announcement means nothing as the USA is a signatory to the JCPOA and supported Security Council Resolution 2231 and cannot unilaterally walk away from the agreement, though clearly if the President wants to make a fool of himself that is his problem, for example, calling the JCPOA 'the worst deal ever negotiated' which merely underlines his pathetic ignorance of history.
.

---

I understand that the U.S cannot walk away from an international treaty we are a signatory to, but if the United States fails to comply with the terms of it Iran will have no incentive to comply. If Congress decides to reinstate sanctions on Iran, I can't imagine why Iran would not enrich Uranium.

All credible sources say that Iran has not violated the agreement. If Trump's just grandstanding it's a dangerous game because it looks like bad faith which could encourage a breach from Iran and if he's not, then I can't think of a better way to ensure the outcome the jcpoa was intended to avoid.

Edit: let me state I don't think Congress will reinstate sanctions. I agree that this damages the credibility and reduces the negotiating power of the U.S.

Although I think you are right about Congress, I think there are some wider issues at stake here. The first is that we have a President who used to have people flowing in and out of his New York apartment, and then the White House 'offering' advice to someone they know has no experience of political office and is so ignorant of world affairs they believe he can be swayed to their point of view. General Kelly has put a stop to that with the consequence the President feels imprisoned, yet cannot be controlled at 5am when he belts out his crazy tweets, or goes off-script in public gatherings. One gets the impression that to him the Presidency is either a game show, or that it goes down best with his core voters if he treats it as if it were a game show, with its neatly sectioned dramas and taglines.

The problem with Iran is that it is hardly an innocent in the Middle East, and that while there is a well-educated urban population who could easily live in Paris, London or LA, the religious elite in the Guardian Council believe Khomeini's legacy must be preserved at all costs, and rely on the conservative social attitudes in rural Iran to support them, and in terms of attitudes they are not so far apart from the people who voted for Roy Moore in Alabama. On the other hand, it was as clear as day that when Saddam Hussein and the Sunni minority in control of Iraq were removed from power, that this would provide the Shi'a in Iraq with a natural majority, that this would benefit Iran, and that the 'balance of power' in the Middle East would at least be challenged, if not changed, for while the Shi'a are not and will never be a majority across the region (even less so if one includes North Africa), it would put more pressure on Saudi Arabia to take the role once played by Egypt, even though history shows Egypt in the long term took the Middle East in the wrong direction, just as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is driving Saudi Arabia into a brick wall.

The US, by backing Saudi Arabia against Iran, is confirming the existence of an anti-Iranian Saudi-Israel alliance, which is only going to be temporary, but is a fair reflection of how things have changed since the Iraq war. In the 1980s when the Reagan administration sold AWACs to Saudi Arabia, Israel went berserk, as it usually does, rhetorically at least, seeing it as a strategic threat to Israel. Today, Saudi Arabia has long range missiles capable of striking all major targets in Israel, and has paid Pakistan for a nuclear bomb, maybe more than one, should the need arise, while quietly developing its own nuclear capability. In any other time, this would be a crisis for Israel and its allies in the US Congress would be putting a lot of pressure on the White House to change its policy or at least take some steps to stop this as best they can.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/saudi-...from-pakistan/

If you want to know why this has not caused a storm of protest, consider the amount of money that the President has made from the Saudis and their compliant brothers in the Gulf (he has made no secret of this), the arms sale that was agreed with the brutal, un-elected dictatorship earlier this year- with who knows how much paid in bribes?- and Israel's temporary support for the anti-Iranian alliance, which also includes the attempt to bankrupt Qatar.
At the same time the President describes Iran as a 'dictatorship', which it clearly is not, the crimes he accuses Iran of can all be documented in Saudi Arabia, from public executions, to overt and covert support for Islamic extremists in Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan to name just three places, and the explicitly anti-Jewish literature which Saudi Arabia provides to state-funded Madrasas across the Sunni world.

The issue of nuclear weapons is important, because they are so dangerous, but the same fears that people had over their development in Pakistan and India, namely that they would be used, has in fact been replaced by the more worrying lack of control on the spread of nuclear technology as an export strategy, a role Pakistan played in the development of North Korea's programme at one stage. It also begs the question why Israel can possess the weapons Iran must not. If deterrence works, then possessing nuclear weapons reduces the threat of attack. One notes, in addition, that the reason why India has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is that the NPT only allows the development of a nuclear capability in five states, so that by definition, signing the NPT would require India to relinquish its nuclear arsenal. Compare the international agreement that limits Iran's ability to grow its nuclear capabilities with the right of external inspection and reports, with the lies that Israel tells about its own capability, and the lengths it goes to to pretend it does not have such weapons.

Hypocrisy is, I suppose, a staple feature of international relations, and there aren't that many good guys out there, but when a President stakes out a position simply to spite the man who preceded him in the White House, threatening delicate relations and agreements with no real thought as to the long-term consequences for his own country, you wonder what would happen if MMKT were not there to restrain this bombastic fool. Either way, this President has already caused damage to the reputation of the USA, and it only remains to be seen how much lower he can go, having already re-drawn the boundaries of personal behaviour and policy risks.

Aside from appealing to his support base, I think a key motivator for Trump is that he can't bear to back down after taking a strong position on something, no matter how flimsy the basis for that position. A prime example is Obamacare, which must be destroyed because Trump has said it is a terrible thing, even though it's clear that millions would lose health insurance as a result.

We need to stop this insane war all the time. Get out of the 2 we are in for the last 18 years, and stop going to war.The children born when we first invaded Iraq, are old enough to join themselves in the same war their fathers were in and maybe died in. Our nation has become the bully of the world. Spending trillions on war and no money for Medicaid, Medicare and single pay health care. GOD what an insane moral compass. Infastructure is falling apart, bridges are crumbleing, and we are looking at war 3.0?

In the last week dramatic developments have been taking place that suggest Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz (CPM) is entering a new stage in his plan to re-shape the dictatorship he presides over (given he is King in all but name) as well as the wider Middle East. One can accept that in Saudi terms, allowing women to drive is a radical bombshell moment, and that might tell you what reform looks like, but little else about what CPM thinks 'reform' might become, and let's just say political parties and democracy are not part of the plan.

The drama took place on two fronts, with the arrest of 201 people, around 11 of them wealthy Princes (of which there are thousands, owing to Abdul Aziz ibn Saud -quite apart from his brothers, having had over 40 wives and concubines and Allah Only Knows how many offspring) the rest being senior officials, the claim being that collectively they have defrauded the Kingdom of over $100 Billion in various ways though we have yet to be told how much was paid out in bribes sanctioned by CPM to secure the latest arms deal with the USA, given that we know Bribes are endemic in the system and that they were used to lubricate the al-Yamama deal the British signed in the 1980s.

More dramatic still was the sudden departure of the Lebanese Prime Minister, Saad Hariri to Saudi Arabia on the 3rd of November. A dual Lebanese and Saudi citizen (the Hariri family took Saudi citizenship to make the best of their lucrative real estate business in the Kingdom, Saad himself is worth around $1.5 Billion), Hariri arrived in Riyadh without the customary welcome party, but instead had his mobile phone taken away, while he went to the family home from where he issued his public statement resigning as Prime Minister and where he still 'lives' though the Saudis claim he is free to leave anytime he wants to.

Following Saudi Arabia's attempt to isolate Qatar, this latest move is seen by some as taking the confrontation with Iran a dangerous step further. The problem for CPM is that Saudi Arabia got involved in the Syrian civil war, and lost, and if you see this as a zero-sum game, what Saudi Arabia lost, Iran through its support for al-Asad won. When it realised it was losing the war in Syria, the Kingdom abandoned its Syrian proxies to wage war in the Yemen,where it is clear so far it has achieved nothing positive but has created a massive internal refugee crisis in the country, with the attendant problems of disease and starvation that go with it. Given that Saudi Arabia wherever it goes -37 years and trillions of $$ has not secured Afghanistan- it loses, one wonders what victory in Lebanon looks like when it happens, given there is no victory in the Yemen and that this crazy country looks set to remain a ruin for many years to come.

The aim must be to 'smash' Hezbollah, or in some way to weaken it, much as the Israelis tried to do with the PLO in Lebanon in the 1980s, removing it from Lebanon but merely shifting it somewhere else and in the long term signing a peace treaty with them. Israel and the USA are on board with CPM, as both have their own reasons for taking on the Iranians, though yet again one wonders what will be achieved. An Israeli General has claimed that after the mess they got into in 2006, their military can now do in Lebanon in hours what they struggled to do in weeks, but what does this mean?
Is Israel with Saudi and American backing going to wipe out Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Beirut? How, and with what level of casualties? What happens to the governance of Lebanon if half of its democratically elected MPs have been killed with the country returned to the bomb-site it was in the civil war? And, even if there was some 'precision strike' on Hezbollah's military capability, Iran will replace it, free of charge. But I guess, as with some of these strikes, it will 'send a message' to Iran, a message that will get through, but may result in Iran retaliating in a grisly fashion, as it has done in the past, Lockerbie being the retaliation for the USS Vincennes blowing up Iran Airflight 655.

So far the US President has been a dog barking in the White House. He hasn't bitten anyone yet. But with CPM at one end of the lead pulling him on, backed by Middle East 'expert' Jared Kushner, determined to 'make things happen' in the Middle East, is this Saudi gambler about to drag the USA into another ditch in the Middle Eastern wars it will struggle to get out of? The last time the Americans got involved in Lebanon, 241 'peacekeepers' were blown to kingdom come -that's a lot of phone calls, Mr President.

And if the confrontation with Iran becomes a confrontation with Russia as the guarantor of Syria -and if Syria, why not Lebanon (the Russian naval base is an hour's sail down the coast)?

Some of us think they are all barking -mad. But we don't make policy. Scary times.

Some reports here-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...uption-inquiry
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/1...060742360.html

Re-reading the posts in this thread I am surprised at how harsh I was with alreik, and should offer an apology as we did indeed often agree if not on some details. The year that has since passed has seen the US withdraw its support for the Iran Nuclear Deal and to re-impose the sanctions that were lifted in 2015.

It is too early to say how the sanctions on petroleum exports will affect Iran when they begin in November 2018. We have been here before. But when Iran nationalized its petroleum industry in 1951, sanctions were devastating to the economy because it was the only significant industry Iran had, and because the international market for oil was smaller than it is today, and because in a world economy in which China and the USSR was mostly absent, Iran was isolated. Today the market is larger, the opportunity to beat sanctions much easier (as South Africa showed in the 1980s and Iraq in the 1990s), and Iran has friends in Russia and China that may enable Iran to find the new sanctions easier to live with.

The Coup in 1953 that deposed the government of Mohamed Musadeq was mounted by the armed forces backed heavily by the US through the CIA ad its slush funds (on one occasion as the Tehran press noted, a suitcase full of dollars delivered to an opposition group by Norman Schwarzkpt, Sr, father of Gulf War 'hero' 'Stormin' Norman). Its primary agent, Kermit Roosevelt had successfully exploited economic hardship in Iran to pay agents provocateurs to mount or disrupt demonstrations for and against the government, often with extreme violence, though there is still some debate over the discontent with Musadeq and why people who had once supported him did not fight back when the Shah was enabled to return to Iran (he bolted to Switzerland when the Coup began just in case it failed) and impose autocratic rule.

John Bolton, who has claimed recently that regime change is not US policy, has in fact been advocating it for years, and as someone who will have read up on Iran, appears to believe that as with Iraq, routing protest through domestic opposition groups such as the MeK will with sanctions weaken the theocracy and at least begin the 'countdown' to precisely the regime change he claims the US does not want. Unlike the plan for Iraq, and instead of a direct bombing campaign, he may think that as with the USSR, a nudge to the domestic scene from outside and the house of cards will tumble, the Mullahs will go back to the Mosques, and a US friendly government will emerge in Tehran to link hands and dance.

Bolton's links to the MeK with its history of murdering Americans is in the link below, and if he claims they have changed, well the Muslim Brotherhood has changed over the years too, but is still considered a terrorist group by its critics in the US and Israel.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...he-white-house

Chaos may indeed become more common in Iran as the people become frustrated with their economic situation, but I doubt that those same Iranians will thank the US for whatever happens next, and if there is chaos, it means a higher oil price, which is good for Saudi Arabia and the domestic US producers (but not consumers, as if Bolton cared about them!) while a weaker Iran would be, in theory at least, a benefit to Saudi Arabia and Israel and make any nuclear development that much slower and more expensive.

Bolton is controversial because of his style, an abrasive indifference to diplomacy informed by the kind of America Alone thinking that he has found congenial in the President and vice versa. Bolton was part of the Bush administration that argued the US should never concede an inch in any international situation, and who was relentlessly unforgiving of Iran even when, as happened after 9/11, Iran publicly supported the US and gave it key co-ordinates of Taliban positions in Afghanistan at the same time the Pakistan government was giving it co-ordinates of the USA's allies, the 'Northern Alliance'.
Far from thanking Iran, which also gave the US info on al-Qaeda movements in Iran and its 'protection' of members of Osama Bin Laden's family there (which would also have reached the US through spies in Tehran), Bolton said:
Iran must get down on their knees and thank us for getting rid of their enemy-
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...hatami&f=false

Bolton's philosophical view can be summed up simply in the form French fascist Marine le Pen put it: he is a 'Patriot' not a 'Globalist', indeed for Bolton anything multi-lateral is the problem:

The blunt-spoken Bolton is a Yale-trained expert in international law who has spent a career seeking, ironically, to delegitimize the very idea of international law, and of multilateral action and organizations...
militant libertarian thinker who has believed passionately that the United States has surrendered its sovereignty for far too long to multilateral treaties and organizations of all kinds, including the United Nations. In articles and speeches, he has gone so far as to question whether “globalism” or international law have any legitimacy under the U.S. Constitution. In a 2000 essay in the Chicago Journal of International Law titled “Should We Take Global Governance Seriously?” Bolton cast the U.S. political debate as a clash between two “parties” — what he called the “Americanists” versus the “Globalists” — and that he, as a “convinced Americanist,” was engaged in a losing battle for America’s very soul. “Americanists find themselves surrounded by small armies of Globalists, each tightly clutching a favorite new treaty or multilateralist proposal,” Bolton wrote.
Bolton then proceeded to attack nearly every major multilateral convention, including the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming, the Land Mines Convention in Ottawa and the International Criminal Court. Over the years, he also has taken on the Biological Weapons Convention and the World Trade Organization, among other multilateral treaties, and continues to do so. Trump’s new unilateral trade tariffs against China will likely meet with his incoming national security adviser’s approval.
In what has since become his mantra, Bolton wrote back then that globalism “represents a kind of worldwide cartelization of governments and interest groups,” and “the costs to the United States — reduced constitutional autonomy, impaired popular sovereignty, reduction of our international power, and limitations on our domestic and foreign policy options and solutions — are far too great.” This puts him at odds with the 70-odd year consensus that has guided U.S. foreign policy since World War II: that a world of rule-based cooperation rather than atavistic competition is ultimately in American interests, too.
https://www.politico.eu/article/trum...mcmaster-anti/

So whatever happens next, it appears that policy in Iran is in the hands of people convinced that diplomacy does not work, and that if the US wants to achieve its objectives, it must and can disregard all and any international agreements it has signed or agreed to.

But will this confrontation with Iraq produce what the US thinks it desires? Iran has never allowed itself to be beaten down without exacting its own version of revenge, often in a bloody fashion. Obama proved the US can achieve good relations with Iran through precisely the diplomacy Bolton rejects, but can Bolton produce a 'liberated' Iran that will be American's friend again? Though I cannot say, my pessimistic self suggests we are taking not one, but two, or even three steps backwards on Iran, and that is not good for anyone.

The attack in south-western Iran over the weekend is a worrying sign that a coalition of the USA, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel is increasing the pressure on Iran to the extent that by attacking the Islamic Republic in this manner they expect -may even hope- that Iran will retaliate in kind. Such an escalation would prove that Iran cannot be trusted and in turn increase the prospect of some kind of military confrontation, although Israeli and US Generals may be holding the President back because in reality there is no military solution to the 'problem' of Iran, which is its Islamic government with, as the President claims, regional ambitions to be the dominant power. That Saudi Arabia claims this is not something the Americans will challenge as long as they are paying.

Moreover, it comes in the week that the President of the USA will address the General Assembly of the UN in a speech in which he is expected to issue incendiary threats to Iran much as he did to North Korea in his previous visit. That the Iran Nuclear Deal was endorsed by the Security Council of the UN would suggest that if the US was bothered by it, a request that the Security Council to review the agreement would have been the most obvious next step, but the President holds the UN in contempt and has by-passed the premier source of international law to make a unilateral decision.

It is most likely that the President is being advised by John Bolton, but particularly Jared Kushner via his links in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and that the short-term aim is to put pressure on Iran to withdraw its forces in Syria as well as its support for proxy forces fighting there. The attack in Ahwaz makes this less likely but that might be to the advantage of the Americans as they point out how 'dangerous' the Iranian presence is to the whole region.

Sanctions against companies trading in Iran's oil and gas come into effect in November though the EU has mechanisms to neutralize them, they may be effective and be an additional reason for Iran to retaliate, though when where and against whom we cannot know.

The attack in Ahvaz was claimed by ISIL but also a local group called Al-Ahvazia (this is Farsi, as the Arab name for the town is actually Ahwaz) which may be linked to another group called the Ahvaz National Resistance Group, and a third called the Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz. Of interest is that while the Iranians claim these groups are funded by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, aka 'US backed regimes', President Rouhani has said that the local militias were a left-over of Iranian Arabs previously funded by Saddam Hussein. The armed gang that seized the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980 claimed to be members of the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan, an Iraqi label for the Khuzestan province of south-western Iran in which the weekend attack took place. The London siege took place but months before Iraq invaded Iran to initiate a fabulously expensive and strategically futile war that resulted in no transfer of territory but which did bleed dry the treasuries of Iran and Iraq leading the latter to invade Kuwait in 1990 in a desperate attempt to seize Kuwait's oil fields.

In other words, encouraged by Saudi Arabia and Israel, the President of the USA is being led, like the ignorant donkey that he is, into an escalation of tension with Iran just as his personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani has called in public for regime change in Tehran as he has done before, just as this odious little creep who will never lose any sleep for supporting the terrorist MeK movement that has slaughtered so many Americans, just as the President is so besotted with Saudi money he doesn't care how many friends and relatives of the 9/11 Hi-Jackers come and go from the USA.

Expect lots of heated rhetoric and, at some point, more dead bodies.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east...hani-/1262614#
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/...134648290.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...crushing-ahvaz

So in the end it was just the usual hypocrisy from the President of the USA. Without making the kind of threats I expected one can argue that in the roll call of Middle Eastern killers, Iran got top billing, while the others, the UAE, Qatar (still isolated without US support as it is pressured by) Saudi Arabia don't just get a free pass, but praise!

On the one hand you have the simple fact that the popular rebellion against the Ba'ath government of Bashar al-Asad in 2011 deepened into a civil war in which Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE all played a direct role through funding and arms imports, before abandoing the rebels to a cruel fate, while the unelected butchers of the Saudi Kingdom turned their violence on the Yemen even as the hypocrite claimed

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have pledged billions of dollars to aid the people of Syria and Yemen. And they are pursuing multiple avenues to ending Yemen’s horrible, horrific civil war.
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/25/179010...eech-full-text

That Saudi Arabia has been, and still is hammering the Yemen with bombs and starvation unveils the cynical indifference to the truth to which the President of the USA is addicted.

On the other hand, the President has benefited personally from Saudi Arabia in terms of millions of dollars, while his son-in-law has had his business interests in New York City saved from oblivion by Qatar and un-documented sums from the UAE.

Had Iran been a source of financial benefit to the President it would not be in the crosshairs of his vanity gun, as it is they are because the President judges foreign counties by their finanial contributions to his personal bank account(s), rather than in the interests of the USA. So maybe that is why Russia, direclty involved in the murder of thousands of Syrians and the displacement of millions more, also gets a free pass.

The best things in life are free, and one day this man will pay for his lies.

A chorus of hypocrites. Here is John Bolton, proving that if his President can lay on the bullshit, he can match him:
The Trump administration has warned Tehran that there would be “hell to pay” if it continued to “cross” the US and its allies.

The threat was delivered by the national security adviser, John Bolton, a longtime Iran hawk who told an audience of anti-Tehran activists: “The murderous regime and its supporters will face significant consequences if they do not change their behaviour”.

“Let my message today be clear: we are watching, and we will come after you,” Bolton said, according to early excerpts from his speech obtained by the Axios news website.

He added: “If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat, and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...united-nations

As for dead Americans, active military support for Saddam Hussein, murderous campaigns against Iran inside Iran, look no further than John Bolton's best buddies. As documented here -

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...n-group-214526

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...t-organisation

Why don't the Iranians realise that all they need to do is play their role in the Trump reality TV show, like his new friend Kim Jong Un? Just agree to a summit (I'm sure Trump's other bestie Vlad can arrange it), make a vague agreement that allows Trump to pose as a master negotiator and he'll be singing their praises in no time. I think that all Trump really cares about is receiving adulation, no matter how phoney it is.

The differences are clear. North Korea has been an isolated country in search of friends, where Iran is far from being isolated and has in fact extended its influence across the Middle East since 1979. Though it can never be a dominant power in the region, Iran sees its operations as, in essence, a defence against hostile states, principally Saudi Arabia in the west, and Pakistan in the east, both of which contain Sunni extremists who consider Shi'a Muslims to be heretics.

There is an awkward history too because Iran was not created by the British and the French as was the case with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine/Israel (which Israelis would probably dispute); nor was it controlled by British Imperial interests as was the case with the Emirates on the eastern coast of Arabia, or the recipient (literally) of bags of gold in exchage for loyalty as happened with Ibn Saud before he reneged on his agreements with the British in 1921. The short period of the Anglo-Russian Convention (1907-1918) did give those two rival empires spheres of influence in Iran (basically, the north for the Russians, the oil-rich south for the British), but Iran has always been more independent than its Arab neighbours, and, of course was a firm allly of the US in the Cold War at a time when key Arab states such as Egypt, Syria and Iraq were pro-Soviet.

The bad blood that exists between the US and Iran is thus different from that which might exist with North Korea because of the war and US casualties, and seems to be toxic in a way that North Korean relations are not.
This may be due to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 undermining US influence in the Middle East, as it took place at a time when Iran and the Arabs had nationalised their oil industries and the US lost another regional ally in Ethiopia even if it gained (a increasingly feeble) one in Egypt. The siege at the US Embassy in Tehran was a biiter experience for the US, but if the US has failed to reform its relations with Iran, it may be due to at least two causes.

The first is one of trust, which is weak between the two, but is also sustained by a lack of dialogue between the US and Iran who have shared strategic interests since 9/11. The reformist President Khatami made repeated attempts to open a positive dialogue with the US after 9/11 on the basis they shared a common enemy in al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but the Bush administration rejected the calls, the primary movers against at the time being Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton, though there is evidence Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice were interested in opening channels of communication (see the IPS link below).

The second is the infuence of both Israel and Saudi Arabia on US policy in the Middle East. I am not a supporter of the idea that American policy is made in Israel, even though Israeli intelligence has been held in high regard in Washington, at least since the Nixon era. You don't need Israel to tell the Americans where their best interests lie, which at various times meant supporting Saddam Hussein's murderous regime in Iraq, while the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s caused much concern in Israel.

At the moment, both Israel and Saudi Arabia, who co-operated on the latter's behalf in the 1960s when the US shipped arms to Saudi Arabia through Israel to assist the Kingdon's futile war against Egypt in the Yemen, are encouraging the Americans to take a tough line with Iran purely for selfish reasons, with the current administration obsessed to trash everything Obama did and are thus willing to openly display their hypocrisy by denying a nuclear capability to Iran that says it is not building one anyway, with support for a nuclear capability that the Saudi Arabians say they need.

As a Republican said recently, 'It will be as if the Obama Presidency never happened'.

IPS article on US-Iran relations-
http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/09/post-...wnward-spiral/

Profile of John Bolton-
https://gulfnews.com/opinion/thinker...lton-1.2193740

The alleged attack on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman has undoubtedly raised the temperature (and the oil price) today, 13th June- and on one level, it would appear to be odd were it to have been organized by the Iranians, as they would not invite an attack. On the other hand, they might calculate that a military attack is not part of the USA's plans (whatever Bolton says), and appear to be challenging the US President to talk, using his form of aggressive action to make it happen.

Iran is undoubtedly suffering because of sanctions, and has said it will not allow the US to dictate the terms of trade it has with states that purchase Iranian oil and gas, and that if Iran's exports suffer, so will other exporting countries, so this would make an attack on tankers make sense as an Iranian tactic, also because the tankers were not destroyed, and Iran itself has rescued at least 40 seamen from one of them.

With no evidence of who was responsible suggesting it was therefore a sophisticated operation, could Iran have farmed out the operation to the Russians? That would make the situation even more 'interestig' -but one hopes cool heads will prevail and that a back channel is opened so that for once, Americans and Iranians can talk to each other on equal terms.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...f-oman-us-navy

I thought Jared Kushner would have solved the Middle East Crisis by now, with Trump Bolton and Pompeo behind him, what could go wrong?
Who's running the store? Kellyanne Conway??????
They knew about Shanahan for months.
Meanwhile disgraced pedophile Roy Moore says McConnell is warning his Republican colleagues to distance themselves from Donald Trump during the 2020 elections, (shhhhh, don't tell Donald..)
Can this get any worse?
YES
How so?
NO CLUE
Isn't Hope Hicks lovely?
HOT!!!

https://i.ibb.co/WffvV6g/0.jpg

I don't know what Hope Hicks has to do with it, even if she does have lovely hair.

What we aso don't know is what is actually happening in the White House. Are we supposed to gasp at the generosity of the President in not attacking Iran -at the same time as it was in fact being attacked by 'cyberwarriors'? Are we supposed to assume the President is a peacenik surrounded by Boltons and Pompeos, one of the two paid by the MeQ to overthrow the Islamic government of Iran which he has publicly said he wants to do? And what are we to make of the pledge that Iran must not acquire Nuclear Weapons, when it has been made easier for them to do so, if that is what they want, by a President who by his actions and words has undermined the Iranians who supported the Nuclear Deal -'the worst deal in history'- while promoting the very regime hardliners who are opposed to internal reform and are, in effect, the President's best friends in Iran?

And if Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, why has the President sold nuclear technlogy to Saudi Arabia, in violation of the law -the Atomic Energy Act- and without reference to Congress, a violation of the Constitution he swore an Oath to protect and to serve?

Finally -what in the end does victory look like? An obliterated Iran, closer to the Stone Age than the Modern World? Or could it be a series of bi-lateral talks that produce an agreement that is in all but name, the same agreement which Obama's administration produced which the President said was 'the worst deal in history'?

The president is a little child whose presidential powers manifest and amplify his uncontrollable tantrums. I imagine that after he worked himself into a emotional state (with the aid of Bolton and Pompeo) when he ordered airstrike on Iran that almost became manifest. Are we to believe his never inquired about the causalities of such an action until ten minutes before he called it off? Wasn’t informed when he gave the order? Or was it the case that in the heat of his tantrum he didn’t give a fuck? Are we to praise him now ‘cause he came to his senses in the nick of time, "That's a good thing you did there, Donny"?

Patrick Cockburn has written a fascinating article that makes telling points about US arms sales to Saudi Arabia- they are functionally useless. Whoever used drones to attack Saudi Arabia scored hits on the cheap which both Saudi Arabia and the US were powerless to prevent even with their million or billion dollar systems to do just that. Early warning? Missile defence? intelligence satellite intelligence human? Don't work. So now P45 sends in the troops- to do what? The man hasn't got a clue, his General Staff are punching their cards and maintaining at least, or expanding their budgets, approved by Congress that shunts the slices of the Defence pie to district and state.
All that money, all that power- will they ever learn from their mistakes?

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-a9113636.html

why the bitcoin is not up yet?

Tough Guy authorised the illegal assassination of Soleimani, no consultation with State, Defence, Intelligemce needed. We are told neither the US nor Iran wants a war, but Iran will get its revenge, and both Toigh Guy and Pompeo threaten 52 sites in Iran, presumably those provided by Israel. Iran can attack the US and its allie through soft means, such as the DoS attacks it made on Wall St in 2012, or disrupt shipping in the Gulf at great financial cost on the basis that the US doesn't care how much it costs to wage a futile war at any level.
Does the US have a plan to replace the aggressive attempt to bring Iran to the negotiating table to produce a harsher version of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal? By his actions, Tough Guy has undermined reformists in Iran to support the very hardliners now determined to take the nuclear road, having all but denounced the 2016 deal.
if Iraq is to be the playground will US forces Tough Guy wanted to withdraw now flood back in at the cost of another $2 trillion, and for what?

You don't have to speculate on the real winner in all this. Tough Guy has delivered another massive, massive victory to Russia and lifelong Communist Vladimir Putin. Russia will guarantee the survival of Iran, and can step into the void left by the US in Iraq, China too may see an opportunity. Bush, Obama and Tough Guy failed to develop a pro-American constituency in Iraq, for them Tough Guy has flopped and is now a liability not an asset. Israel is more vulnerable because of Tough Guy, and who knows if Saudi Arabia, which was preparing a meeting this week with Iran will now withdraw, if Bin Salman has any coherent plan given that any attempt to talk to Iran will not please Tough Guy?

Uncertain times, but with Tough Guy, all roads lead to Putin, and Putin is the man with a big smile on his face.

Well, here we go folks, World War fucking 3. Thanks to all who voted for the demented man-child squatting in the White House.

It's being reported that there are no U.S. casualties from the strikes. If Trump can take this as evidence that Iran deliberately planned a face-saving attack to cause minimal damage and no casualties, he can avoid getting us embroiled in a war. He's never shown intelligence before but this would require very little.

This was written by Iran's foreign minister. It should give Trump a pretty good idea that Iran is done, their attack was calculated to help them save face, and we should be done as well because a war would be a disaster here.

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1214739347959734274?s=20

So Bonehead has said Iran backed down, when it was also the US that backed down from more violence. The Shi'a tend to mourn for 40 days before taking revenge, if that is what they seek. Iran has ways of undermining the US presence in Iraq, and will now be emboldened to increase the pressure on Iraq to expel the US/NATO forces in the country. Yes, to some extent Iran has been weakened by Soleimani's assassination, but this will only make the hardliners in Tehran more aggressive in their response. The US is in the weakest position for the simple reason that it cannot justify its presence in Iraq -indeed, far from seeing off Daesh in Iraq, the assassination may enable the Iranians who helped destroy the Daesh infrastructure, renew their activities at a guerilla level merely to engage the Americans in a 'war of attrition'.
In the long term, the US is done in Iraq, but the real joke is in the presssure by Bonehead on the UK/EU to publicly declare the Iran Nuclear Deal is dead, on the basis he is going to re-negotiate- and end up with what, if it is not a document that looks almost exactly like the one he has said was 'the worst deal in history' ? -after all, what does Iran want that the US is prepared to give? So when Bonehead says Iran will never have nuclear weapons -which they have said they don't want anyway- who is he to decide? Is Iran going to tell the Americans it can't have a new generation of ballistic missiles? Maybe if they gave him $25 million, as the Saudis probably did, they would get all the nuclear technology they want, as the US has 'sold' that technology to the Kingdom that produced most of the 9/11 Hi-Jackers who slaughtered thousands of Americans.
Nothing has been resolved in the region by the assassination, much has been disturbed.

The Man With No Plan is continually torn between two competing impulses. One the one hand, he wants to be seen to be delivering on his promise to end US involvement in never-ending wars. On the other hand, he hates the idea that he might be made to look weak.

To the extent that has a strategy, it seems to be to try to intimidate Iran into making a deal that he can trumpet as solution to the problem. Failing that, he probably figures that conflict will help his election chances. It also serves as a useful distraction from the fact that North Korea is clearly ignoring the "deal" he made with them.

Interesting perspective from an Iranian-American.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVzIkREFmjg

This is mostly a strawman. Of the people who opposed the killing of Soleimani, only a very small percent believe he wasn't a bad guy. The number of people in the U.S. who opposed the attack and are "mourning" Soleimani is probably close to zero, and I haven't seen a single one.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MrFanti

Interesting perspective from an Iranian-American.

---

Interesting, but also wrong. Soleimani was not a terrorist, he was both a representative of the State, and an important State actor whose role was to export the Islamic Revolution to those parts of the Middle East where the Shi'a, in 1979 were marginalized, discriminated against, and, as was and is the case with Saudi Arabia, vilified for being heretics, a counter campaign that the Saudis promoted with vicious, lethal results in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Unless she understand what the Islamic State is in Iran, how will she cope with the complexity in which, yes, a lot of Iranians are pro-American and loathe the Guardian Council and its apparatus of 'security' which for many ordinary Iranians is just uniformed, or not-uniformed thugs licensed to beat people up, imprison and torture them or even kill them in the streets -while millions more, mostly in rural areas, support the Islamic regime. Snail-paced reform in Iran is the best that one could have hoped for in recent years, and Rouhani's election confirms it is what Iranians want -but who has assaulted and undermined the economy with sanctions if not the President of the USA? Who, through his military aggression, has undermined Rouhani and reform to endorse the hard-line policies of the Guardian Council on nuclear development and internal reform if not the same man in Washington DC?

It is true that Iran is now in a more difficult place than it was a month ago. It blundered in Iraq by taking on the demonstrators fed up with Iran's influence; it blundered through its lethal suppression of domestic protest, and clearly blundered through its attacks on Saudi Arabia and US installations and personnel, and with the catastrophic error in downing the Ukraine bound plane, it has now a lot of compensation to account for.

But this will embolden the Guardian Council to double down on its external missions, not retreat from then, though its direct involvement in Syria was not as great as some claim. The talks with Saudi Arabia that were supposed to take place this week -the reason Soleimani was in Iraq- appear to be on hold, but indicate that Saudi Arabia too now accepts its war policy is failing in the Yemen, just as someone in Qatar tells me that the aggressive policy bin Salman promoted toward Qatar has now dissipated.

If there were signs that regional reform is now possible, that Iran and Saudi Arabia can open a dialogue, the last thing they need is an idiot supported by cretins pursuing a confrontation with Iran at the very time everyone else wants to talk. And anyway, even if he forced the Iranians to the negotiating table, does the President really think the outcome will be any different from the Iran Nuclear Deal he called 'the worst deal in history'?

Now consider what she says about Iran that is true: no freedom of religion, no freedom of speech, punishment for protest -all three standard features in the daily life of Saudi Arabia, the closest ally the US has in the region other than Israel, and the source of much of the President's personal wealth. And if bin Salman now calms down and looks for more diplomatic solutions, what is his 'brother Arab' Zayed in the UAE doing, boasting he has the crooked Kushners in his pocket? There are too many ambitious men in the region who in any other context would be considered crooks or Mafiosi, only this lot have billions to spend.

Lastly, where were all those happy Iraqis who were supposed to flood into the streets waving portraits of Bush and Blair when Saddam was overthrown? Do the Americans really think the Islamic Revolution is about to end with happy Iranians dancing in the streets? Rudolph Giuliani Jr and John Bolton have both been paid to appear and speak at rallies in the US organized by the MeQ which has a record of marching around Tehran chanting 'Death to America' and actually killing Americans too. Are these the favoured replacements for the Guardian Council, just as Ahmad Chalabi was America's boy in Baghdad having received millions from the US tax-payer to 'fight Saddam', who then used his position in the Government to renege on the agreement they had with the US, sacking every Sunni Muslim from public duties, meaning every Sunni refuse collector, tax collector, teacher, doctor, dentist, army officer and so on, paving the way for the ascendancy of Daesh?

As ever in this militant region, one solution often gives birth to another crisis: we can all hope that one day Iran will be free of its religious extremists, just as we hope the same for Israel, Saudi Arabia and the USA, where spooky 'Christians' are at war with the Constitution, and seek to replace it with the Holy Bible.

Take the next best step, remove the impeached President even if it means opening a dialogue with semi-comatose Pence, who should at least sack Mad Mike Pompeo, and the crooks with their noses deep in the swampy trough -Carson, Chao, de Vos, Mnuchin -and the crooked Kushners with their private email servers set up to help them run their businesses from the White House...

In the dying days of the Presidency, Mike Pompeo met with the Prime Minister of Israel and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, and days later Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was murdered. As the 'guru' of Iran's nuclear programme, this was both an audacious and clever operation, as Fakhrizadeh was closely guarded, his location and movements often secret, so either Israel got a tip off, or has been monitoring the man for some time. My guess is that the people responsible are Iranian by birth, possibly Israeli citizens, though one could speculate that they are Arabs, only Saudi Arabia seems mostly only capable of murdering its own ciizens, usually in broad daylight on a Friday after Jama'a Prayers, or in the protected confines of their Embassies and Consuates.

Strategically, Israel has merely delivered an embarrassing blow to Iran, the point being it was unable to protect so important a man on its own soil -but does this mean Iran will halt its nuclear development? No. Does it mean the people will rise up and overthrow the Islamic regime? No. So in strategic terms, if Israel is determined to halt Iran's nuclear development, it has failed -again.

The danger, is that this single assassination is but part of a broader plan to strike Iran's facilities at Natanz, and that it also fits into Trump's personal vendetta against the man who defeated him at the ballot box, to leave him with a Middle East crisis in which Biden will be asked to renew the USA's historic choice in the region: supporting Israel no matter how risky or costly or plain stupid its regional behaviour is. Biden is known to be cooler on Saudi Arabia, so MbS appears to be riding side-saddle with Israel just to provoke Biden.

Here are the contradictions, and the perils ahead:

1) Israel, having made so much of its 'Peace Treaties' with Bahrain and the UAE, in fact merely formal acts of recognition, must explain why it also seems so determined to go to war with Iran, when it is a war that cannot be won. Even if Natanz and every component of Iran's nuclear programme were to be destroyed, Iran would just start over.

2) MbS might be one of Democratic Israel's new 'best friends' -Israel seems keen to make friends with brutal dictators who would -indeed have- murder any citizens asking for the same democracy in their Emirates and Kingdoms Israel has- but most Arabs in the Kingdom would rejoice if Israel were wiped off the map, much as they contributed most of the 9/11 Hi-Jackers -but as Saudi Arabia begins its own nuclear journey, will it at some time have to contemplate murdering Saudi engineeers, blow up their facilities?

3) As noted above in earlier posts, Iran has a history of retaliating against attacks -so far there was no major retaliation following the assassination of Qasem Suleimani, but I wonder now if the Republican Guard is demanding the right to take action, something Rouhani would probably caution against, even as he can see why the Guardian Council feels it must act. But if so, would the attacks punish smaller places like Bahrain, where the majority of the population is Shi'a and looks favouraby on Iran?

4) The real danger is that the US is planning, directly or using Israel as a proxy, to attack Iran again, either individuals, or facilities it claims are part of the nuclear programme. Pompeo, Giuliani and John Bolton appear to or have explicitly called for 'Regime Change' in Iran, so it would be another act of hypocrisy for the man who claims he was opposed to regime change in Iraq, to support it in Iran, and not least when I assume he only approved the sharing of nuclear intelligence with Saudi Arabia because he was paid to do so- one of the many crimes that Trump must answer for when he leaves the White House.

5) But what do the Generals think? Israel's Generals have tended to warn Netanyahu off direct military strikes, and I would hope the USA's Generals can also see the risks involved, but if it is the case that everyone is so terrified of Trump they say yes to everything, could he be about to 'go out with a bang'? Oddly, I think he might not, because he has staked so much on not getting the US dragged into foreign adventures -but with his temper fraying because of his defeat, and as he lashes out at Fox News and even the Republicans in Georgia, one wonders if less principled people (plenty of them in this administation) have been whispering in his ears to encorage him to support Israel's batty aims?

Simon Tisdall makes some interesting points here-
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ed-war-on-iran