Now That Trump's President... (not any more!)

[goDel]

1 hour ago, darreichungsform said:

It's not because of the bull-headedness of the current leaders, it's a long-term strategy that didn't start with Trump

What started with trump was the end of the iran deal. You know, that deal they spent years on.(strategy?)  Which should have normalised relationships. (again, strategy?)

I think you're confusing the "long term strategies" of Israel and others in the middle east who are at odds with iran. Although, in fairness, us has been supporting those voices for decades. With, arguably, Obama being an outlier. (But who knows what happened outside of public eye)

[Hugh Mughnus]

"Mohsen Rezaei, the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said Iran would take "vigorous revenge on America". "

Well, we know it won't be Iranian sanctions on the US,  so here's to escalating. ;0

[President Squidward]

honestly just had it since I just can't take this shit annymore. fucking hate this countries's pompous and disgusting dictator-like leaders. (like hOLY FUCK Just posting the american flag and seeing possible trollbots who may be real people just sucking this man's dick like brainwashed sheep, just really fucking boils me)

Here's to hoping this isn't too fucking awful since we're all just trying to live life, man... on both sides. NO MORE WAR PLZ. Leave all the innocent people alone.  

[goDel]

11 minutes ago, StephenG said:

"Mohsen Rezaei, the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said Iran would take "vigorous revenge on America". "

Well, we know it won't be Iranian sanctions on the US,  so here's to escalating. ;0

I'm not too sure about what Iran can do though. They're not a bunch of jihadists.

The only thing that comes to mind ( which says a lot about my lack of knowledge about the situation in the middle east) is that Iran will be pushing events in the region which are opposite to us ambitions. That could mean in Iraq, Syria or even Jemen. (Afghanistan and Pakistan?)

So, probably some escalating events in an already troublesome region. With the effect that us will be drawn towards more military involvment in the region. Which, ironically, is a form of economic/political sanction. As it costs a lot of money. And I'm fairly sure Iran assumes there's little political will in the us.

In other words, the Iranian version of sanctions on the us is to force the us to poor more money into the middle east.

[Hugh Mughnus]

@goDel hmm, yeah I see what you’re saying. You could be right. Hopefully I’m wrong in thinking it’s going to escalate in a more direct way... I have a difficult time articulating exactly what I think. 

Edited January 3, 2020 by StephenG

[ignatius]

 

 

 

 

[goDel]

Some potential silver lining arguments wrt iran in this thread

 

[Silent Member]

lol

[dingformung]

10 hours ago, ignatius said:

no one wins. really.

people said the same thing about iraq btw.. afghanistan too... " war in a country with such a complex topography particularly difficult, time consuming and dirty." which is sad that people will start asking that question. .once the news shows join in the trumpets it's all but done.  once they start asking nad debating "what would war with iran look like?" and that kind of shit.. then it's over.  then it's a conclusion in people's minds already and they've swallowed the idea and are just waiting. 

if trump decides for some action against iran there will be chaos. lot's of calm reasonable people on the sidelines will finally get off their asses and start protesting.. and the people who've been motivated all along and protesting etc will probably take things up a notch. 

but also all the blind "patriots" will ramp up their bullshit as well. it'll be chaos. 

there's been a "Committee to liberate iran" for like 30 years.. somewhere in the pentagon.. I imagine veterans will be split. 

fingers crossed that sanity prevails or some dumb luck to keep the orange idiot distracted.

Edit: Rage Against The Machine is headlining Coachella though. so that'll ChAnGe eVeRyTHinG

Iraq is a mostly flat desert land, Afghanistan didn't have a lot of military power and the topography there was already causing lots of troubles. Iran on the other hand is gigantic with lots of mountains and has two competent armies and lots of highly trained people and lots of arms. The sheer size of the country makes an invasion extremely costly. Such a war would drag on for many years and cause lots of deaths on both sides with the current military technology. It's not comparable to the Iraq and Afghanistan war, it would be even more terrible. I guess the game is to weaken Iran's standing in the world even further and cause a regime change. If that doesn't work then maybe there will be weapons that could make this war easier for the US in the future. I'm thinking sort of ultra precise highly specialised drone swarms, like described in this article: https://warontherocks.com/2019/02/drones-of-mass-destruction-drone-swarms-and-the-future-of-nuclear-chemical-and-biological-weapons/

[auxien]

i mean i'm no strategic war guy or anything but i assume an invasion/ground war in Iran is off the table unless shit goes wild. weakening standing by way of strategic attacks like we just did or like you mention seems most likely? but as of now we’re not at war anyway. let’s all cross our fingers that Iran does some posturing attack that saves some face but doesn’t kill too many of any side and we de-escalate from there to sanctions/etc.

[dingformung]

14 minutes ago, auxien said:

i mean i'm no strategic war guy or anything but i assume an invasion/ground war in Iran is off the table unless shit goes wild. weakening standing by way of strategic attacks like we just did or like you mention seems most likely? but as of now we’re not at war anyway. let’s all cross our fingers that Iran does some posturing attack that saves some face but doesn’t kill too many of any side and we de-escalate from there to sanctions/etc.

Yes, that was kind of my point. An invasion just doesn't make sense economically. Things might change when certain military technology evolves but that's sheer speculation and nobody knows how long that would take

[may be rude]

world war 1, which started with an assassination, simply ballooned out of hand. france and germany almost ran out of people. they didn't want that war.

 

 a serbian group associated with the serbian government assassinated the austro-hungarian arch duke. austria-hungary gave serbia an extreme list of demands that serbia considered absurd, but serbia was small and austria-hungary was pissed and they knew they could wipe serbia out, particularly because austria-hungary was allied with germany, who had a powerful military. but serbia was allied russia. and russia was aligned with france. so germany knew they would have to fight, and russia knew they would have to fight, so the russians started marching. because the russians started marching, germany decided to take france out before the russians arrived. so they went through belgium, bringing in britain on france's side. they thought they could put down france and britain in a few weeks, but the front didn't move for years, because they didn't know how the new warfare systems would play out. hundreds of thousands at a clip were ground up in poison artillery rushes. after millions had died on the hellscapes, france and germany began to design traps to simply lure the enemy into a meat grinder, because they knew the other side was probably running out of military-aged males. no side, if they knew what the war would have been like, would have allowed it to begin, in retrospect. germany had a war appetite, going in, but they suffered worst of all, with their entire population starving, and the survivors having endured an unimaginable, prolonged, hellish nightmare. 

 

what happens is people cross lines and then they can't go back, and there are steps of  escalation, and there are surprising developments, and there are miscalculations and miscommunications. at the end of the day, a gun is a poor problem-solving tool. it is possible to hash things out. people need to use their words.

 

this was a major escalation by trump. soleimani was the number 2 guy in iran. a major general who was an iconic figure. maybe he had it coming, based on a history of contributing to attacks on the US in iraq. i'm sure trump went to his DOD people and they pulled this option from their list. i'm also sure that this was an extreme option and a provocative option. far from seeking to avoid escalation, this is what you would do if you were trying to escalate. with this action, trump is stating that he does not care if war begins with iran. he's good either way. we all have to hope that iran absorbs this and accepts that soleimani was a dick who had it coming.

Edited January 3, 2020 by very honest

[goDel]

1 hour ago, auxien said:

but as of now we’re not at war anyway.

Well, no! This open and admitted assassination by the US can function as a declaration of war. Or rather, it does.

How can it not be a declaration of war? Reverse the countries and you can be sure the US would consider it a declaration of war. The only difference is that Iran is less powerful than the US and wouldn't retaliate the way the US would. But the fact that Iran wouldn't bomb US target on American soil, doesn't make it any less than a declaration of war. The only difference is the option Iran has in response.

In short: as of this assassination, the US is at war with Iran.

[ignatius]

Congress has to declare war. It’s their job.

 

Right? I think that’s how it’s set up. That power belongs to congress.

[goDel]

Ah, right. You think in terms of formal procedures. Read Very Honests post and discover the formal procedures and when they took place. Before or after the assassination.

The Trump administration doesn't "color between the lines". They obvsly don't give a f*ck about procedures, or the congress. So why bother arguing that there's no declaration of war because congress is out of the loop? The president of the US ordered this assassination. Point.

 

edit: also, would Iran care wether or not that power belongs to US congress? I think not!

Edited January 3, 2020 by goDel

[beerwolf]

Live by the sword, die by the sword. 

But yeah a risky move. 

[caze]

21 minutes ago, goDel said:

In short: as of this assassination, the US is at war with Iran.

It's not. The US doesn't consider itself to be at war with Iran, from their POV they took out the leader of a terrorist organisation. Iran can turn it into a war if they want, by directly attacking US assets (rather than by using proxies), which would lead to the US taking out Iranian military assets probably, but this is pretty unlikely. Iran isn't stupid, it knows it couldn't win in such a direct conflict (and the US isn't going to send troops into Iran, it'd just be airstrikes). They've been swinging their dick around for a while now and got too cocky, they did not expect this level of retaliation and they won't make the same mistake again.

[dingformung]

The Iranian regime is disgusting and deserves to be eradicated and I would prefer US/Israeli hegemony in that region over the Iranian one. But as of yet the victim of the aggressive politics towards Iran is the Iranian population most of which hate their government. And the Trump administration has no interest to protect the Iranian population from their government or consider them at all because they are a bunch of irresponsible racists.

[caze]

Iran is also directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. The Iranian people are not the main victims, though they certainly are victims and they are primarily victims of the regime, not of US interference.

[goDel]

2 minutes ago, caze said:

It's not. The US doesn't consider itself to be at war with Iran, from their POV they took out the leader of a terrorist organisation. Iran can turn it into a war if they want, by directly attacking US assets (rather than by using proxies), which would lead to the US taking out Iranian military assets probably, but this is pretty unlikely. Iran isn't stupid, it knows it couldn't win in such a direct conflict (and the US isn't going to send troops into Iran, it'd just be airstrikes). They've been swinging their dick around for a while now and got too cocky, they did not expect this level of retaliation and they won't make the same mistake again.

From Iran's POV they are.

The only crucial factor you seem to leave out, imo, is that because Iran is less powerful and has different "retaliation"  options that the so-called Disney version of what it means to be at war (read: direct conflict), than it can *still* be at war (again, from Iran's perspective). Even if nothing happens in terms of direct conflict. There's a distinction to make here between acting upon "being at war" and "being at war" without any direct act. 

I mean, yeah it's rather obvious Iran avoids direct conflict. But indirect conflict is arguably still part of "being at war". As far as I'm concerned, that's a yes btw.

I think it's rather naive to think that as long as there's no direct conflict, there's no war. We have different ideas of war, I guess. Whatever though, you can bet your ass that diplomacy, or rather, a diplomatic relationship between US and Iran is off the table. Good luck with that.

[caze]

The Iranians have been attacking US assets via proxies for decades now, if that's your definition then they've been at war all along, and this assassination changes nothing.

[dingformung]

2 minutes ago, caze said:

Iran is also directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. The Iranian people are not the main victims, though they certainly are victims and they are primarily victims of the regime, not of US interference.

Well, their income loses value every month and they become poorer and poorer because of the sanctions. And airstrikes and destruction of infrastructure in the country wouldn't help them or only damage the government but not the people. The idea is to starve the population to destabilise the country which is a very brutal approach. But I admittedly have no idea how this problem could be solved.

[goDel]

4 minutes ago, caze said:

The Iranians have been attacking US assets via proxies for decades now, if that's your definition then they've been at war all along, and this assassination changes nothing.

We're going to find out, isn't it? We don't know. The only thing we do know is that the US openly and admittedly assassinated Iran's #2. And now the ball is in Iran's lap to act. 

Point is though, whether or not Congress declared war, or whether or not the US considers itself to be at war is completely irrelevant. The US made their move. It's Irans move now.

 

edit: and note that the US acted - as far as i can tell - without congress' approval, or international allies' support!

thank that brilliant orange fruitcake behind the wheel

Edited January 3, 2020 by goDel

[goDel]

16 minutes ago, caze said:

Iran is also directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. The Iranian people are not the main victims, though they certainly are victims and they are primarily victims of the regime, not of US interference.

Same holds for the US, btw. 

[caze]

No, it doesn't. The US hasn't been directly targeting civilians. It has been indirectly involved in lots of deaths perpetrated by others, which is not the same thing at all.

Edited January 3, 2020 by caze