War with Iran is it imminent

[Guest Pistonbroke]

42 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

That basshunter bird is Iranian, some quality porn online with her in it. 

 

I'm just putting it on the table, not urging anyone to a particular course of action.

 

Her IMDb page is not that flattering. 

 

[Jairzinho]

 

[TheHowieLama]

Dont see a specific thread for it but - as there is a pretty universal feeling about non interventionism among our brethren how do we feel about how Sudan is playing out?

[Bigfoot]

Didnt anyone ever tell Iran never to return to a firework once lit?

[Pureblood]

16 hours ago, Babb'sBurstNad said:

The worst part about WWIII will be hearing Americans constantly mispronouncing "Iran", like it's a Flock of Seagulls song.

Tehran so far away.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

On 16/06/2019 at 09:41, Rico1304 said:

Ha ha, they fucking ‘parade’ them every year.  So the US either nicked one or made one...or the more simple explanation is that it’s iranian. 

Just about every nation parades its military hardware; that proves nothing.

 

Do you have an independent source for your claim that the boat is unique to Iran? (Because, frankly, I don't take your claims at face value. ) 

 

Also, do you have independent evidence that the video shows the boat removing limpet mines?

[AngryOfTuebrook]

22 hours ago, Section_31 said:

I don't think America has ever been so thoroughly unprepared for a war as it is now. 

 

Even in Iraq it could still beat the 9/11 narrative and Bin Laden bogeyman drum, plus its economy was reasonably stable and its domestic politics nowhere near as toxic.

 

Imagine what will happen when the yanks discover once again the hard way that they're not very good at wars and two thirds of Idaho come back in bodybags, while bone spurrs Donny tweets how if he'd been fighting there he would never have been killed because his IQ was too high, unlike leafy-eyed Joe Biden.

 

If the yanks don't riot at some point they've lost my respect.

Also, they'd spent a decade tenderising Iraq and making sure it had no serious weapons before they attacked. It didn't exactly go swimmingly then; this would be a million times worse.

[Anubis]

According to the Guardian, Iran is now threatening uranium enrichment and stockpiling beyond the limits of the agreement that was in place before Trump tore it up.

 

Kind of in line with what Peter Beaumont speculated might happen in his piece for The Guardian on Friday.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/14/trump-iran-oil-tanker-attacks

 

May juts be a ploy to warn against any sort of ground game by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Then again, with so many antagonistic fuckwitts in play, it might have the capacity to escalate.

[Anubis]

A bit of a downbeat ending to Julian Borger's analysis.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/14/shinzo-abe-iran-ayatollah-talks-analysis-trump

 

Quote

 

Shinzo Abe’s trip to Tehran this week turned out to be one of the more ill-fated mediation efforts of recent times.

 

What was billed as a grand gesture – the first Japanese leader to visit Iran in four decades – ended in humiliation, with split-screen television pictures showing Abe being told off by a stern supreme leader, while a thick plume of smoke rose from a burning Japanese tanker in the Gulf of Oman.

 

The US has blamed Iran for Thursday’s attack on two petrochemical tankers and has distributed grainy black and white images purporting to show Iranian sailors removing a limpet mine from the side of the Japanese tanker.

 

The footage has produced more questions than answers. Is the removal of the unexploded mine supposed to show an effort to hide evidence? The Pentagon is not saying.

 

f this was an effort by Iranian hardliners to torpedo peace talks, why was it not timed to disrupt Abe’s meeting the day before with the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani (the hardliners’ principal target), rather than their patron, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

 

Even without the visible symbolism of burning oil, Khamenei’s response to Abe’s mission could hardly have been more dismissive. He tossed aside the polite pretense that the Japanese prime minister had come on his own initiative, inviting the television cameras into his office to explain, in the bluntest of terms while Abe looked on helplessly, that the Japanese visitor had come bearing a message from Donald Trump, and was wasting his time.

 

To add inevitable insult to injury, the US president then swiftly disowned Abe and his mission, portraying him in a tweet as well-meaning but naive, and declaring the time was not right for negotiations.

 

Abe is certainly not the first nor will he be the last foreign leader to regret trying to do Trump a favour. But he must have known he was taking a substantial risk by inserting himself in the chaos of US foreign policymaking.

 

By all accounts, Abe was carrying a message with Trump’s approval, conveying the US president’s seriousness about talks. But the offer contained no sweeteners, no pause in the campaign of “maximum pressure”. In fact, less than a week before Abe’s peace errand, the US piled on a new level of sanctions, aimed at the petrochemical industry. The Japanese mission was doomed before it started.

 

It is evident Trump got onboard the maximum pressure train because he thought it would take him to the same destination as its North Korean equivalent – a glamorous summit and another “deal of the century”, the details of which would be of secondary importance to the statesmanlike atmospheric.

 

This has always been the Trump’s template for doing business: squeeze the other side by every means available until he or she comes begging to the table. The first summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore seems to have only deepened Trump’s conviction that this method worked.

 

His self-belief as the master of the deal has made him oblivious to all the signs that it had been Kim’s intention all along to pivot to diplomacy once a basic nuclear arsenal had been completed. It also made Trump blind to the fact that Kim gave nothing away in Singapore. Trump is now hostage to his relationship with Kim, pointing to the “beautiful” letters he still receives from the 35-year-old North Korean leader as a distraction from the complete absence of disarmament.

 

Beautiful letters were never going to cut it with Khamenei. While a summit with a US president represented a historic victory for Kim, it would be unthinkable for the supreme leader, and politically impossible under current circumstances for Rouhani.

 

The Iranians, too, have miscalculated. In the wake of US abrogation of the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, and its attempt to pressure the rest of the world to follow suit, Iran expected China and at least a few of their other oil customers to defy the US oil embargo. That has not happened so far. Rouhani met Xi Jinping in Kyrgyzstan on Friday to get a clear idea of Chinese intentions, but Xi seems to have remained non-committal.

 

Meanwhile, the European mechanism that was supposed to insulate the trade in basic humanitarian supplies from US sanctions has yet to get off the ground – and may never fly.

 

Faced with economic strangulation, Tehran has less and less to lose. Whether it was behind the tanker attacks or not, it had signalled its intention to make the rest of the world pay some of the price for US brinksmanship. The message from Iranian officials over the past two months has been that, if Iran could not export its oil through the Gulf, nor should other nations.

 

Tehran has also slapped down a nuclear ultimatum. If sanctions pressures are not significantly eased by 8 July, it will throw off some of the shackles of the 2015 nuclear deal, most importantly by raising the level at which it enriches uranium. That will ring alarm bells around the world, by cutting the time Iran would need to make a bomb.

 

Trump now appears to realise that the train he boarded is not heading to a glorious summit, but a potentially devastating conflict in the Gulf, and that some of his own officials, notably the national security adviser, John Bolton, are quite content – enthusiastic, even – to keep driving in that direction. Trump wants to get off and make a deal, but the Abe mission suggests he has no idea how to.

 

Iran, meanwhile, has found its strongest point of leverage – Trump’s fears about his chances of re-election against the backdrop of a new war in the Middle East. To play on those fears is a gamble with very high risks. Every cycle of escalation brings the region closer to a point where the slide towards war goes beyond anyone’s control.

 

 

[SasaS]

3 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Also, they'd spent a decade tenderising Iraq and making sure it had no serious weapons before they attacked. It didn't exactly go swimmingly then; this would be a million times worse.

It actually did go pretty well, they defeated the Iraqi army in what, less than a month, losing fewer than 150 people? The problems came later. Iran is, surprisingly, ethnically relatively diverse, so if you want to facilitate an aggressive regime change, it would make sense to use its internal weaknesses, rather than try a ground offensive. If they are indeed behind the attacks on tankers (and they may well be) it means the sanctions are hurting them pretty badly so it would be more likely the US would keep tightening that screw and work with malcontents.

[Strontium]

The fact that people are posting in an 11 year old thread which argued that war with Iran is imminent says it all, really.

[Pureblood]

2 minutes ago, Sixtimes Dog said:

The fact that people are posting in an 11 year old thread which argued that war with Iran is imminent says it all, really.

Not really.  The OP was just asking a question, that's all.  Quite a pertinent question, given where we are now.  Questions are good.  

[Bjornebye]

14 minutes ago, Sixtimes Dog said:

The fact that people are posting in an 11 year old thread which argued that war with Iran is imminent says it all, really.

What does it say? 

[Strontium]

19 minutes ago, TK421 said:

Not really.  The OP was just asking a question, that's all.  Quite a pertinent question, given where we are now.  Questions are good.  

 

I'd bet my house that there'll be no war with Iran in the next 11 years either.

[moof]

Yeah, went brilliantly, the iraq war, didn’t it? Oh, the discourse 

[Duff Man]

While people like this, are guiding a moron like Trump, I'd say there's a decent chance.

 

Quote

To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran

By John R. Bolton

• March 26, 2015

FOR years, experts worried that the Middle East would face an uncontrollable nuclear-arms race if Iran ever acquired weapons capability. Given the region’s political, religious and ethnic conflicts, the logic is straightforward.

 

As in other nuclear proliferation cases like India, Pakistan and North Korea, America and the West were guilty of inattention when they should have been vigilant. But failing to act in the past is no excuse for making the same mistakes now. All presidents enter office facing the cumulative effects of their predecessors’ decisions. But each is responsible for what happens on his watch. President Obama’s approach on Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe.

 

In theory, comprehensive international sanctions, rigorously enforced and universally adhered to, might have broken the back of Iran’s nuclear program. But the sanctions imposed have not met those criteria. Naturally, Tehran wants to be free of them, but the president’s own director of National Intelligence testified in 2014 that they had not stopped Iran’s progressing its nuclear program. There is now widespread acknowledgment that the rosy 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which judged that Iran’s weapons program was halted in 2003, was an embarrassment, little more than wishful thinking.

 

Even absent palpable proof, like a nuclear test, Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear weapons has long been evident. Now the arms race has begun: Neighboring countries are moving forward, driven by fears that Mr. Obama’s diplomacy is fostering a nuclear Iran. Saudi Arabia, keystone of the oil-producing monarchies, has long been expected to move first. No way would the Sunni Saudis allow the Shiite Persians to outpace them in the quest for dominance within Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitical hegemony. Because of reports of early Saudi funding, analysts have long believed that Saudi Arabia has an option to obtain nuclear weapons from Pakistan, allowing it to become a nuclear-weapons state overnight. Egypt and Turkey, both with imperial legacies and modern aspirations, and similarly distrustful of Tehran, would be right behind.

 

Ironically perhaps, Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.

 

Iran is a different story. Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions. Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish interests are complex and conflicting, but faced with Iran’s threat, all have concluded that nuclear weapons are essential.

 

The former Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said recently, “whatever comes out of these talks, we will want the same.” He added, “if Iran has the ability to enrich uranium to whatever level, it’s not just Saudi Arabia that’s going to ask for that.” Obviously, the Saudis, Turkey and Egypt will not be issuing news releases trumpeting their intentions. But the evidence is accumulating that they have quickened their pace toward developing weapons.

 

Saudi Arabia has signed nuclear cooperation agreements with South Korea, China, France and Argentina, aiming to build a total of 16 reactors by 2030. The Saudis also just hosted meetings with the leaders of Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey; nuclear matters were almost certainly on the agenda. Pakistan could quickly supply nuclear weapons or technology to Egypt, Turkey and others. Or, for the right price, North Korea might sell behind the backs of its Iranian friends.

 

The Obama administration’s increasingly frantic efforts to reach agreement with Iran have spurred demands for ever-greater concessions from Washington. Successive administrations, Democratic and Republican, worked hard, with varying success, to forestall or terminate efforts to acquire nuclear weapons by states as diverse as South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa. Even where civilian nuclear reactors were tolerated, access to the rest of the nuclear fuel cycle was typically avoided. Everyone involved understood why.

 

This gold standard is now everywhere in jeopardy because the president’s policy is empowering Iran. Whether diplomacy and sanctions would ever have worked against the hard-liners running Iran is unlikely. But abandoning the red line on weapons-grade fuel drawn originally by the Europeans in 2003, and by the United Nations Security Council in several resolutions, has alarmed the Middle East and effectively handed a permit to Iran’s nuclear weapons establishment.

 

The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.

 

Rendering inoperable the Natanz and Fordow uranium-enrichment installations and the Arak heavy-water production facility and reactor would be priorities. So, too, would be the little-noticed but critical uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan. An attack need not destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.

 

Mr. Obama’s fascination with an Iranian nuclear deal always had an air of unreality. But by ignoring the strategic implications of such diplomacy, these talks have triggered a potential wave of nuclear programs. The president’s biggest legacy could be a thoroughly nuclear-weaponized Middle East.

 

[Duff Man]

These people are psychopaths. Always worth bearing that in mind.

[No2]

America have a whiff of Man Utd about them. They used to be able to go around doing what they want and their little stooges would come rowing in behind them. Well now the bully has been shown to be just that, all right minded countries are keeping their instance bar the usual suspects, Israel and the UK. 

 

20 years ago Iran would be up in lights already, so would Venezuela. 

[TheHowieLama]

Germany says there is 'strong evidence' Iran behind tanker attacks

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said there is "strong evidence" Iran carried out attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. She also warned Iran of consequences if it violated the 2015 international nuclear deal.

 

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-says-there-is-strong-evidence-iran-behind-tanker-attacks/a-49248524

[Rico1304]

2 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

Germany says there is 'strong evidence' Iran behind tanker attacks

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said there is "strong evidence" Iran carried out attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. She also warned Iran of consequences if it violated the 2015 international nuclear deal.

 

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-says-there-is-strong-evidence-iran-behind-tanker-attacks/a-49248524

What a load of bollocks.  Until I have the minutes of the meeting authorising the attack I’m still going American false flag. Gulf of Tommy Robinson 

[polymerpunkah]

On 16/06/2019 at 12:47, TheHowieLama said:

Dont see a specific thread for it but - as there is a pretty universal feeling about non interventionism among our brethren how do we feel about how Sudan is playing out?

I was going to respond to this, as I'd read a couple of articles indicating that the reason the US wasn't taking any sort of action re Sudan was due to the Saudi interest in maintaining the undemocratic status quo.

 

But the articles didn't really go into why.

 

Just saw this tonight:

 

Quote

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-childsoldiers-exclusive/exclusive-overruling-his-experts-pompeo-keeps-saudis-off-u-s-child-soldiers-list-idUSKCN1TJ25H

Apparently Pompeo has decided to leave Saudi Arabia off a list of countries using child soldiers despite his experts' recommendations.

 

The child soldiers, allegedly, come from Sudan, included in the forces sent by that country as part of the coalition fighting against the Houthis in Yemen.

 

So that might explain the US taking a "hands-off" approach to Sudan (that Saudi Arabia had asked them to do so, as they were depending on the soldiers Sudan was sending to fight for them in Yemen).

 

But then this from the Guardian, indicating that a US official has just recently contacted Saudi Arabia and asked them to ask the Sudanese government to stop killing protesters:

 

Quote

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/05/washington-urges-riyadh-to-end-military-crackdown-in-sudan

Hopefully this might stop the worst of the excesses, and get them back on the process toward some sort of democracy. But I doubt it.

 

Quite a few articles out there discussing the negative influence SA/UAE are having across northern Africa, actually.

 

 

 

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

On 17/06/2019 at 16:55, Sixtimes Dog said:

 

I'd bet my house that there'll be no war with Iran in the next 11 years either.

I fucking hope you're right but "war was averted once before, therefore war will always be averted" is a dangerously stupid take.

 

War was averted 11 years ago because the Republicans lost control of Congress and because the USA was still heavily mired in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those conditions don't apply today. What are you relying on to avert the current rush to war; closing your eyes and wishing?

[Jose Jones]

16 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

I fucking hope you're right but "war was averted once before, therefore war will always be averted" is a dangerously stupid take.

 

War was averted 11 years ago because the Republicans lost control of Congress and because the USA was still heavily mired in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those conditions don't apply today. What are you relying on to avert the current rush to war; closing your eyes and wishing?

I reckon Stronts is right on this one.

I also reckon it is the US applying pressure on behalf of Saudi Arabia to weaken their regional rival.  Probably will be a lot of hollering about war and that, then sanctions on Iran will be increased as the more palatable option.

[Numero Veinticinco]

On 17/06/2019 at 16:55, Sixtimes Dog said:

 

I'd bet my house that there'll be no war with Iran in the next 11 years either.

Agreed, I just can't see it either. It would take some serious mentalism to go to war with them.

[Mudface]

7 minutes ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

Agreed, I just can't see it either. It would take some serious mentalism to go to war with them.

 

Wut?