Saudi Arabia: Drone attack against world's largest crude oil refinery

[Cookiegod]

Iran can fight conventionally. Its army outclasses most of its neighbors. Conducting asymmetrical warfare is not an excuse for your proxies to target civilians like Hezbollah did in 1994 in Argentina.

lol. Yeah. Because if they'd been Wahhabi terrorists, like the drug dealers, robbers, headchoppers & slave traders the US creates, arms and sustains, that'd be totally ok.

[Vanoi]

lol. Yeah. Because if they'd been Wahhabi terrorists, like the drug dealers, robbers, headchoppers & slave traders the US creates, arms and sustains, that'd be totally ok.

Take your whataboutism somewhere else. The actions of the US don't in anyway justify Iran's actions or excuse them.

[Cookiegod]

Take your whataboutism somewhere else. The actions of the US don't in anyway justify Iran's actions or excuse them.

That's not whataboutism in the slightest. US is the hyperactive elefant in the porcelain store here. Iran is REacting with what limited means it has.

No one forces the US to do what it does. NOTHING justifies it. NO ONE threatens it the way it threatens Iran.

So take your "Iran has no right to do so" shtick somewhere else.

[Vanoi]

That's not whataboutism in the slightest. US is the hyperactive elefant in the porcelain store here. Iran is REacting with what limited means it has.

Thats and you know it. What US action is forcing Iran to send hundreds of missiles to its proxy in Lebanon?

Better yet what US action prompted Iran to order its proxy to bomb a Jewish temple in Argentina?

No one forces the US to do what it does. NOTHING justifies it. NO ONE threatens it the way it threatens Iran

Nothing justifies it? They openly threaten a US ally. Thats plenty of justification.

So take your "Iran has no right to do so" shtick somewhere else.

What right again does Iran have to bomb neutral countries?

[Lord Thesaurian]

No, it's not illogical for an oil rich country to pursue nuclear power. It does make sense, including for Iran.

Ok

You draw false conclusions from indications that have little to do with that. The most powerful countries did not agree that the Iranians pursue nuclear power.

Right. They only constructed an international framework to monitor and explicitly limit Iran’s nuclear program and uranium enrichment because they wanted to deter Iran from generating electricity.

Iran pursuing ballistic missiles has very sound reasons: 1) It has no air power except for what the Shah left them with. 2) It's only part of their missile programs and has very sound reasons.

I never claimed anything Iran’s government does to be inherently illogical. I spent quite a bit of time explaining the opposite, in fact. China can buy oil from a lot of places. They buy from Iran as part of strategic coordination against the US, not because Iran is some kind of golden goose that can’t be killed. Iran choking off the Gulf would cause headaches for everyone that would obviously, as I said, impact the US in secondary and tertiary ways. It would also be a death sentence for the Ayatollah’s regime.

Your assertions are a bizarre mix of tankie revisionism and whataboutist apologism with no points of fact that aren’t entirely predicated on your apparent contempt for the US. Operation Ajax is the go-to talking point for Iran apologists. The US agreed to have the CIA help the British solve their oil problem in Iran by organizing and assisting pro-Shah forces in exchange for letting US commercial interests into the market when the dust settled. Attempting to establish causation between this event and the Islamist coup decades later is predictably hilarious. You might as well blame the Soviets and Brits too while at it for Iraq’ing the place in 1941, occupying the country, deliberately fueling sectarian violence thereafter, and harnessing Iranian economic development to the wagon of oil exports to the West. The US didn’t take an overtly hostile posture toward Iran until the Revolution.

The Islamist Revolution in 1979 had everything to do with economic unrest caused by specific events immediately precluding the coup, coupled with popular backlash against perceived secularization of Iran under the Shah. The objective facts and results of the course of events which culminated in the Revolution completely debunk your narrative that the US somehow Lex Luthor’d theocracy onto Iran, regardless of which way you want to point fingers in the present day. At this point, the most deferential treatment I can give your anti-US rants is that we’re the only evil western boogyman you have left since the British Empire isn’t around for you to whine about.

As Cookiegod explained, missiles are pretty much the only alternative to a state deprived of the ability to modernise and equip its air-force. The propagation of the Islamic Revolution has stopped being the goal of Iranian foreign policy at least since the early stages of the war with Iraq. The Iranian Republic is a pragmatic actor, who successfully cooperates with several sovereign entities that do not endorse her ideology, like the coalition, democratically elected and authoritarian governments of Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, not to mention the cordial relationship with the Russian Federation, the Republic of Pakistan or the Omani monarchy. Investment on nuclear energy is a necessary measure for every administration with coherent, long-term plans and, in any case, the contradiction between Iranian nuclear facilities and ample oil resources does not really negate the counter-arguments I mentioned above, including IAEA's report. In my opinion, it's unreasonable to claim that the Iranian government is genuinely inspired from jihadist and fundamentalist policies and then reject the leadership's edict against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as insincere.

I don’t believe I ever suggested the current Iranian regime is inherently irrational or not pragmatic. Russia cooperates with Iran as part of a coordinated strategy against the US. As I said, Iran has used terrorism against targets all over the world irrespective of the type of government in any given place, so I’m not sure what relevance the same metric would have to the countries with whom Iran decides to cooperate. Whether or not the Iranian regime are genuine religious fanatics, or merely use it as a tool, is anyone’s guess. It’s surely of little consequence to the results of Iranian shadow wars.

To what terrorist tactics on behalf of Iran are you referring?

I believe the article I provided previously is a decent primer on more recent events, though I’m sure we could spend all day going over individual events during 40 years of terrorism and whether this or that counts according to which proxy group or by whose definition.

https://ctc.usma.edu/irans-deadly-diplomats/

From all the above, I cannot personally conclude that Iran is an exceptionally aggressive player, whose strategy and methods are especially egregious, from a moralist perspective. It looks like a typical case of an average power that tries to safeguard its sphere of influence and financial interests in the area surrounding its borders, in spite of the opposition of several other countries, whose hostility stems from economic clashes, diplomatic antagonism, lobbying and the sour feelings caused caused by the rupture and large-scale nationalisations of the great 1979 Revolution.

Iran is at least as aggressive as Saudi Arabia overall, and their external aggression is at least as proactive as it is reactive. Given that Iran has rejected efforts to help evade US sanctions that aren’t specifically oriented around the finance and purchase of Iranian oil exports, it’s clear reactionary desperation is not the key factor here, to say the least. Iran is a woman scorned. They want to continue launching attacks against dissidents like the Saudis, and against any entity or group considered friendly to Israel, while remaining free to sell oil and use it as leverage like the Saudis. Until Iran gets what it wants, it will continue its shadow wars and nuclear extortion.

The difference is, the Saudis decided to be team players to enough of an extent to keep the cost/benefit threshold at a level where most of the world is content to be a customer rather than an adversary. In short, Iran is the cause of its own problems, and any harm suffered as a result. Everyone can understand that when it comes to the Saudis, but Iran seems to have the good fortune of benefiting from a frankly stunning degree apologism espoused by people predisposed to oppose the US. I’ve no doubt the same narrative would be flipped in favor of Iran’s rivals if the pro-US Shah were still around.

[B. W.]

Of course Iran does not want to provoke a war, since the outcome would be obvious. If Tehran indeed played a role in the affair, her intention is pretty clear: To warn its enemies of its capabilities and to therefore discourage them from becoming too aggressive. The article's assumption that Iranian foreign policy is determined by Messianic expectations about the arrival of the Mahdi is pretty awkward and probably influenced by a conflation on part of the author of the Iranian clergy with Evangelical extremists. By the way, Heinsohn is not a NATO strategy, but just a preacher of the power of demographics with a brief presence in the NATO college of Rome, who bizarrely believes that Middle Eastern and Egyptian history began in 1.200 B.C..

Even before the agreement, there had been no credible claim that Iran aimed to produce nuclear weapons. After all, Ayatollah Khamenei has published a fatwa forbidding the acquisition or manufacture of nuclear weapons, which is not surprising, considering that means of mass destruction are ideologically opposed by the revolutionary regime, as it can be noticed by Iran's refusal to retaliate in kind to Saddam's use of chemical warfare, with the implicit approval, of course, of the United States. Now, even if all this is wrong, there's still no indication that Iran would use nuclear weapons in a blackmailing manner, and not simply keep them as a desperate deterrent, including the Saudi Kingdom. To be sincere, your description gives me the impression of a caricature evil adversary of the "free world".

The problem of Iranian opposition to American geopolitical interests can be easily solved with war, but what prevents it from occurring are the inevitable financial sacrifices and the political repercussions in the domestic front. The disintegration of Iran will not necessarily lead to the rise of Islamism and, in any case, Islamism should not be automatically viewed as hostile to American interests in the region. Washington has a history of a very fruitful cooperation with religious extremists dating from the Cold War and Afghanistan. Islamists were largely successful at withholding the rise of socialist and progressive movements in the Arab societies, while even recently, Sunni sectarianism has proven to be an invaluable and reliable ally of the West in the Syrian Civil War. Not to mention the religiously intolerant and extremely authoritarian monarchies of Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which have contributed crucially to the containment of Iran. Therefore, it's safe to suppose that a sufficiently flexible American administration could productively collaborate with Islamists in, for instance, Iranian Kurdistan or Baluchistan, to prevent an obviously hostile democratically elected government in Iran from emerging from her ashes.

Finally, in what concerns the moral judgements and the labeling of the Iranian government as a terrorist regime, I personally strongly disagree and consider Iran's sphere of influence significantly more benign than, let's say, the economic strangulation of Syria or the support of Jundallah and Al-Qaeda, but I understand that it essentially depends on our subjective perspectives, so there's probably little point in debating this aspect.

Hmmm, the third section of your post seems to imply that much of the current situation is an aftereffect of cold war policies and I would agree that the world, in general, is still suffering a hangover from all the proxie wars that took place as the superpowers were waging a battle over supremacy while avoiding a nuclear exchange.

There are a mountain of bad feelings about the choices that were made in that struggle and yes, the west did get in bed with some pretty unsavory characters, but the alternative was all out nuclear war.

As far as your criticism of the author he did teach at Rome, but 8 years is hardly what I would call a brief period. Additionally, being the keynote speaker at an international event such as the NATO warfare center's birthday event suggests that there were a lot of highly influential people that considered him to be credible.

As far as the Wikipedia reference, I would put a little salt on it. That platform has shown itself to be highly biased when it comes to anything that is remotely geopolitical. The Egypt reference could, in fact, be a complete distortion of what he has written. The man has written extensively on a lot of subjects that aren't necessarily within his field of expertise and I certainly wouldn't rely on any of that, nor would I consider that evidence of his lack of credibility in his filed of expertise.

You asserted that Iran has not shown any inclination of weapons research and I have to wonder what bubble you've been living in. What do you think all those centrifuges producing weapon's grade material are doing?

[Abdülmecid I]

I don’t believe I ever suggested the current Iranian regime is inherently irrational or not pragmatic. Russia cooperates with Iran as part of a coordinated strategy against the US. As I said, Iran has used terrorism against targets all over the world irrespective of the type of government in any given place, so I’m not sure what relevance the same metric would have to the countries with whom Iran decides to cooperate. Whether or not the Iranian regime are genuine religious fanatics, or merely use it as a tool, is anyone’s guess. It’s surely of little consequence to the results of Iranian shadow wars.

As we speak, Russia closely cooperates with the governments of Syria and Iran in the fight against sectarian rebels in Idlib, which includes a variety of groups, from al-Qaeda affiliates to Central Asian jihadists. Therefore, their alliance is not limited to the opposition towards the United States, but concerns also a variety of geopolitical issues, such as the containment of rogue or Turkish-backed Salafist groups. I addressed the content of the Deadly Diplomats article in my previous comment. From the recent, post-1994 attacks, nothing could be considered as terrorist, with the exception of the alleged failed attacks against Jewish synagogues.

On the contrary, the victims the author misleadingly describes as dissidents* are members or supporters of organisations universally recognized as terrorist, like ASMLA, MEK and PJAK. You can argue that these operations are illegal and violate international law, which can generate an interesting debate similar to that following the assassination of Imam al-Awlaki in Yemen by an American drone. However, considering that the victims of the attack were not civilians, but instead had joined organisations with an active agenda of attacking the Iranian authorities and murdering everyone on their path, these policies of Tehran cannot possibly be defined as being of terrorist nature. In a general note, I wouldn't be surprised if Matthew Levitt intentionally attempts to manipulate his readership, due to his role in the Washington Institute for Near East, which is closely linked with the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. It's a think tank solely dedicated to improve and undermine the image of Israel and its diplomatic adversaries respectively to the English-speaking audience.

*The only exception being general Oveissi, whose controversial nickname is unexpectedly revealed by Levitt.

[conon394]

Iran can fight conventionally. Its army outclasses most of its neighbors

Really Russia provides and equivalent level of top tier unquestioned military backing to Iran as the US does to Israel in dollars and interdicts? Of course Russia as also nod nod wink winked Iran into a nuclear power as well...

Conducting asymmetrical warfare is not an excuse for your proxies to target civilians like Hezbollah did in 1994 in Argentina.

Umm an attack from 30 years ago that was not directed at the US by a regime that was perfectly OK to deal with to support our own warm and fuzzy narco terrorists in Central America on the sly... err right Iran has got to go and any cost to make our 'friendly' terrorist theocratic Arabs happy.

Better yet what US action prompted Iran to order its proxy to bomb a Jewish temple in Argentina?

Who cares? I worry more about right wing white nationalist anti gov gun nuts blowing up or shooting feds at home. To be blunt what exactly does the US alliance with Israel and treating their every issue as if it were the utmost importance to the US gain the US? All those troops in Vietnam or the Fuda gap back in the day? nope. A nice oil embargo or two - yep. Not spying on the us - nope, not passing US military equipment to China - nope, troops in A-stan or Iraq, or fighting ISIS - nope, I know ships patrolling the South China sea defying China's extravagant claims - nope, I know a division on the DMZ - nope. Not shooting up the USS Liberty - nope tough love guys Israel needed a secret attack... So really Vanoi show me another great power that put up with so much crap for so little from an otherwise third rate client state.

Yep blowing up a Jewish temple is bad, fine, but so is wiping out the Rohingya or Tutusis if US policy is driven by bloody hands Iran scores a little low on that account or hey that secret war somebody started that put the Pol Pot in power err OK let's ignore that...

I could do the same for the house of Saud, but its not even close makes Israel look like a great and good ally.

---

Realistically one might ask after the collapse of The USSR why the US did not simply remove the House of Saud from the table of play. Anyone who sat in a gas line back in the 70s might well see payback as fair play. Let the Palestinians run the show for 50% of the oil and no OPEC and the westbank (sans Jerusalem)+ Arabian peninsula. Or in all honestly if we have to carry the fight with Iran to the mat why not just green light Saddam to back in the day and with conditions.

[Love Mountain]

I would say in Irans context ballistic missiles are a substitute for stratetic bombers.

Iran is since Reagan the target of US sanctions, they hadn't the means to build up a modern airforce. They need an instrument for the destruction of distant military facilities as deterrence.

Finally i agree with Cookiegod and Abdülmecid. Iran is a quite moderate islamic regime in comparison to Saudi Arabia or the Isis state in Syria.

Sorry, Legio i don't believe your anti iranian propaganda, reminds me of Greuel propaganda of WW I against German Empire.

Crafty buggers. Iran using unmanned munitions as kamikaze pilots.

ICBMs are a deterrent because they can be armed with WMDs. They are insurance for regime survival. In a conventional or unconventional war where the stakes are not so high, I.e. Yemen, Syria, etc for Iran, Paramilitaries and artillery are a much more accurate and useful tool than ballistic missiles. Especially if the objective is to cause mass damage and terror, a MLRS, which has a similar logistical footprint to a SCUD launcher, will do far more damage.

Also, ballistic missiles are very different from other missiles or rockets used for military applications. I.E. Russian hypersonic Anti-ship missiles, aircraft missiles, and dumb rockets require very different components and expertise than ballistic missiles. The only reason to pursue accurate, long-range, or large payload ballistic missiles is to eventually use them as a strategic deterrent. That's not something an air force does. An air force is almost always a conventional weapon for securing tactical goals. Current strategic bombers are largely obsolete as a strategic deterrent. The real threat of MAD comes from land-based sites or submarines.

I'm not an Iran hawk, but their aspirations for nuclear power seem predicated on acquiring nuclear weapons as deterrent. Whether that's something that should be allowed or not is an interesting point of discussion, but I'm not sure what the conversation about air forces and ballistic missiles have to do with each other.

[Lord Thesaurian]

As we speak, Russia closely cooperates with the governments of Syria and Iran in the fight against sectarian rebels in Idlib, which includes a variety of groups, from al-Qaeda affiliates to Central Asian jihadists. Therefore, their alliance is not limited to the opposition towards the United States, but concerns also a variety of geopolitical issues, such as the containment of rogue or Turkish-backed Salafist groups. I addressed the content of the Deadly Diplomats article in my previous comment. From the recent, post-1994 attacks, nothing could be considered as terrorist, with the exception of the alleged failed attacks against Jewish synagogues.


On the contrary, the victims the author misleadingly describes as dissidents* are members or supporters of organisations universally recognized as terrorist, like ASMLA, MEK and PJAK. You can argue that these operations are illegal and violate international law, which can generate an interesting debate similar to that following the assassination of Imam al-Awlaki in Yemen by an American drone. However, considering that the victims of the attack were not civilians, but instead had joined organisations with an active agenda of attacking the Iranian authorities and murdering everyone on their path, these policies of Tehran cannot possibly be defined as being of terrorist nature. In a general note, I wouldn't be surprised if Matthew Levitt intentionally attempts to manipulate his readership, due to his role in the Washington Institute for Near East, which is closely linked with the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. It's a think tank solely dedicated to improve and undermine the image of Israel and its diplomatic adversaries respectively to the English-speaking audience.


*The only exception being general Oveissi, whose controversial nickname is unexpectedly revealed by Levitt.

Years and years of Iranian government agents plotting bombings of soft targets and assassinations of political dissidents all over the world, training, arming, funding jihadist groups, “doesn’t count” whether successful or not, because the targets were all “terrorists” based on the fact the Iranian regime wanted them gone. Arrests and court cases in numerous countries describing the plots as terrorism and tying them to the Iranian government directly doesn’t count either because somehow the reporting is inevitably from somebody who is part of a vast Israeli conspiracy. What’s amazing to me is how every discussion with Iran apologists ends in exactly the same place. All roads lead to Rome, I guess.

[Abdülmecid I]

He's not part of a conspiracy, but he's indeed paid by a certain think-tank with a well-documented specific agenda. Anyway, I didn't dismiss his accusations, because of his fragile credibility (that would be an ad hominem fallacy), but because of the fact that all the targets were indeed members of terrorist groups. As for the definition of terrorism, I do not base my assessment on the list of the Iranian Republic, which, by the way, there is no reason to assume that it is not legitimate, but on their past actions. PJAK and MEK have been classified as terrorist by the United States themselves, despite sharing a common enemy, while ASMLA has been murdering Iranians since the early 2000s, with the massacre of the Ahvaz parade being their most notorious and recent (2018) accomplishment. I don't have an issue with condemning Iran for violating the laws of foreign countries, even if their targets are hardly praiseworthy individuals, but classifying it as terrorist, as Mr. Levitt tried to claim, is misleading.

[Lord Thesaurian]

He's not part of a conspiracy, but he's indeed paid by a certain think-tank with a well-documented specific agenda. Anyway, I didn't dismiss his accusations, because of his fragile credibility (that would be an ad hominem fallacy), but because of the fact that all the targets were indeed members of terrorist groups. As for the definition of terrorism, I do not base my assessment on the list of the Iranian Republic, which, by the way, there is no reason to assume that it is not legitimate, but on their past actions. PJAK and MEK have been classified as terrorist by the United States themselves, despite sharing a common enemy, while ASMLA has been murdering Iranians since the early 2000s, with the massacre of the Ahvaz parade being their most notorious and recent (2018) accomplishment. I don't have an issue with condemning Iran for violating the laws of foreign countries, even if their targets are hardly praiseworthy individuals, but classifying it as terrorist, as Mr. Levitt tried to claim, is misleading.

I’m not trying to be overly dismissive either, but as I said before, if the history and proven actions of the Iranian regime don’t qualify as terrorism, the term itself has a conveniently selective definition, at best. I doubt we’re ever going to agree about sources or labels at this point, as your view regards the official, decades old position of the US and allied governments on the Ayatollah’s regime to be “misleading,” to say the least.


Your commentary in this thread suggests you also believe Iran to be a victim to at least some degree, and that’s another point we’ll never converge on. I suppose I can agree that conventional war with Iran is a bad idea for all involved. There again, I view Iran as the aggressor and instigator, even if I were to muse that it’s regrettable the Islamist Revolution deprived the US of a valuable ally in the region and left us with a bunch of morally inconvenient frenemies instead. I will also say the US should have drastically scaled down in the Middle East years ago to focus on China. Then again, Iran, ISIL and the Taliban haven’t exactly made it easy for the US to do that, either, despite claiming to want nothing more than an end to US presence in the region. No matter how I slice it, I don’t think I can see from your perspective.

[Swiss Army Cheese]

Years and years of Iranian government agents plotting bombings of soft targets and assassinations of political dissidents all over the world, training, arming, funding jihadist groups, “doesn’t count” whether successful or not, because the targets were all “terrorists” based on the fact the Iranian regime wanted them gone. Arrests and court cases in numerous countries describing the plots as terrorism and tying them to the Iranian government directly doesn’t count either because somehow the reporting is inevitably from somebody who is part of a vast Israeli conspiracy. What’s amazing to me is how every discussion with Iran apologists ends in exactly the same place. All roads lead to Rome, I guess.

"Iran apologist". Back in my day we called 'em "Medists".

[Vanoi]

Really Russia provides and equivalent level of top tier unquestioned military backing to Iran as the US does to Israel in dollars and interdicts? Of course Russia as also nod nod wink winked Iran into a nuclear power as well...

Most of its neighbors. Not all. Do actually read my posts Conan.

Umm an attack from 30 years ago that was not directed at the US by a regime that was perfectly OK to deal with to support our own warm and fuzzy narco terrorists in Central America on the sly... err right Iran has got to go and any cost to make our 'friendly' terrorist theocratic Arabs happy.

More whataboutism? If you want a thread on US actions in central America or America's relationship with Arab nations go start a thread on it. I see you left out Israel. Hard to make the argument the US is taking out Iran to please the Arabs if you mention Israel.

Who cares?

Jews do. And i guess anyone who likes to go worship without being bombed.

I worry more about right wing white nationalist anti gov gun nuts blowing up or shooting feds at home. To be blunt what exactly does the US alliance with Israel and treating their every issue as if it were the utmost importance to the US gain the US? All those troops in Vietnam or the Fuda gap back in the day? nope. A nice oil embargo or two - yep. Not spying on the us - nope, not passing US military equipment to China - nope, troops in A-stan or Iraq, or fighting ISIS - nope, I know ships patrolling the South China sea defying China's extravagant claims - nope, I know a division on the DMZ - nope. Not shooting up the USS Liberty - nope tough love guys Israel needed a secret attack... So really Vanoi show me another great power that put up with so much crap for so little from an otherwise third rate client state.

They are a pretty reliable ally in the Middle East when it comes to US interests, intellgence sharing, and the sheer amount of military cooperation and technology exchange makes them worth having around.

Yep blowing up a Jewish temple is bad, fine, but so is wiping out the Rohingya or Tutusis if US policy is driven by bloody hands Iran scores a little low on that account or hey that secret war somebody started that put the Pol Pot in power err OK let's ignore that...

I could do the same for the house of Saud, but its not even close makes Israel look like a great and good ally.

Using the same old "intervene everywhere or intervene nowhere" argument you used in the Syrian thread long ago.

I've mentioned already Iran is a threat to US allies and interests so even mentioning Tutusis or the Rohingya makes no sense. I'm not advocating intervention to save anyone.

Infact i haven't advocated intervention of any kind. The continued sanctions, almost daily bombing of Iranian militias by Israel, and simply responding to any Iranian attack is more than enough. Oh and maybe placing some land-based cruise missiles in Saudi Arabia.

[conon394]

There again, I view Iran as the aggressor and instigator, even if I were to muse that it’s regrettable the Islamist Revolution deprived the US of a valuable ally in the region and left us with a bunch of morally inconvenient frenemies instead

Well yes however the US could be a tad more upfront about how that valuable ally came to be you know squashing their democratically elected PM who was not really a puppet of USSR. In any case we doubled down on mistakes by either not backing the Shah in hard core repression or backing in repression with enough reform that Iran could have walked into ROK territory.

I will also say the US should have drastically scaled down in the Middle East years ago to focus on China.

Not a bad point but given the frothing at the mouth fantasy about the supposed gold mine of Chinese consumers etc etc I not sure any real focus on China was likely to change the the now.

Then again, Iran, ISIL and the Taliban haven’t exactly made it easy for the US to do that, either, despite claiming to want nothing more than an end to US presence in the region. No matter how I slice it, I don’t think I can see from your perspective.

Well obviously you are right about Iran. given the origins of the IR as a reaction against among other things a US backed and imposed government and their desire to regional power at minimum, always going to be contentious situation with the US. On the other 2 not so much. ISIS first. Would not exist but for a reckless war of choice in Iraq that had no well conceived end game. Simple containment with a lot more nods and winks that the some set generals who delivered up Saddam and his close friends on a platter would end all that,would have worked better. The Taliban were beat and AQ run out of Dodge. Simply declare that's all we needed to do and not nation building and we are done with that 15 years ago.

[Cookiegod]

ICBMs are a deterrent because they can be armed with WMDs. They are insurance for regime survival. In a conventional or unconventional war where the stakes are not so high, I.e. Yemen, Syria, etc for Iran, Paramilitaries and artillery are a much more accurate and useful tool than ballistic missiles. Especially if the objective is to cause mass damage and terror, a MLRS, which has a similar logistical footprint to a SCUD launcher, will do far more damage.

Also, ballistic missiles are very different from other missiles or rockets used for military applications. I.E. Russian hypersonic Anti-ship missiles, aircraft missiles, and dumb rockets require very different components and expertise than ballistic missiles. The only reason to pursue accurate, long-range, or large payload ballistic missiles is to eventually use them as a strategic deterrent. That's not something an air force does. An air force is almost always a conventional weapon for securing tactical goals. Current strategic bombers are largely obsolete as a strategic deterrent. The real threat of MAD comes from land-based sites or submarines.

I'm not an Iran hawk, but their aspirations for nuclear power seem predicated on acquiring nuclear weapons as deterrent. Whether that's something that should be allowed or not is an interesting point of discussion, but I'm not sure what the conversation about air forces and ballistic missiles have to do with each other.

Pretty much sums up what a giant nothingburger this all is, when a rocket program is the best argument you can come up with to back your nuke case.

Guess all those huge stockpiles of ballistic rockets that other countries have are all for nukes? Nope.

There's plenty of use for them. ESPECIALLY for a country that lacks an air force.

Thats and you know it. What US action is forcing Iran to send hundreds of missiles to its proxy in Lebanon?

Well they must be armed with nukes obviously, since apparently no missiles without nukes exist.

Better yet what US action prompted Iran to order its proxy to bomb a Jewish temple in Argentina?

Interesting. First you accuse me of whataboutism, now this. You have to go back all the way to 1994, to baseless accusations regarding a bombing that was never solved.

Nothing justifies it? They openly threaten a US ally. Thats plenty of justification.

Oh sure. They're the only ones doing it. In fact they routinely talk about that using nukes in a war is legitimate, and threaten the US on a regular basis not only with regime change, but also with nuclear extinction.

Oh wait a minute. They don't do that at all.

What right again does Iran have to bomb neutral countries?

Why does the US have to bomb half the world?

They only constructed an international framework to monitor and explicitly limit Iran’s nuclear program and uranium enrichment because they wanted to deter Iran from generating electricity.

No, they followed the US lead based on what carrots and sticks were offered them by Washington. As to how convinced they are about all this, can be seen from the current situation, where pretty much all the world kindly asks the US to take a chill pill. Unfortunately Trump has an election to win. Nothing helps Republicans more to get reelected than a crisis.

Your assertions are a bizarre mix of tankie revisionism and whataboutist apologism with no points of fact that aren’t entirely predicated on your apparent contempt for the US.

Yeah, I do have a contempt for the US regime. Not for the US people.

Here's the difference between a patriot and a nationalist the way I see it: A patriot wants his country to be the best it can be, regardless of what others are doing. A nationalist wants to sate some externalised narcissism and wants his country to be superior to others. I am a patriot of my country, and ashamed of my government. But holy s.... It doesn't even come close to what yours does.

But hey. Keep justifying your regimes actions. Let more of your soldiers die in wars that never made life any better at home, except for the cleptocracy of course, while roads and bridges and all that infrastructure is just left to rot. Never mind the nonexisting healthcare.

There's zero revisionism in what I said. I stated facts. If there's one regime that needs changing in the world, it's gotta be the one in Washington D.C.

Attempting to establish causation between this event and the Islamist coup decades later is predictably hilarious. You might as well blame the Soviets and Brits too while at it for Iraq’ing the place in 1941, occupying the country, deliberately fueling sectarian violence thereafter, and harnessing Iranian economic development to the wagon of oil exports to the West. The US didn’t take an overtly hostile posture toward Iran until the Revolution.

Difference being that after the Soviets and Brits left, a democracy did emerge. The Americans and their puppet Shah pretty much made a secular democratic comeback impossible. You're also lying if you're claiming the US had zero influence on the Shah's reign after 1953.

The Islamist Revolution in 1979 had everything to do with economic unrest caused by specific events immediately precluding the coup, coupled with popular backlash against perceived secularization of Iran under the Shah. The objective facts and results of the course of events which culminated in the Revolution completely debunk your narrative that the US somehow Lex Luthor’d theocracy onto Iran, regardless of which way you want to point fingers in the present day. At this point, the most deferential treatment I can give your anti-US rants is that we’re the only evil western boogyman you have left since the British Empire isn’t around for you to whine about.

If you were to follow through with your own logic, the secular democratic government in Iran of 1953 couldn't have existed at all.

But hey. Another example for the lulz:








Guess which country that is, and guess which country decided to change that by arming Wahhabi fanatics, undoing all the progress that had been achieved.

Really Russia provides and equivalent level of top tier unquestioned military backing to Iran as the US does to Israel in dollars and interdicts? Of course Russia as also nod nod wink winked Iran into a nuclear power as well...

Not really. They have zero interest in Iran becoming another nuclear power. Especially since Iran's basically at their doorstep, and the one angle they so far don't have to expect nukes from.

[Vanoi]

Well they must be armed with nukes obviously, since apparently no missiles without nukes exist.

You didn't answer my question. What US action propted Iran to send and continue to send Hezbollah hundreds of missiles and rockets?

Interesting. First you accuse me of whataboutism, now this. You have to go back all the way to 1994, to baseless accusations regarding a bombing that was never solved.

First off this entire thread revolves around Iran and its proxies. Second you were the one who claimed Iran doesn't support terror groups, that Hezbollah isnt a terror group, and that any Iranian actions are just reactions to US actions. No whataboutism here.

Oh and multiple investigations including by Argentina itself found Iran and Hezbollah responsible.

Oh sure. They're the only ones doing it. In fact they routinely talk about that using nukes in a war is legitimate, and threaten the US on a regular basis not only with regime change, but also with nuclear extinction.

Iran is the only country in the world that still calls for Israel's destruction. Unless you know of another one?

Oh wait a minute. They don't do that at all.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-ir...hilate-israel/

https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/12/2...s-destruction/

You were saying?

Why does the US have to bomb half the world?

You going to answer my question or keep up the whataboutism? US actions do not justify or excuse Iranian actions.

[barongan]

When does the world be peaceful without war?

[Lord Thesaurian]

Well yes however the US could be a tad more upfront about how that valuable ally came to be you know squashing their democratically elected PM who was not really a puppet of USSR. In any case we doubled down on mistakes by either not backing the Shah in hard core repression or backing in repression with enough reform that Iran could have walked into ROK territory.

As I said before, Operation Ajax is more of a tankie talking point than a causal factor in anything happened decades later. If causation for the Revolution is going to be framed in such terms, I’d say the British and Soviets doing an “Operation Iranian Freedom” in the 40s had far more to do with it than the CIA providing intelligence and logistical support to the Shah. If the latter counts as “squashing” a government, I must say it’s a shame our boys haven’t had far more success.

In terms of valuable allies, none are more so than Britain, obviously. Expecting the US to thumb its nose at dear old Dad on principle is pretty unrealistic, to put it mildly, especially considering there was significant pushback from the US at the time, and we’d just gone through a world war together. The Revolution was as much a backlash against modernization and secularization under the Shah as it was against any autocratic measures undertaken during his reign. The Ayatollah isn’t exactly Bernie Sanders. Who really knows what an alternate history would have looked like. Iran clearly wants to be Saudi Arabia on steroids, and they’re pretty pissed about not being able to do that, regardless of what might have been.

Not a bad point but given the frothing at the mouth fantasy about the supposed gold mine of Chinese consumers etc etc I not sure any real focus on China was likely to change the the now.

It’s not apples to apples, but at a certain point, the ROI on US resources spent beefing up defenses and cooperation with allies in Asia would have been better than playing whackamole in the desert. The US evidently learned nothing from Tiananmen and clung to the doctrine that money=freedom. After 30 plus years of giving away the technological and intellectual edge that always put the US ahead of its rivals in exchange for access and labor in China, US corporations are somehow shocked the Chinese used it to get ahead. I’m more concerned about the result that an authoritarian police state, to whom democratic norms are literally a foreign concept, has the ability to steamroll its neighbors in days or weeks, project power and influence anywhere on earth, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Well obviously you are right about Iran. given the origins of the IR as a reaction against among other things a US backed and imposed government and their desire to regional power at minimum, always going to be contentious situation with the US. On the other 2 not so much. ISIS first. Would not exist but for a reckless war of choice in Iraq that had no well conceived end game. Simple containment with a lot more nods and winks that the some set generals who delivered up Saddam and his close friends on a platter would end all that,would have worked better. The Taliban were beat and AQ run out of Dodge. Simply declare that's all we needed to do and not nation building and we are done with that 15 years ago.

The Shah was in power for 50 years before the Revolution. The Brits knocked him out before asking us to help put him back in. This narrative that the US “imposed” any government on Iran has always been puzzling to me. The Taliban controls most of Afghanistan and can strike at will anywhere in the country. As soon as we leave, they’ll formally retake the whole thing. Admitting defeat is an important step to any move forward.

Blaming the US for ISIL at least makes far more sense than blaming us for the Ayatollah, but even then, it’s a question of leaving the Ba’athists in charge from the beginning, which is hardly ideal, even if we could have managed to work out a reliable deal with the replacement Saddam. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. By the time fossil fuels become irrelevant enough to negate continued US presence in the region, any chance for a strategic pivot will be long gone, if it isn’t already. The Ayatollah will be a problem for the world, regardless of what the US does or does not.

No, they followed the US lead based on what carrots and sticks were offered them by Washington. As to how convinced they are about all this, can be seen from the current situation, where pretty much all the world kindly asks the US to take a chill pill.

The same US “carrots and sticks” haven’t gone anywhere, except now there are alot more sticks. According to your logic, there’s no reason for the JCPA to have existed, and no reason why Iran has used its nuclear program as a geopolitical football for years. As I said, Iran explicitly told the Europeans to shove their humanitarian sanctions relief where the sun doesn’t shine, unless it includes financing and purchase of Iranian oil. Clearly not the actions of a desperate government trying to fend off certain death.

But hey. Keep justifying your regimes actions. Let more of your soldiers die in wars that never made life any better at home, except for the cleptocracy of course, while roads and bridges and all that infrastructure is just left to rot. Never mind the nonexisting healthcare.

What’s there to justify? The “world policeman” philosophy of US foreign policy you so despise is based on historical precedents that arose from things like fighting the Nazis, bankrolling the reconstruction of Europe, and preventing the Soviets from steamrolling Europe and half the planet. Its success literally made democratic ideas into democratic norms, built the modern “globalist” status quo, and facilitated the explosion in technological and economic advancement everyone now takes for granted. You’re welcome. If you’d rather define the US by its failures so you can feel like a good person or whatever, nobody’s gonna stop you.

Difference being that after the Soviets and Brits left, a democracy did emerge. The Americans and their puppet Shah pretty much made a secular democratic comeback impossible. You're also lying if you're claiming the US had zero influence on the Shah's reign after 1953.

The Shah was in power for over 50 years before the Revolution, and for decades before the US had the audacity to help the British bring him back from exile and stage some protests so he could return to power. As I said, the idea that the US magically conjured an evil wizard to destroy an Eden of democracy in Iran is flatly counterfactual. There were Marxists, democrats, republicans, Islamists, anarchists, etc etc aligned against the Shah in a marriage of convenience.

Iran was modernizing and relatively wealthy at the time of the Revolution. Khomeini was enormously popular and came out on top in the end, precisely because the people of Iran broadly opposed the secular, capitalist reforms undertaken by the Shah. #Awkward. We had all the influence over the Shah’s reign by the end. We even sanctioned his regime for human rights abuses before a radical Islamist cleric rode a wave of anti-secular and anti-capitalist sentiment to a new dictatorship.

If you were to follow through with your own logic, the secular democratic government in Iran of 1953 couldn't have existed at all.

Actually, that’s as per your logic. If regime change eventually caused nominal democracy to emerge in the 40s, regime change in the 70s could have had the same result - especially given the prevalence of constitutionalist and secular political forces which existed right up until the day an Islamic theocracy officially took hold. According to you, the US alone has a magic ability and malice of forethought to spawn evil regimes by virtue of supporting a government.

[Heathen Hammer]

Anyone can disagree with my observations by way of opinion, and Trump’s observable stupidity is in no way predicated on ideology. Perhaps your ideology precludes your assumptions and predictions. I’m sure you can come up with plenty of reasons why what we’re all seeing and reading isn’t what’s happening. I’m even willing to believe those reasons made sense when you explained them to the mirror this morning. The question is, how many dimensions of chess do you plan on conjuring from the ether in order to maintain your cognitive dissonance?

Um, what does that have to do with the fact that notion of warmongering globalist lunatics (both as neolib Dems and neocons in GOP) being "smarter" then Trump is laughable? Trump has been playing opposition against him like a fiddle.