Perpetual Middle East Geopolitical Quagmire Megathread

[GRHorn 105]

1 hour ago, elfenix said:

care to correct any of that or are you just going to attack me?

Ian Bremmer is globalist geopolitical “consultant” or some such, hates Trump. Not so much for neocon reasons, but more for global status quo reasons.  I’m gonna do the Hugo, link a few tweets move. 
 

There’s others, but he’s fairly optimistic that escalation is unlikely. Let’s hope he’s right. 

[washparkhorn 9935]

Just a reminder - a couple of weeks ago more than 180 Democrats in Congress voted to take out the language in the National Defense Authorization Act that would have prohibited military action against Iran without Congressional approval.

We get what we deserve. 

Now that troops are in harm's way, we owe it to them to give and do everything we can as a nation to protect them. We have civilian control of our military. Civilian leaders must protect those they place in harm's way - whether they voted for or against the NDAA or the provision that was stripped out of the authorization. 

As for the idiots who stripped out the provisions in both parties, they deserve to be voted out of power. 

[Zavala 1384]

same dude

small world

https://nypost.com/2014/06/20/how-irans-spy-chief-paid-for-the-benghazi-attack/

[Foosters 17734]

28 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

Ian Bremmer is globalist geopolitical “consultant” or some such, hates Trump. Not so much for neocon reasons, but more for global status quo reasons.  I’m gonna do the Hugo, link a few tweets move. 
 

There’s others, but he’s fairly optimistic that escalation is unlikely. Let’s hope he’s right. 

Sure, its possible. FWIW, Iran has already called it a war and vowed to retaliate, but maybe they're just bluffing.

[Hank Scorpio 17723]

 

 

[Celery Man 20886]

It’s being joked about a lot on twitter, but a draft over this won’t happen.  Both chambers couldn’t and wouldn’t agree on it, and it would be a great way to get Millenials out and voting against the GOP.  

Just as a reminder of the passage of time, the youngest millennials are ~2 years away from aging out of the draft. Gen Z would be the third consecutive generation to get a shiny new war in the Middle East.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23362]

So tired of winning 

[SquishMitten 10402]

Maybe this was lost in my longcat post, or maybe it's so dumb that nobody bothered to refute me, but I'll say it again because I'm curious as to how others view it.

Is it fair to call it an "assassination" when the target was a soldier? I realize he wielded a far greater role in strategic decision making than any of our generals are capable of wielding, but I just see it as fundamentally different than killing a purely political official. Yes, there are significantly greater ramifications than the killing of a grunt, but (I think?) that's an entirely separate debate. Maybe I'm just being nitpicky, but calling it an assassination seems inaccurate. To use my prior analogy, wouldn't we expect the Iranian/international response to be significantly worse if we had done the exact same thing to the Iranian President? All indications are that he was less powerful than Soleimani, but it seems to me like that would be a much more clear act of war.

Am I making any sense? Or do I just sound like a crazy person? Not sure why this point is annoying me so much.

Edited January 3, 2020 by SquishMitten

[Anastasis 23397]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/obituaries/qassem-soleimani-dead.html?

Behind the tags

Qassim Suleimani, Master of Iran’s Intrigue, Built a Shiite Axis of Power in Mideast

The commander helped direct wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and he became the face of Iran’s efforts to build a regional bloc of Shiite power.

By Tim Arango, Ronen Bergman and Ben Hubbard

Jan. 3, 2020Updated 2:20 p.m. ET

He changed the shape of the Syrian civil war and tightened Iran’s grip on Iraq. He was behind hundreds of American deaths in Iraq and waves of militia attacks against Israel. And for two decades, his every move lit up the communications networks — and fed the obsessions — of intelligence operatives across the Middle East.

On Friday, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the powerful and shadowy 62-year-old spymaster at the head of Iran’s security machinery, was killed by an American drone strike near the Baghdad airport.

Just as his accomplishments shaped the creation of a Shiite axis of influence across the Middle East, with Iran at the center, his death is now likely to prove central to a new chapter of geopolitical tension across the region.

LIVE UPDATES

 Iran vowed to retaliate for the U.S. killing of a powerful general.

General Suleimani was at the vanguard of Iran’s revolutionary generation, joining the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in his early 20s after the 1979 uprising that enshrined the country’s Shiite theocracy.

He rose quickly during the brutal Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. And since 1998, he was the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ influential Quds Force, the foreign-facing arm of Iran’s security apparatus, melding intelligence work with a military strategy of nurturing proxy forces across the world.

In the West, he was seen as a clandestine force behind an Iranian campaign of international terrorism. He and other Iranian officials were designated as terrorists by the United States and Israel in 2011, accused of a plot to kill the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, one of Iran’s chief enemies in the region, in Washington. Last year, in April, the entire Quds Force was listed as a foreign terrorism group by the Trump administration.

But in Iran, many saw him as a larger-than-life hero, particularly within security circles. Anecdotes about his asceticism and quiet charisma joined to create an image of a warrior-philosopher who became the backbone of a nation’s defense against a host of enemies.

He was close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Friday issued a statement calling for three days of public mourning and “forceful revenge,” in a declaration that amounted to a threat of retaliation against the United States.

“His departure to God does not end his path or his mission,” he said.

The first years of General Suleimani’s tenure in the late 1990s were devoted to directing the militant group Hezbollah’s effort against the Israeli military occupation of south Lebanon. General Suleimani, along with Hezbollah’s military commander, Imad Mugniyah, drove a sophisticated campaign of guerrilla warfare, combining ambushes, roadside bombs, suicide bombers, targeted killings of senior Israeli officers and attacks on Israeli defense posts.

At the end, the price for Israel was too high, and in May 2000 it withdrew from Lebanon, marking a major victory for General Suleimani, his Quds Force and Hezbollah.

The Arab Spring in the Middle East, and later the fight against the Islamic State, turned General Suleimani from a shadow figure into a major player in the geopolitics of the region, said Tamir Pardo, a former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service.

“Suleimani’s professional life can be divided into two periods,” he said. “Until the Arab Spring, he is commander of a force that has branches in various parts of the world, active mainly in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, but at the end of the day is a secret operational organization whose main purpose is terrorism.”

“From the shock that befell the Middle East following the rise of ISIS, he is changing course,” Mr. Pardo continued. “He becomes a kingpin regional player, knowing with great talent how to exploit the secret infrastructure he has established for so many years, to achieve noncovert objectives — to fight, to win, to establish presence.”

In recent years, the man whose face had rarely been seen became the face of Iran’s foreign operations.

In Syria, he oversaw a massive operation to shore up the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose own troops had been depleted by widespread defections and fierce fighting with rebels seeking to topple the government since 2011. His command of Arabic helped put local commanders at ease as he welded them into a support network for Mr. al-Assad.

Over a number of years, Iranian operatives guided by General Suleimani recruited militia fighters from countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, who were airlifted to Syria to back up Mr. Assad’s forces in key battles.

Many of these militia fighters received training at military bases in Iran or on the ground in Syria by operatives from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an organization General Suleimani had helped develop over the years.

When Iranian and Iranian-backed forces became major combatants against ISIS after the group took over roughly a third of Iraq in 2014, pictures of General Suleimani, often photographed on the battlefield in fatigues, began being widely shared on social media. The publicity spawned rumors that General Suleimani was trying to widen his fame for a possible run for Iran’s presidency; he denied them, saying he always saw himself as just a soldier.

Image

General Suleimani, left, in Tikrit, Iraq, in 2015.Credit...SIPA, via Associated Press

That conflict, from 2014 through 2017, was a rare instance of Iran and the United States nominally fighting on the same side. On a number of occasions, Americans were hitting Islamic State targets from the air while General Suleimani was directing ground forces against the militants.

It was unclear what direct role General Suleimani played in Yemen. But Iran’s patronage of the country’s Houthi rebels, which intensified when Saudi Arabia intervened against them in Yemen’s war in 2015, had all the hallmarks of the Suleimani playbook: above all, to support local militants as a way of expanding Iranian influence and punishing Saudi Arabia, the region’s Sunni power.

Maps: How the Confrontation Between the U.S. and Iran Escalated

Here’s how the situation developed over the last eight days.

Iran had long offered similar support to the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, creating decades of new security headaches for Israel. And with the support of the Quds Force, Hamas was able to take over the Gaza Strip, capable of firing rockets that can reach into most of Israeli territory.

Previous American administrations had resisted striking General Suleimani directly, either because of operational concerns or out of fear that killing him could destabilize the region further and lead to all-out war between the United States and Iran.

At least once, though, Israeli officials ran the possibility of attacking him up their command structure. That was in February 2008, while Israeli and American intelligence operatives were tracking Mr. Mugniyah, the Hezbollah commander, in the hopes of killing him, according to senior American and Israeli intelligence officials. Operatives spotted the Hezbollah commander talking with another man, who they quickly determined was Mr. Suleimani.

Excited by the possibility of killing two archenemies at once, the Israelis phoned senior government officials. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert denied the request, as he had promised the Americans that only Mr. Mugniyah would be targeted in the operation.

Perhaps more than any other individual, General Suleimani was the foil for American plans in Iraq, which like Iran is predominantly Shiite.

After the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Iranian militiamen and their Iraqi allies fought a clandestine war against American troops, launching rockets at bases and attacking convoys. The militias also played a large part in inflaming sectarian tensions that led to Iraq’s sectarian civil war in 2006 and 2007 between Shiites and Sunnis, leading President George W. Bush to order a troop surge there.

General Suleimani and other leaders of his generation were shaped by the brutal war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, a conflict so cruel, with trench warfare and chemical weapons, that some compared it to the devastation of World War I. Nearly a million people died on both sides, and General Suleimani spent much of that war on the front lines.

Image

Iraqi forces fired rocket launchers on the outskirts of Khorramshahr, a major Iranian supply port, in 1980, during the Iran-Iraq war.Credit...Zuheir Saade/Associated Press

Image

General Suleimani, left, in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq war.Credit...SIPA, via Associated Press

For him and his fellow soldiers, the war was a “never again” moment. Ensuring that Iraq was weak and unable to again pose a threat to Iran became the primary goal of Iran’s policy toward Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, whom the United States supported during its war with Iran in the 1980s.

“For Qassim Suleimani, the Iran-Iraq war never really ended,” Ryan C. Crocker, a former American ambassador to Iraq, once said in an interview. “No human being could have come through such a World War I-style conflict and not have been forever affected. His strategic goal was an outright victory over Iraq, and if that was not possible, to create and influence a weak Iraq.”

Sometimes, American officials secretly communicated with General Suleimani in an effort to ease tensions in Iraq. In 2008, the American general, David Petraeus, was trying to find a truce in a fight that American forces and the Iraqi Army were waging against Shiite militias loyal to Iran. In Mr. Petraeus’s telling of the story, he was shown a text message directed to him: “General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassim Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan.”

Years later, General Suleimani personally, and mockingly, addressed another American leader: President Trump, who in July 2018 warned Iran’s president not to threaten the United States.

“It is beneath the dignity of our president to respond to you,” General Suleimani declared in a speech in western Iran. “I, as a soldier, respond to you.”

“We are near you, where you can’t even imagine,” he added. “We are ready. We are the man of this arena.”

For years after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran railed against what it saw as American aggression in the region, worried that the United States would turn its attention to regime change in Iran after Mr. Hussein was gone.

American officials have blamed Iran for killing hundreds of American soldiers during the war, many with sophisticated, shaped-charge bombs that could slice through American armored vehicles.

As the United States sought to negotiate a deal with Iraq that would allow American forces to stay in the country past a 2011 deadline, it was General Suleimani who relentlessly pushed Iraqi officials to refuse to sign, using a mixture of threats and the promise of more financial and military aid, American and Iraqi officials say.

Image

United States troops in Karbala, Iraq, in 2004.Credit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times

Image

A demonstration against the United States in Najaf, Iraq, in 2010.Credit...Joao Silva for The New York Times

On his orders, Iraqi construction crews in 2014 began building a roadway for Iranian supplies and militiamen, a small piece of what was perhaps the general’s most important project: establishing a land route from Tehran to the Mediterranean, across Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, where Iran has long supported Hezbollah, a primary threat to Israel.

One telling episode that illustrated the depth of Iranian control came in 2014, when the Islamic State was rampaging across Iraq. General Suleimani paid a visit to Bayan Jabr, then the country’s transportation minister.

According to a collection of Iranian intelligence cables published recently by The Intercept and The New York Times, General Suleimani came to Mr. Jabr with a demand: He needed to use Iraqi airspace to fly planeloads of military supplies to support the Syrian government of Mr. Assad. Despite lobbying by the Obama administration to close Iraq’s airspace to the flights, Mr. Jabr quickly said yes.

“I put my hands on my eyes and said, ‘On my eyes! As you wish!’” Mr. Jabr told an Iranian Intelligence Ministry officer, according to one of the cables. “Then he got up and approached me and kissed my forehead.”

The same trove of documents contains evidence that General Suleimani is not universally admired within Iran.

A bitter rivalry between his Quds Force and the other main Iranian intelligence agency, the Ministry of Intelligence, played out over the course of the cables. Many criticized General Suleimani’s proxy campaign in Iraq, and the way his militia allies abused the Sunni population there, as weakening Iran’s long-term interests in the region.

“This policy of Iran in Iraq has allowed the Americans to return to Iraq with greater legitimacy,” one cable read.

In others, ministry case officers portrayed General Suleimani as a relentless self-promoter who used the battle against the Islamic State to bolster his potential political aspirations in the future.

Iran watchers sounded alarm that General Suleimani’s death would unleash unpredictable regional mayhem from Syria to Iraq that would be difficult for the United States to contain. Several Iranian diplomats said that the prospect of diplomacy with the United States, being quietly negotiated through Japan and France, was effectively dead. The talk was now of revenge, not negotiations, they said.

“This one life lost will likely cost many more Iranian, Iraqi, American and others,” said Ali Vaez, director of Iran program for International Crisis Group. “It is not just Suleimani’s death, but likely the death knell of the Iran nuclear deal and any prospect of diplomacy between Iran and the U.S.”

Qassim Suleimani was born in 1957 in Rabor, in eastern Iran, and later moved to the city of Kerman. He was the son of a farmer, and began laboring as a construction worker at age 12. His highest level of education was high school, and he later worked in the municipal water department in Kerman, according to a profile published by the Iranian state media.

According to a 2012 profile in The New Yorker, General Suleimani’s father became burdened with debt under the Shah. When the revolution came he was sympathetic to the cause, and joined the Revolutionary Guards soon after. He was married and had children, although there were conflicting stories in the Iranian news media about how many.

Within Iran, he was widely seen as exerting more influence over the country’s foreign policy than even the country’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

General Suleimani, in death if not in life, appeared to have united Iran’s rival political parties to rally behind the flag. Iran’s expansionist policies in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon have been contentious at home among ordinary Iranians and some reformist politicians who saw money and resources diverted from Iran to fund General Suleimani’s missions.

Image

General Suleimani, right, with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at a religious ceremony in Tehran in 2015.Credit...Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader, via Associated Press

Image

Portraits of Iranian supreme leaders Ayatollah Khomeini, right, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, and the Iraqi cleric Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, center, in Baghdad in 2017.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

But on Friday, there was only praise and grief. Iranian officials across the political spectrum issued statements of condolences and condemned the United States.

The powerful Revolutionary Guards, of which the Quds Force is a component, said plans were underway for a huge public funeral.

“He was so big that he achieved his dream of being martyred by America,” wrote a reformist politician and former vice president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi.

General Suleimani had received the country’s highest military honor, the Order of Zolfaghar, established in 1856 under the Qajar dynasty. He became the only military commander to receive the honor in the Islamic Republic.

Ayatollah Khamenei pinned the medal on General Suleimani’s chest last February, and in remarks that now seem prophetic, said: “The Islamic Republic needs him for many more years. But I hope that in the end, he dies as a martyr.”

Tim Arango reported from Los Angeles; Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv, Israel; and Ben Hubbard from Beirut. Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Washington, and Farnaz Fassihi from New York.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33844]

1 minute ago, SquishMitten said:

Maybe this was lost in my longcat post, or maybe it's so dumb that nobody bothered to refute me, but I'll say it again because I'm curious as to how others view it.

Is it fair to call it an "assassination" when the target was a soldier? I realize he wielded a far greater role in strategic decision making than any of our generals are capable of wielding, but I just see it as fundamentally different than killing a purely political official. Yes, there are significantly greater ramifications than the killing of a grunt, but that's an entirely separate debate. Maybe I'm just being nitpicky, but calling it an assassination seems inaccurate. To use my prior analogy, wouldn't we expect the Iranian/international response to be significantly worse if we had done the exact same thing to the Iranian President? All indications are that he was less powerful than Soleimani, but it seems to me like that would be a much more clear act of war.

Am I making any sense? Or do I just sound like a crazy person? Not sure why this point is annoying me so much.

If validation is what you seek, then yes, it's a stretch to call it an assassination.

[elfenix 34183]

 

[babysdaddy 2718]

Man, I'm a little surprised at the reactions in here.  This guy was a terrible human, had organized and was organizing more killings of Americans, orchestrated all kinds of shit in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, etc, helped organize Iranian proxy terrorist attacks all over the globe, and had just organized this 'spontaneous' attack on the Embassy and 95% of the people in here are pissed off because the assumption is there was no planning, forethought, or concern for repercussions.  Trump is no neocon and he will not send 100k plus troops or whatever we had in Iraq.  Iran overplayed, and has been overplaying, their hand and Soleimani was the head of the military command.  This 3 days of mourning is buying time to figure out a response that will allow them to save face.  While Dotard does not appear to have any strategic plan, the Iranians do.  They will play out all scenarios and come to the same conclusion. They would lose and lose badly and now they know we can and will target leadership.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23362]

If killing this dude starts world war three or a large scale regional war then it was a mistake to kill him, objectively speaking.  I think that’s how most people are approaching the criticism. 
 

The thing about this is no one knows the consequences yet and the uncertainty alone is destabilizing.  

[wildcat09 29267]

The Vice President is on Twitter basically claiming that Iran did 9/11:

They're really so lazy they're just replacing a "Q" with an "N" and peddling the exact same lies.

[Js1 85131]

1 minute ago, wildcat09 said:

The Vice President is on Twitter basically claiming that Iran did 9/11:

They're really so lazy they're just replacing a "Q" with an "N" and peddling the exact same lies.

Well we were stupid enough to fall for it once and now we elected a Trump so.....

[InkaUtexas 25530]

17 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

Man, I'm a little surprised at the reactions in here.  This guy was a terrible human, had organized and was organizing more killings of Americans, orchestrated all kinds of shit in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, etc, helped organize Iranian proxy terrorist attacks all over the globe, and had just organized this 'spontaneous' attack on the Embassy and 95% of the people in here are pissed off because the assumption is there was no planning, forethought, or concern for repercussions.  Trump is no neocon and he will not send 100k plus troops or whatever we had in Iraq.  Iran overplayed, and has been overplaying, their hand and Soleimani was the head of the military command.  This 3 days of mourning is buying time to figure out a response that will allow them to save face.  While Dotard does not appear to have any strategic plan, the Iranians do.  They will play out all scenarios and come to the same conclusion. They would lose and lose badly and now they know we can and will target leadership.

I anticipate an upswing in anti-American attacks anywhere they have contact with non-state actors. Think about cartels hitting a resort, random acts against tourists in Europe, etc. One group who needs to be wary, and most are assessing their security situation are the US NGO's operating across Africa and Afghanistan. They are soft targets and Iran knows this. 

[4th&Five 41461]

 

[washparkhorn 9935]

19 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

Man, I'm a little surprised at the reactions in here.  This guy was a terrible human, had organized and was organizing more killings of Americans, orchestrated all kinds of shit in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, etc, helped organize Iranian proxy terrorist attacks all over the globe, and had just organized this 'spontaneous' attack on the Embassy and 95% of the people in here are pissed off because the assumption is there was no planning, forethought, or concern for repercussions.  Trump is no neocon and he will not send 100k plus troops or whatever we had in Iraq.  Iran overplayed, and has been overplaying, their hand and Soleimani was the head of the military command.  This 3 days of mourning is buying time to figure out a response that will allow them to save face.  While Dotard does not appear to have any strategic plan, the Iranians do.  They will play out all scenarios and come to the same conclusion. They would lose and lose badly and now they know we can and will target leadership.

I assume the concerns are the same that Gen Stanley McCrystal had 12 years ago when he had the chance to blow him up, but thought better of it. 

Rubble makes trouble in this area of the world. I hope we have a plan to achieve the military objective and get out. My gut tells me we don't. 

[4th&Five 41461]

Just now, washparkhorn said:

I assume the concerns are the same that Gen Stanley McCrystal had 12 years ago when he had the chance to blow him up, but thought better of it. 

Rubble makes trouble in this area of the world. I hope we have a plan to achieve the military objective and get out. My gut tells me we don't. 

Not a chance.

[wildcat09 29267]

21 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

Man, I'm a little surprised at the reactions in here.  This guy was a terrible human, had organized and was organizing more killings of Americans, orchestrated all kinds of shit in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, etc, helped organize Iranian proxy terrorist attacks all over the globe, and had just organized this 'spontaneous' attack on the Embassy and 95% of the people in here are pissed off because the assumption is there was no planning, forethought, or concern for repercussions.  Trump is no neocon and he will not send 100k plus troops or whatever we had in Iraq.  Iran overplayed, and has been overplaying, their hand and Soleimani was the head of the military command.  This 3 days of mourning is buying time to figure out a response that will allow them to save face.  While Dotard does not appear to have any strategic plan, the Iranians do.  They will play out all scenarios and come to the same conclusion. They would lose and lose badly and now they know we can and will target leadership.

Your inability to never learn anything is impressive.

[Anastasis 23397]

Just now, washparkhorn said:

I assume the concerns are the same that Gen Stanley McCrystal had 12 years ago when he had the chance to blow him up, but thought better of it. 

Rubble makes trouble in this area of the world. I hope we have a plan to achieve the military objective and get out. My gut tells me we don't. 

McCrystal seems all in on this one though (from NYT):

 

Mr. Trump’s decision to kill General Suleimani was one that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had rejected, fearing it would lead to war.

General McChrystal praised Mr. Trump’s decision to do so.

“The targeting was appropriate given Suleimani’s very public role in orchestrating Iranian attacks on the U.S. and our allies,” he said in an email.

But the general added a somber warning: “We can’t consider this as an isolated action. As with all such actions it will impact the dynamics of the region, and Iran will likely feel compelled to respond in kind.

“There is the potential for a stair-step escalation of attacks, and we must think several moves ahead to determine how far we will take this — and what the new level of conflict we are prepared to engage in,” he said.

 

[tx 3 putt 76421]

5 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

I hope we have a plan to achieve the military objective and get out. My gut tells me we don't. 

20+ year war !

[bolverk 29414]

14 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

While Dotard does not appear to have any strategic plan, the Iranians do.  They will play out all scenarios and come to the same conclusion. They would lose and lose badly and now they know we can and will target leadership.

Yes. The motherfucker sucked, but have you never heard of asymmetric warfare? The past few years have been a bit of a cat and mouse game conducted primarily through their intermediaries but also with weird instances of coordination against ISIS and he had some support from the Iraqi government (see Anastasis's article above) where there's been relative stability between the Sunnis and Shiites the last couple of years.

It's a really tricky deal that's gotten much more dangerous, and we can likely now forget about Iran stalling their nuclear program anytime in the future, which means we'll inevitably have a conflict with them.

"The incoming commander of the Quds Force, Esmail Ghaani, was quoted on al-Jazeera as saying: “We tell everyone, be patient and see the dead bodies of Americans all over the Middle East.”"

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/03/iran-vows-revenge-for-us-trump-killing-of-top-general-qassem-suleimani

[Ghost of Shag 2583]

5 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Your inability to never learn anything is impressive.

Not as impressive as your use of the English language.

[Hornius Emeritus 12422]

I heard this Suleimani guy was responsible for the rise of Hitler. 

[wildcat09 29267]

Just now, Ghost of Shag said:

Not as impressive as your use of the English language.

[Brisketexan 104660]

26 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

Man, I'm a little surprised at the reactions in here.  This guy was a terrible human, had organized and was organizing more killings of Americans, orchestrated all kinds of shit in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, etc, helped organize Iranian proxy terrorist attacks all over the globe, and had just organized this 'spontaneous' attack on the Embassy and 95% of the people in here are pissed off because the assumption is there was no planning, forethought, or concern for repercussions.  Trump is no neocon and he will not send 100k plus troops or whatever we had in Iraq.  Iran overplayed, and has been overplaying, their hand and Soleimani was the head of the military command.  This 3 days of mourning is buying time to figure out a response that will allow them to save face.  While Dotard does not appear to have any strategic plan, the Iranians do.  They will play out all scenarios and come to the same conclusion. They would lose and lose badly and now they know we can and will target leadership.

Because "how, and by whom" matters in such things.

For example, I definitely think the world would be better off if Donald Trump died today.  I make no bones about that assessment.  HOWEVER, I think it would be disastrous is somebody assassinated the President.  Even worse, if a foreign power like Iran did.  Because either scenario would have huge negative implications for the rule of law, the peaceful succession of power, and the sanctity of a sovereign nation being secure in its leadership.

So, Soleimani dead?  Good.  Us killing him in a brazen attack in Iraq, and bragging about it far and wide?  Not good.

[Brisketexan 104660]

4 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

“There is the potential for a stair-step escalation of attacks, and we must think several moves ahead to determine how far we will take this — and what the new level of conflict we are prepared to engage in,” he said.

Well then, thank GOD we're led by that notable chess-master, Donald J. Trump.  All will be well!

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

29 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

If killing this dude starts world war three or a large scale regional war then it was a mistake to kill him, objectively speaking.  I think that’s how most people are approaching the criticism. 
 

The thing about this is no one knows the consequences yet and the uncertainty alone is destabilizing.  

And don't really trust the rationale of the CIC. 

[Telegraph_it 3354]

13 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Well then, thank GOD we're led by that notable chess-master, Donald J. Trump.  All will be well!

For real. I doubt our military game plans for stuff like this. 

[heso 2748]

2 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Then if his tweet was unrelated to this attack why did he delete it? It's not like people don't know it existed.  the simple explanation is that donald told his son.

I expect that his tweet wasn’t directly related to the attack, just that big d told him when the embassy was under siege that we were going to respond bigly and probably didn’t have legit details of what that meant. But then after the fact it looked like he was the first one Donny briefed on the matter so he took it down. 

[Bateshorn 9907]

32 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

The Vice President is on Twitter basically claiming that Iran did 9/11:

They're really so lazy they're just replacing a "Q" with an "N" and peddling the exact same lies.

This is not only demonstrably false, Soleimani actually helped us during the months right after 9/11.  The Iranian's were assisting us till the Axis of Evil speech.

[maninblack 7974]

Just now, Telegraph_it said:

For real. I doubt our military game plans for stuff like this. 

In reality there's a game plan for a war with every country in the world. I'm not kidding. Some like Iceland may have only one initial scenario that gets updated every decade or so but other countries that are on the hit list like Iran have multiple plans that are updated frequently.

[NWBuck 8548]

Just now, maninblack said:

In reality there's a game plan for a war with every country in the world. I'm not kidding. Some like Iceland may have only one initial scenario that gets updated every decade or so but other countries that are on the hit list like Iran have multiple plans that are updated frequently.

I like to imagine this one is nothing but a brigade of soldiers with really powerful hair dryers

[babysdaddy 2718]

15 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Because "how, and by whom" matters in such things.

For example, I definitely think the world would be better off if Donald Trump died today.  I make no bones about that assessment.  HOWEVER, I think it would be disastrous is somebody assassinated the President.  Even worse, if a foreign power like Iran did.  Because either scenario would have huge negative implications for the rule of law, the peaceful succession of power, and the sanctity of a sovereign nation being secure in its leadership.

So, Soleimani dead?  Good.  Us killing him in a brazen attack in Iraq, and bragging about it far and wide?  Not good.

Yes, the board knows your feelings toward Trump.  While I wouldn't wish him death, I do think him not being President would be healthy for the US and the globe.

The alternative way to view the public attack and letting the world know we did it and why? Deterrence.  

[Biff Tannen 45500]

1 minute ago, NWBuck said:

I like to imagine this one is nothing but a brigade of soldiers with really powerful hair dryers

[wildcat09 29267]

5 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

This is not only demonstrably false, Soleimani actually helped us during the months right after 9/11.  The Iranian's were assisting us till the Axis of Evil speech.

Yup, which is one more reason David Frum can fuck himself for eternity.

[Guest Lobo]

"These gentlemen are with the CLI."  

"The Committee for the Liberation of Iran, Mr. Barnes."

We hold more reserves in the U.S. than they do.  The narrative about needing their oil has been over for a decade.  What could be interesting though is choking off their supply to China.  All part of Captain Dipshit's trade-war pyrrhic victory.  

[washparkhorn 9935]

10 minutes ago, maninblack said:

In reality there's a game plan for a war with every country in the world. I'm not kidding. Some like Iceland may have only one initial scenario that gets updated every decade or so but other countries that are on the hit list like Iran have multiple plans that are updated frequently.

Agree.

It would be lovely if the Constitutional Body responsible for declaring war weighed the options and voted on a course of action, rather than the President. Congress was vested with the power to declare war for many reasons. 

[Brisketexan 104660]

10 minutes ago, Telegraph_it said:

For real. I doubt our military game plans for stuff like this. 

 

5 minutes ago, maninblack said:

In reality there's a game plan for a war with every country in the world. I'm not kidding. Some like Iceland may have only one initial scenario that gets updated every decade or so but other countries that are on the hit list like Iran have multiple plans that are updated frequently.

Yep.  There's no doubt that the military has game plans for dozens of scenarios involving Iran.  But, spoiler: many of those scenarios involve a shitload of dead Americans and/or dead civilians. I mean, we have fucking game plans for multiple nuclear war scenarios.  Hooray!  I don't want a single one of those fucking game plans being put into play.

And that's only the plan for military action.  We're concerned about the plan -- or lack thereof - for provocation of an Iranian response.

2 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

Yes, the board knows your feelings toward Trump.  While I wouldn't wish him death, I do think him not being President would be healthy for the US and the globe.

The alternative way to view the public attack and letting the world know we did it and why? Deterrence.  

Yes.  Because deterrence has worked so well.  After all, we showed the world that we're willing to invade a country and occupy it for 18 years and counting, and killing tens of thousands of people, and as a result...[checks notes]....folks in the region are still trying to kill us, folks in that country are still trying to kill us, and we're actually negotiating with the group we pushed out of power to allow them to [checks notes again, ignores bbq sauce stain on notes, they're old notes] return to power.

I used to believe in the deterrent power of American force.  And I still do, at a REALLY high level -- that is, no nation state is going to launch a full-on attack on American soil, because they know that they would face a full and devastating reprisal.  If Iran managed to blow up downtown Houston, for example, we'd have no choice but to launch a devastating counter-attack on their soil.  But this isn't WWII.  This war will be relatively low-intensity, so as to take our overwhelming power out of the mix.  

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20345]

3 hours ago, Lagunamadre said:

MBS for sure. In fact I would bet Kushner and MBS's bromance had a lot to do with this. A US/Iran all out war is Saudi's wet dream. Let the American's spend their blood and treasure to the benefit of the Kingdom. 

 

They send 19 terrorists to attack on 9/11, we respond by spending six trillion dollars (so far) and attacking their enemy.

 

[Guest Lobo]

We also bought electric cars.  Right after we figured out we have more oil than they do.  

 

Fuck!  I had something for this /archer

[wildcat09 29267]

This seems like a good day to remember that Donald Trump was doing business with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in fucking 2016.

[bolverk 29414]

1 minute ago, wildcat09 said:

This seems like a good day to remember that Donald Trump was doing business with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in fucking 2016.

Wait...

 

WHAT?!?!

[wildcat09 29267]

2 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Wait...

 

WHAT?!?!

Yup.

Quote

Between 2004 and 2014, Mammadov family businesses spent more than half a billion dollars on large construction projects. They also poured money into a major construction-materials company, an insurance firm, and a new headquarters. It’s not clear how the Mammadovs funded such enormous investments while spending so much on themselves. They may have received loans, or secretly owned profitable businesses that supported the flurry of spending. Another explanation is that some of the investment money came from the Revolutionary Guard, through Azarpassillo.

Calls and e-mails to Azarpassillo, the Iranian Mission to the U.N., and the Azerbaijani government were not returned. Ziya and Anar Mammadov did not respond to requests for comment. Donald Trump has not addressed the Baku deal since becoming President. A Department of Justice spokesperson would not comment on the possibility of its investigating the Trump Tower Baku deal. The White House declined to comment.

If, as Alan Garten told me, the Trump Organization learned in 2015 about “the possibility” that the Mammadovs had ties to the Revolutionary Guard, it is striking that the company did not end the Baku deal until December, 2016. During this period, Garten told me, the Trump Organization never asked its Azerbaijani partners about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, but it did send several default notices for late payments.

Throughout the Presidential campaign, Trump was in business with someone that his company knew was likely a partner with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

In a March, 2016, speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Trump said that his “No. 1 priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” Calling Iran the “biggest sponsor of terrorism around the world,” he promised, “We will work to dismantle that reach—believe me, believe me.” In the speech, Trump lamented that Iran had been allowed to develop new long-range ballistic missiles. According to Iran Watch, an organization that monitors Iran’s military capabilities, much of the technology to make the missiles was provided by Nasr, the company once run by Kamal Darvishi.

I asked Garten why the Trump Organization hadn’t cancelled the Baku contract in 2015. He said that there was “no rush,” because “the project had already stalled and was showing no signs of moving forward.” The Azerbaijani lawyer who worked on the project has seen the hotel’s interior, and told me that it is almost finished. In an interview with the magazine Baku, published in April, 2015, Ivanka Trump said that she was eager to enjoy the hotel’s “huge spa area,” and promised that the hotel would open “in June.”

Moreover, Garten said, the Trump Organization had signed binding contracts with the Mammadovs and couldn’t simply abandon its agreements. But Jessica Tillipman, the law-school assistant dean, told me, “You can’t violate sanctions just because you have a contract with someone.” According to Erich Ferrari, the lawyer who specializes in sanctions, companies that learn of a possible sanctions violation typically commission a “look-back” investigation that “reviews all payments you received, to make sure they didn’t originate with a sanctioned entity.” He added, “All the big four accounting companies do them routinely.” The Trump Organization did not commission a look-back.

The Baku deal appears to be the second time that the Trump Organization has turned a blind eye to U.S. efforts to sanction Iran. In 1998, when Donald Trump purchased the General Motors Building, in Manhattan, he inherited as a tenant Iran’s Bank Melli. The following year, the Treasury Department listed Bank Melli as an institution that was “owned or controlled” by the government of Iran and that was covered by U.S. sanctions. (The department later labelled Bank Melli one of the primary financial institutions through which Iran was funnelling money to finance terrorism and to develop weapons of mass destruction.) The Trump Organization kept Bank Melli as a tenant for four more years before terminating the lease.

 

[Brisketexan 104660]

7 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Wait...

 

WHAT?!?!

Yep.  Trump Tower Baku, in Azerbaijan.  Many of the firms were part of a money-laundering scheme on behalf of the Revolutionary Guards.  No evidence that any Trump cash was intentionally/directly sent to the RGs, but it was crooked as shit business and there's no doubt that the Trump family took a "la la la, I can't hear you" approach to any corruption.

[Zavala 1384]

What happened to the pallets of cash strategy in Iran?

[babysdaddy 2718]

19 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yes.  Because deterrence has worked so well.  After all, we showed the world that we're willing to invade a country and occupy it for 18 years and counting, and killing tens of thousands of people, and as a result...[checks notes]....folks in the region are still trying to kill us, folks in that country are still trying to kill us, and we're actually negotiating with the group we pushed out of power to allow them to [checks notes again, ignores bbq sauce stain on notes, they're old notes] return to power.

I used to believe in the deterrent power of American force.  And I still do, at a REALLY high level -- that is, no nation state is going to launch a full-on attack on American soil, because they know that they would face a full and devastating reprisal.  If Iran managed to blow up downtown Houston, for example, we'd have no choice but to launch a devastating counter-attack on their soil.  But this isn't WWII.  This war will be relatively low-intensity, so as to take our overwhelming power out of the mix.  

Your analogy of deterrent events is not in the same ballpark.   

This guy being dead is good.  I don't expect them to respond in a way that escalates to even a low-intensity war.  Our Cold War with them will continue.

[Brisketexan 104660]

7 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

Your analogy of deterrent events is not in the same ballpark.   

This guy being dead is good.  I don't expect them to respond in a way that escalates to even a low-intensity war.  Our Cold War with them will continue.

That "cold war" has seen Iran arm and direct numerous movements/groups that have killed Americans and our allies.  Even if all that does is "continue," how is that a damned win?  And of course, you and I and anyone with an ounce of sanity knows that Iran has no choice but to escalate their activities.  You should never put an enemy in a position where they have no choice but to cause you great injury (unless, of course, you're engaged in total war), and we've done exactly that.

Edited January 3, 2020 by Brisketexan

[bolverk 29414]

5 minutes ago, Zavala said:

What happened to the pallets of cash strategy in Iran?

Trump, as usual, fucked it all up because he's a fat fucking retard. It was working.

Thanks Wilcat and Brisket. I'm out of 🙂 for the day. SMDH