Quote :

"Only if they succeed in their efforts is there a chance that continuing them makes them safer."

Actually, if they succeed, there's a 100% chance they'll be far safer, and most importantly the US and NATO wont be able to push them around. Even North Korea gets more respectful treatment from Washington, and there's a reason why. Any nation that's got US bases on every border would want nuclear arms ASAP, it's the surest way to get long-term security and freedom from harassment.

5/24/2012 2:13:19 PM

It will happen in Mid-late September. Thats the date when Israel will stir the pot unless Iran backs way down and neuters themselves. Its strategic timing for the election.

5/29/2012 2:59:39 AM

^^With N. Korea I think it's more that they had/have a legitimately insane leader and the world's largest stockpile of artillery shells and we don't want to see Seoul get blown off the map (for any number of reasons too numerous to mention).

I will say though, it is incredibly arrogant of us to try to dictate to the rest of the world who can and cannot have nuclear capability.

5/29/2012 3:07:17 AM

^ Not to mention that Iran has levied a pretty solid ass-kicking in the form of a low intensity proxy war against the US over the last 30 or so years.

5/29/2012 11:52:50 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html

Quote :

"From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program. Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet."

6/1/2012 8:50:26 AM

Quote :

"^^With N. Korea I think it's more that they had/have a legitimately insane leader and the world's largest stockpile of artillery shells and we don't want to see Seoul get blown off the map (for any number of reasons too numerous to mention)."

Well, the bottom line is that the US respects the big sticks of other nations too. Even the foulest of nations, like the DPRK, get treated with satin gloves because of their ability to inflict harm on neighbors. Going for nukes is just a quick way to achieve such a capability, or maintain such a capability even while your traditional artillery rusts. Plus, bonus points for the relatively cheap energy nearby technology affords.


[Edited on June 1, 2012 at 12:29 PM. Reason : .]

6/1/2012 12:26:54 PM

Quote :

"6 months later, still no war. Guess it's never gonna happen!"

I've said it won't happen for a variety of reasons. But it must be nice for you that the alternative position can't be disproved, strictly speaking. As long as all the relevant countries exist, war remains a possibility. In a few centuries will your Libertarian Cyborg descendant be mocking my clone with, "600 years later, still no war. Guess it's never gonna happen!"

And, as it happens, there are legit reasons for "6 months later, still no war" to be brought up. Much of the sensationalist talk of war recently was predicated on the idea that any attack would begin in Spring -- the weather in parts of Iran being too rough in other parts of the year. Assuming these people (and there were many) know whereof they speak, the window for launching military action is now closed for some time.

Quote :

"Actually, if they succeed, there's a 100% chance they'll be far safer, and most importantly the US and NATO wont be able to push them around."

I don't think it's 100% by any means. There's a critical period after "success" -- that is, making a bomb -- where I'd argue they're more vulnerable than ever. Producing a bomb is absolute evidence of intent to make bombs. From Israel's point of view, the logic at that moment might well be "Better to nuke them now when they've just got one, rather than let them get twenty."

And the US and NATO and everybody else will be able to keep pushing them around. Remember that these are entities who seemed willing to toy with the idea of war with the USSR. They didn't, thank God, but the option was on the table.

Quote :

" Even North Korea gets more respectful treatment from Washington, and there's a reason why."

Sure, but the reason isn't the Bomb. NK has always gotten a certain degree of "kid gloves" treatment because of the conventional damage we're pretty sure it can inflict on SK (as opposed to the nuclear damage that is still pretty questionable), but more importantly because they're still in the Chinese sphere of influence. North Korea has a very, very powerful friend. Iran's relationship with superpowers isn't nearly so tight.

Quote :

"It will happen in Mid-late September."

You mean the exact opposite time of year from when everyone said it would need to happen for practical military reasons?

6/4/2012 8:23:49 PM

Happy Anniversary

6/6/2012 8:50:06 PM

It's troubling to me that the leader of the country of Iran, who is supposedly evil, is actually speaking the truth, and there really are very few people in the U.S. receptive to it.

I mean, what Ahmadinejad says in this interview can't even be disputed. Yes, the holocaust occurred...in Europe. Not in modern day Israel. The Palestinians didn't do shit, the Germans fucked up. And yet, Larry King argues in this clip that Israel is a legal state. Somehow, the Palestinians deserve to be dumped on. In all seriousness - what in the fuck? God damn, this world is truly bizarre sometimes.

The "logic" of U.S. policy is the equivalent of New Testament doctrine. Like, "Jesus died for our sins". Uhh, okay...how does that work exactly? What is the mechanism behind the death of Jesus that saved us? No one ever bothers to explain it, because it cannot be explained. It's simply a tautology that has to be accepted on the basis of faith.

Full text of the interview: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/22/larry_king_with_president_mahmoud_ahmadinejad_107286.html

Just fuckin' read it. This guy has been demonized by the U.S. media, but he is not crazy, he's just saying what most of the world is thinking. I would probably vote for someone with Ahmadinejad's positions over Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.

[Edited on June 22, 2012 at 12:47 AM. Reason : ]

6/22/2012 12:21:52 AM

No.... I'm pretty sure that guy is crazy.

6/22/2012 8:25:54 AM

Great. You fell for U.S. propaganda. Congrats on being part of the problem.

6/22/2012 10:04:53 AM

So he doesn't deny the Holocaust and advocates nuking another country off the map? I seriously don't know, I don't speak Farsi or whatever they speak over there. He could be saying how much he loves puppies and Coca-Cola for all I know.

6/22/2012 10:52:45 AM

He's neither a holocaust denier, nor did he say that "Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth."

I, too, had accepted these as fact, and upon further research, they simply aren't true. He denies that the holocaust had anything to do with Palestine, which is 100% correct. If you disagree with Zionism, that makes you a holocaust denier.

The other comment is wrongly translated. From what I've been able to determine, it translates to roughly, "The leadership of Israel should be wiped from the face of time". That's a far fucking cry from what the media has being drilling into people's heads.

6/22/2012 12:08:20 PM

I dunno, I had an Iranian professor that said that's pretty much what it means.

And no, that doesn't mean they would even want, much less be dumb enough, to nuke Israel.

[Edited on June 22, 2012 at 12:22 PM. Reason : ,]

6/22/2012 12:13:14 PM

Do you have an article or anything?

6/22/2012 12:35:58 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel

6/22/2012 12:45:59 PM

You are devaluing my degree.

6/22/2012 7:40:24 PM

Whoops, I said something that contrasted with your Fox News/CNN/MSNBC propaganda. Why don't you respond to something I've said and we'll go from there.

I'm just going to spell this out really fucking clearly for your dumb ass.

-The holocaust happened
-The holocaust was perpetrated by Nazi Germany
-Britain then designated modern day Israel as a place where Jews from Europe could start a new country
-There were already people living there called the Palestinians - Jews had not been in the area for a long ass time
-Millions of Palestinians dumped on by Israel/Western forces, no one gives a shit, any attempt to address this injustice results in being shouted down

I mean, if you can't understand this, you can't be helped.

[Edited on June 22, 2012 at 7:56 PM. Reason : ]

6/22/2012 7:48:06 PM

Quote :

"nor did he say that "Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth.""

those who bother with facts have KNOWN this for years, ever since he said it.

but of course, 99.9% of the western world thinks he said what the media says he said.

6/22/2012 8:43:21 PM

So, let me get this right? This is basically the equivalent of playing Civ4 and a nation like the Aztecs have an iron tile that is completely surrounded by their borders, but it doesn't actually fall within their borders. Then you come along and drop a settler on that one spot and start a city in the middle of their territory and they're pissed.

6/22/2012 10:46:54 PM

"Our close borders spark tension."

The only solution is an axeman rush.

6/22/2012 11:55:52 PM

Quote :

"-Britain then designated modern day Israel as a place where Jews from Europe could start a new country"

Actually that was the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

6/23/2012 12:24:00 AM

We have no copper. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

6/23/2012 8:02:05 PM

bump by request; posting link for JesusHChrist:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/07/iran-santions-suffering

10/8/2012 10:28:33 PM

Maybe they should have thought about that before they decided to be born in Iran.

10/8/2012 11:08:12 PM

^^good lookin' out, money.

Anyway, the gist of the article is simple:

Sanctions are starving millions of people, increasing anti-American sentiment, and actually increasing the regimes strength because the people who are most likely to be anti-Ahmedinejad are middle class voters, who are being pushed down to subsistence levels and becoming dependent on the state as their livelihoods are crushed by the result of the sanctions:

Quote :

"..the decade-long suffering of Iraqis was all futile when viewed next to the ostensible goal of sanctions: "the sanctions failed to remove Saddam from power and by many accounts helped him solidify his grip on the country by keeping the overwhelming majority of the population focused purely on subsistence." Some isolated exceptions notwithstanding, the very idea that a regime can be undermined by severely weakening the population that would otherwise oppose it - literally weakening them physically through food and medicine deprivation - is not only intuitively absurd and morally grotesque but also empirically disproven. As Mohammad Sadeghi Esfahlani and Jamal Abdi recently documented in Foreign Policy, the sanctions regime, while devastating ordinary Iranians, is having virtually no effect on their leaders - other than to strengthen their grip on power: "Instead of speculating from afar, we should listen to the Iranians on the ground who are actually struggling for democracy firsthand. The leaders of the Green Movement and Iranian human rights and democracy defenders have adamantly opposed broad sanctions and warned that confrontation, isolation and broad economic punishment only undermine the cause of democracy and rule of law in Iran. A new report by the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) documents how sanctions are destroying the sources of societal change in Iran. 'The urban middle class that has historically played a central role in creating change and promoting progress in Iran are key casualties of the sanctions regime,' according to the report. "As documented by the report's firsthand account on the ground, sanctions are not driving the working class to join Iran's democracy movement, they are doing the opposite - decimating the Iranian middle class, that has been at the center of the democracy movement, by intensifying their economic struggles. The greatest impediment for Iran's pro-democracy movement - as we saw at the height of the Green Movement protests in 2009 - has been that working class Iranians who are preoccupied with immediate financial struggles are unable to enlist in a struggle for political freedoms.""

10/9/2012 1:34:19 AM

Romney wants to arm Syrian rebels and has said he is not supposed to additional intervention if necessary. Definitely related to this subject.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/08/romney-hope-is-not-strategy-in-middle-east/

10/9/2012 8:57:02 AM

i thought a lot of romney supporters are quick to point-out that the rebels are al queda and we shouldn't get involved?

10/9/2012 9:40:34 AM

Boots on the ground in Libya? BURN OBAMA!
Why aren't we on the ground in Syria? BURN OBAMA!

10/9/2012 9:45:16 AM

Above I meant to say not opposed to... (just noticed the autocorrect fail and can not edit)

10/9/2012 9:47:46 AM

i was just reading an article about how the value of Iran's currency dropped 40% in one week (it happened a week or two ago)

10/9/2012 12:48:09 PM

11/1/2012 5:51:22 PM

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/08/first-on-cnn-iranian-jets-fire-on-u-s-drone/

PEW PEW PEW!!

11/8/2012 7:01:30 PM

I heard about that the other day, but honestly couldn't believe it. I knew Iran was getting increasingly ballsy.... But goddammit if that's not poking a sleeping bear in the taint, I don't know what is.

11/8/2012 7:14:10 PM

^

Quote :

"The CNN report on this incident is revealing indeed. Every paragraph - literally - contains nothing but mindless summaries of the claims of US government officials. There is not an iota of skepticism about any of the assertions, including how this incident happened, what the drone was doing at the time, or where it took place. It is pure US government press release - literally; I defy anyone to identify any differences if the US government had issued its own press release directly rather than issuing it masquerading as a leaked CNN report. Most notably, CNN does not even bother with the pretense of trying to include the claims of the Iranian government about what happened. There is no indication that the self-described news outlet even made an effort to contact Tehran to obtain their rendition of these events or even confirmation that it occurred. It simply regurgitates the accusations of anonymous US officials that Iran, with no provocation, out of the blue decided to shoot at a US drone in international airspace. (Although CNN does not mention it, last December Iran shot down a US drone which, it claims (and the US does not deny) was in Iranian air space)."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/08/cnn-iran-drones-gulf


You know what we should do? Go in, change their regime on the pretense that they have WMDs and that they were responsible for 9/11, "shock and awe" them, declare that the civilian population will greet us as liberators, and then just fucking occupy them for a decade while 3,000 US soldiers and thousands more Iranian citizens die needlessly, all while we stoke the fires of anti-Americanism across the Muslim world.



That's sure to work this time.

11/8/2012 8:59:32 PM

11/9/2012 1:45:22 AM

^^ You really shouldn't link to Glenn Greenwald on here. The dude is a goddamn kook, constantly making up crazy new conspiracy theories to attack the US Govt. He should really be writing for PrisonPlanet or another crazy conspiracy site, but unfortunately he finds a receptive audience from angry, slightly delusional liberals such as yourself.

As for the drone shooting, it is easily verifiable from other news sources, and in fact the US Govt kept the story out of the press for a week so that it wouldn't affect elections. Hardly the case of a propaganda effort to smear Iran, like Greenwald alleges.

[Edited on November 9, 2012 at 3:37 AM. Reason : 2]

11/9/2012 3:36:11 AM

Quote :

"the US Govt kept the story out of the press for a week so that it wouldn't affect elections"

noticed that too. i am guessing that was iran's intent??

11/9/2012 10:36:36 AM

US Election ends.
Israel begins housekeeping in gaza.
IAEA releases report to UN that Iran has significantly increased nuclear capabilities in the last 2 weeks.

Its all leading to one thing.

11/17/2012 10:27:20 AM

Consider them put on notice

2/1/2017 2:08:49 PM

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-resolution/10/text
H.J.Res.10 - Authorization of Use of Force Against Iran Resolution
Sponsor: Rep. Hastings, Alcee L. [D-FL-20] (Introduced 01/03/2017)
Committees: House - Foreign Affairs
Latest Action: 01/03/2017 Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. (All Actions)

Quote :

"H. J. RES. 10 To authorize the use of the United States Armed Forces to achieve the goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. [...]"

the start

2/3/2017 2:53:04 PM

Does this mean we can get all the pallets of cash Obama airlifted to them back? Refunds???

2/3/2017 3:23:34 PM

it would mean flying in a shitload more

2/3/2017 3:26:18 PM

It would mean barbaric unprovoked aggression against yet another country leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of more civilians who will testify against their brutal brazen killers on the Day of Judgement, the day when the amoral killers will be thrown into the bottommost pits of Hell.

2/3/2017 10:10:34 PM

An actual war with Iran would be a monumentally stupid endeavor likely worse than Iraq. But the bluster of a war isn't inherently bad. The question really is how motivated is the trump admin for war? Trump tried to pretend he was very against Iraq, but who knows what bannon/miller/Flynn really think, they have had very bellicose rhetoric.

2/3/2017 11:29:55 PM

Wait wait wait... hear me out.

So we airlift Iran $ Billions to be nice

But they start testing missiles...

Maybe that just means we need to airlift them MORE cash? #ObamaLogic

2/4/2017 10:19:27 PM

Why do we care that Iran is testing missiles, do you think they are going to use them on us?

2/5/2017 12:31:58 AM

The rhetoric is certainly being turned up.

Surely this is a Bannon thing. He's made no secrets of the fact he thinks a holy war is inevitable. I don't think Trump believes that though, so maybe restraint will win.

[Edited on February 5, 2017 at 9:27 AM. Reason : Bannon really needs to go. Just a scary guy.]

2/5/2017 9:26:58 AM

conflicting reports are coming out about a Yemen SCUD missile striking Riyadh. If that's true, then Iran's proxy war with Saudi Arabia just got escalated up further.

2/5/2017 6:33:07 PM

Lol "conflicting reports"

2/5/2017 6:54:34 PM