Iran Wants to Talk

They really don't. They care about staying in power and use ideology to accomplish that goal. You think their "religious police" are truly religious, or just sex offenders who smell opportunity?

 

Iran's economy is not too far from collapse, after decades of mismanagement.

 

Can't they be both? At any rate, they use religion as an excuse like a lot of others.

 

Iranian women before the Revolution -
Photos Show What Life Looked Like for Iranian Women Before 1979 Revolution




And after








VOTE BLUE

 

Oh, 100% on that my friend. I just wonder how long their shtick will continue to resonate.

 

Everybody at the time, republican democrat, netenyahu were all saying that Iran going nuclear was the biggest international threat. Maybe that was true, maybe that wasn’t. Presuming that it was, doing something the mitigate it would seem to be a logical step. By all accounts a military strike was not thought to be a highly reliable way to accomplish it. Sanctions were not stopping them from progressing. So a deal was made and a deal requires compromise. I have no evidence or reason to think there was a “better deal” to be had.

We could have tried to choke Iran out via sanctions, let them potentially develop nukes, and see what happened. Would that have worked out better? I have no way of knowing.

During the surge we were paying Sunni tribes to keep the peace and it worked. However any democratic government was going to be Shia lead because Iraq was more Shia than Sunni. At some point we had to work directly with the Iraqi government. We went through all that work to set up a democracy. At some point you have to work directly with the government. Continuing to fund Sunni tribes would have been undermining the government.

Of course, it all fell apart because the Shia government wanted us out, wouldn’t renew status of forces protecting US troops, and wanted to start enacting their pound of flesh against the Sunnis, and then the inevitable happened. So were we supposed to fund the Sunni tribes against the government we helped set up? Were we supposed to keep troops there when the government didn’t want us, put our troops in danger and Obama break his promise to get us out?

Obama did make the mistake of repeating “Assad must go” rhetoric and later throwing out “red lines”. However there were really no viable alternatives to Assad. The alternatives were mostly militant Sunnis which arguably would have been worse. I’m not sure what sort of military options were even feasible. Take Assad out? Then what?

As to the chemical weapons he shouldn’t have uttered the words red line. But once he was presented with an option of a negotiated settlement re chemical weapons he took it, vs launching some token face saving military strike that likely would have accomplished nothing. Was it the right decision, I don’t know but it wasn’t an irrational one. Obama’s goal was to get us out of ME wars not to entangle us in yet another one.

 

You may not think so; but, Iran's actions seem to indicate it does.
FBI says Iranian hackers stole Trump campaign info – NBC New York

 

Hopefully, we can make a deal to trade food for destruction of their weapons factories and their nuclear weapons program. It's hard to be too optimistic with them, however.

 

We made three rather serious mistakes in Iraq.

1) Failed to properly guard the large weapons caches that we found in Iraq, including one that was 2 miles by 1 mile, and contained 200 tons of high explosives, I believe. We had a total of 12 soldiers guarding it, or one every half of a mile or so. The insurgents just drove up in pickup trucks and drove off with the explosives. The soldiers were too scared to fire a shot. The war was lost right then and there; the insurgents had more than enough explosives to kill every U.S. soldier in the region with IED's from that point on. We had the war won, and then we gave it away, along with the lives of thousands of U.S. troops.

2) Not sending a strong message to Iran about not interfering with Iraq. GWB was stupid enough to appoint a horse show organizer to be in charge of organizing things in Iraq, and he was asked on Day 1 if he had a message to deliver to Iran, and he said no. Iran took that as an indication that they were free to interfere through terrorist financing and support as much as they wanted, and the U.S. wouldn't do anything.

3) Rushing to bring democracy to the entire country, knowing that the Islamic groups did not get along. It would have been far smarter to organize local democracies within each region that contained a particular religious group, and minimized their interaction, with the U.S. or the U.N. managing the entire country, until such time as Iraqis were ready to assume the responsibility for the entire country. It may have taken 20 years or more to get to that point, but GWB was in a hurry to declare "mission accomplished" yet again, and was not smart or wise enough to understand what the consequences would be.

Agree with you on the red line. If you say it, you must obey it, and do something about it. Dumping the decision off on Congress to authorize military action was also a weak thing to do, knowing he probably wouldn't get it, and knowing that he certainly didn't need Congressional authorization. I don't know that military action needed to necessarily involve us in another war. A lot could have been accomplished through aerial bombing, without bringing ground troops into Syria. We wound up involving ground troops anyway to fight ISIS. At one point, there were 11 factions in Syria fighting each other. One of our allies (Turkey) was backing one faction that was fighting a faction that we were supporting. That's poor leadership.

 

Looks like Iran wants to get in line to take a shot or two at former president Donald Trump. Seems like we should discourage this on some level.

US intel warns of Iran threats to assassinate Trump: campaign

If anyone is going to shoot Trump, it should be a mentally-disturbed American. We have plenty of 'em, and there are plenty of guns available, thanks to Trump and his followers.

Just kidding. Trump needs to be ridden into an orange sunset on a large buffalo after he loses this election. By "orange sunset", I mean federal prison. By "large buffalo", I mean JD Vance.

 

Actually, I read that the reason that Trump had additional security (including a rooftop sniper) during his first shooting was that the Secret Service was concerned about a threat from Iran to assassinate him. The Secret Service usually does not post counter-snipers on a candidate before the party convention picks a final candidate. The fact that it was a former president probably also weighed into the decision.

Ironic that by choosing to target Trump for assassination, Iran might have accidentally saved his life from a crazy, low-life American. Iran seems to be cursed lately with their foreign policy.

Trump had counter-snipers on day of assassination attempt because of threat, bipartisan report says

 

Biden should say, "I've spoken to the Ayatollah and he pinky swore he isn't up to anything. I have no reason to disbelieve him."

 

No way does Iran want to provoke a major military response from Israel. Especially if the U.S. might get involved. Iran is already poor and starving--they can't afford to get their 7-11's blown up, too. Iran's leadership is crazy, but they're not stupid.

 

Where else is Hezbollah going to get its missiles? For most middle east terrorist groups, Iran is the only game in town. And they have the best prices. No coupons required.