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Al-Saqr posted:1. Iran is not a benevolent force in the region, they are every bit as murderous and oppressive through their proxies as any other fascist movement. Grouchio fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Nov 8, 2017 |
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Nov 8, 2017 19:35
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Al-Saqr posted:2. try being a decent human being and not a total retard, be for democracy, freedom and human rights rather than arbitrarily picking one group of murderers and oppressors over another. Remember this is Grouchio you are talking to, his whole gimmick is being incredibly retarded and masturbating furiously over the most violent and vicious American interventions he can conceive. His ideal ideal foreign policy would be to back Contra style killers everywhere on earth without any regard for the lives lost or misery inflicted or blowback incurred. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 8, 2017 19:51
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Al-Saqr posted:1. Iran is not a benevolent force in the region, they are every bit as murderous and oppressive through their proxies as any other fascist movement. There is not a chance in hell I'd support Saudi Arabia in any case. [Part of me personally hopes every woman in that nation takes a knife and sticks it in the nearest man.] When it comes to geopolitics, I fall back on computer games, but I end up looking for the facts regardless. Saudi pretty much always had Western support for over a century. Iran not only rebuked it, but was never offered it to the same degree. And, to be fair, Saudi Arabia is genuinely more evil, as in actually morally evil. But from a games standpoint, Iran would have been hosed! They would have done anything! The fact that they remained mostly independent from the Soviets while rebuking the Americans meant they were cut off and lost! And they still won. They were winners. They fought Saddam's chemical weapons and denied his objectives. They are still there. And, tourists still travel there. Women tourists still travel there. And the women tourists are regarded as actual people, not as property. Your move, loving Saudis! [And didn't you JUST imprison a bunch of your own relatives for corruption???]
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Nov 8, 2017 19:56
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Squalid posted:Remember this is Grouchio you are talking to, his whole gimmick is being incredibly retarded and masturbating furiously over the most violent and vicious American interventions he can conceive. His ideal ideal foreign policy would be to back Contra style killers everywhere on earth without any regard for the lives lost or misery inflicted or blowback incurred. To be fair, Contra-style killers would also handily defeat every alien invasion. Until they stub their toe on something, that is. 
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Nov 8, 2017 19:57
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IronClaymore posted:There is not a chance in hell I'd support Saudi Arabia in any case. [Part of me personally hopes every woman in that nation takes a knife and sticks it in the nearest man.] They just helped decimate an entire generation of Syrians.
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Nov 8, 2017 19:59
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As long as there aren't too many nuns around who's to complain.
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Nov 8, 2017 20:06
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WoodrowSkillson posted:They just helped decimate an entire generation of Syrians. You misspelled TERRORISTS There isn't much hope for the Middle East going into the 21st century and the best the region could hope for would be a future where various regional powers don't attempt to dominate the rest of the Middle East and instead work together to stave off the effects of climate change and reform their police states. But I think we're more likely to see another caliphate before we see any sort of cooperation between Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel and serious governmental reforms. It's been surreal following the purges, "reforms" and "wars" stemming from Saudi Arabia and I'm very leary about the kingdoms stability going forward.
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Nov 8, 2017 20:09
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Al-Saqr posted:1. Iran is not a benevolent force in the region, they are every bit as murderous and oppressive through their proxies as any other fascist movement. This isn't inherent in "Iranianess" but is a result of a government with a siege mentality that has expanded its influence to protect itself. The origin of its external support of proxies came from legitimate issues in the sovereignty of Shias in Lebanon & Iraq under Saddam. This view has been dramatically altered by US invasions to the east & west, success in Lebanon, and the correct perception that an Israeli-Saudi axis has emerged post-2006. So none of this is to say that Iran would not have continued to support proxies if they weren't under constant threat of war, but the extent of the support would have been different. Regardless, the distinguishing features that in my mind leaves Iran an exception is the decaying grip of hardliners as they die off in Iran as the middle class grows (slowly, thanks to sanctions) & liberal youth age. V this was coming sooner or later. Caspian Report predicted it with good reason guidoanselmi fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Nov 8, 2017 |
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Nov 8, 2017 20:52
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Welp https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/928263953096105985
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Nov 8, 2017 20:53
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The leader of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Struggle_Movement_for_the_Liberation_of_Ahwaz was assassinated today in The Hague, was this group anywhere on the radar of anyone to get such a high profile hit ordered ?
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Nov 8, 2017 20:59
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Not really surprised by the result, just by the form. You know if anything it means that mbs' control on the regime wasn't that secure if they had to loving jail 3/4 of his cousins to assure the succession.
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Nov 8, 2017 21:04
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Al-Saqr posted:They are not a force for good at all. Who is? Saudi Arabia? The United Arab Emirates? Turkey? Egypt? Iraq? Syria? Israel? Yemen? Qatar? Oman? Lebanon? Who in that cursed region can be described as a force for good? They're all either forces for evil, or not a force at all. So we end up having to look at the lesser evil and that's when you get people saying "I support this brutal repressive misogynistic theocracy because I like them better than those brutal repressive misogynistic theocracies" and  As for the murder brigades in Syria, the blame is primarily to place on Assad because he's the fucker who decided to genocide his own people instead of compromising in the first place. Iran, like Russia, are guilty of aiding and abetting out of geopolitical calculus, but they're merely accomplices. Assad is the one who is responsible.
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Nov 8, 2017 21:14
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This has been predicted for some time here, wouldn't be very surprising.
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Nov 8, 2017 21:17
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CeeJee posted:The leader of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Struggle_Movement_for_the_Liberation_of_Ahwaz was assassinated today in The Hague, was this group anywhere on the radar of anyone to get such a high profile hit ordered ?
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Nov 8, 2017 21:45
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Squalid posted:Remember this is Grouchio you are talking to, his whole gimmick is being incredibly retarded and masturbating furiously over the most violent and vicious American interventions he can conceive. His ideal ideal foreign policy would be to back Contra style killers everywhere on earth without any regard for the lives lost or misery inflicted or blowback incurred. Grouchio opposed the TPP because he thought the extension of Japanese copyright terms from life plus 50 to life plus 70 would somehow ruin the anime industry. He just doesn't know how politics work.
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Nov 8, 2017 22:09
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Jeez louise, Saudi Arabia, catch your drat breath
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Nov 8, 2017 22:15
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CeeJee posted:The leader of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Struggle_Movement_for_the_Liberation_of_Ahwaz was assassinated today in The Hague, was this group anywhere on the radar of anyone to get such a high profile hit ordered ? Iran. They have a long history of assassinations abroad. That said, I'm not finding anything on this story. Any Dutch links? Tangentially related but an interesting person for those who don't know him or his story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawud_Salahuddin
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Nov 8, 2017 22:21
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guidoanselmi posted:Iran. They have a long history of assassinations abroad. That said, I'm not finding anything on this story. Any Dutch links? https://denhaagfm.nl/2017/11/08/in-jan-van-riebeekstraat-vermoorde-man-blijkt-iraanse-politicus/ Three bullets in the head according to a witness.
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Nov 8, 2017 22:36
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hell yeah its been a while since we've assassinated someone on foreign soil
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Nov 8, 2017 22:39
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:Jeez louise, Saudi Arabia, catch your drat breath That is p much the last thing the prince wants for it. Hence, those recent arrests being a punch to its gut that effectively knock its breath out so it can't react effectively to his power grab.
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Nov 9, 2017 00:38
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spaceships posted:hell yeah its been a while since we've assassinated someone on foreign soil Bin Laden was a non person  as were all those south and central american political figures that met their unfortunate 'accidents'
CrazyLoon fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Nov 9, 2017 |
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Nov 9, 2017 00:40
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IronClaymore posted:There is not a chance in hell I'd support Saudi Arabia in any case. [Part of me personally hopes every woman in that nation takes a knife and sticks it in the nearest man.] Saudi Arabia isn't even a century old. America had little to no politcal interest in the Middle East until WW2. Until the Islamic Revolution Iran was a primary American regional ally, together with Egypt the earliest, and one of the top receivers of American aid in the entire world (particularly weapons). The Saudi alliance dates back roughly to the 70s mind you (and the Israeli to the early 60s after Egypt came under Soviet influence until the 70s).
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Nov 9, 2017 02:58
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this article portrays an other side to the story https://iranian.com/2017/11/08/irans-assassins-murder-prominent-ahwazi-activist-hague/ we're actually also political refugees from Ahwaz living in the Netherlands so I'm curious as to how my family view this event. what i do know from my father is that Khuzestan feels hosed over by the government since all the oil money is flowing to Tehran and they dont even fix cities like Khorramshahr which still have ruins from the war with Iraq. as a kid I've seen the racism against Arabs in Ahwaz and from my own relatives too even though we have Arab blood on my father's side. the horrible war did play a part in to this though
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Nov 9, 2017 04:03
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guidoanselmi posted:Regardless, the distinguishing features that in my mind leaves Iran an exception is the decaying grip of hardliners as they die off in Iran as the middle class grows (slowly, thanks to sanctions) & liberal youth age. You know, I've seen this sentiment a lot, but I can't say I've seen particularly compelling evidence that Iran is just brimming with these nice liberal young people who'll turn the country around when the old guard die and make it a Secular, Liberal society in stark contrast to the religious despots in the Gulf. I think people in the west hear about things like the Green movement and assume that represents the whole or a significant portion of the country when that's probably not really true. Iran is still an Islamic Republic that, among other things, has the highest per capita execution rate in the world and will execute people under 18 for such awful crimes as adultery and blasphemy. It's also a very unpopular country in most of the Sunni world, so I don't know what positive things people expect if it and Saudi Arabia switched roles.
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Nov 9, 2017 05:08
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Iranian society has been dominated by a hardline ideological minority since '79. It's not a contradiction to say that the government is a corrupt and theocratic totalitarian poo poo show and that most Iranians are moderates who yearn for reform. Rouhani is something of a synthesis of those two realities -- a safe channel for reformist impulses that doesn't threaten the dominant ideology. As Volkerball loves to point out, the "most Iranians are good people" argument is pretty irrelevant as long as they have a "supreme leader" who is willing to impose his manichaean worldview on the rest of society and even export it abroad. I'd like to believe that will change in time, but until it does, Iran's foreign policy will continue to be a source of misery and strife in the region.
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Nov 9, 2017 06:06
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Iran does have a considerably more cosmopolitan society than Saudi Arabia (based on much of the evidence I have seen and people I have talked to), that doesn't necessarily mean it is a good idea that they or really anyone "controls" the Middle East. The Ottomans are a good example of why this isn't a particularly good idea. That said, the execution rate for the Saudis is relatively similar per capita and they fluctuate versus each other year by year. Neither one is a particularly attractive regime. That said, I don't see why we need to explicitly support the Saudis, even if they tried another embargo, I doubt they still have the pull to get it done especially since Russia/Iran/Iraq all have extra capacity as does the US shale industry. I much rather see the US act more as a more neutral force focused on keeping peace in the region (which is never going to happen). (As let's be honest, Saudi Arabia is even more totalitarian and an even more destabilizing force than Iran is and they are clearly causing their own considerable degree of misery.)
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Nov 9, 2017 06:11
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If these figures are to be believed then Iran has consistently had a higher per capita execution rate than Saudi Arabia for years. You have to go back almost 10 years before they reach parity. I can see the argument that SA is more despotic overall but more destabilizing? I don't know about that, they've got a much wider economic and social reach than Iran does in the wider Muslim world, for good or ill, and trying to disentangle that at this point would probably be really destructive. Again Iran can't really just occupy the same space considering the ethnic and religious differences between them and the rest of the Middle East, and if the last few years are any indication they probably wouldn't be any less oppressive or supportive of violently sectarian allies than anyone else. What gets up my craw specifically is that I'm constantly seeing this 'oh, if the Iranians were in charge of the Middle East they'd definitely do a better job than Saudi Arabia/Turkey/Egypt/Whoever' on this site and I feel like its so drat simplistic, as if you could even trade them around like, I think there's an element of anti-Sunni sentiment there, though that's more explicit in places like Reddit where the civilized Shiites, who hardly ever have terrorist attacks on white people, need to be elevated to keep the ISIS supporting Sunnis under wraps.
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Nov 9, 2017 06:44
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khwarezm posted:If these figures are to be believed then Iran has consistently had a higher per capita execution rate than Saudi Arabia for years. You have to go back almost 10 years before they reach parity. I think the point is that while Iran has higher execution rates, the Saudis are usually just the next place down (they weren't that far behind in 2014), neither one deserves brownie points. Between MbS (disputes with Qatar and now Lebanon), Yemen and the money we know that is coming out of the Gulf to radical groups, yeah they are almost certainly as destabilizing or arguably more destabilizing. It is just replacing them with Iran would just be role reversal that wouldn't actually fix anything. At this point though, I think "taking Iran" out of the equation would be even more dangerous and the only thing that can be done is try to mitigate the damage both states are doing to their neighbors. My hope eventually some type of equilibrium is reached without full-scale war.
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Nov 9, 2017 07:14
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Ardennes posted:I think the point is that while Iran has higher execution rates, the Saudis are usually just the next place down (they weren't that far behind in 2014), neither one deserves brownie points. I wonder how the execution rates would look if we could account for extrajudicial/tribal law/"sharia" killings. Both Iran and the KSA have an issue with paramilitary "moral police" and other alleged "non-state" actors taking the law into their own hands. My impression is this is worse in Saudi, but I don't have the stats to back that up.
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Nov 9, 2017 08:20
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Ardennes posted:I think the point is that while Iran has higher execution rates, the Saudis are usually just the next place down (they weren't that far behind in 2014), neither one deserves brownie points. You're being too vague here and I don't know why, you said they were basically the same when it came to execution rates but the point is they're not the same, from most figures I can dig up. It's nothing to do with Brownie points it's do with the fact that too many people have a kind naive view of what Iranian society is like. Even with somebody like Rouhani in charge at the moment, he came off the back of Ahmadinejad. As ridiculous as his demonization usually got in the west he was still a hardcore right-wing, religious populist and even now without the support of the Guardian Council he's a popular, influential figure in the country. I don't want to demonize Iran I'm just pointing out that I don't think the situation can be boiled down to a zealot government imposed over a population with totally different views, honestly a lot of Iran is very conservative in a way that's pretty in line with government policies. This question of destabilizing other countries can go on and on. Iran's taken a very hands on role in Iraq and Syria in a way that would make me very weary about their future behavior in the region. They've also gotten involved in Lebanon, Palestine and, yes, Yemen in ways that's probably not in the best interests of the locals. Their ability to act freely has been curtailed by the sanctions and, again, the religious and ethnic realities of the Middle East restricts them to a large degree, I don't think there's a great argument that Iran is less of a destabilizing force than SA, especially when you consider the theaters it can operate with impunity, how do you even quantify that kind of thing at this point anyway.
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Nov 9, 2017 08:24
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CrazyLoon posted:Bin Laden was a non person pretty sure the americans did that, the "we" was referring to iranians.
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Nov 9, 2017 09:01
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I think Iran and Saudi are locked in the classic cold war scenario of using the other regime's misdeeds to justify their own. I don't think taking one or the other out of the equation would "fix" their rival overnight (look at all the poo poo the post cold war US has pulled), but finding a way to ratchet down tensions would probably be a good thing for both countries and the broader Middle East.
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Nov 9, 2017 09:02
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khwarezm posted:I think there's an element of anti-Sunni sentiment there, though that's more explicit in places like Reddit where the civilized Shiites, who hardly ever have terrorist attacks on white people, need to be elevated to keep the ISIS supporting Sunnis under wraps. Oh certainly. I think there's also an element of reaction to the constant drumbeat of "Iran is the most evil country of Earth; the House of Saud is cool and good tho" from western governments. The "terrorist attacks on white people" angle just feeds into this: "why are we friends and allies with a country that is stocking sectarian tensions all over the world with its proselytism of salafism; while we accuse of terrorism a country that has largely left us alone?" Two decades of singing "bomb Iran" and lumping them with North Korea as the "axis of evil" while Al Qaeda and Daesh were competing for who could make the most spectacular act of mass murder would tend to make people question why exactly they're supposed to hate Iran so much. And perhaps the Shiites have an element of underdog sympathy because they are persecuted by the Sunnites in most Muslim-majority countries other than Iran (most visibly in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as Iraq during baathist rule).
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Nov 9, 2017 14:19
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Of course the West shouldn't (and isn't going to) 'give' the Middle East to Iran....but like it or not, Iran's influence and political and military power in the Middle east is only going to rise. They're a large, young, vibrant, ambitious nation with a relatively diversified economy and a population twice that of the Arab gulf states.
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Nov 9, 2017 14:30
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Yeah, but the Gulf states are also Uber rich and have a young, rapidly growing population too, not to mention tremendous social and political influence around the Middle East, especially so long as somewhere like Saudi Arabia controls the holy cities. To be honest it looks really loving difficult to ratchet down the conflict between these two parties at this point.
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Nov 9, 2017 14:37
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I love how quickly supposed radical anti-establishment leftists will hop in on the generic Kissinger realpolitik bullshit as soon as the victims of such stupid thinking get foreign enough that we can't identify with them anymore. It's pretty obvious who you're supposed to side with on these issues when you stop looking at the geopolitical actors as factions in a loving video game that you get to arbitrarily pick between based on poo poo like who has the cooler flag.
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Nov 9, 2017 14:56
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Volkerball posted:I love how quickly supposed radical anti-establishment leftists will hop in on the generic Kissinger realpolitik bullshit as soon as the victims of such stupid thinking get foreign enough that we can't identify with them anymore. It's pretty obvious who you're supposed to side with on these issues when you stop looking at the geopolitical actors as factions in a loving video game that you get to arbitrarily pick between based on poo poo like who has the cooler flag. Kind of a mirror image of freedom loving neocons embracing ostensibly friendly dictators as long as they have the right enemies.
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Nov 9, 2017 15:08
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It's almost as if you can be a hypocrite regardless of your political leaning.
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Nov 9, 2017 15:10
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Westerners obviously sympathize more with Shi'ites since Sunnis are the ones committing most terror attacks in the west, and Shi'ites are often the target of terror attacks in Muslim countries too.
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Nov 9, 2017 15:11
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https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/928627833185931264
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