Hot Karl Marx posted:

this sounds important

https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1213103642988793858

Flying_Crab posted:

https://twitter.com/karlbode/status/1213118670181822464?s=21

I’m sure GG will be on Tucker Carlson soon explaining why this is a good thing.

CBJSprague24 posted:

Oil prices shot up on the news so, both a potential gently caress-all war AND we'll pay more at the pump. Thanks, Fuhrer!

colachute posted:

Didn’t gas prices hitting like $4/gal plummet GWB’s approval nationally?

Best Friends posted:

Yeah. I think the smartest and lowest bodycount response Iran could do would be to release the piss tape.

Hannibal Rex posted:

Best Friends posted:

Yeah. I think the smartest and lowest bodycount response Iran could do would be steps to increase fuel costs. It'll be tricky to not do something in the course of that that makes Trump start bombing though. Especially since Trump seems like he really wants an excuse to start bombing.

quote:

Here we get Rafsanjani really trying to make peace with the US and just cool everyone off, they gave a huge oil contract to a US company to develop an offshore oil field, the government and the CIA pushed for this to happen as they really wanted to try and break the ice. But then the republicans won Congress and the Israeli lobby and those who just plain hated Bill Clinton and they put up even harsher economic sanctions. This is the point that Newt Gingrich really starts yelling about overthrowing Iran. He pushed through a very public 18 million dollars for the CIA's budget for Iranian operations. This would accomplish bugger all, you can’t run a spy ring in a coffee shop for 18 million. It completely tanked any chance of the CIA really developing any meaningful Iranian intelligence network (Which they had lost in its entirety 6 years prior). What the CIA actually did was stuff like smuggling books into Iran. The one thing this really achieved was in convincing Iran that America was essentially declaring full scale covert war against them, so Iran countered by actually declaring covert war. They attempted to start a riot in Bahrain and then blew up Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, a building that housed a bunch of USAF personnel of whom they killed 20 and injured a further 400. The revolutionary guard navy harassed boats in the gulf leading to concerns about suicide boat attacks against the USN.

…

It took some wrangling but the US agrees over the objections of Bolton, Wolfowitz and Luti (the assistant secretary of defence for near eastern affairs, who had served as Gingriches military aid before entering the administration). Iran gives the US significant intelligence about where the Taliban are in Afghanistan and are really pushing commonalities, the US are a bit leery but take their information and it develops into regular talks.

...

However at this point the Israelis intercept a shipment of weapons to Palestine from Iran, it seems unlikely this was an official government action but it still puts a bit of a spanner in the works. Then we get possibly the most ill-considered speech, the Axis of Evil speech. Which is notable because it didn’t come out of US government policy on Iran, because the US government had no policy on Iran at all, it was a lyrical flourish. This really hacks off Iran who withdraw from the talks, release a major Taliban commander and start undermining the government the US is trying to install in Afghanistan.

…

This is essentially the very very short version of Iranian relations with the US since 1989. I hope it has illuminated why making a deal with Iran is quite so drat difficult. They are a deeply fractured nation with an uneasy balance of power between moderates and radicals. There is only really one person who can actually impart order, and that is the Supreme Leader Khameini. The supreme religious lot in charge are all really loving old, they have been there for decades and have seen everything come to nought and still in my view cling to this idea of Iranian regional hegemon as a greater Shia state that Khomeini explicitly stated was the goal of the Islamic revolution back in 1979.

...

The second is that Iran is pretty much as to blame for this as the US is, precisely how much is open to personal interpretation, there is no denying the huge scale of the damage that Dubyas administration did to ever finding an actual solution. But Iran has nobody but itself to blame for the fact that nobody likes them given their constant and repeated actions. It’s a revolutionary state that never learned to stop fighting, and really its been fighting for nigh on 40 years now.

…

Iran and America now just fundamentally cannot trust each other, Iranian overtures historically have largely been met by either disbelief or a demand for complete capitulation by the US. And US overtures have been met with either silence or another campaign of bombings by Iran. The fact that the Obama deal got signed at all is an absolute miracle given the legacy of distrust that it had to overcome. Hardliners on both sides want war, its very difficult for them not to get it at this stage.

a real dude posted:

Drone attacks seem a little pricey and scaredy cat like when we have heroes like Eddie Gallagher and his hatchet. I bet if you rounded up everybody with a punisher decal on their truck we could take down Iran in weekend.

quote:

Time for the draft. I'm tired of my taxes being used to lure recruits with promises of free college, etc. It kind of distracts from that whole notion of "service".

dubzee posted:

A buddy of mine is retired SF, still does recon training on contract basis 'round Fayettenam, he just posted this on FB and I had to share:

LongDarkNight posted:

Any chance Iraq will tell us to pack up our poo poo an leave?

a real dude posted:

Drone attacks seem a little pricey and scaredy cat like when we have heroes like Eddie Gallagher and his hatchet. I bet if you rounded up everybody with a punisher decal on their truck we could take down Iran in weekend.

UP THE BUM NO BABY posted:

https://twitter.com/jpaceDC/status/1213154848448876544?s=19

a real dude posted:

Drone attacks seem a little pricey and scaredy cat like when we have heroes like Eddie Gallagher and his hatchet. I bet if you rounded up everybody with a punisher decal on their truck we could take down Iran in weekend.

facialimpediment posted:

They're in the process of doing so in the Iraqi parliament right now. The bigger question is if we'll listen or not.

Hot Karl Marx posted:

still a rumour so far

https://twitter.com/farnazfassihi/status/1213166276752879616

facialimpediment posted:

https://twitter.com/AsherLangton/status/1213122262045483008?s=19

Hot Karl Marx posted:

still a rumour so far

https://twitter.com/farnazfassihi/status/1213166276752879616

madeintaipei posted:

Mustafa Salim (@Mustafa_salimb) Tweeted:
@farnazfassihi I just called the Iraqi army 7th division commander who is based there, he completely denied it.

EBB posted:

Let's maybe not jump to conclusions based on unconfirmed twitter rumors.