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Saladin Rising posted:Raqqa is done, we're still supplying the SDF. I'm very curious to see if we continue supplying the SDF after ISIS no longer officially holds territory, since that would indicate a bit more of a long-term commitment. Sputnik Turkiye though. Count Roland posted:I wonder how much of this was planned by that loving orb. FTFY
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mediadave posted:I also have Iranian in-laws , but they don't really talk (to me) about Iran or the middle east except to moan about family drama and the ownership of the carpet factory (yep...) That reminds me of a very nice comedy movie about culture clash and communication issues.
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Nov 7, 2017 18:24
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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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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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Don't worry, Macron is in Riyadh right now and he's gonna convince the Saudi to fix everything.
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Nov 9, 2017 21:14
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I'll count that as a fix.
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Nov 9, 2017 21:29
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When I think "societies believing in tolerance", I think "birthplace of salafism", yes. Raif Badawi blogged a good article on Saudi tolerance. Or at least, he would have, I'm sure.
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Nov 11, 2017 15:00
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But it also meant that it gave Junior a way to overcome his daddy issues by "finishing the job".
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Nov 13, 2017 17:01
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Al-Saqr posted:Good article about how KSA is floundering in its fight against Iranian influence and why they keep failing:- "incompetent and U.S.-backed" -- I'd say "incompetent because U.S.-backed. There was no pressure to adapt since they didn't need to fend for themselves, so they allowed themselves to become complacent.
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Nov 17, 2017 18:58
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I kind of dislike these "uncleaned" audio transcripts. They have no value outside of linguistic studies IMO. I know people talk like this, but when you read it instead of hear it, it just make them seem like morons, because it brings emphasis to all the hesitations and abandoned sentence fragments that you normally just ignore in a conversation.
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Nov 19, 2017 00:54
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Turkey is a NATO member who is also a JSF partner. They're planning to buy a lot of Grover's favorite airplane, a commitment that got them the very coveted spot of being the engine maintenance hub for the whole Europe+MENA region. But that was before Erdogan discovered that actually, he likes Moscow, Beijing and Tehran more than Washington. And notably he's buying a Russian air defense system. So now people in the US are getting upset about the whole Turkey being a JSF partner deal. Here comes the threats: https://www.defensenews.com/digital...into-nato-tech/ quote:further action may be forthcoming that could affect the country’s acquisition or operation of the F-35, a top Air Force official said Wednesday. Pundits are bringing some public pressure on the topic, too. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/i...article/2641027 So Turkey retaliates to blackmail with more blackmail. http://www.yenisafak.com/en/news/turkey-may-remove-us-radar-if-f-35s-not-delivered-on-schedule-2808663 quote:In retaliation to the American blackmail, Ankara may take measures of its own in response, atop of which is the possible dismantling of the powerful Malatya- Kürecik AN-TPY-2 radar that was set up by the U.S. in 2012.
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Nov 20, 2017 15:02
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Hariri is back at home, and announced that he 'suspends' his resignation. http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient...18315_3218.html She cannot drive yet, so that was the next best thing.
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Nov 22, 2017 15:03
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Please do not insult animals or neanderthals by comparing them to fascists. Also please try not to get an all-expenses-paid stay at the Ritz Carlton.
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Nov 24, 2017 17:29
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Shageletic posted:Yeah the linkage of blackwater which doesn't even exist anymore (I think even Xe might be defunct) They're as defunct as the United Fruit Company, which is to say, they just change their name from time to time to get rid of the bad press. Nowadays, they go by Academi.
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Nov 25, 2017 14:43
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guidoanselmi posted:I read your post earlier and didn't think otherwise. Then this came up on my feed: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-s...e-idUKKBN1DQ0EU Feh. If they were waiting for a terrorist attack to announce something, unfortunately, all they needed was a bit of patience. No reason to go full truther about it.
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Nov 27, 2017 01:33
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Dapper_Swindler posted:genuinly sad. Irans goverment is loving terrible but there was chance of future reform/hell maybe populist overthrow if we let the country open up and etc. Now trump has made the same mistake the Iraqis made in the 80s and the Persians have rallied around the flag and to their homeland and now a hardliner will be in power. good times ahead indeed. Which is why I hope that European policy will keep a certain openness and play the good cop to the US's bad cop. In other news, according to the NYT, MBS will probably have to abort the privatization of Aramco. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-mohammed-bin-salman.html quote:The extrajudicial arrests have spooked investors enough, analysts say, to extinguish the prince’s plans for an public stock offering of Aramco, the Saudi state oil company, in New York or London next year. It had been a centerpiece of his overhaul.
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Nov 27, 2017 16:51
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In Pakistan you have the military, but you also have the intelligence services. From what little I know, the Pakistanese intelligence services are those who are behind propping up terrorist groups everywhere (in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, at home...) and the government doesn't really control them.
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Nov 27, 2017 23:54
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Count Roland posted:I strongly disagree with this, mostly because I see Iran getting quite a lot stronger in the coming decades. Not as strong as Russia, but strong enough to exert strong influence on neighbouring states. Yep, but right now both are pissed at the USA, for their own reasons, and Russia is keen to capitalize on that. And so you get this:  Look at how smug Vladdy looks on that picture. As for getting ancestral clay back, I doubt they'll try anything in the near future. Even if they had irredentist views on these territories (do they actually?), it's not something that could be done militarily against a Russia that remains one of the most powerful military nations on Earth just by virtue of having a ton of nukes. In fact, Russia itself gave us the playbook for how to do that kind of poo poo: foster nationalist sentiment, try to be subtle about it so that it doesn't look like a threat until it's ready and you get a good opportunity to strike because the central power is destabilized and won't be able to react forcefully. It'd take a couple generations at least IMO to build the base, and then who knows how long waiting for a collapse of the Russian government. Definitely not something Putin has to worry about.
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Nov 29, 2017 19:44
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Josef bugman posted:On that note, a larger philosophical question: How do we encourage better respect for Human Rights in the Middle East from a policy standpoint? 1. Stop the influx of weapons in the region, and in fact try to organize disarmament. 3. Freeze the assets of the worst people as far as corruption and funding of terrorism are concerned. 4. Beyond that, just stop meddling. Stop backing such or such group for political expediency reasons. Just, you know, stop.
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Nov 29, 2017 21:50
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https://twitter.com/egea_blog/status/936352887583772672 Sudan proposes to host a Russian base on the Red Sea. They can't offer a really strategic location, though, since they aren't Djibouti. Anyway I guess this shows that Russia has become an interesting friend for MENA countries in the throes of an endless civil war?
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Dec 1, 2017 01:48
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UK has far greater expeditionary capabilities than Germany, gimped carrier or not. Still have overseas military bases in a bunch of places (in fact that's a reason why aircraft carriers were neglected: planners figured that an island is like a carrier that doesn't sink; read up on the "island strategy"). Since this is the ME thread, I'll just mention Bahrain, Cyprus, and Qatar. Plus, nuke, UNSC permanent seat, etc. This kind of things help punching a bit above your weight. Germany on the other hand has a larger economy but their military is a joke, basically nothing more than a scheme to subsidize their weapon industry so that they can export their crap. Typically, they order a lot more than they need (which gives them that must more weight to get the lion's share of the workshare in international projects) and then they just sell off all the surplus directly as brand-new second-hand stuff. Then they don't bother funding maintenance of the stuff they've kept, so the German military ends up training with broomsticks instead of guns. This has been largely encouraged because after two world wars, nobody wanted Germany to have a strong military anymore; not even the Germans themselves.
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Dec 1, 2017 14:53
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Honestly that Wahsh guy looks pretty fascist to me. When someones says it's a patriotic duty to assault people because of how they look? They're 100% a fascist. It's science.
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Dec 2, 2017 21:11
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How was Saleh a "prominent world leader"? Like even if you considered him the legitimate chief of state of Yemen (a different debate in the first place), how is leadership of Yemen something that makes you prominent?
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Dec 5, 2017 22:12
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Warbadger posted:It is kinda odd seeing pro-Assad/Ghaddafi voices cheering his death on, though, given he was the secular strongman and knocked off by self-declared islamists. About as odd as seeing anti-Assad/Ghaddafi condemning his death. It's all a question of whose son of a bitch he was.
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Dec 6, 2017 14:39
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None of the leaders who fought against Israel in the past is still around, the "new" generation of Arab dictators is one that grew up with Israel being a thing that exist. It was a convenient scapegoat to distract the population from their problems at home, but not something that they personally cared about. So it shouldn't be a surprise that they're ready to drop it; especially since nowadays there's a new convenient scapegoat: the terrorists, who are of course and obviously backed by the Nefarious Iran. Israel and the Arab dictatorships can all be allied under Uncle Sam's umbrella for a great righteous war against the Perfidious Persians. Hatred of the Shia will replace hatred of the Jews as a substitution target for anger against the government, and to that end a book entitled "Protocols of the Elders of Iran" will appear in the near future.
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Dec 7, 2017 17:37
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MBS is brash enough to just execute all the naysayers instead of attempting to appease them.
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Dec 8, 2017 15:01
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For Christmas this year, Qatar wants protectors. On December 7, they bought 12 additional Rafale aircraft (in addition to the 24 already purchased) and reserved an option for 36 more in the future. And three days later, today, they signed up a contract for 24 Typhoon aircraft from the UK. They had also signed up for 36 F-15 earlier. Will they look at the MiG-35 and FC-31 next? Just so as to round out the P5 favors?
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Dec 10, 2017 20:41
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The aircraft themselves are near useless in the short term. For the Typhoon, deliveries are planned for 2022 for example. And actually operating them requires a ton of infrastructure and logistical support that Qatar doesn't have yet. Most likely most of their pilots will have to be foreign mercenaries. They're buying them for political favors.
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Dec 10, 2017 21:09
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The Mossad has a lot of experience assassinating nuclear scientists.
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Dec 11, 2017 15:10
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Fahad al-Saud has never been more prepared for anything in his life. Looking to see if that na3m game thing still existed, I found that: https://www.disruptorawards.com/2015-honoree-blog/2017/1/19/hh-prince-fahad-al-saud-na3m-games His instagram account is yolofahad.
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Dec 12, 2017 03:18
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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/rouhani-ready-restore-ties-saudi-arabia-171210084010955.htmlquote:In a speech broadcast Sunday, President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran is ready to restore ties with Saudi Arabia if it stops bombing Yemen and cuts its alleged ties with Israel.
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Dec 12, 2017 18:20
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America's inept foreign policy managed to create a Turkey-Iran axis and an Israel-KSA axis. And Saudi Arabia's inept bullying has pushed Qatar in the arms of Iran. Congrats. Quick map.  Red and blue: the two blocks. Purple: disputed areas of influence. Iran seems to be winning those. Green: countries that are trying not to attract too much attention so that they don't get involved in the mess, but if they have to choose, they'll probably side with Saudi Arabia. What do you think?
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Dec 13, 2017 17:11
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Count Roland posted:Did you color this manually or use some service for it? I used mapchart. It's a simple online tool to quickly get a colored map. Amusingly, the "simple" world map is more detailed for this area than the "detailed" one. There's no real alliance between Turkey and Iran, but recently they've been on the same side wrt. Qatar, wrt. Syria, and wrt. Jerusalem. And both stand to benefit from the Saudi losing legitimacy in the Muslim world, so I can see them remaining in agreement on other diplomatic questions. If an actual war broke out between KSA and Iran, they probably wouldn't side with Iran there, but as long as the situation doesn't devolve to that point, I think they can be seen as part of the same block.
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Dec 13, 2017 18:29
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Afghanistan is unconquerable largely because it's a battleground for proxy wars. If Iran were to attempt to create a Hezbollah there, the proxy war would be between Iran and Pakistan.
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Dec 15, 2017 02:10
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Hasn't the "Any Day Now" crowd said Iran was six weeks away from a nuclear bomb since, like, 1980 or something? I imagine by now Iran must have like a hundred billion nuclear bombs and any attempt at attacking them will provoke a chain reaction of all these nukes going off together, pulverizing the entire planet Earth.
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Dec 15, 2017 16:45
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Just distract Pakistan from Afghanistan by providing arms and support to the Baluchistan separatists. India can help. 
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Dec 16, 2017 12:02
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Darkman Fanpage posted:Isn’t the US Navy helping with the blockade though? They're too busy colliding with fishing vessels, tankers, container ships, tugboats, and the shore to be allowed near a busy sea lane.
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Dec 20, 2017 16:15
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Meanwhile, in Egypt: https://twitter.com/Arn_Del/status/943970825996324869/video/1 quote:Video showing the #ISIS attack on al-Arish Airbase in North #Sinai. An UH-60 that has just landed is destroyed with a 9M133 Kornet ATGM. The pilot did not survive. This helicopter was carrying the Defense & Interior Ministers #Egypt Also the tweet says the helicopter was carrying two ministers, they had already gotten out so they haven't been killed by the attack. They returned home in another chopper (a Mi-17 this time).
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Dec 22, 2017 19:08
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khwarezm posted:and just lay bare the country's awful, oppressive systems Speaking of which, we haven't seen Al-Saqr in a while.
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Dec 30, 2017 13:12
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There's been a revival of what could be called Iranian cultural nationalism: reminders that Iran existed before the Islamic Republic and even before Islam, and so that Iran doesn't need to be defined by its current regime. The Shah is just another symbol of a different Iran from the current one.
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Jan 1, 2018 16:25
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