colliric wrote:Don't know whether to laugh or cry....
Global warming is going to end the world in 10 years anyway, so it doesn't really matter.
JohnRawls wrote:Although if US will try to occupy Iran then it will not lead anywhere in a sense. Occupying Iran is not possible without WW2 level of mobilisation from the US. Even worse than Vietnam.
Yeah, other than maybe a Marine expedition into a few port towns for some reprisals (which I don't think is a good idea), invading Iran would be folly. It's twice the size of Iraq and mountainous. If the US wants to fight in those types of geographies, it needs to rebase the 10th Mountain Division to the East side of the Rockies in Wyoming or Colorado, and develop many other mountain divisions. Afghanistan is a fraction of the size of Iran and we've been there for 18 years now.
JohnRawls wrote:At best, US can turn Iran in to a failed state
Yes, it can most certainly do that. Killing Soleimani actually does a lot to fuck up their foreign military activity too.
B0ycey wrote:Continue to do so and Russia and China if forced to chose sides will chose Iran.
China is in a trade conflict with the US that it cannot afford to continue. Choosing sides with Iran means the US could re-ignite trade tensions, which have not hurt the US economy the way it has hurt the Chinese economy.
colliric wrote:Iran is threatening to "remove America from Iraq" and apparently has the support of its middle eastern allies.
Only Iraqi factions could precipitate that action by force. It could be that Iran is trying to mirror Trump's desires and claim that they made it happen. It doesn't seem to be working out for them though. Losing Soleimaini is a high profile loss for Iran by any measure. It would be like losing Petraeus for us when he was still a general.
colliric wrote:They're either going to bomb Iraq, or invade.
To try to gain what? They would invite a US military response, and open up Iran to a bombing campaign that Iraq couldn't even inflict during the height of the Iran Iraq war.
Nonsense wrote:Although Iranian involvement in other countries is sometimes 'complex', at the end of the day, he was a war monger, as such, he deserved what he got.
Yeah, I find the sympathy for Soleimani a bit disingenuous. Basically, people have to admit that Trump hit Iran where it hurts and at the same time did so in a very measured way.
B0ycey wrote:Hardly a high five for Trump.
Oh, it most certainly is. That's why people are nervous, because Iran has taken a significant hit--in a very measured way compared to what Iran has been doing.
B0ycey wrote:Even Pompero suggests the US want to de-escalate tensions now although the next move was never theirs anyway.
Trump doesn't want to escalate tensions or he would have ordered air strikes after Iran hit a US drone. Taking out Soleimani tends to precipitate a response from Iran, but Soleimani would have been the most likely person to orchestrate the response.
B0ycey wrote:Trump doesn't know what he is doing. This cannot be ME strategy as he clearly has done this alone.
Killing an opposing general on the field of battle hurts the enemy substantially and saps the enemy's capability and morale simultaneously.
B0ycey wrote:I can only think it has to do with gaining a few percentage points in his election campaign by stoking nationalism from is core base.
I doubt that is the primary calculation. Trump actually gains more overseas.
Both the Saudis and the Israelis wanted Soleimani dead. The US has had reason to do this for well over a decade now.
late wrote:Not only did that not happen, we later cut a deal with them that kept them for making nukes.
Like the deal we cut with North Korea? Countries do not adhere to such deals. They only serve as a bit of Xanax for worried liberals.
JohnRawls wrote:It seems Iran might really be considering outright war with either Iraq, Israel or Saudi Arabia.
Not a bright idea when your best general just got killed.
late wrote:The guy was going to be the next president, he was a national hero.
So you are saying that Trump's minor air strike was a major injury to Iran's body politic, right?
Rancid wrote:If I were the guy that replaces Soleimani, I would be very paranoid.
Well, I think overconfidence in proximity to US forces isn't something Iranian generals are going to exhibit any time soon. The fact that it was so easy to nail Soleimani suggests that they thought Trump was as impotent as Obama. It was a grave miscalculation.
Rancid wrote:Further, it's interesting that the US didn't take a quiet approach to killing him through some CIA balckop or whatever. I guess they really wanted to make a point.
Obama was humiliated by both Benghazi and his "red line." I said at the time that US adversaries should attack, and eventually Russia did annex Crimea. The US media constantly covered for Obama's weakness, but when he did things like make fun of Putin as acting like a tough guy or being the bored kid in the back of the class, he did that after having been humiliated in Benghazi and Syria. Iran killed a US soldier and then taunted Trump. They had this coming to them. The DoD let it be known that the attack was at Trump's direction.
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:That part, I'm sure, was for the 2020 election - Trump wants to be an international strongman, unafraid to kill his enemies.
Iran directly taunted Trump. They thought his non-response to the drone shoot-down made him like Obama--a coward. They were hoping to humiliate him. Now they are humiliated. As weird as it sounds, humiliation is a big deal in the Middle East.
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:I think the prime purpose is to be seen to be aggressive; it's a bonus for the USA that one of the guys they killed was, by all accounts, very competent, and unlikely to be replaced by someone as clever.
It's a
coup de grâce for sure. Frankly, I don't think Iran saw it coming. That Soleimani was confident to be riding around in convoys after organizing an attack on a US embassy illustrates that they had a psychological profile of Trump as no different from Obama, and it was disastrously wrong.
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:The Trump family is as reckless as ever with security:
Maybe. Maybe not. This was before the attack on the US embassy. So maybe they used Trump to send a message foretelling events of which he knew nothing.
B0ycey wrote:To be fair, the only person to benefit here will be Putin when Iran start buying Russian defence systems and fighter planes.
That would be a defensive measure that would have no effect on Quds operations. Not a single Russian weapon system would have stopped Trump's attack. The bottom line is Iran got cocky and got smacked down.
The Sabbaticus wrote:In truth, Soleimani should have been killed a decade ago for his involvement in the Iraqi civil war.
I find it interesting that Trump detractors miss this rather obvious point. He's directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of US soldiers. So it's more than a fair retaliation, and quite a gut punch to Iran.
John Rawls wrote:Your not far from the truth here because sky high oil prices and more advanced weapons sales is what Putin wants any time, all the time.
So does Trump. The US isn't "over a barrel" anymore when it comes to energy.
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