So, Iran destroys some of our property that means we get to kill some of their people?
Put me down for a hard no on that one.
Enemies list, huh? Good luck with that.
As much as I loathe the “both sides do it” claim, sometimes it’s true.
Hostile actions don’t have to be violent to be labeled as war. There’s trade war, cyber war, propaganda war, etc. There is no need, other than semantic wankery, to pretend that violence must necessarily follow every conceptual form of war.
Again, I don’t believe that shooting down the drone (or mining container ships) was a decision made by Iranian leaders. It was far more likely an internal dick waving contest between moderates and hardliners to test and see who’s really in charge. Stupid provocation and unlikely to turn out well for Iran if the US decides to step in. But I think the hardliners are pressing for a full resumption of a nuclear weapons program and the moderates are resisting doing so. My read, anyway.
It brings us closer to war if we choose to be brought closer to war.
I will not defend the Iranian actions, and I have no idea whether the drone was over Iranian or international airspace. But a lesson I was taught long ago was that you can’t control what the other guy does, you can only control what you’re going to do. Serious provocation or not, the United States of America gets to choose whether it’s going to be provoked into a potentially escalating back-and-forth.
Unfortunately, the person making our choices is Donald Fucking Trump, advised by clowns such as John Bolton who simply wants a war with somebody (though he’s got a particular jones for Iran), and Trump’s gotten bored with Venezuela.
But in a saner world, [del]we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with because we wouldn’t have a nutcase as President[/del] this is where we’d step back and consider our larger interests, and how well some sort of retaliation would serve them.
Just to clarify, when I said “good, take it to the public, take it to the UN” I wasn’t saying: and then have a war. America instead can pull back our troops, relieve the recently hardened sanctions and reinstate the nuclear agreement. That approach was working fine until Trump and his shitty diaper smeared everything.
I find it amazing that people assume that How Things Work (Iran Version) doesn’t include a strict chain-of-command controlling what the military does. I mean, just because they are in the Middle East doesn’t mean that they are undisciplined yahoos who get to do whatever shenanigans they want. If their military is taking an action, I assume that it is just as sanctioned by the people in power as if the US military took an action.
The trouble with the Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t that they have people doing stuff like this without proper permission. The trouble is that the proper channels of power are not the obvious, apparent channels that you’d expect from a country with a nominal democracy. Never doubt that anything that is done by Iran militarily (either directly, or by proxy) has been authorized by the Supreme Leader, or those below him whom he trusts with the power to make such decisions.
I believe that Iran is trying as hard as it can to make clear to the President that his naive assumption that he can re-negotiate the agreement regarding development of nuclear weapons in a way that is “better” from his viewpoint is wrong. I think that they are convinced that the United States won’t go to war with Iran, and won’t seriously risk further de-stabilizing Iraq and Syria. So they are going to continue to smack us on the snout, so to speak, until we give up this lone-shark strategy and return to acting in accord with all our allies by returning to the provisions of the prior agreement. Given that the President has just blinked in his first chance to stand up to them, they may be right. Time will tell.
In which case, aggression will have lead to positive results for Iran. For those who were wondering why Iran would do things like mine tankers, bomb pipeline stations, and now shoot down a fifth of a billion dollar drone.
I agree with you; I think their aggression is aimed at getting economic sanctions lowered or removed. If that is the case, then aggression will continue by Iran’s forces until that goal is achieved.
Edit: Expect more accidents. Or attacks by rogue elements. Or totally coincidental attacks on US personnel in other countries.
The goal may be to irritate the US enough to conduct lengthy military operations against and within Iran. The idea being that will be so unpopular as to cause Trump’s defeat in 2020, and then the removal of lots of sanctions and tariffs.
Good thing somebody alerted Putin in time for him to call and tell Donald “NYET”.
For what it’s worth, I do not yet take any position on where the drone was. Some people I don’t trust say that it was in Iranian airspace. Other people I don’t trust say that it was in international waters. One group of people I don’t trust are telling me the truth, but I don’t know which ones. Hopefully, more evidence will come out with time, and then we’ll know.
That said, if it was in Iranian airspace, then shooting it down was absolutely, positively not a provocative act. It was the exact opposite; a de-escalating act. It changed the situation from being a confrontational one (hostile aircraft in territory) to what the situation should have been (no hostile aircraft in territory), and did so without any loss of life.
Whether it was in their territory or not, it was still a provocative act. I don’t see how you can arrive at the conclusion this de-escalates things in any way, shape or form. It would be a provocative act no matter who the government was that shot down some other countries drone, but in this specific case it has further upped the tension of the situation. And I seriously doubt the Iranians thought it would calm things down or did it to be less confrontation…quite the opposite. Pretty obviously they WANT to ramp things up nearly as much as the war-hawks in the US government do.
Who should I believe? The “Iraq has WMDs” and Trump team or literally anyone else?
Did you say the same about Turkey destroying a Russian plane four years ago?
Agreed. Nothing about shooting down a US asset is intended to de-escalate tensions or teach a lesson.
Holy shit…yeah, I’d say Turkey shooting down a Russian plane, even over it’s own territory was DEFINITELY a provocative act! :smack: That could easily have pushed things into war between Turkey and Russia…which would have brought NATO into it as well, depending on how it was looked at.
As to who to believe…that one is hard to say. There would have been no real reason for the US to fly the thing over their territory. Where we are saying it was at is the logical place for it to be to watch what we were wanting it to watch (presumably for more evidence of attacks on oil tankers and the like). Flying it closer to Iran wouldn’t really do anything for us. That said, mistake can be made…or, hell, Trump et al could have ordered it just to push the Iranian’s. I watched some video on this that seemed to show it was where we said it was, but it wasn’t definitive, so I’d say the jury is still out on that.
The thing is, I don’t think it’s really all that important where it was wrt the escalation of the situation. Both sides seem to be pushing the other and themselves closer and closer to a direct confrontation.
I’m not really seeing how the exact position of the aircraft when it was shot down is relevant further than the very strictest, legalistic sense. My point is that the US is not even bothering to deny that it was a spy plane that was in the process of spying on Iran. At that point, does it spying from juuuust across the international line matter overly much ?
Let me put it this way : imagine you live in a ground floor flat, on street level. Every day this big burly guy (who keeps talking shit about you to the neighbours) stands outside your window and stares in. If you try and close the blinds, he keeps peering between the slats. Staring at you and your kids. All day long. Every day.
Now in that situation, do you reckon that the cops you call on the creep would tell you “oh but he’s in the street which is public so he’s got the right to do that ; he’s not touching you, everything’s fine” ? Of course not. Anybody being described such a situation would opine that the huge guy was being creepy and you’d be justified to feel threatened, call the cops on him, get a restraining order, what have you.
The problem where Iran is concerned is, there are no cops to call (or, if the UN can be equated with the cops in this simile, the big burly guy happens to also be the chief of police). So what are they *supposed *to do ? Let the US spy on them because “well we’re the baddies and they’re the good guys so they get to do that” ?
It was not a provocation. It was an answer to provocation. They’re saying “stop fucking with us, or shit **will **go down”. It certainly is an escalation of sorts, and confrontational, but it’s not like Iran started the shit. From their POV, it’s standing up to a bully. Again, how are they supposed to respond ? Ask the US to stop spying on them, pretty please with a bow on top ?
It’s not stealthy. I do not know if its ATC transponder was turned on or not, but if it was on, any number of ATC radars could see it and know where it was. Have any of those air traffic control agencies been interviewed, or their radar tapes seen?
IRGC general claimed this morning that they could have also shot down a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft the same day, if they wanted, as it was also violating Iran’s airspace. https://en.irna.ir/news/83363396/IRGC-commander-Drone-Attack-Message-to-US-Iran-Could-Down-P8
The aggression will increase until the sanctions are lifted, or until the ruling elements in Iran feel the danger to their safety from attacking the US and its allies, outweighs the domestic danger they feel from economic harm caused by the sanctions.
I prefer to call it a credibility list.
I think if you look over ashai’s posts on the matter, he’s using the term war in the sense of Korean War etc., and not the war on cancer.
You are totally right, we do not have to take the bait. But since Iran has started a series of violent actions in the region over the past month, I think it is fair to say that the JCPOA withdrawal, IRGC designation, maximum pressure campaign, etc. were key steps to lead Iran to decide that they could gain something from the attacks. So by the same measure, Iran is choosing to blow up stuff, which is furthering the risk of war, and is wrong and inexcusable. I think quite a few people are taking Iran’s (and their proxies’) attacks as somewhat of a given.
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As I recall, Russia was routinely violating an international border with armed planes in order to carry out attacks on anti-Assad rebels (I can’t recall who specifically the Russians were attacking in that region at the time), and Turkey had made a big deal of demanding the violations of its airspace stop. Also, I believe I had less of a concern that Turkey (slash NATO) would go to war with Russia over the shootdown.
I have already suggested in this thread that Iran should have first tried to intercept the drone or warn it away with radio calls. I also do not think that it is clear at all that the U.S. went into Iranian airspace, as having a fairly decent understanding of what these aircraft do, there wouldn’t really be the need to do so except as a provocation or serious mistake. (And the case for provocation doesn’t really hold up, since Trump for whatever reason temporarily came to his senses and decided not to kill ~150 Iranians last night.)
I know I posted in a thread about the matter, I’m sure you could look it up. (I have not refreshed myself on my contributions.) But from whatever comments you quote me from that thread, keep in mind that the context of the incident is sharply at odds of what we face today.
What did you say/think about the shootdown of the Russian plane?
I missed where the US was the one who started bombing third party neutral civilian shipping. As to the spying and lack of privacy issue, what are your feelings on spy satellites, either government owned or privately?
As long as U.S. planes are in international areas, the Iranians have no case to say the U.S. should stop completely legal activities.