Remember that destroying Israel is their figurehead’s bluster, not their actual government’s political policy.
We could, for instance, negotiate to get them to stop uranium enrichment, suspend any and all support for terrorist organizations, etc… I’d wager we have a few heavy carrots, including normalizing trade relations.
Hardly practical; they need nukes to defend themselves; our conquest of Iraq proved that neither negotiations nor being harmless will protect you from American aggression. It is their clear duty for their national survival to acquire nukes, as well as in their leadership’s self interest. And I doubt it would be politically acceptable to stop supporting terrorists while we support our own against them in Iran. We don’t exactly have the moral high ground here. Or the psychological; it’s hard to strike a deal with someone who knows you can’t be trusted, and we can’t.
Their figurehead has a puppet hand up his ass so anything that comes out of his mouth has the tacit approval of his religious overlords. This is a country where the cabinet likes to end it’s sessions with “Death to America”. I don’t see a lot of carrot success coming our way.
Yes yes Der, your apologia for militant theocracy is noted as well as your “I hate America” tu quoque.
You win the internet.
Thanks.
Not, strictly speaking, true. He’s a lunatic and a thug, no doubt, but it’s a mistake to think that the real powers in Iran are bound by/necessarily support anything, let alone everything that he says. To be sure, there are some common points of agreement… but remember that Khatami before him was quite interested in warming relations, for a while at least.
There is potential, not necessarily a high probability.
The fact is that any change will have to be internal, and it will have to come from the bottom-down. While, of course, there will be loons spewing screeds about how Iran or the US is made of concentrated evil, in both cases nuance is better than absurdities.
The Iranian people, for instance, have an overwhelming majority that is against their theocracy, for better US relations, etc… Their leadership are a pack of corrupt theocratic goons, but even then, there is negotiation possible and I for one am curious to see if we could resurrect the 2003 Swiss offer, and if so, to what end.
This has nothing to do with theocracy ( and accusing ME of liking a religious government is a rather implausible thing to say ). This has everything to do with America’s decades of consistent hostility towards Iran, bad treatment of them and the region by us, uncritical to the point of being self destructive support of Israel, and our willingness to conquer and devastate countries that are no threat to us. Theocratic, Communist or democracy, we’d be just as dangerous to them, just as willing to attack them, and acquiring nuclear weapons would be just as much of a duty for them.
They have no obligation to commit collective suicide just to make you happy.
I know this is a fool’s errand … but of course you are blatantly and obviously showing support for a brutal theocratic regime. Do you really think your denial holds much weight in the face of what you’ve already written here?
It’s clear to anybody who looks at yours posts. Instead of seeing you condemn Iran at all, they’d see you supporting Iran’s desire for a nuclear weapons program and for not engaging in negotiation, all while blaming Iran’s actions on the US. That you try to spin it doesn’t mean anything other than that you condone, even support brutal asshole theocrats as long as they’re making trouble for America.
Hate-based reasoning never made much sense to me, though, so I’m sure you have some way of rationalizing supporting theocrats as long as they also hate America.
I’m not going to address your silly, blatantly false talking points. Anybody aware of the period of history from, roughly, 1980 to 2001 will be well aware of what actions we did or did not take against Iran, and how many times they attacked us, which terrorist organizations they aided and how, how many American soldiers peacekeepers and civilians they had murdered, etc…
An objective reader could, at that point, determine who was attacking whom, and which party actually needed ‘defense’ rather than added protection when they go to attack someone. People aren’t stupid. And if anybody does the research, they’ll find out the truth.
Which is part of why fact-based arguments always trump hate-based ones.
I just found it tremendously interesting that your opposition to religion fades and turns into support as long as that religion promotes violence against Americans, murder of Americans and the spread of theocracy that’s hostile to America and all western civilization to boot.
Yes, because I’m not supporting the regime at all. I’m supporting the right of the Iranian people not to be slaughtered by us or our proxies.
Saddam tried negotiation; he’s dead. Do you think the Iranians are too stupid to see that ? What’s the point in negotiating with us ?
And of course, you carefully choose a time period that leaves out our forcing the Shah on them. And you ignore our sponsoring Saddam in a proxy war against them. And you ignore the terrorists we support in their country. So much for your supposed concern over the brutality of the theocrats - I guess brutality and terrorism is OK, as long as we or our proxies are the ones doing it.
And they’ll find out you are wrong.
Only in your fantasies. Support for a country’s right to defend itself from an imperialist war of conquest and widespread slaughter is not at all the same as supporting their present government. We’ve demonstrated quite clearly in Iraq that however bad the theocrats are, we’d be worse.
And I don’t care if they are “hostile to western civilization” or not. They are too weak and will always be too weak to threaten it, nukes or not.
Jesus fucking Christ, DT. You Americans can be so self-centered. I mean, you guys have only been in the Middle East for what, five years, and suddenly you start thinking everything is about you?
This is between us and Iran. .
Except it is the regime itself that is nuking up, that its own people want removed, that hates America while the vast majority of Iranian citizens do not. So, yeah, you do indeed support the regime, down to parroting their PR about being the ones who need defense when they spent two decades either attacking us, planning to attack us or helping those who planned to attack us… without one actual direct major military invasion on our part.
So, you do indeed support religious fundamentalists. Undeniably. Which makes your denial all the more awkward to watch, almost embarrassing to see you pretzel yourself like that.
Not only that, you support religious fundamentalists in their drive to murder civilians and topple governments in order to instill their theocracy, and what’s more, you support their gaining nuclear weapons so as to protect their ability to murder civilians and topple governments in order to instill their theocracy. Your argument has actually gotten so morally repugnant, that you just defended Iran’s right to engage in aggressive imperialism, an optional war of conquest and the attempt to spread Khomenism, and took the US to task for trying to stop them. We already know all about your sliding moral scale, and how all that is terribly wrong if your invented fiction has the US doing those things.
I mean, do you even read what you write? You defended Iran’s right to conquer Iraq and impose fundamentalist Islam on them, and demonized the US for getting involved only after Iran made clear that it would not accept any ceasefire offer. So not only do you support the violent spread of fundamentalist Islam, you oppose trying to stop it.
So yeah, you’ve just come out in support of one of the ugliest theocratic hate-factories of the last 100 years. You’ve even gone as far as to simply fabricate fiction in order to claim that during two decades when Iran was launching numerous attacks against us and we weren’t striking back, that we were the aggressors and Iran needs to defend itself.
But hey, if you can support Iran’s leaders, knowing that they’re brutal, evil, racist, bigoted oppressive fucks whose own people want replaced so that their nation can begin having good relations with the US again? And you support the theocrats simply because the Iranian leaders also hate the US?
Well, when the Iranian people sure are lucky to have friends like you. They’ll have someone (else) who’s willing to pay with their (someone else’s) very lives if their leaders are likely to piss off the US. And after all, that’s what friends are for, to sacrifice you on the altar of partisan political hatred.
Just out of curiosity, is this a commonly-used phrase (either with or without the swear word) among English speaking Israelis ? I mean, I wouldn’t have expected it but I’d never actually thought about it.
I’m sorry for the hijack, but it seemed like a more immediately-addressed question here than in a new thread…
Hell, I’ve heard it said by non-native-English-speaking Israelis.
Too many American movies, I guess.
(More seriously: Hebrew, being a revived ancient language, has relatively little real profanity of its own; Israelis tend to swear in a variety of languages, chief among them Arabic, Yiddish, Russian and English. Step on an Israeli’s foot, and chances are you’ll hear a loud “sheet!”).
I don’t think Iran wants any part of Israel. All bluster, no substance. That’s Iran.
And I hope Israel does stop them (however they do it) from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
So, what would happen if Iran tried to attack Israel? Few well trained suicide bombers loaded with the latest in chemical warfare? Missile fire?
How about this; niether can do much. Iran is all bluster and Israel not much better. Israel could possibly carry out an Orsirak type raid or two, to “disarm” Iran, short of using nukes, Israel needs to carry out a campaign, over 2000 km away. There is no way Israeli airforce has the logistic support to carry a multi-week sustained campaign against an enemy that far away.
And secondly; Israelis swear in Arabic! Talk about ironic.
Lots of interesting news from Iran today :
“A top Iranian official has said Barack Obama is the favoured candidate of Tehran, calling him more “rational” than John McCain in remarks that could be used against the Democratic US presidential hopeful.” from here
and:
“Speculation about the hyperactive leader’s health was prompted this week after a keynote speech to the state statistics and planning body was cancelled at the last minute and a cabinet meeting took place without him. A speech to a martyr’s commemoration event was also called off. A senior aide, Amir Mansour Borghei, told journalists the president was “indisposed”.
It has triggered rumours that Ahmadinejad, 52, is suffering from a long-term illness that may stop him running for re-election next year.” from here
No mention of war with Israel though.
Sorry Alessan, but considering that the US subsidizes Israel with military and economic aid to the tune of about $US 3 billion per year, and that Israel would be highly unlikely to survive as a nation in its present form without that support, I think it makes sense for Americans to feel that we have a stake in Iran/Israel relations. The rest of the world certainly sees us as having a stake there.
That’s odd - step on a Canadian’s foot and you’ll probably hear an apology.
Actually Israel would probably survive fine without the US; US support provides Israel with the financial/diplomatic cushion to pursue its expansionist fantasies in the occupied territories but it isn’t essential for Israel’s survival. Without US support Israel would probably scale back the settlements, pursue a more realistic diplomatic policy and might actually be better off than it is today.
As for the report, it seems like empty bluster to me. Whatever Israel’s capacity to attack Iran’s nuclear assets (and I am skeptical that Israel has much), Iran certainly doesn’t have the capability to pre-emptively destroy it or even significantly damage it. Iran’s main card is deterrence; any attack by Israel or the US will probably mean a fierce counter-attack on both. So I agree that the US definitely has a big stake in any Israeli action against Iran.
I am skeptical that Iran is actually building nuclear weapons as opposed to enriching uranium. My hunch is that Iran wants to get closer to being able to build nukes without actually crossing the line. I don’t think anyone will stop them from achieving that goal.
It’s not a function of agreeing with him, it’s a function of using him as a mouthpiece.
That may be true but they have no love of Israel which brings us back to a lunatic puppet who constantly talks about wiping out the country. It’s not just blustering words. Iran funds Hezbollah.
As I pointed out earlier, Iran has the military ability to attack Isreal, but not to “preempt” anything. They have a variety of ballistic missiles, but nothing that has enough precision to take out enough strategic targets (airfields, command bunkers, missile silos, submarines, etc.) to dent any Isreali response. They could cause alot civililian casualties (an awful lot if they decide to tip their missiles with chemical weapons), but all that would do is ensure the international community gives Israel a carte-blanche to respond.
I don’t think Hezbollah (Iran’s “proxy” in the area) has ever carried out sucide attack inside of Isreal (I could be wrong, I know the haven’t recently). Their MO has been crude short range missile attacks and amushes on Israeli troops, nothing that could do anything to prevent an Israeli response against Iran.
Any conventional airbourne attack by Iran would be precluded by the fact they would have to fly over, US controlled Iraq, and would anyway be effectively a sucide mission,.