The one that doesn’t exist anymore. And collapsed without destroying civilization.
Off-topic (Ukraine)
If the treaty had “don’t attack Ukraine” in it, you might have a point.
As it does not have this, you don’t have a point.
Off-topic Ukraine
No, the arms control treaty that was the subject of the discussion. Nice try though at switching out treaties!
Yes, I agree that Russia completely abrogated the Budapest memorandum. That, however is a different subject entirely.
Moderating:
Exactly as you note, it’s a different subject and off-topic, so I’m hiding all of these.
And yet it happened.
US sent plane with $400 million in cash to Iran
- The Obama administration secretly arranged a plane delivery of $400 million in cash on the same day Iran released four American prisoners and formally implemented the nuclear deal, US officials confirmed Wednesday.
- President Barack Obama approved the $400 million transfer, which he had announced in January as part of the Iran nuclear deal. The money was flown into Iran on wooden pallets stacked with Swiss francs, euros and other currencies as the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement resolving claims at an international tribunal at The Hague over a failed arms deal under the time of the Shah.
- A fifth American man was released by Iran separately.
It’s relevant that this was sent in CASH to a country known to fund terrorists.
You hoping no one clicks that link and reads the rest of the story?
US officials said cash had to be flown in because existing US sanctions ban American dollars from being used in a transaction with Iran and because Iran could not access the global financial system due to international sanctions it was under at the time.
…
{White House spokesman Josh} Earnest cast those using the new details about the palettes of cash as people “flailing to justify their continued opposition to the deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”The $400 million was Iran’s to start with, placed into a US-based trust fund to support American military equipment purchases in the 1970s. When the Shah was ousted by a 1979 popular uprising that led to the creation of the Islamic Republic, the US froze the trust fund. Iran has been fighting for a return of the funds through international courts since 1981.
How is that at all meant to be a convincing argument?
If Dexter the Serial Killer asks me to give back the $100 I borrowed from him before he was a serial killer, and I do, and then he uses the money to buy a gun and kill Greg, and Greg’s friends and family ask me “why did you give Dexter, who you knew was a serial killer, the money?” then “it was his to begin with” is not a convincing answer. The financing of a murder weapon is a much bigger issue than respecting the property rights of serial killers.
Put the money in an account where it won’t be touched until Iran gets rid of their terroristic regime. You know, exactly where it was before Obama felt the need to send it to Iran in exchange for a deal that allowed Iran to continue progressing towards nuclear weapons and stockpiling materials so long as they didn’t take the final step.
It more or less was and a court ordered the United States to give the money back now as it says in Magiver’s post.
Because if killing people means that a nation should be cut off from its legally owned funds, that means that every nation of significance should be cut off. Certainly both Israel and the US.
It’s silly for Greg’s family to complain about Dexter the serial killer getting money then killing Greg, when both Greg and his entire family are also serial killers.
A court that has exactly 0 binding authority over what the United States chooses to do; it’s not like Obama had any trouble pissing all over their rules with drone strikes. It was 100% Obama’s decision, not the court’s.
As your own post points out, the Iranians were bitching in various international courts since the 80s, to exactly 0 avail.
That’s hardly an argument in favor of doing them, we damaged our interests significantly with those strikes. And Trump right now is busily demonstrating what the result is of “we’re the US and you can’t stop us” as a foreign policy.
If we won’t cooperate with the world, then the world won’t cooperate with us. Act like treacherous thugs, and the world treats us like treacherous thugs.
You do realise that at some stage the US is going to pay for reparations to Iran?
Most likely via a 3rd party e.g. Saudia Arabia who agree to fund the reconstruction of Iran and in turn they get a really good deal on the best and shiniest US military hardware … to protect themselves from the now overtly militant and expansive Iran.
At any rate, the topic of the thread is what was Trump’s motive for starting the war, and I guarantee that it had nothing to do with “stopping terrorism” or any other even nominally benevolent reason. He’s a malignant narcissist, and wouldn’t care if Iran (or anyone else) burned the whole region to the ground.
His motives were some mix of selfishness and malice, because that’s literally all that ever motivates him. It’s just being done badly because he’s a willfully ignorant man with dementia.
Yes it is.
No, it isn’t.
He was motivated by legacy and bragging rights. He wanted to be the president that brought peace to the middle east; it’s the same mistake W made in Iraq.
There was a false sense of security after the ease of the Venezuelan operation and a naive expectation that assassinating Iran’s leadership would lead to the IRGC collapsing and the protesters ousting the regime.
It’s no more complicated than that. MBS, Netanyahu, and the admin in his orbit had other priorities, but that was Trump’s.
In his first term it was reported they Trump was sensitive to the bad optics of dead American soldiers coming home. I can’t tell if he’s gotten over this or not.
How so? The problem isn’t property rights, it’s the fact that Iran is using the money to sponsor terrorism, build rockets, and build nukes. The fact that the money was Iran’s to begin with (assuming we even accept that Iran under the Shah and Iran under the Ayatollahs are the same entity, I’d sooner give the money to the Shah than to the IRGC) has absolutely no bearing on what they use the money for, and the immorality of giving them money stems from what they would (and, in fact, have) done with it.
Giving the money to Iran was a rare Obama L.
Agree to disagree, but I don’t understand that perspective at all. You think that giving a serial killer their money back is more moral than withholding it so they can’t use the money to kill again?
So does the US. And if i owe a guy money, i don’t ask him what he’s planning on doing with it before i repay him.
The question is whether the US was so opposed to Iran as to have no dealings with it at all. And at the time, we were attempting to negotiate with Iran in good faith, so that wasn’t true. And that’s what you are actually opposed to, that the US was interacting peacefully with Iran at the time.
But i don’t think that money has anything to do with the current war. I don’t think it especially enabled Iran to build nuclear weapons. I don’t think Iran was a threat to the US. I think Trump did it in the hopes of grandeur, not for any specific strategic reason.
(Israel has different motives, which are more strategic.)
Well, yeah, obviously that’s what I’m opposed to.
The problem is that while Obama was handing them money and “interacting peacefully” with them, they were attacking us through proxies and building up capacity for further attacks. They were playing us for fools, and it was incredibly obvious.
Obama was negotiating with them in good faith. They were not negotiating in good faith back. That was incredibly obvious at the time, and even more so with hindsight.
When you try to negotiate in good faith with someone who clearly has zero interest in good faith negotiations, and even after it becomes extremely obvious that they’re fleecing you you continue to allow them to fuck you over and over again out of some misplaced desire not to appear hawkish, that is how you get taken advantage of. That behavior is the rate Obama L I was referring to.
Moderating:
@Babale, you are far from the only offender in this particular instance, but you have a noted track record for hijacking threads and going off topic.
This particular hijack does not belong in this thread. We’ve let it go on for awhile now, but if you wish to discuss the repayment of Iranian funds to Iran under Obama, it belongs in a different thread. Drop it here now. Same goes for anyone else who is discussing it.