If Obama doesn’t get the credit for taking out bin Laden, then Osama shouldn’t be blamed for 9/11. After all, he didn’t even have a pilot’s license.
Then this drone strike on Soleimani makes even less sense by this theory. If Trump wanted to keep oil prices low, he’d stay far away from anything Iran-related. So the oil-war theory does not make sense.
Neocons have been pushing for “regime change” in Iran for years; John Bolton, for example, before he joined the administration said that “the declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran.” Trump hired him, presumably knowing this. (Yes, Bolton got fired, but he’s still calling for regime change, and while he’s gone a lot of people with similar backgrounds and apparent opinions are still in the administration.) Pompeo’s 2018 speech on Iran wasn’t exactly far off, e.g.
The US needs global cheap oil to maintain our economic expansion. We still import more than half a million barrels a day from the Persian Gulf; China, Japan, and the EU get even more. A crisis of supply there imperils the global economy, which will have knock-on effects at home. (We also import another two million or so barrels a day from elsewhere, especially Canada, but if the Persian Gulf supply isn’t available for awhile, we’ll be bidding against the Chinese and Japanese and Europeans for Canadian crude. Remember that from the Canadian perspective, a major advantage of the Keystone XL [‘Export Limited’] pipeline expansion was getting more of their crude to the Gulf export terminals.)
The Iranians likely have the ability to shut off the Persian Gulf supply, at least for awhile, by shutting the Strait of Hormuz (in addition to their attacks on, e.g., Saudi facilities). The Iranians have long regarded oil as a strategic weapon; you’ll remember that their attempts to control Iranian oil triggered the Abadan crisis and the 1953 Iranian coup engineered by the CIA. The US doesn’t want them using their own or other Gulf oil assets strategically.
Not sure about this being a war for oil, but as to making it work: since we are a big producer, then like Goldfinger one needs to just to remove Iran’s production from the market and then suddenly the oil America can make is worth more. Of course, that reasoning is what a very simple mind like Trump would likely go for.
There has to be a name for this attitude that you speak of - this belief that “Our side reacts this when X happens, but their side will react the opposite way when X happens.” It is an assumption that crops up in relationships, marriages, business, war, politics, etc. etc. It often results in a rude surprise when the other side does not tamely slink away with tail between legs as expected.
This is Great Debates, not Jokes And Silliness. This statement is preposterous and beneath you.
The only reason the US is at such odds with Iran is stabilizing oil supply. This is why the US sponsored a coup to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953, which is why we’re constantly managing the fact that Iran hates us. Not only that, but Iran is in a huge power rivalry with Saudi Arabia, the other predominant oil producer. This is the main reason we try to keep Iran militarily weak, and stop them from getting a nuclear bomb. The long game is the threat that they represent to the oil supply.
But you’re correct, right now in January 2020, Trump’s current actions are not intended to keep oil prices down. In fact, that’s probably the only thing restraining him. He’s in a trap of his own making. He doesn’t want to look weak, but he also doesn’t want oil prices going up. He also definitely doesn’t want American deaths that would harm his popularity. And he’d find it nicely convenient if a war somehow made the impeachment threat go away.
So yes, Trump is definitely in this war for himself, the same reason he does everything else. But the reason he has this problem, other than shooting himself in the foot, is US fixation on maintaining status quo regarding mideast oil supplies.
In how many ways is this crazy?
If our puppet doesn’t want to be our puppet anymore, we’ll beat them up and take their lunch money. So if they needed one more reason to throw in with Iran rather than us, we just gave it to them.
And it’s really a footnote, but why do they owe us for the damn airbase? We built it because we invaded, then realized we were stuck with being there for awhile.
Fucker’s crazy. The real reason Trump needs to be removed from office, stat, is that we have a crazy fucker running the country, and he’s destabilizing random parts of the world.
And, the Pentagon Chief of Staff just resigned, being “the third senior Pentagon official to announce his resignation since President Donald Trump announced US forces would leave Syria”.
If you guys think Trump is on the right track, you have to wonder why your opinions are at odds with US top military commanders.
As pointed out here - can’t give an exact timestamp ATM, sorry! - Iran could smash not only the oil infrastructure of its foes across the Persian Gulf, but their desalination plants as well.
Going by Dolan’s analysis, this’d be pretty much a checkmate move as far as the Gulf States are concerned, and the Americans would be forced to run a “24/7 Berlin airlift” of freshwater just to keep their cities liveable.
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Iraqi parliament votes to expel U.S. troops.
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Trump threatens Iraq in return.
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Iran states that it is backing out of its nuclear agreement due to U.S. aggression.
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U.S. allies remain totally mum and offer zero words of support for our actions.
Stay tuned.
Interesting tweet thread by Reza Marashi, Research Director for the National Iranian American Council. Any emphasis are mine:
Full thread here: https://twitter.com/rezamarashi/status/1214031171434102784
And, if I may, let me repeat this one:
“One of Trump’s top Iran advisors got suckered into a honey trap, had their laptop/iPhone stolen and hacked before they woke up, and the White House refused to take precautionary measures regarding their security clearance. Ladies and gents, I give you the Trump administration.”
- This has already come to pass in the 16-odd hours since this went up. See RTF’s post right above.
Someone upthread had made some kind of comment about how “Iran’s military is not to be trifled with” or something like that. Which is sort of absurd when you look at it from the perspective of the US military- they’re not China, the UK, France, Russia, or Germany. They’re a third-tier military power- maybe the top of that tier, but not really on par with a lot of other nations, never mind the US.
That’s what I was responding to, and got a lot of flak about how our military hasn’t won wars lately, etc…
Ultimately, our military outclasses theirs dramatically. But the question remains- why fight? There’s nothing for either side to gain by fighting. That’s why it’s such a political failure IMO.
There’s been more than 3. The BBC must be defining “senior” a little more tightly than American sources.
People say random, often foolish, usually over-reactionary things on twitter.
That’s a fair enough observation, but it must be said that the definition of “formidable” depends on the stakes. Iran can’t win, but it has sophisticated Russian air defense systems, some sophisticated anti-ship missile technology. It could achieve PR victories like downing stealth aircraft, capturing crews… a 2004 military exercise determined that Iran could sink an aircraft carrier, which would be enormously costly to the US. Even a tiny nation like Serbia was able to down a US stealth bomber in 1999, thanks to Russian intel and equipment.
So the point isn’t that Iran is formidable enough to fight the US to defeat or even to a stalemate, but they are formidable enough to make this a lot more painful than (say) the Iraq conflict was.
Iranian leadership is not stupid. They will not do anything so dumb as to invite a war and wholesale destruction to their country by having its entire infrastructure and government crippled and 10’s of thousands of people killed, just to ‘sucker’ the US into another Afghanistan/Iraq ‘regime change’ situation. So no, Iran will not use its military in an overtly confrontational way against the US or regional allies. They will do nothing of the kind, unless and until, they have a formidable working nuclear arsenal with which to threaten the US and Israel and western allies. In the meantime, the world can expect a rise in Iranian backed proxy terrorism attacks. In short, more of what they’ve already been doing but renewed vigor.
Definitely. But it runs both ways; they’d almost certainly get their own ration of pain as well; last time their navy tangled with ours, we sank or crippled half of their navy in one day.
There’s not a lot of credible rationale for going to war on either side, even a naval/air war (which any conceivable war would almost certainly be), much less a ground war.
And that’s only discussing their potential against hard military targets.
We have to remember that there are an awful lot of softer, non-military targets they could also attack, such as oil infrastructure, that would have a huge impact on the region, and the world. If the US launches an assault large enough to seriously degrade Iran’s capabilities, then Iran will be in a use-it-or-lose-it situation. There would be no reason for them not to launch every missile they have at every single soft target they can reach. And there’s no way we’d shoot all of them down.
Agree with you, but more to the point, it doesn’t work like that anymore. It took, what, three weeks for our military to beat Saddam’s in March/April 2003. Lot of good it did us.
We still need a conventional military, but as HMS Irruncible and others* have said in this thread, it’s more often than not the wrong tool for the sorts of conflicts we actually have nowadays.
- Quite possibly including you - I won’t say I’ve read every post in the thread. Apologies if you’ve already said this and I’ve overlooked it.