Iran
One thing is for sure - the Iranians are very unlikely to go head to head with the USN unless they have to
Something like the odd "terrorist" raid on tankers - just enough to drive up insurance rates and spook a few shippers is much more their style
And of course they can "encourage" a lot of people to cause problems elsewhere.................. the US has interests EVERYWHERE - the Iranians - not so much................
Something like the odd "terrorist" raid on tankers - just enough to drive up insurance rates and spook a few shippers is much more their style
And of course they can "encourage" a lot of people to cause problems elsewhere.................. the US has interests EVERYWHERE - the Iranians - not so much................
Unfortunately you may get someone who is following orders but not orders from USN Chain of Command to start something.
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Or maybe a warning to the Lincoln group to keep out of the Straits?
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...oup-approaches
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...oup-approaches
I really don't think a CBG will go into shallow, close waters near any potential enemy - they'll be somewhere south of Oman
Well, despite the vague nature of the Drive article above, we have all seen the jagged hole at the waterline in the stern of one of these ships. (See Andrea Victory, Bergen, in BBC article above) There was a similar attack a couple of years ago I remember where some craft managed to creep up undetected to a (Japanese?) tanker and hit it mysteriously.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...of-Hormuz.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...of-Hormuz.html
Last edited by jolihokistix; 14th May 2019 at 01:46.
Al Jazeera article with some background perspective in a video interview.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/...055332524.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/...055332524.html
Read the tweets of one Ilan Goldenberg - three years on the Iran desk at the Pentagon.
The deployment of one Patriot Battery, a CVA (planned) and four B-52s and pretty pictures of F-15s and F-35s is not a game changer.
Multiple Patriot Batteries, forty B-52s, B-2s and B-1s etc - then you've got my attention.
This is over hyped rubbish.
The deployment of one Patriot Battery, a CVA (planned) and four B-52s and pretty pictures of F-15s and F-35s is not a game changer.
Multiple Patriot Batteries, forty B-52s, B-2s and B-1s etc - then you've got my attention.
This is over hyped rubbish.
Bolton now pushing for 120,000 US troops to be deployed to Middle East.......... I think Trump will slap him down very quickly on this. Sending a message is one thing, putting an Invasion force on the lawn is another thing.
Much is being made in the media about targeting of 2 tankers destined for the US, now being a simple soul I would look at a Tanker at anchor and wonder where it is going as it is not like a bus with "US" on a light at the front telling where it is heading.
But if it was Iran then their teams are very good because they managed to cripple 4 ships and not do any damage to their cargo. Good job they had the details plans of exactly where to hit and only use a minimum amount of explosives.
Much is being made in the media about targeting of 2 tankers destined for the US, now being a simple soul I would look at a Tanker at anchor and wonder where it is going as it is not like a bus with "US" on a light at the front telling where it is heading.
But if it was Iran then their teams are very good because they managed to cripple 4 ships and not do any damage to their cargo. Good job they had the details plans of exactly where to hit and only use a minimum amount of explosives.
Joanna Lumley's Silk Road journey through Iran on TV here tonight.
Worth a watch - astonishing.
And Bolton wants to bomb these people?
Walks away shaking head in disbelief...
Worth a watch - astonishing.
And Bolton wants to bomb these people?
Walks away shaking head in disbelief...
Iran seems to be one of those coutries trapped under abad regime, I have spoken with half a dozen people who have been their recentlya nd they all say how firnedlya nd helpful iranian people are.
they are not alone in thesis predicament , both UK and UA could be portrayed as having dysfunctional governments at the moment and if anyone's navy has a right to be in the Persian Gulf and Straits of Hormuz it is Iran. Of course while thy have such a bizare government they need to be contained and watched over in the event thy get more into terrorism but as several people here have pointed out B52s are not much use without targets.
I wonder if this has anything to do with UK Foreign Minister Jeremy *unt saying Britain needs to spend more on its military so it can continue 'hard power protection' this from a man who brought us the three week wait for a GP health service and a country whose road network resembles parts of Africa
We need to spend on defence but the spooky techie kind not redundant strike aircraft and nuclear subs which are most likely US surrogates anyway.
they are not alone in thesis predicament , both UK and UA could be portrayed as having dysfunctional governments at the moment and if anyone's navy has a right to be in the Persian Gulf and Straits of Hormuz it is Iran. Of course while thy have such a bizare government they need to be contained and watched over in the event thy get more into terrorism but as several people here have pointed out B52s are not much use without targets.
I wonder if this has anything to do with UK Foreign Minister Jeremy *unt saying Britain needs to spend more on its military so it can continue 'hard power protection' this from a man who brought us the three week wait for a GP health service and a country whose road network resembles parts of Africa
We need to spend on defence but the spooky techie kind not redundant strike aircraft and nuclear subs which are most likely US surrogates anyway.
Having to agree here.
It's unpleasant people with attitude and a mouth who control things there.
It's unpleasant people with attitude and a mouth who control things there.
BEagle, just recently in the USA, no?
Looks like Trump has put Bolton back in his box on idea of sending 120,000 troops.
Trump has had to bring in sh*theads like Bolton to counter their attempt to get rid of him, but he is giving them enough rope to slap them down. In event Trump re elected i forecast Bolton is exiting.
Trump has had to bring in sh*theads like Bolton to counter their attempt to get rid of him, but he is giving them enough rope to slap them down. In event Trump re elected i forecast Bolton is exiting.
When I was a skinter young person I wanted to vist Iraq (Nimrud) , Syria (Palmyra) and Teheran.But couldn't afford it
Suppose I'd better get to Teheran sharpish before that becomes a lawless hellhole where Westerners are persona non grata..
Suppose I'd better get to Teheran sharpish before that becomes a lawless hellhole where Westerners are persona non grata..
[SPhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...=.23ca0d79ad13
Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration, is author of " ."
May 16 at 6:40 AMThe Iraq War showed us all what happens when exaggerations and lies are weaponized to justify an ideological push for war: In 2002 and 2003, a relentless series of ominous, overblown public statements and bogus intelligence reports were used to justify an invasion — part of a deliberate campaign to make an offensive military action look defensive: “Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation,” President George W. Bush said, “the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war.”
It wasn’t true. Yet Bush made the case that the United States had to attack before Hussein could use weapons of mass destruction that Iraq didn’t really have. Now a similar cycle of deception may be repeating itself with President Trump’s increasingly belligerent posture on Iran.
Trump’s Iran policy has long been rooted in falsehoods. In 2017, his administration refused to certify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Iran nuclear deal — on the premise that Iran wasn’t complying with the terms. That wasn’t true. Earlier that year, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Iran’s compliance; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reported to Congress that “Iran is adhering to its JCPOA obligations”; and the U.S. intelligence community presented no evidence justifying Trump’s decertification.
Trump’s subsequent decision to withdraw from the JCPOA was no surprise. For years, he had railed against it as the “worst deal ever negotiated” by tossing out a raft of easily debunked assertions: that Iran was given $150 billion under the terms of the deal, a https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/13/president-trumps-claim-that-democrats-gave-iran-billion/?utm_term=.f1f73d82772d The Washington Post’s Fact Checker rated with four Pinocchios; that Iran’s regime was verging on “https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/14/fact-checking-president-trumps-speech-on-the-iran-deal/?utm_term=.ebcb88dec2cd” before the deal, implying that somehow the deal lent the regime new life. After pulling out, Trump has continued to
his own intelligence community’s assessment that Iran had been complying. Numbed to a president who lies so regularly that it’s become the background noise to our political culture, his reckless exit from a multilateral, U.N. Security Council-endorsed arms-control agreement that wasn’t being violated was treated as just another routine turn of events in Trump’s Washington.
[Trump is moving us closer to war with Iran]
Since then, Trump’s administration has made every effort to manufacture a crisis with Iran. To the dismay of our closest European allies, the administration has repeatedly https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/us/politics/iran-nuclear-deal.html new sanctions; officially https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/08/politics/iran-us-irgc-designation/index.html Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization; announced an “https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/us-iran/567751/” in the same week as the 65th anniversary of a U.S.-backed coup in Iran;
, via a tweeted-out video message from national security adviser John Bolton, that the Iranian regime wouldn’t “
”; and https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rand-paul-slams-pompeo-over-potential-war-against-iran-says-admin-doesnt-have-authority that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force against al Qaeda and associated forces could be applied to war with Iran.
This month, the manufactured crisis was escalated. Bolton announced the deployment of a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the region,
unspecified “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran that could lead to the use of “unrelenting force” by the United States. Days later, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iran-trump-pompeo/pompeo-warns-iran-against-attacking-us-interests-idUSKCN1SF2L6 that any attacks from Iran or its proxies would be met with a “swift and decisive U.S. response.” The State Department has drawn down some of our personnel in nearby Baghdad, again citing unspecified threats from Iran.
Our allies have contradicted this view: Speaking at the Pentagon this week, a British major general stated, “There’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.”
The ideological agenda behind the administration’s rhetoric and policies is clear. Bolton, in particular, has long advocated regime change and called for war, writing an op-ed in 2015 for the New York Times titled, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” Israel and Saudi Arabia — with governments that have cultivated close ties with Trump — favor confrontation with Iran. Based on that history, it’s hard not to conclude that Trump’s administration has pursued a clear strategy: provoke Iran into doing something that gives a pretext for war. And as with Iraq, the administration has used exaggerations and unspecified intelligence reports to lay the predicate that an offensive war against Iran will be defensive. In that context, the closure of the U.S. consulate in Basra and the Baghdad embassy drawdown are ominous, removing targets that could feature in an Iranian response to a U.S. attack.
[Obama worried with foreign leaders about Trump. The president has proved them right.]
The remaining question involves President Trump’s ultimate intentions. He campaigned pledging to end U.S. wars in the Middle East and as recently as his State of the Union address earlier this year, said “Great nations do not fight endless wars.” But he also clearly revels in undoing the progress of President Barack Obama’s Iran deal and posing as a tough guy on the world stage. He could (and should) pivot back to diplomacy, as he’s attempted to do with North Korea, though his actions to date have only set back the starting point for serious diplomatic efforts. Instead, on his watch, our country has become isolated from our allies and, unsurprisingly, Iran has signaled that it plans to restart elements of its nuclear program that were rolled back or halted under the JCPOA. Trump could still pull back from the brink, or he could follow the momentum of his own creation into a war that could be a deadly, costly disaster.
We don’t know what he’ll do. But we know Trump is averse to truth, addicted to lies, and that what he says about Iran should be treated with tremendous skepticism. The consequences of a war with Iran — a much larger, more determined and more sophisticated adversary than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — should be urgently aired. And Congress, the branch of government empowered to declare war, should make clear that military action against Iran is not authorized.
It can be tempting, sometimes, to shrug off the false and misleading statements, more than 10,000 and counting, that Trump has habitually proffered while in office. But if we slide into another war based on a fundamentally dishonest premise, Trump’s lies could wind up producing painful and far-reaching consequences.
Trump’s Iran policy is rooted in lies. The kind that got us into the Iraq War.
Failing to see his dishonesty for what it is could have devastating consequences.
Ben RhodesPresident Trump speaks to the press on the White House South Lawn Tuesday. (Al Drago/Bloomberg)BenRhodes, a deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration, is author of " ."
May 16 at 6:40 AMThe Iraq War showed us all what happens when exaggerations and lies are weaponized to justify an ideological push for war: In 2002 and 2003, a relentless series of ominous, overblown public statements and bogus intelligence reports were used to justify an invasion — part of a deliberate campaign to make an offensive military action look defensive: “Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation,” President George W. Bush said, “the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war.”
It wasn’t true. Yet Bush made the case that the United States had to attack before Hussein could use weapons of mass destruction that Iraq didn’t really have. Now a similar cycle of deception may be repeating itself with President Trump’s increasingly belligerent posture on Iran.
Trump’s Iran policy has long been rooted in falsehoods. In 2017, his administration refused to certify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Iran nuclear deal — on the premise that Iran wasn’t complying with the terms. That wasn’t true. Earlier that year, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Iran’s compliance; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reported to Congress that “Iran is adhering to its JCPOA obligations”; and the U.S. intelligence community presented no evidence justifying Trump’s decertification.
Trump’s subsequent decision to withdraw from the JCPOA was no surprise. For years, he had railed against it as the “worst deal ever negotiated” by tossing out a raft of easily debunked assertions: that Iran was given $150 billion under the terms of the deal, a https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/13/president-trumps-claim-that-democrats-gave-iran-billion/?utm_term=.f1f73d82772d The Washington Post’s Fact Checker rated with four Pinocchios; that Iran’s regime was verging on “https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/14/fact-checking-president-trumps-speech-on-the-iran-deal/?utm_term=.ebcb88dec2cd” before the deal, implying that somehow the deal lent the regime new life. After pulling out, Trump has continued to
[Trump is moving us closer to war with Iran]
Since then, Trump’s administration has made every effort to manufacture a crisis with Iran. To the dismay of our closest European allies, the administration has repeatedly https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/us/politics/iran-nuclear-deal.html new sanctions; officially https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/08/politics/iran-us-irgc-designation/index.html Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization; announced an “https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/us-iran/567751/” in the same week as the 65th anniversary of a U.S.-backed coup in Iran;
This month, the manufactured crisis was escalated. Bolton announced the deployment of a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the region,
Our allies have contradicted this view: Speaking at the Pentagon this week, a British major general stated, “There’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.”
The ideological agenda behind the administration’s rhetoric and policies is clear. Bolton, in particular, has long advocated regime change and called for war, writing an op-ed in 2015 for the New York Times titled, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” Israel and Saudi Arabia — with governments that have cultivated close ties with Trump — favor confrontation with Iran. Based on that history, it’s hard not to conclude that Trump’s administration has pursued a clear strategy: provoke Iran into doing something that gives a pretext for war. And as with Iraq, the administration has used exaggerations and unspecified intelligence reports to lay the predicate that an offensive war against Iran will be defensive. In that context, the closure of the U.S. consulate in Basra and the Baghdad embassy drawdown are ominous, removing targets that could feature in an Iranian response to a U.S. attack.
[Obama worried with foreign leaders about Trump. The president has proved them right.]
The remaining question involves President Trump’s ultimate intentions. He campaigned pledging to end U.S. wars in the Middle East and as recently as his State of the Union address earlier this year, said “Great nations do not fight endless wars.” But he also clearly revels in undoing the progress of President Barack Obama’s Iran deal and posing as a tough guy on the world stage. He could (and should) pivot back to diplomacy, as he’s attempted to do with North Korea, though his actions to date have only set back the starting point for serious diplomatic efforts. Instead, on his watch, our country has become isolated from our allies and, unsurprisingly, Iran has signaled that it plans to restart elements of its nuclear program that were rolled back or halted under the JCPOA. Trump could still pull back from the brink, or he could follow the momentum of his own creation into a war that could be a deadly, costly disaster.
We don’t know what he’ll do. But we know Trump is averse to truth, addicted to lies, and that what he says about Iran should be treated with tremendous skepticism. The consequences of a war with Iran — a much larger, more determined and more sophisticated adversary than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — should be urgently aired. And Congress, the branch of government empowered to declare war, should make clear that military action against Iran is not authorized.
It can be tempting, sometimes, to shrug off the false and misleading statements, more than 10,000 and counting, that Trump has habitually proffered while in office. But if we slide into another war based on a fundamentally dishonest premise, Trump’s lies could wind up producing painful and far-reaching consequences.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Thread Starter
To counter the above, from the Grauniad - not known as an American mouthpiece.....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-for-proxy-war
Iran’s most prominent military leader has recently met Iraqi militias in Baghdad and told them to “prepare for proxy war”, the Guardian has learned.
Two senior intelligence sources said that Qassem Suleimani, leader of Iran’s powerful Quds force, summoned the militias under Tehran’s influence three weeks ago, amid a heightened state of tension in the region. The move to mobilise Iran’s regional allies is understood to have triggered fears in the US that Washington’s interests in the Middle East are facing a pressing threat. The UK raised its threat levels for British troops in Iraq on Thursday.
While Suleimani has met regularly with leaders of Iraq’s myriad Shia groups over the past five years, the nature and tone of this gathering was different. “It wasn’t quite a call to arms, but it wasn’t far off,” one source said.
The meeting has led to a frenzy of diplomatic activity between US, British and Iraqi officials who are trying to banish the spectre of clashes between Tehran and Washington and who now fear that Iraq could become an arena for conflict. The gathering partly informed a US decision to evacuate non-essential diplomatic staff from the US embassy in Baghdad and Erbil and to raise the threat status at US bases in Iraq. It also coincided with a perceived separate risk to US interests and those of its allies in the Persian Gulf and led to a heightened threat that more than a decade of proxy conflicts may spill over into a direct clash between Washington and Tehran.
Leaders of all the militia groups that fall under the umbrella of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Units (PMUs) were in attendance at the meeting called by Suleimani, the intelligence sources claimed. One senior figure who learned about the meeting had since met with western officials to express concerns. As the head of the elite Quds force, Suleimani plays a significant role in the militias’ strategic directions and major operations. Over the past 15 years, he has been Iran’s most influential powerbroker in Iraq and Syria, leading Tehran’s efforts to consolidate its presence in both countries and trying to reshape the region in its favour.......
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-for-proxy-war
Iran’s most prominent military leader has recently met Iraqi militias in Baghdad and told them to “prepare for proxy war”, the Guardian has learned.
Two senior intelligence sources said that Qassem Suleimani, leader of Iran’s powerful Quds force, summoned the militias under Tehran’s influence three weeks ago, amid a heightened state of tension in the region. The move to mobilise Iran’s regional allies is understood to have triggered fears in the US that Washington’s interests in the Middle East are facing a pressing threat. The UK raised its threat levels for British troops in Iraq on Thursday.
While Suleimani has met regularly with leaders of Iraq’s myriad Shia groups over the past five years, the nature and tone of this gathering was different. “It wasn’t quite a call to arms, but it wasn’t far off,” one source said.
The meeting has led to a frenzy of diplomatic activity between US, British and Iraqi officials who are trying to banish the spectre of clashes between Tehran and Washington and who now fear that Iraq could become an arena for conflict. The gathering partly informed a US decision to evacuate non-essential diplomatic staff from the US embassy in Baghdad and Erbil and to raise the threat status at US bases in Iraq. It also coincided with a perceived separate risk to US interests and those of its allies in the Persian Gulf and led to a heightened threat that more than a decade of proxy conflicts may spill over into a direct clash between Washington and Tehran.
Leaders of all the militia groups that fall under the umbrella of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Units (PMUs) were in attendance at the meeting called by Suleimani, the intelligence sources claimed. One senior figure who learned about the meeting had since met with western officials to express concerns. As the head of the elite Quds force, Suleimani plays a significant role in the militias’ strategic directions and major operations. Over the past 15 years, he has been Iran’s most influential powerbroker in Iraq and Syria, leading Tehran’s efforts to consolidate its presence in both countries and trying to reshape the region in its favour.......