Iran
 

New thread to add to those on Russia, Yemen, Stria etc. Things are getting heated......

Military Leader: Iran Sending Elite Fighters Into U.S., Europe

IRGC commander: 'IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon'

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country’s elite military force, is sending assets to infiltrate the United States and Europe at the direction of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to recent Farsi-language comments from an Iranian military leader.

The IRGC “will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” according to the Iranian military commander, who said that these forces would operate with the goal of bolstering Iran’s hardline regime and thwarting potential plots against the Islamic Republic. “The whole world should know that the IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator of Iran’s Khatam-al-Anbia Garrison, an IRGC command front, was quoted as saying in an Iranian state-controlled publication closely tied to the IRGC........

“The IRGC is [the] strong guardian of the Islamic Republic,” Abnoush was quoted as saying. “The Fedayeen of Velayat [fighting force] are under the order of Iran’s Supreme leader. Defending and protecting the Velayat [the Supreme Leader] has no border and limit.”....... “Our enemies have several projects to destroy our Islamic revolution, and have waged three wars against us to execute their plans against our Islamic Republic,” Abnoush said.

“The IRGC has defeated enemies in several fronts. The enemy surrendered and accepted to negotiate with us. And now all of our problems are being solved and our country is becoming stronger in all fronts. Some believe the holy defense ended,” the military leader added. “They are wrong; the holy defense continues, and today, it is more complicated than before.”........

Spin nowt else

sounds like an SO facing budget cuts....................

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...lynn-on-notice

The Trump administration has said it was “officially putting Iran on notice” in reaction to a Iranian missile test and an attack on a Saudi warship by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, but gave no details about how Washington intended to respond. The threat was made on Wednesday by the national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in his first public statement since taking office.

Speaking in the White House briefing room, Flynn said the medium-range missile launch on Sunday and a Houthi attack on a Saudi frigate on Monday, reportedly by suicide-boat, represented “the latest of a series of incidents in the past six months in which Houthi forces that Iran has trained and armed have struck Emirati and Saudi vessels, and threatened US and allied vessels transiting the Red Sea.

“In these and other similar activities, Iran continues to threaten US friends and allies in the region,” the national security adviser said. He said Iranian actions “undermine security, prosperity, and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East and place American lives at risk”.

Flynn did not specify how the new administration would respond. Asked for clarification, the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, said that the president wanted to make sure the Iranians “understood we are not going to sit by and not act on their actions”.......

Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group in Washington, said: “It’s either an empty threat or a clear statement of intent to go to war with Iran......

Ali Vaez is leaving out a lot of middle ground, so he's blowing as much hot air as Flynn.


Just out of curiosity, who funds that site, ORAC?
I'm not sure ... but follow the money is usually a good idea.

The Guardian? They are an independent newspaper funded by their own long standing trust fund - no external influence or funding.

I guess the Iranians will be putting to good use all that Cash Mr. Obama sent them in the form of Non-Ransom money.

Perhaps this ties in with Bannon stating the West is in an un-declared War with Islam and its aim of major expansion into Western countries? - and both he and Trump have defined aims of doing something about it?

The Guardian - War on Islam the central Trump doctrine

SAS

All in the directions Putin gave Trumpet. Rattle swords so Iran buys more missles from Russia instead of commercial planes from the US.

This is minor compared to Trumpet s-ing on Australia, sending troops into Mexico, and setting up a war at sea with "Jina."

The Sultan

It'll go down well in Saudi Arabia & Israel..................

Here we go again. Another Middle-East war.

what would we do without one?

I still chuckle about the "highly trained" Iranian operative who was caught making bombs destined for Israeli tourists in Thailand when one of them detonated prematurely blowing the roof off the house he was living in. He emerged into the street covered in blood and with his trousers ripped off and flagged down a passing taxi. When said taxi saw him up close it sped off and the enraged operative proceeded to throw a grenade at it, he then also threw a grenade at arriving police officers only to have it bounce back off a tree and blow his legs off.

Not exactly SAS material.

For ORAC:
Please don't try to get cute.
International Crisis Group
I cited that group's spokesman (Ali Vaez) in my post/reply to you.
I know that the Guardian is a newspaper.

Suggest you consider the source when you consume information on the internet. Also, a grain of salt should be consumed with each story, many of which are rich with opinion and sparse on fact.

The Guardian piece covers a good bit of ground. It closes with a point that most people don't understand. William Lind wrote, a couple of decades ago, a theoretical framework about a thing called 4th generation warfare. It's a reasonable approximation for political conflicts that include non-state actors. Under that framework, and with some updates based on experiences in the last 20 years, there's been a ideological war for sure underway since about 1998 when the first successful attacks on America by Al Queda came off in Kenya and Tanzania. (whether or not the (failed) truck attack on in 1993 the WTC were of a primordial version of Al Qaeda is debatable, but the perps were in fact Muslims).

If you pull your mind out of the Peace of Westphalia assumptions of wars only being possible between nation states, you find that a strange kind of war has been going on for about 20 years that looks nothing like our grandfather's war. As time has gone on, the number of factions and sides has increased and morphed, not remained static. What Bin Laden and his inner circle hoped to achieve was a call to arms under a broad front (which is sort of what Al Qaeda means) to encourage Muslims of all kinds to fight back against the world order/world structure as they saw it. (In that respect they are in an anarchist model of political movements).

With that perspective in mind, Flynn's not raving. He's reporting on history. When you consider the funding funneled into Syrian groups fighting Assad from Saudi and Qatar, among other places, the "many vs many" nature of this new global reality really hits home. It's not going to stop for a very long time, and any fantasy Mr Trump has about destroying ISIS for once and for all demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of the field of play he's confronted with. It's not a soccer match, its a six team 7-man rugby match played with one, two, or three balls depending on the flip of a coin.

On Reuters
Iran holds naval war games amid rising tensions with U.S.

LoneWolf is correct I think - it's no longer nation states but a war of ideas (or fanatics...)

nation states try and use the perpetrators - as the US did in Afghanistan against Russia - but you don't control them................... they go their own way and it can often rebound on you

Sounds like the late spymaster COlin Forbes thriller 'The Sisterhood' about Tweed's elite SIS team combatting Middle East dictatorship sponsored terror cell predominantly made up of three mysterious female assaisns knocking off key figures in intel and think tank around Europe. All this plus a plot to poison the UK water system with chemical agents and said middle eatern state preparing to invade if not destory Western infrastructure.

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g2...pserhr3ugu.jpg

Book was written and published in the late 90s btw

cheers

@LynehamLad


Iran has a Navy. Navies need to do exercises to keep their edge. Iran is doing exercises in waters near their home. It's a non story. Someone is engaging in a bit of spin in that article.

Or as a certain tweeter would have it - FAKE NEWS!!! ;)