They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran

peterstorey

Yeah, Alexander started it all in 300BC.

Plechazunga

Aristagoras in 499.

RedKaos

Yes, but for the US im certain their concerns aren't the human rights and liberties of the Iranian people - if that were the case then the CIA wouldnt have forcefully replaced a democratically-elected government with an oppressive Shah on the helm some decades ago.

The US wants Iran toppled to maintain near total control of the region, with Iran weakened there'd be very little standing between them and total dominance.

RedKaos

The US has always had a naturally destructive foreign policy since 1945, regardless of president. G W Bush just took it a step further with his insane neocon aspirations.

I think it was also down to many bearing desperate hopes on Obama's shoulders, only to realise that his foreign policies are mostly a continuation of the administration that preceded him. So to many the revelation isnt the nature of the President himself thats destructive, but its the nation itself irrespective of who's at the helm.

peterstorey

Source?

Plechazunga

Don't worry, the big one's coming apart in a few years, an anti-Western Egypt will make us nostalgic for the Mullahs...

Plechazunga

Yer man Herodotus of course. Well yes fair point. But there are Persian sources too I think.

mjs020294

What a total crock of shit.

Most Americans can see the fanatical religious posturing of an extreme Islamic State. Letting them develop nuclear weapons would be a very dangerous situation for the region.

Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons, and any President that wants to wipe them off the face of the earth would get overwhelming support from the electorate.

peterstorey

Gung ho!

RedKaos

Most Americans are ignorant of the true intentions and actions of their government's foreign policies. For example ask any American if they were aware that the US government had funded the East Timorese massacre killing 200,000..most of them will have never heard of East Timor, full stop. Or perhaps Nicaragua..or even the deliberate burning of crops and destruction of dams in South Vietnam leading hundreds and thousands to starve to death. The US propaganda machine engineers consent by using 'fear' as a recurring justification...in this case its the fear of Islamic extremists getting their hands on a nuke.

And as for nukes being dangerous for the region...Its already been discussed that Iran would be suicidally stupid to even consider using them unless in retaliation. If anything it would be a dangerous situation for the Iranian government not to have them since they'd have close to nothing to deterring what I see as an inevitable foreign toppling.

Theres a lot of talk about the dangers of religious fundamentalists obtaining a nuke, its interesting how there seems to be zero concern over the fact that religious fundamentalists in the form of Zionists already have a considerable arsenal of nukes under their disposal, and we all know that the Israelis are not known for their excessive retaliations....

Wiping them off the face of the earth?...now where have I heard that before...

mjs020294

Propaganda machine The irony.

RedKaos

If you fail the realise that even the US utilises an effective propaganda machine then quite frankly you've been living in a hole the last century or so.

Without it how do you they think they would have justified Afghanistan and Iraq, again it strives on fear and they used just that following the devastating 9/11 attacks to draw in public consent. Had the 9/11 attacks not occured then there wouldnt have been consent for a war on Iraq.

mjs020294

There is a huge difference between reacting to the largest most devastating attack on your soil in history and a propaganda machine. GW Bush didn't need to gain public support with propaganda after 911, he had full public support by midday on 9/1/2001.

RedKaos

For the Iraq war? And check your dates.

VidaRed

yanks aren't in that region so why do you care ?

they dont give a fuck about the region and they have there own ulterior motives.

Sir Matt

No one else in the Middle East wants Iran to get nuclear weapons, especially the Saudis. Why would any Sunni countries want the threat of a nuclear Iran?

Also, the US wants protect its allies in the region because it is mutually beneficial to both the countries and the US.

Team Brian GB

Whilst the American media does like to rally behind the flag and big up their military, you cannot claim they have a 'propaganda' machine, after all there is a growing school of thought that it was the media that was the cause of the United States losing the Vietnam War.

And on Vietnam and a scorched earth policy they were justified in doing so, they were fighting a guerilla army that was living off the land and using it as cover - an enemy I might add that was very casual in the breaking of the rules of war. Plus the United States are not responsible for what another country does or doesn't do.

This criticism of the United States is what I always find fascinating, how detractors handpick episodes and ignore others. For instance the US provided the final push that toppled Germany in World War One ridding the threat to Europe. They gave the western front in World War Two a whole new impetus and kept Fascism from winning the war and privinding massive material wealth to fight in the East, whilst at the same time they were responsible for crushing the Japanese who inflicted such incredible brutality across Asia. After the war despite the biggest national debt in their history they gave tens of billions to European countries to keep them from collapsing and they would go on to spend billions more to keep the Soviet Union out of Western Europe, and would counter their influence across the globe. The USA were also instrumental in forcing the end of colonialism, coercing Britain and France into departing from their empires. They protected the internationally agreed settlement in Korea with tens of thousands of deaths and they attempted to do the same in Vietnam. They intervened twice in the Balkans to prevent ethnic cleansing and bring back peace, whilst on the second occasion the Russians tried to provoke an international incident. And whilst Iraq was a bad move they are now actively trying to build a pleasant society and are doing the same in Afghanistan which was ravaged by the Soviet Union.

If the United States had done none of the above in the last one hundred years it would be a very, very different world, and that whatever undoubted at times shady activities they have gotten up to, the positive contributions to the world they have made and will make in the future will always, always outweigh them. Hence I am solidly pro American.

Mihajlovic

Well quite obviously at least the bolded part is utterly wrong. Generally speaking American foreign policy has dramatically changed after 1945 and I cannot see how anyone can believe that the US administrations have done anything only because the have so much love and compassion for humanity and because they really care about building 'pleasant societies'. The American government primarily cares about their own interests. If they have no interests in a particular region and if there is nothing to gain either in the short or long run, they will not care about promoting peace and democracy at all. They will, however, try to make the world believe that what they do is of purely philanthropic nature, hence some people, like yourself, believe that the American intervention in the Balkans, for example, was because of preventing 'ethnic cleansing' and bring peace.

Team Brian GB

Then enlighten us, what interests did the United States have in Yugoslavia besides preventing ethnic cleansing? Which of course they did, there is nothing there for the US to be interested in which is proven by the point we are now fifteen years on and there is no American presence, no NATO membership and no EU membership. There are few times any country will act outside their interests and the US is no different, but more often than not if anyone is to act they are - if the United States had decided to return to isolationism at any point after WWII I fear what the world would look like today, at no point have I said the US do what they do for humanity but they've had a far greater influence on the world than any other country you could mention.

Plechazunga

NOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo!

Forgive Brian everyone, he knows not what he does.

Team Brian GB

I know the question of conduct in the Yugoslav Wars has come up in many a long winded thread in times gone by, though it isn't rocket science to see it was perhaps the most legitimate war the international community has gotten involved with since Korea, preventing a series of war marked by many a crime against humanity.

Mihajlovic

Dr. Dwayne

There's Iraq Part I as well in that regard but I agree with you about the US. There are a lot of countries that would be much worse in the role of world policeman and without their influence in the last century things might have been very different.

Mihajlovic

Sorry Brian, Im too exhausted to even think of starting a discussion on that topic... if you think it was because of ethnic cleansing, fine, I say nothing could be further from the truth so let's just skip this subject.

Mihajlovic

It's phrases like this that gives me stomach ache, and headaches. And if only you would have mentioned 'Milosevic', somehow, I think I would have just run out into the cold muddy garden and screamed in pain.

Mockney

So, we're all for this then yeah?...Bumming Iran?

Plechazunga

Allegorical depiction of America turning her gaze to Persia.

Team Brian GB

Wow.

Don't Kill Bill

The group most likely to topple the Iranian regime are the Iranian people. I think that the regime or parts of it want nuclear bombs to threaten their own population with. It is a fantastic control method if you have hold of the national nuclear arsenal and decide you are not giving up power then can anyone dare challenge you internally.

hungrywing

That snort you just heard was God taking a breather on Alpha Centauri and lining up a potshot at Earth only to have Jesus and Buddha grab onto His arms at the last second and convince Him you meant wiping nuclear weapons off the face of the earth, not of a chunk of land tilled and worked by people who - like the rest of us - didn't ever ask to be born in the first place.

Fixed. It's amazing how much stock we put into foresight, especially what with our species not even being able to get the weather right a majority of the time.

All Presidents should be weathermen first. If you correctly predict one-thousand four-hundred and sixty consecutive days of weather, your name goes into a hat for the next election.

711

I agree with this. Trying to bluff them into climbing down with a lot of nasty rhetoric is more than just a waste of time, it's actively worsening the situation by pushing Iranians into hating the West and supporting their own government.

RedKaos

If the US were serious about wiping nukes off the earth then a good start would be fixing the fact that both them and Israel have more nukes than all the other nations combined. Hypocrisy is bliss.


The successive United States governments since 1945 have known exactly what they're doing, and to the most part have been extremely successful.

Dr. Dwayne

mate maybe you mean Russia? Israel is considered an undeclared nuclear power and there is almost no proof that they actually possess nuclear weapons.

Plechazunga

There's a fair amount of proof. Everyone knows they've got nukes. But no, they haven't got 'more than all the other nations combined'

Team Brian GB

First things first, the United States can be trusted with the responsibility of having nuclear weapons and controlling their proliferation, whilst who knows what Iran would do with them.

Secondly, in fact Russia has roughly more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined - current US stocks are around 2,500, North Korea 0-10, Israel from 0-100, India and Pakistan 40-80 each, Britain and China 150-200 each, France around 300 and Russia has in the vicinity of 6,000.

I've just written an essay on the international standing of India's hard power capabilities so I had to determine nuclear capabilities around the world.

Plechazunga

To be fair only one country has ever used nukes.

Sir Matt

But...that means it's not all America's fault! That can't be...

Dr. Dwayne

If they do they don't have enough space to store that many.

bazalini

Channel 4 has just broke an exclusive story about Iran supplying the Taleban.

Renowned blogger Zerohedge, speculated that a war with Iran is imminent, last week.

Team Brian GB

There is a difference between needing to use them and being justified in using them and being responsible enough to maintain and control them, I have no problem with a country using nuclear weapons as has been the subject of controversy here, but there is a genuine fear Iran would use them for her outrageous foreign policy aims ala Israel or/and provide them to the many terrorist groups she funds and provides for. And Forget episodes like their involvement in the Lebanon War for a moment, the insurgency that is going on in Yemen at the moment is deemed to be a proxy war between Iranian and AL Qaeda back rebels on one hand and the Yemeni Government and Saudi Arabia on the other - bringing Hiroshima and Nagasaki into the argument is hardly fair.