Onward movement... As in onward to Iran?
Iran v US confrontation
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Onward movement... As in onward to Iran?
This is a strong opinion... Wow.
Nah. "Onwards to Iran" would require a massive build-up that would be impossible to hide from Iraq or anyone else in the world. Right now this appears to be what is written in the letter.
America would have been at war with North Korea long ago only for China backing them up, and entrenched conventional artillery that can hit Seoul. Can't see them rebooting the nuclear agreement now because frankly if you where Iran why would you take the deal again but could 100% see a war in Iran to stop them getting nuclear weapons.
You're "forgetting" that Hezbollah clearly haven't been interested in an open war either in the recent past. Both sides took care to keep the hostilities in a containable way in the past few years. Trump's moves put that delicate balance into question as well.
Will go to SA/Israel I reckon.
I'm not debating if the assassination is an act of war or not, my question is can an American president commit an act of war without the approval of other governing institutions, I'm guessing he can't declare a war on his own but can he use the military in any way he wants to provoke one? I'm not that informed on American politics and it's structure.
Can't wait for Iraq to plunge itself back into chaos and Iran coming in for another attempt to take it over. But hey that domestic infrastructure plan is coming any day now.
Yeah pretty much. Constitutionally war powers lie with congress, but over the years more and more power has passed to the administrative branch. Then post 9-11 they gave the president a load of new power to authorize force which was suppose to be 9/11 related but has been misused by Bush and Obama and now Trump. Basically if memory serves a president can basically do whatever the feck they want for about 30 days or thereabouts before having to get congressional approval for continued action.
Surprising coming from Tapper, he‘d fecking love to see his military heroes in another war. Probably write some erotic fiction about it.
I think it is for 60 days with another 30 days for withdrawal. If I am not mistaken, the US never actually declared war in Vietnam, and both. The number of days has been violated by both Clinton (Kosovo) and Obama (Syria and Libya). To be fair, the US has military missions in 20+ countries, and I guess in most of them it is without declaring war, being in a war, or having a congress approvement.
The main thing congress can do is to not finance the war.
Yeah, pretty much this. I think in the way it was written up originally, as with other elements of the US Constitution, there was the thought that congressmen wouldn't be hyper partisan all that time and therefore at certain times there'd be bipartisan support within congress to challenge the President if he were abusing his powers. But obviously this has very much not been the case for at least the 2nd half of the 20th century and early 21st.
Iran is a stronger regional power. It can close the straits of Hormuz, threaten Saudi Arabia and Israel, destabilise a number of surrounding countries. The US would have to move significantt forces into the region to mitigate against that, I doubt limited air strikes would be enough to contain it. They’d have no allies. Could they do it? Yes. Not easy though. Would a war weary country over half of which hates Trump be prepared to pay the price, especially when Trump said no more wars - and it’s an election year. Iran don’t even have to win, they only have to make the cost for Trump high enough.
Israel has assassinated Iranian scientists within Iran, with US help, it has launched a computer virus against Iranian research, and it has also bombed a Iranian nuclear research base in coordination with internal Kurdish militants. Iranian response has been random terrorist violent with no threat to either global oil or the Israeli state (both of which would cause escalation). If Israel can do this without response, the US can do a dozen times more. There are no laws when you are a superpower, unless your enemy wants to commit suicide. If Iran openly bloks shipping they will be annihilated.
To think that fecking country was once our colony.
Weirdly enough, I’m not sure if this is the case, the “without response” part anyway. Israel doesn’t announce or in most cases even acknowledge its missions against Iran, maintaining a certain level of plausible deniability which allows Iran to save face and relieves Tehran of the pressure to respond accordingly. With the US it’s the complete opposite, Washington has to have its “we got him” moment every time, which pretty much obliges Iran to respond, no matter how asymetrical that confrontation appears.
Interesting with 30 days, didn't know that.
Stupid question perhaps but I know for the longest time Iran was arguably the most Western country in the ME. Since the arrival of the religious regime that has obviously been affected but I remember watching a travel show some years ago where even fairly recently it seemed Iranians still enjoyed a level of Western style luxuries and freedoms that are less common elsewhere.
It's a bit ironic we have a President claiming to stand for Christianity and taking over the US as if it were his divine right - somehow wanting to undo what happened in Iran under that type of belief system.
Is Iran still progressive enough to where a war by the US risks setting Iran further back in it's internal battle to go back to it's pre Ayatollah society?
It's a bit ironic we have a President claiming to stand for Christianity and taking over the US as if it were his divine right - somehow wanting to undo what happened in Iran under that type of belief system.
Is Iran still progressive enough to where a war by the US risks setting Iran further back in it's internal battle to go back to it's pre Ayatollah society?
Revan reckons 60 which is probably right, but yeah it’s a weird situation. It means a president can get his country up to the ass in trouble quickly and then congress are left having to either risk looking like they don’t support the military by refusing to continue funding the operation, or basically rubber stamping whatever dumbshit adventure the President got them into.
The US didn't claim responsibility for Stuxnet, I think it was wikileaks or someone else that revealed it. I'm not sure if the Iranian bombings started before or after the public confirmation.
Of course, Trum might just blurt it out at a Mar A Lago buffet.
Iran needs to respond to save face, but any real attack on Saudi oil or shipping will mean that the Iranian sky will rain death. I think all they can do without risking war is to wait a bit and ask Hezbollah or Iraqi proxies to lob a few rockets at Israel or US troops (the latter after delay).
Yup, amateur hour
They won't attack Israel now. Bibi has closed the door by distancing Israel from this. The Iranians are no fools. I would say they will keep up the noise for a while until closer to the election and then get Trump embroiled in a war. In that part of the world things are taken personally. Though they shout death to America it's not the country of America or the American public they hate. It's a particular administration.
Maybe, I doubt any of that will be enough to save face though, it’s nothing they haven’t done already, including attacks in the Gulf and on Saudi soil. Nasrallah indicated that the proxies have been given the autonomy to act as they see fit without direction from Tehran, so perhaps there’s a way there to escalate and save face while maintaining their own plausible deniability.
I dunno, I think we’re probably at the point now where a wide regional war in the next year is more likely than not. Feels like the road of de-escalation is now harder than the war-path.
I'm far from being an expert on Khomeinist ideology, but this reads like complete nonsense.
I know this kind of PR talk, but do you believe this is really the essence of Shia Islamism's attitude towards America and what they perceive as the West?
You know Khomeini lived in France. Nothing is religion based in the middle east. It is all to do with power. They use religion for power. The same in Saudi Arabia. If the US becomes the friends of the Iranian regime, I bet they would be their biggest supporters. The problem is that the Iranians did have democracy but the CIA and Mi6 got rid of their democratically elected PM and put in the Shah who was a brutal dictator in the end. No one likes their governments to be puppets of a foreign power and when you combine religion to oppose then it becomes a unifying force.
Khomeini’s Islamic Government is worth a read through - https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/125389/8006_islamic-government.pdf
Damn bro that's 94 pages! That's like all my toilet breaks for 2 weeks.
'Death to America' is basically them saying 'down with America' like chanting at a football game. It doesn't mean literal death. Persian language is full of exaggerations and phrases that seem obscene/over the top when directly translated to English.
We’ve not fought a declared war since WWII. Amazing stat all things considered.
It was written before the parties formed in America, so they definitely expected congressmen to act independently.
So in essence a president can start any war he likes without the rest of the political system having any say at all? Quite a dangerous set up considering the capabilities of the US army. Even more scary when a clearly unbalanced person is in power. Just think about it, 1 person can do anything he wants with the whole military force of the US for a prolonged period of time.
Well, at least the SecDef spoke out...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/politics/esper-iran-cultural-sites-trump/index.html
The parallels to Iraq are uncanny. You've got the pundit-sphere and politicians painting a picture of Iran as the big bad evil, just like they did 17 years ago to their neighbours. Then, as now, the concept is so deeply embedded in our consciousnesses that it's almost impossible to suggest they're not without being called 'crazy'. The result is that it's really easy to chat bullshit about the nation without opposition because... well... we all know that Iran are evil. Don't we? If they weren't, why would everyone say they were?
Anyway, on the matter of "Death to America", it means something different in everyday Farsi. You only have to look at the fact that Iranians were chanting "Death to Potatoes" (marg bar sabzimini) a few years ago in opposition to some of Ahmedinejad's reforms. They obviously didn't want to literally kill potatoes.
"Death to whatever" basically just means "feck whatever". But if you were to take that transliteration literally, can you imagine how a deliberately antagonistic person might translate "feck Iran"? If you wanted to be mischievous, you could could translate it as "Rape all Iranians". That's not what it means, though. Just like "Death to America" doesn't mean "Kill all Americans".