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Comment · 3 months ago
They may also want to replace the Supreme leader with a CIA, Al-Qaeeda, ISIS and Nusra-Front veteran to get taken off the State-Sponsor-of-Terror list.
Comment · 6 months ago
But Trump literally did those things in that order :

- Ripped up the JCPOA in 2016, freezing Iranian assets while imposing maximum-pressure sanctions; not even lifting them during Covid, blocking medicines and essential supplies which causing untold number of avoidable deaths. Biden also kept most of these sanctions in place during his term.

- Initiated a currency crisis to instigate "popular uprisings" in December of last year ( which immediately followed Netanyahu's sixth visit to the White House and in which Netanyahu secured Trump's go-ahead). The US Treasury secretary boasted : "We created a dollar shortage in the country. The Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded”

- On cue, the CIA , Mossad coordinated and armed the "peaceful protestors" with Mossad openly tweeting in farsi : "Go out together into the streets. The time has come... We are with you in the field." Also Mike Pompeo : "Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.". As the USS Gerald Ford was making its way over to the Middle-east from murder and kidnapping operations in the Caribbean, Trump truth-socialled to iranians to "KEEP PROTESTING -TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!" and "HELP IS ON ITS WAY,"

- Trump recently also admitted to Fox New that they sent lots of weapons to Iranians via the Iraqi Kurds : "We sent a lot of guns to the Iranian protesters, we sent guns through the Kurds, I think the Kurds kept them."

All of this was on top of decades-worth of covert operations, assassinations, sabotage operations, and (let's be honest for once) terrorist attacks via various proxies. All garnished with agitprop laundered through the mainstream media, "independent media" , NGOs, think-tanks, human-rights and activists groups. Pretty much anything we hear about Irani s filtered through this states-funded, intelligence-directed machinery.

It is when these combined efforts failed that Trump finally resorted to threatening to destroy their civilization (which regardless of the means employed or who was in charge was always the endgame because that was the only outcome satisfactory to the Israelis)

If i had to guess where they failed, it would be doing all this on the back of the Genocidal war in Gaza and Israel's general invasion of the middle-east, plus the 12-day war and the countless live-streamed war-crimes not to mention the countless failed wars and "interventions" in the middle-east; There has been a mass-awakening about Israel's true nature and ambitions and how it has been the driving force for all these wars and behind the foreign policy of the US and its allies w.r.t. Iran. Also alienating, bullying and betraying your allies whether the Europeans, or the Kurds or anyone else, probably didn't help.

Comment · 7 months ago
I am not sure getting a million people killed in another decades-long middle-eastern war (one whose scale and tragedies will likely overshadow all the previous wars we have seen so far in region) in a country of 90 million people is really worth the push to renewables.
Comment · 7 months ago
Joe Kent [1] offered a possible way out of this - however slim the odds might be. Trump's one quality that may save us all from this quagmire is his ability to do a complete 180 on his previous committed path - "TACO" as his detractors like to call it. Like he did with ICE in Minneapolis, or in Yemen last year when he quit his bombing campaign after one month. If he could be convinced to just declare victory over Iran and move onto the next crisis of his creation - maybe send ICE to Cuba or invade Puerto Rico. He has the personal power to pull it off and his base will probably back him. Getting the Iranians to de-escalate and back to negotiations will be a challenge (after the second time he bombed them in middle of negotiations). The real problem will be restraining the Israelis who will likely do everything in their power to scuttle any deal and will do things to further drag the US and other countries in the region and the world into their war.

Another problem will be getting to through to Trump who seems to be cocooned in a reality distortion field cast by Fox News, the Israel Lobby and Israel-firsters in his administration. If enough people in his base and dissenters in his administration and the government can speak up and get through to him he might be convinced to change course.

The Democratic Party for their part seem to be quite unanimated in all this. It looks like they're playing a cynical double-game, hoping Trump gets further caught up in a web of his own making. I wonder if it will weigh on them at all if another school gets blown up or another thousand people die while they slow-walk the vote on the next war powers resolution.

[1] - Interesting interview between Kent and Saagar Enjeti https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XMyC2Cr7X0

Comment · 7 months ago
Please don't go there. This is a deadly serious matter.
Comment · 7 months ago
A part of the problem is that the complicit media and politicians diverts the public's attention and energies away from relevant things like weapons-transfers, monetary flows, technology transfers, intelligence-sharing, foreign lobbying, legal and media cover for child-sex-trafficking and honeypot operations and onto minimally impactful elements like song and dance competitions.
Comment · 7 months ago
Comment · 7 months ago
Comment · 8 months ago
Comment · 8 months ago
> The point is preventing another North Korea style nuclear blackmail state.

North Korea aspires be to be a Israel-style nuclear blackmail state.

Comment · 8 months ago
Why are we even talking about this? As if this is being done for the 'protestors'? Netanyahu didn't visit the White House 6 times in the last year to advocate for the welfare of the Iranian people. The "negotiations" over the last several weeks weren't over protestors - it was over the Nuclear program, ballistic program and proxy forces. It wasn't even about US interests. Iran offered mining, oil and other valuable rights. Trump wasn't buying. This is about Israel's national security interests and hegemonic ambitions. Protestors are just pawns in service of that.

If this turns into a full-scale war or a civil war breaks out, we are looking at 1 million Iranian deaths conservatively speaking. Just look at happened at every single foreign intervention in the region - Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia. How does a million dead Iranians help them? How does it help the Americans, and the world if oil infrastructures or shipping lanes are targeted ? How does it help the region or Europe when millions of refugees flood out, and armouries are broken open and weapons and insurgents flood the region (like it did with Iraq and Libya)? It helps Israel greatly though, since they take out their arch nemesis, their conventional military and the nuclear program. And they think can shield themselves from the chaos they create around them.

Comment · 8 months ago
A lot of them were armed as well based on the death toll for security forces. Again where is the evidence for all this. The Iranian government published the names and details for the 3000-odd death-toll they claimed. The 30,000 number is from diaspora, citing 'anonymous health and government officials' - Who all seem to be linked to Pahlavi, Israel and US-backed sources all trying to manufacture a case for the war they are now waging. If the real number is > 10x then giving names should be very easy for CIA and Mossad.

All this is just a excuse, when this whole war is about Israel's national security interest and hegemonic ambitions. The "negotiations" were entirely over the Nuclear program, ballistic program and proxy forces - The protestors, human rights, democracy none of it were even mentioned. Netanyahu didn't visit the White House 6 times over the last year to advocate for the protestors.

Comment · 8 months ago
More specifically, seems to be driven by Netanyahu's political accounting. Starting a potential major war going into mid-terms is pretty inconvenient for Trump who could be looking at impeachment over Epstein. But Netanyahu is facing trial and October-7 investigation commissions more imminently and can't wait that long. Netanyahu trumps Trump, evidently.
Comment · 8 months ago
> 30,000 in 2 days - half the 2-year death toll of Gaza ; With no artillery , air-strikes or heavy weapons, without million-man armies facing off in pitched battles, without health system collapsing with 100s of thousands of injuries in 48 hours, photos or satellite imagery of mass graves and bodies littering the streets

Propaganda is a hell of a drug.

Comment · 8 months ago
Trump launching bunker-busters on his midterm chances. Which depending on how bad it goes, potentially means impeachment and prison. Whatever it is the Israelis have on him, it must be good.

Works out great for Netanyahu though as is customary. He can be PM for a while longer and stave off his own impending trial and imprisonment. If this goes well for Israel, he might even get that pardon that Trump campaigned for tirelessly.

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