Is Trump Doing a George Bush with Iran?

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fountainhall

Is Trump Doing a George Bush with Iran?

Post by fountainhall »

One thing is clear. Trump is doing almost everything he can to provoke Iran. Spurred by his hawks, the region is now less stable than for years.

Trump's strings are obviously being pulled by Pompeo and regime-change tyrant Bolton. (Did he not learn any lessons from the disaster in Iraq?) But Israel and Sunni Saudi Arabia are equally part of that mix and want nothing more than to see Shi'ite Iran's wings clipped if not eliminated. There is surely little doubt those countries that Trump courted during his election campaign helped persuade him to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, thereby screwing the USA's negotiating partners China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany. To believe, as Trump has declared, that he can make a better deal to ensure that its nuclear programme is jettisoned, is facile in the extreme. Most international commentators and Middle East experts agree it would have been far better to stay in the deal and use diplomacy and carrots to enhance it. I suspect Trump is clueless as to what diplomacy means!

It's hard to believe that without Netanyahu and MBS Trump would go this far in a campaign against Iran. Having visited Iran 18 months ago, it was clear from my guides (from a private company) and the few Iranians I spoke to at length that there is little love within the country for their theocratic regime. Equally Iranians are a proud people with thousands of years of history and an immense cultural influence that extended as far away as China. If their country is challenged, in my view Iranians will likely rally around the regime. They will not be bullied.

Iranians also have little love for the USA which has interfered in its affairs for almost 70 years. It was the USA along with the British who engineered the coup that led to the ouster of the country's democratically elected President in 1953. It was the western powers who propped up the Shah and his hated Savak Security Police. Had the west left the country alone, it is probably unlikely that Khomeini and his religious fanatics would have gained the support they did.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, it was Iraq that the west supported and equipped with arms during that 8-year pointless war that killed 1 million Iranians.

Iran has clearly been interfering in the affairs of other Middle East countries. But the various sanctions that have been imposed over several years only affect the people. The regime with its corruption eat caviar and kebabs in their ivory towers.

Pompeio's recent and sudden changes of itineraries, with the media advised they could not report locations, could well have been a pantomime to start the drama of a war with Iran. With a US aircraft carrier now in the Gulf the recent incident involving damage to four commercial ships - “sabotage” as claimed by the UAE - has ratcheted up tensions, even though these took place almost 150 kms outside the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz. Damage was minimal and no casualties or injuries were reported. All of which seems to suggest that some actor in this drama is attempting to create an incident as a pretext for further action.

Many countries technically and actually at war resort to this tactic. We now know from Robert McNamara's confessions and the declassified reports of The Gulf of Tonkin incident during the Vietnam War, the action which finally persuaded President Johnson to bomb North Vietnam, was almost totally a work of fiction. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was another fiction. Condoleezza Rice's televised soon-ridiculed suggestion of mushroom clouds over Iraq was a deliberate ploy to scare a gullible public and stampede Congress to support was in Iraq.

Something is just over the horizon with Iran. Nothing like a nice little war and the dropping of precision-targeted bombs on another country to prop up an administration's short-time popularity and distract from other pressing issues. Will there be war? I have absolutely no idea. But the elastic bands tethering Trump to a Netanyahu under indictment for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and an MBS whose credibility seems to be waning by the day in his own country, ought to be stretching to breaking point. He needs a win - somewhere.
fountainhall

Re: Is Trump Doing a George Bush with Iran?

Post by fountainhall »

Apologies. In paragraph 4 above, the reference to the ouster of Iran's democratically elected President should read Prime Minister.
firecat69

Re: Is Trump Doing a George Bush with Iran?

Post by firecat69 »

Could be exactly what he is doing . The Moron cancelled the deal and now he is surprised if they start up their nuclear program. Maybe we can send Iran engineers from Boeing and possibly they could blow themselves up .
fountainhall

Re: Is Trump Doing a George Bush with Iran?

Post by fountainhall »

The USA states categorically that it has evidence Iran planted explosives on the ships in the Gulf of Oman the other day. Britain's Foreign Secretary has given a degree of credence to that view.
"Our own assessment leads us to conclude that responsibility for the attacks almost certainly lies with Iran. These latest attacks build on a pattern of destabilising Iranian behaviour and pose a serious danger to the region."

"No other state or non-state actor could plausibly have been responsible"
Perhaps it was Iran. But certainty about no other state? Not the Israelis? Not the Saudis? Both states are vehemently anti-Iran and would like nothing more than to see its regime destroyed. No doubt the British Foreign Secretary was too young to remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident which resulted in the escalation of the Vietnam War. As stated in the OP and as we know from documents declassified in 2005 and 2006 and as recorded in the official US Navy history -
These new documents and tapes reveal what historians could not prove: There was not a second attack on U.S. Navy ships in the Tonkin Gulf in early August 1964. Furthermore, the evidence suggests a disturbing and deliberate attempt by Secretary of Defense McNamara to distort the evidence and mislead Congress.
The official history then goes further re McNamara's role -
Secretary McNamara lied when he denied knowledge of the provocative 34A patrols
As a result of the lies and distortion of evidence, the US Congress authoritsed The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution effectively launching America’s full-scale involvement in the Vietnam War. Is something similar about to happen with Iran?

https://www.dw.com/en/iran-rejects-us-b ... a-49190489
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-hi ... out-tonkin
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Captain Kirk
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Re: Is Trump Doing a George Bush with Iran?

Post by Captain Kirk »

and wouldn't Russia and China just love to sit back and watch the US pick a fight with Iran. Greed, power and religion, that's the bottom line in all of these actions.
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Re: Is Trump Doing a George Bush with Iran?

Post by Gaybutton »

Captain Kirk wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 5:43 pm Greed, power and religion, that's the bottom line in all of these actions.
You left out arrogance, stupidity, and incompetence . . .
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