In consideration of the "war on terror," might President Trump's branding the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization be a prelude to war with Iran?
War with Iran has been a goal of certain neoconservative elements within the U.S. for decades now - mostly people who don’t forgive Iran for the 1979–1980 hostage crisis, while conveniently forgetting the roots of that crisis, and the Islamic Revolution, in U.S. support for the Shah and the U.S. backed overthrow of the Mossadegh government.Here’s John Bolton who currently runs the NSC, in 2015 advocating bombing Iran.Here’s a bunch of Iran hawks discussing in 2014 how to sabotage the JCPOA - including Mike Pompeo, now Secretary of State, advocating pre-emptive military action,Bolton also continues to push, evidence-free, the notion that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Principally because the treat of WMDs worked very well for helping kick off the Iraq war. Bolton, of course, remains in favor of that war, as well as of starting one with North Korea.Bolton famously wrote in his 25th Yale reunion yearbook "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost.” But he has yet to meet a war he wouldn’t like to send other people’s children to die in.No idea whether the hawks Trump has surrounded himself with will get their wish - anti-Muslim sentiment animates some of the Trump base, but so does isolationism, and the Pentagon is probably appalled at the thought of walking into another ill-defined Middle East war. (To put it in perspective, Iran has more than twice the population of Iraq, not to mention a better economy than Saddam had, all the lessons of the Iraq War to draw on, proxies in several other countries in the region, and far more mountains and valleys to break up armor attacks.)Original question:In consideration of the "war on terror," might President Trump's branding the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization be a prelude to war with Iran?
Is Iran supporting terrorism?
It all depends on which lens we are looking at the issue through.We can agree that Iran sponsors Hizbolla, Hamaz and the Syrian Regime.The Question is, if these can be seen as terrorist groups. it depends on who you ask.If you ask the west and Israel these groups are terrorist groups, so in this aspect the answer to your question would be yes.But what if we look at the facts? Hizbolla is a big part of Lebanon, and are conceived of as a legitimate "army". they are not seen as terrorists but defenders and freedom fighters.In 2006 Hamas won the Palestinian elections, in this aspect one would say they are part of a "government". when you look at it, Israel does actually negotiate with Hamas. We all know that the US and Israel do not negotiate with terrorists.Syria is a country, and Assad is it president. Iran supports this country and its regime. Now if we look at it from this angle, Iran would not be a state sponsoring terrorism. If we conclude that Iran supports terrorism and condemn them for it, we would have to condemn many other countries.Let us look at the rise Al-qaida, who sponsored them, trained them and armed them? the same question applies to ISIS.Saddam used chemical weapons in the 80's against his own population and Iran. Who supplied the Chemical weapons? I guess we all know the answer to that. So would one think that the supplier and deployer of chemical weapons would be considered terrorists?Many countries support groups in different regions to forward their own political agenda. This has been the case for all western powers for the last century.So is it fair to condemn Iran? and if it is, then should we also condemn the USA, UK, Israel, Saudi and France? the list can go on.It is all politics and has actually not much to do with terrorism.
If Trump blows up the Iran deal and orders air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, how will Iran respond? Could they react with an all-out missile war or with more terror and cyber crime?
They could try, but they would risk escalating the conflict with the US.The reality is we saw the way the US took down Saddam during the first Iraq war, he was for the day much better set up for defending his nation then Iran is today, the US went in and took him out like his military was a 4th rate power.The US is the one nation that could first go in and cripple the Iranian Air defenses, even if Russia loads them up with S-300’s like they have promised, any conflict would result in Iran either doing what Iraq did, moving their military fighters and ships to a neutral country or lose them in the opening hours of such a attack.Second, since Iran needs its ports to ship out oil, its main source of revenue, the US would shut them down by destroying them, this would cut off Iran’s ability to do this with any type of production for a year or more.While Iran may have cyber warfare unites, I promise they are nothing compared to what the US can do, they may wish to look to the worm released on their nuke program for references.And if a all out war was pushed, which a all out missile attack would bring about, Iran would last less time then Iraq did. And if they were stupid enough to try to draw in Israel, it would last even less.
Has the word 'terrorist' lost it's meaning?
"YOU CRAZY LIBRUL! HOW DARE YOU QUESTION OUR COUNTRY'S RAIGHT TUH CALL YEW A TURRURYST!!" yup. would agree. I'm also tired of being called a liberal when i disagree...especially when I'm not. And shortly after being called a commie, I'm told to move to another country. I'm seriously thinking about it. I don't wanna be on the recieving end when we piss enough of the world off and every nukes US!
Would a rejection of the Iran nuclear deal by the US Congress be a vote for war?
Dear POTUS,I truly appreciate your effort and hard work to secure a diplomatic solution, however, I have a few points to make, in the hope that you actually read this:1- "A nuclear-armed Iran would threaten our friends in the Middle East"! How exactly would Iran threaten our friends? Iran was invaded by Iraq while we were supporting Saddam. When Saddam used chemical weapon on both Kurdish and Iranians, the world was silent! Iran has not invaded any country in centuries and they cried over and over again that they are not pursuing a nuclear bomb! (We don't have any evidence that proves otherwise, yet we sanctioned 80 million people!) Iran helped us fighting terorrists in Afghanistan and we called them Axis or Evil! Iranians are actually losing lives fighting ISIS at this very moment. Whereas, Pakistan is expanding its nuclear warheads and we just choose to ignore the threat or at least don't catastrophize it in the US media!2- "... and provide a nuclear shield to the Iranian regime's support for terrorism, human rights abuses, and other destabilizing activities in the region."Could you please give us an example of where and when an Iranian citizen was directly involved in killing of western civilians? 15 of 19 people who attacked us on 9/11 were Saudis! (none of them Iranians)Why are we ignoring the atrocities on human rights in other Middle Eastern countries such as UAE (slaves building cities), Saudi Arabia (beheading and stunning on a daily basis), to name a few or human abuses in China? Why don't we put sanctions on them?We need to STOP demonizing Iranians if we want to avoid a war with them! Deal or no deal.
Do you think that Israel Over-reacted with their response to Lebanon?
I'm a foreigner currently residing in Israel, thus I cannot really say my answer will be absolutely fair. Emotionally I sympathize with Israel, and grief for the Lebanese. I'd experienced Arafat's death, Sharon's coma, Olmert's election and now the fighting in the North of Israel. (Sad to say, Northern Israel is my favorite area, it saddens me to know that I'll never get to go there again, not in the immediate future.) So as to say, I felt that it's one event leading to another, purely coincidence and basic reactions from all parties. The attack on Lebanon does look impulsive and over reactive, IF one chooses to forget Middle East history before the recent World Cup(still remember Zidane? I bet everyone has clean forgotten about him by now.) and decide that the current conflict is sudden in nature. Hezbollah had been left alone for a long time and I believe no one except themselves know how much they had been planning and preparing for this day. Once they start a war, only chance of ending it is when they run out of rockets and suicide bombers. From my point of view, Israel is ill-prepared. From the day Sharon went into coma, Israel had been busying herself with the idea of changing Hamas's agenda, building the separation wall and gaining international support. But in reality, I don't believe Israel is successful with the part about International recognition. I was in front of the internet and television for the past 2 days, watching Internet, Skynews, CNN and local news channel. The world reported on the Lebonese side with great sympathy and lukewarm attitude on Israel's side. (Skynews is still quite neutral though). While the local news are really "local", reporting only on what is important to the Israelis. Even the Lebanese Prime minister's plea is much more convincing than the legitimacy of Israel's actions. Why is the humane side of Israelis not shown to the world at all? Perhaps there wasn't enough being done to convince the world that Israelis wanted only Peace? Or has Israel been too absorbed with herself that they lost touch with the international community? The world is not interested in justifications, sympathy will always be on the side with the largest no. of casualties.
Who told u that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization?
I am not a big fan of Israel. However I do believe they have a right to protect themselves from Hezbollah kidnappings, murders & missiles. Lebanon's government either can't or won't control the Syrian and Iranian sponsered terrorists know as Hezbollah. Lebanon could have spared itself much misery by actually TRYING to remove this cancer from their own country. Unfortunately they waited for Israel to react (over-react). My heart goes out to the innocent Lebanese caught between these two forces. Until other peoples in that region learn to live in peace with Israel, there will always be strive & suffering. Yes Israel has done many things I personally think is criminal. However two wrongs never make a right as they say here in the west.