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Israel, Palestine and Iran


Swerbs

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8 hours ago, Awol said:

I thought it was just a thread of three Trump tweets? He said the US has identified 52 Iranian targets (one for each hostage taken by them in 1979), to be hit immediately, should there be any retaliation against US assets or people for the drone strike that killed Suleimani. 

I thought that was quite a significant development, even if written in the usual crayon. 

Ah ok, thought you meant the thread as a whole with the various comments.

Yes, it's a bizarre threat, like a child acting out a fantasy of being a tough guy.  It's a pity his bone spurs don't prevent him tweeting these threats.

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5 hours ago, Davkaus said:

And he specifically calls out some as being important cultural sites. Do you think it's just that he doesn't know, or that he doesn't care he's just admitted to preparing to violate the Geneva convention?

Him threatening war crimes is nothing new. Iran should try the "no terrorist. No terrorist. You're the terrorist" line.

True and not for the first time. 

It also demonstrates beyond doubt that he’s making decisions in isolation from the US national security architecture, which would otherwise be advising him as to the illegality of his statements. 

It supports reporting in the US press that Trump made the decision to kill Suleimani (just a simple general in the way Josef Mengele was just a simply doctor) on a whim, divorced from any wider strategy.

So there’s no plan, only the emotional, one-dimensional reactions of a plainly ill man, in command of history’s most advanced military machine and taking his security briefings from Fox News.

Hardly surprising that his allies aren’t being consulted, either. 

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It's not surprising when it's widely known he doesn't actually read the briefs he's given, and with the number of senior resignations over the last 4 years, I imagine he has very little interaction with anyone other than 'yes men' at this point.

It's going to be interesting times for those several rungs down the line of command that get given these illegal orders.

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15 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

It's not surprising when it's widely known he doesn't actually read the briefs he's given, and with the number of senior resignations over the last 4 years, I imagine he has very little interaction with anyone other than 'yes men' at this point.

It's going to be interesting times for those several rungs down the line of command that get given these illegal orders.

When North Korea was on the twitter-boil with insults flying, Trump wanted then SoS for Defence Jim Mattis to draw up options for striking NK. Mattis got the instruction and said ‘nah, we’re not doing that.’ 

From a sanity point of view that was clearly right, but from a constitutional (legal) perspective it clearly wasn’t. 

As you say, interesting times. 

Edited by Awol
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3 minutes ago, Genie said:

Wonder if we’ll get dragged into it as we’ve got our begging bowl out for a trade deal.

No. We’ll protect our own assets, (shipping in the Gulf for example) but lack the numbers to do much at all beyond that even if Johnson wanted to. 

Raab continuing the UK position of support for diplomacy and deescalation on Marr this morning, I genuinely don’t see that changing. 

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3 minutes ago, Awol said:

No. We’ll protect our own assets, (shipping in the Gulf for example) but lack the numbers to do much at all beyond that even if Johnson wanted to. 

Raab continuing the UK position of support for diplomacy and deescalation on Marr this morning, I genuinely don’t see that changing. 

Thank goodness. 

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10 minutes ago, Genie said:

Wonder if we’ll get dragged into it as we’ve got our begging bowl out for a trade deal.

Sec of State Mike Pompeo already on the record calling us out for not being more helpful and supportive.

Bit of a dick move when they didn’t even tell us about it and subsequently put all those lives at risk, but hey, that’s our new post Brexit best buddy for ya.

 

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On 04/01/2020 at 11:40, sne said:

The leaders of Iran are no doubt horrible religious/nationalistic nutters with a agenda non of us want to see come to fruition.

On the flip side the axis of goodness in this conflict that are the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia are not exactly in it for the goodness of their hearts or altruistic reasons. They are just as bad or even worse.

Not sure if you know that the US and Israel are democratic countries mate. SA I agree is a shit country, but at least the population of the two other countries have a choice in their leadership. Iran is full blown nuts since 1979, people get hanged, beheaded, stoned to death etc for being gay. I'm not sure how you can compare that to USA or Israel.

Soleimani was a general that applied tactics outside of any rules of war, hence he should be considered a fairly legitimate target for repercussions when he's killed people for that long. That doesn't mean that Mossad\CIA etc aren't just as bad - and frankly quite often agents from these agencies get killed by Iran. It's tit for tat baddies killing baddies in an endless circle.

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14 minutes ago, blandy said:

It's apparently long been the case that this bloke was as you say a target for repurcussions for his murdering and so on, since way back, but wiser heads never enacted any of the contingencies to act, because of the wider consequences. Then along come the shit-gibbon with his neediness and need for distraction and....well.

Hopefully the Americans, Brits, French, Germans et al currently in Iraq to train their local equivalents have read Xenophon’s March of the Ten Thousand.

I’m 99.99% certain Mr Trump has not. 

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1 hour ago, magnkarl said:

Not sure if you know that the US and Israel are democratic countries mate. SA I agree is a shit country, but at least the population of the two other countries have a choice in their leadership. Iran is full blown nuts since 1979, people get hanged, beheaded, stoned to death etc for being gay. I'm not sure how you can compare that to USA or Israel.

Soleimani was a general that applied tactics outside of any rules of war, hence he should be considered a fairly legitimate target for repercussions when he's killed people for that long. That doesn't mean that Mossad\CIA etc aren't just as bad - and frankly quite often agents from these agencies get killed by Iran. It's tit for tat baddies killing baddies in an endless circle.

Well the US (or CIA) overthrew the democratically elected leader in Iran in 1953 because he made a lot of social reforms and wanted to keep the newfound oil for the Iranian people and throw out the foreign oil companies.

Couldn't have that so they orchestrated a coup detat and had their guy Mohammad Reza Pahlavi take power instead so they could start BP.

Then the revolution happened in 77-79 but it's the US who removed democracy from Iran, not the priests.

Once again no one is saying Iran are the good guys but siting democracy reasons is just weak.

For one thing the Israeli government is a joke. Isn't Netanyahu still personally holding pretty every important post while trying to get immunity against corruption charges, once again not being able to form a government and relying on the ultra religious nationalists to stay in power.

Buddy

Edited by sne
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51 minutes ago, blandy said:

On occasion even Trump's instincts are right

His instincts, as expressed over several years, seemed to be to avoid entanglement in miltary adventurism, and that was compounded by his fear of "paying for" things that others should have been paying for.  His base also seemed to want to get away from endless foreign interventions.

I'm not sure what changed, though his position on Iran has been illogical and disastrous for some time.  There's a lot of talk about "dominionism", a far right Christian belief that apparently infects people like Pompeo, mush as the "rapture" crowd influenced Reagan.  I'm sure Israel plays a part, and Netanyahu has been pressing for war with Iran for ages.  Probably that oily little slug Kushner is wittering in Trump's ear to that effect, too.  But he seemed to be able to resist the more unhinged advisers, like getting rid of Bolton.

There's a suggestion here that it's as superficial and stupid as fear of looking weak, which sounds crazy but I suppose would fit his character.

Quote

...The administration feels compelled to lie about an “imminent” attack because if that isn’t true they don’t have a leg to stand on legally or otherwise for taking such a drastic and dangerous action. If there wasn’t an “imminent” attack in the works, the assassination can’t be spun as a “defensive action” at all, and the president has no authority to initiate hostilities against another state like this. The lack of an “imminent” threat isn’t just a matter of the administration deceiving the public about why they took this action, but it also shows that the attack was both illegal and unjustifiable. The idea that the 2002 Iraq war AUMF somehow covers initiating hostilities against Iran in 2020 is ludicrous and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Ryan Costello comments on the administration’s lies:

Add it all up, and you have an administration that ignored Congress while planning an assassination of a foreign general that risks a disastrous war without any plausible argument that doing so was authorized by Congress. This is an administration that has lied over matters big and small, and thinks it can get away with lying Americans into war while repeating the George W. Bush playbook that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Hence, the warnings of an imminent terror threat that doesn’t appear to have existed as well as the bizarre lie from Vice President Mike Pence attempting to link Soleimani to the September 11 attacks. And, just like the George W. Bush administration had delusions about what would come after the invasion of Iraq, many members of Trump’s team are apparently deluded about what comes next. As one senior State Department official claimed, they don’t expect additional retaliation from Iran because the U.S. is “speaking in a language the regime understands.”

The decision to assassinate Soleimani appears to have been as abrupt and arbitrary as many other Trump decisions. The Los Angeles Timesreports:

 

One briefing slide shown to Trump listed several follow-up steps the U.S. could take, among them targeting Suleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to talk about the meeting on the record.

Unexpectedly, Trump chose that option, the official said, adding that the president’s decision was spurred on in part by Iran hawks among his advisors.

One reason that the president ordered the attack seems to be the fear of appearing weak:

Trump was also motivated to act by what he felt was negative coverage after his 2019 decision to call off the airstrike after Iran downed the U.S. surveillance drone, officials said. Trump was also frustrated that the details of his internal deliberations had leaked out and felt he looked weak, the officials said.

The president made a terrible decision that puts more Americans at risk in part because of his own insecurity and vanity, and he ordered the military to commit an act of war against another state without any legal justification. Congress and the public need to make it absolutely clear that we reject war with Iran. The first thing Congress can do is to approve Sen. Kaine’s war powers challenge to the administration. The president has recklessly led the U.S. into an unnecessary conflict, but there is still a chance to halt it before more lives are lost.

On the point about "imminent attack", the claimed justification for this act, Craig Murray has explained where the notion comes from, and what nonsense it is.

Quote

In one of the series of blatant lies the USA has told to justify the assassination of Soleimani, Mike Pompeo said that Soleimani was killed because he was planning “Imminent attacks” on US citizens. It is a careful choice of word. Pompeo is specifically referring to the Bethlehem Doctrine of Pre-Emptive Self Defence.

Developed by Daniel Bethlehem when Legal Adviser to first Netanyahu’s government and then Blair’s, the Bethlehem Doctrine is that states have a right of “pre-emptive self-defence” against “imminent” attack. That is something most people, and most international law experts and judges, would accept. Including me.

What very few people, and almost no international lawyers, accept is the key to the Bethlehem Doctrine – that here “Imminent” – the word used so carefully by Pompeo – does not need to have its normal meanings of either “soon” or “about to happen”. An attack may be deemed “imminent”, according to the Bethlehem Doctrine, even if you know no details of it or when it might occur. So you may be assassinated by a drone or bomb strike – and the doctrine was specifically developed to justify such strikes – because of “intelligence” you are engaged in a plot, when that intelligence neither says what the plot is nor when it might occur. Or even more tenuous, because there is intelligence you have engaged in a plot before, so it is reasonable to kill you in case you do so again.

I am not inventing the Bethlehem Doctrine. It has been the formal legal justification for drone strikes and targeted assassinations by the Israeli, US and UK governments for a decade. Here it is in academic paper form, published by Bethlehem after he left government service (the form in which it is adopted by the US, UK and Israeli Governments is classified information).

So when Pompeo says attacks by Soleimani were “imminent” he is not using the word in the normal sense in the English language. It is no use asking him what, where or when these “imminent” attacks were planned to be. He is referencing the Bethlehem Doctrine under which you can kill people on the basis of a feeling that they may have been about to do something.

The idea that killing an individual who you have received information is going to attack you, but you do not know when, where or how, can be justified as self-defence, has not gained widespread acceptance – or indeed virtually any acceptance – in legal circles outside the ranks of the most extreme devoted neo-conservatives and zionists. Daniel Bethlehem became the FCO’s Chief Legal Adviser, brought in by Jack Straw, precisely because every single one of the FCO’s existing Legal Advisers believed the Iraq War to be illegal. In 2004, when the House of Commons was considering the legality of the war on Iraq, Bethlehem produced a remarkable paper for consideration which said that it was legal because the courts and existing law were wrong, a defence which has seldom succeeded in court...

 

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