Meanwhile in Iran…
“We were supposed to do what???”
If the Obama administration decided tomorrow that military action against Iran were warranted in response, is there any doubt that large majorities of Americans — and large majorities of Democrats — would support that?
Not anymore. Not for that.
There’s not a chance Qods Force or Iranian leadership were involved in this. Although, as pointed out above, the truth is irrelevant.
I seriously don’t think the American public have a stomach for more military action, although I suspect they might approve of it if it was “sterile” (i.e. no risk of American lives) and high odds of no escalation.
In this case, since there was no actual attack, there’s no way at all that we’ll have a military response. I think the Obama admin dodged a bullet here; trying to come up with a response to an actual attack of some kind on American soil that took American lives, with confirmed links to Iran, would be a nightmare scenario. There is no “good” response - if you respond with something like sanctions, they get accused of looking extremely weak. If you launch some kind of attack - say a missile strike on some target that you pump up as appropriate - you risk some type of escalating mess.
I’ll give you the latter, but what’s your proof of the former?
There’s not a chance that anyone in this thread is capable of doing anything other than an educated guess at best.
Why would you say there is no chance that the leadership of Iran would be involved? They have been heavily involved in terrorist plots in the past and I am sure will be in the future.
Oh fuck. I’m on the same side of the argument as Brett MickeyD?
Edit: Ahh! I misread Brett’s post. I’m not on the same side of the argument as Brett or Dawn, because I think it’s really unlikely the upper reaches of Iranian leadership knew anything. I think it was roque elements of Quds.
And me.
Assuming that what the West would call a sane rationale applies to Iran’s leadership is a mistake. It may of course make perfect sense to them in their cultural and political context, but it’s quite different from the West’s.
Although it’s not exactly beyond the bounds of possibility that it was a rogue operation. That, too, has happened before. To pretty much EVERY country with special forces.
Iran doesn’t want a military engagement with the U.S. Certain powerful forces within the US as well as within Israel would like a US/Iran war, however.
One rule of politics is that no single act rewrites reality. If one finds an act which seems to, one has the wrong explanation. Try again until things make sense.
Certain elements within Iran want tension between the US and Iran in order to provide exploitation of and control over the domestic Iranian populace.
Only an absolute fringe in Iran wants war.
And this was another honeypot FBI -backed, -encouraged, and -planned operation to keep up their perfect record of “attacks averted.” This is bullshit and should be treated as bullshit.
I’m guessing finding a true hitman is very hard. Most scumbags at bars are state troopers.
It’s not like the FBI planted a DEA informant in Mexico just to entrap the dude. This seems fundamentally different than what you’re talking about.
I guess we’ll see when more details come out; I assign zero weight to the FBI’s initial statements anymore.
- evaluations of Qods Force capabilities from intelligence officials in the Middle East
- commentary and feedback from Iranian exiles
- commentary and feedback from media globally
- Previous FBI honeypot entrapments
- The US government are proven liars, I’d be loath to agree with them if they released a statement saying the sky is blue. This is just another excuse to kill more brown people, make money and distract attention from domestic issues.
Hell, a war got GWB elected to a second term. Why wouldn’t it work twice.
You guys are some cynical bastards. I can understand being skeptical, but…damn.
Once again, Iranians aren’t “brown people”. There’s enough going on here without having to haul out the tired old racism explanation.
Yeah, I think a lot of these guys would believe Press TV/IRIB before the State Department at this point.
Seriously, if Iran had no history of sponsoring people to blow up “Zionist” buildings, there’d be a point behind the knee-jerk skepticism but, uh, they do. It’s not made-up fantasy, it actually happens. There’s also the not insignificant point that Mossad has been whacking nuclear scientists in Iran and it’s kind of pissing them off.
Don’t forget Stuxnet.