That’s the conclusion I got too.
From what I’ve read it seems Iran deliberately “misfired” the missiles, to avoid actually hitting anyone.
Did anyone listen to the speech? One for the ages. Slurring, sniffing, and a fair amount of horse tranquilizers make for a pretty low energy (near dead) performance.
I can’t listen to Trump for more than ten seconds.
Well this clip is 9 seconds, and indicative of the whole show. No sniffing in this clip though.
edit: I don’t necessarily agree with the twitter user’s assessment, she just had the clip I wanted
Thrag
1634
I for one am glad we are not tolerizing mayhem any longer.
Clearly this flub was intentional and a signal to Q, Q+, Q++ and Q# to start wearing towels on their heads, or to trowel something, we’ll need to do a deep audio analysis to be sure.
Aceris
1635
I do wonder if there is some back channel between the sane people left in the Pentagon and State and the Iranians. (There’s clearly noone sane left in the White House with any influence). This is pretty much the best possible outcome in terms of Iranian response, and suggests to me that someone was able to scare them a little as to how this might play out, without aggravating the situation further. Or maybe that was just the native Iranian read on the situation, in which case they are giving the US a lot more credit than I would.
Of course it isn’t. cries.
I’m not sure that is true - especially not if the missiles were targetted on empty bits of the airbase. Iran might feel they have a PR win in Iran and Iraq, they’ve restored face and demonstrated their strength by bombing the airbases, and they don’t want to raise the stakes further. It’s entirely possible that escalating is bad both for Iran and the US.
Calling the Iraqi government an ally is stretching it - they are as much if not more Iran’s ally as the US’s (which if nothing else showcases the utter failure of the Iraq war).
I’m not really disagreeing with your overall take here, but a lot of the details seem kind of at right angles to the way I see the situation in the Mideast.
On one level, I know right. On another level, Iran have been doing everything they can to weaken the US’s position in the MidEast while simultaneously avoiding direct confrontation as much as possible for a long time. This isn’t really that far out of their normal pattern. We see the tremendous difficulties of getting any kind of good outcome out of a shooting war with Iran, and the human cost of such a war. But that doesnt mean the bad outcome from our perspective wouldn’t be a worse outcome for the specific clerics currently in charge of the Iranian government, though almost certainly not for the Iranian islamic revolution as a movement in control of Iran in the long term.
Story checks out.
I mean, he’s not wrong, but as I pointed out above I’m not sure how we’d tell the difference between this and what they were already doing.
I strongly suspect that the internal Iranian reporting of this is a bit less milquetoast :).
Probably just has a really bad cold, and is trying to work through it the poor guy.
So what’s likelier, that he’s a septuagenarian who gets sick a lot, or that he’s a cokehead?
Grr, trying to post the Rick James gif, but it won’t for some reason.
Uhm… I think not. OK, I see that several people have already responded, so I’ll just summarize:
- This is not the Iranian response. This is a short-term reaction to avoid an actual shooting war; the actual revenge will come at a later date through one of their proxies, and it will be a attack targeted at taking maximal US lives. It may even happen this year (an October surprise?)
- Iran’s Nuclear program will now be back on at full force. That the US can invade or otherwise prevent this from happening at some point is a fantasy, and I very much doubt we’ll ever get this regime back to the negotiating table in good faith. We had our shot, and we blew it. Iran will build up nuclear capacity fast.
- The diplomatic consequences of strike are still unclear. But while there is certainly the possibility for the US to gain from the situation, doing so would require deft diplomacy. Given the incompetence of this administration, there is little reason to doubt that the result of this strike will be increased political influence for Iran, Russia, and China.
Trump no doubt feels that he has won though, which is fortunate for those of us who prefer peace.
Someone can correct me, but I think Trump would make money if they bomb his buildings. Terrorism is apparently covered by insurance now.
He could also protect his buildings with lots of private contractors after an event (which would pay housing fees to the owner of course using federal funds).
This entire fiasco fits in perfectly with the ongoing perception that Trump (with tacit approval of certain Republican members of Congress) is deliberately increasing Russia’s influence in the Middle East.
Though that would assume Trump is bright enough to actually plan that far ahead. Or maybe he’s just following orders.
The Russian state via VTB Bank underwrites all of Trump’s debts. They own him.
Nesrie
1646
He’s not the one planning and they don’t really need him to follow orders most of the time, just some of the time would give them more than they had before. No matter what happens, the United States role in the world is forever changed. While some see this as a good thing, there were actual ways to competently step back… it didn’t have to be bungling and half-ass attempts.
Cool, but we’ll have to agree to disagree. Nothing you – or anyone here, really – has typed has dissuaded me to ignore what I’ve heard from some folks who work at Foggy Bottom since the weekend. There is absolutely a strain of fairly hawk-ish types at DoD and State who’ve been advocating for something like the assassination of Soleimani for years — even going back to W. Bush. And for them and for their policy projections, this so far has been close to their own (and again, consider it a hawkish, militant anti-Iran stance, and not one I personally favor or agree with), this is within the ballpark of their best-case scenarios (especially considering that in this view, these are folks who already believe Iran has been working full force on developing nuclear weapons even under the treaty/agreement). And I hear it from folks who are pretty miserable working in the current State department.
That’s just anecdote, but for now I still think that Trump got himself a political win here,at least in the short term. I have doubts that it remains a win in the long term, and it’s likely to go just the opposite, but I don’t think he thinks in those terms.
