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| Qasem Soleimani is Dead And General Motors is Alive |
The photo above summarises the cognitive dissonance of the Iranian government. A funeral procession for what’s left of Soleimani after being killed by Americans, with the crowd chanting the usual Death To America stuff – while his remains are carried in a Chevrolet truck.
Unfortunately it’s not been much better in the US and across the West in general. On the one hand the Left have had panic attacks about WWIII and a US draft while also treating Soleimani as a victim – while on the other hand various Right-Wing idiots imagine we’re back in 2003:
Um… NO.
FFS, you can support killing the likes of Soleimani without demanding that Tehran be fire-bombed.
You can also be opposed to the US getting into another useless ME war without making excuses for the murderous bastard, let alone buying into Iranian propaganda and mythologising him as the hero who fought ISIS (“it was General Qassem Soleimani who liberated Mosul from ISIL … and he did it with boots on the ground”).
As Trump-loathing magazine New Statesman pointed out:
But it is a preposterous and grotesque revisionism of history to suggest that the man who harboured al-Qaeda in Iran was some sort of counter-terrorist. The brutality of Soleimani’s policies in Iraq was as responsible for creating the material conditions ISIS needed to flourish as Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq did (Obama doesn’t get off lightly here, either), and his forces carried out acts of unimaginable cruelty against civilians in IS-occupied territory in the process.
As a result of all this you won’t get much of an idea of what the USA and Iran will do next by listening to and watching such hysterical and incoherent reactions, which are the norm from the usual actors, starting with the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamanei:
… a forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of the other martyrs last night on their hands.”
Cory Booker – “We have a president who has failed to show any larger strategic plan.”
Elizabeth Warren – “this reckless move escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict.”
Bernie Sanders – “Trump’s dangerous escalation brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars.”
Yada, yada, yada.
It’s notable that although Elizabeth Warren acknowledged that Soleimani was an evil prick responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians she backed away from this pretty quickly under attack by the Left wing of the party as she fights Bernie for that segment. However, the domestic fallout is a separate issue and reveals nothing about what Iran and the USA will now do, although you might not know that based on such comments, which have received the bulk of the MSM’s shallow attention.
So what are the possibilities?
It will start a war between the USA and Iran!
Wrong, since the Iranian Islamic Republic has been in a de-facto state of war with the US for forty years now. For the most part the Yanks have tried to pretend that such is not the case, shrugging off all the “Death To The Great Satan” crap and wobbling between confrontation and cooperation in every Presidency from Carter to Trump.
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| US sailors held hostage by Iran, 2016 |
It’s true that this is a military escalation by the US – but that’s also been true of Iran who, in just the past year, have attacked shipping in the Persian Gulf, a major Saudi oil field, and shot down an American drone. Upping the ante in Iraq was par for the course.
And then there was the capture of US sailors and boats during Obama’s time, even after all he had done for Iran.
Rather like the truest of True Believing Leftists, for Iran’s leaders it doesn’t matter who the US President is or whether he’s Democrat or Republican. Iran has always regarded itself as being at war with the USA.
The USA and Iran will declare war on eachother!
Wrong and hysterical. Declarations of war by nation-states belong to a past and tradition that ended in the mid-20th century. In the case of the USSR v USA in the Cold War the reason was obviously that nuclear weapons prevented traditional war from reaching a resolution with a winner and loser, and this continues to be the case with contesting nuclear powers. But even wars at the edge of that lengthy contest did not bother with such declarations; a prime example being the Falklands Islands fight between Argentina and Great Britain. Why this should be the case is a question for another time.
In this particular case the US has nothing to gain from formally declaring war, which would mean that a resolution must therefore be obtained as fast as possible. That would mean either a negotiated end that would likely be no different to the status quo, thereby being a waste of time – or the USA conducting a full-scale attack of Iran, which would be a huge waste of lives and resources. And of course a Democrat-led House would never approve of such a declaration for Trump.
If Iran formally declared war on the US, it would be more insane than Japan and Nazi Germany’s declarations of war on the USA in 1941. Two thirds of Iran’s electricity comes from about a dozen power plants, just eight refineries produce 80% of its oil products and 90% of those are exported through just one place, the Port of Kharg. One night of cruise missile and stealth bomber attacks would destroy all of them.
It will escalate into a large-scale, undeclared war!
Wrong and hysterical again, and for the same reasons as the declared war scenario.
It will escalate into an accidental large-scale war
Over at Kiwipolitico, former CIA analyst Paul Buchanan makes this point:
The issue for Tehran is whether it wants to respond in kind or lose face. It cannot afford to lose face. This is how wars start. By error.
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miscalculation is at the heart of what is known as the “security dilemma” and a major cause of war…
But I don’t agree about further such escalations because I think the miscalculations can now be clearly seen by the Iranians; whether the escalation is deliberate or accidental it will lead to the same place. They’re going to be very careful from here on.
Paradoxically so will the USA because the last thing Trump wants is to provide the Democrats with a war in an election year. The reactions the other day, together with the sudden re-appearance of protests from groups like ANSWER and CODE PINK, dormant through the Obama years of Libya and drone strikes, will have shown him clearly where that would go. This is aside from his well-known and long-held belief in an almost isolationist America that ignores other people’s wars.
Iran will assassinate a prominent US General or Politician.
Possible but unlikely. They’ve already offered a bounty of $US 80 million for somebody to kill Trump, although the fact that it was backed only by a proposal to get one dollar from each Iranian citizen shows the usual comedic line of Iranian propaganda.
Still, there might be some takers, especially in the USA.
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| Kathy Griffin’s proposal for Iran’s $80 millon |
NEXT UP: What WILL Happen After Soleimani’s Killing
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