Given the recent U.S. force buildup in the Middle East, it really looks like this weekend's war is on, so I figured I'd better make a placeholder thread. Will we get out of this one without any casualties, or will Trump's luck run out?
War with...Iran?
- Thread starter Technarch
- Start date
Hope everyone in uniform is excited to potentially die as a distraction from your president raping kids! 
I'll have you know it's ephebophilia! not pedophilia, totally different.Hope everyone in uniform is excited to potentially die as a distraction from your president raping kids!
Please, not again with the definitions of this man's sins, PLEASE?
Well, as a cohort they did literally vote for all this.Hope everyone in uniform is excited to potentially die as a distraction from your president raping kids!
¯\(ツ)/¯
What I find strange is Trump targeting Russia or China's friends although he is best pal with them. Is he manipulated into doing this ? And more importantly; will China let the US control its oil producers ?
"Better those small fry than us," Putin and Xi say to themselves.
It's fascinating in a trainwreck sort of way to see the oligarchs fighting amongst each other like kaiju, while the rest of us scamper around trying not to get squished.
In this case I'm guessing that Putin has either lost some leverage over Trump, or else he's gotten what he needs out of Iran and is hanging them out to dry. Putin's offering less material support to Iran than he did to Maduro.
I speculate that the fossil fuel lobby and MIC are driving this attack, along with a Trump who now needs to distract from ICE gestapo tactics as well as the Epstein files. To be fair, I have no sympathy for the Khamenei regime. But I'm pretty fucking leery of starting yet another land war in Asia.
Can Trump not start a war for five fucking minutes?
Also - what is his end game here? Iran is big and has a large army, he’s not going to conquer the place with a few air strikes. That would require an invasion larger than Desert Storm 2. Does he think that he is going to make the mullahs give up with a bomb or two? Because hot tip - they’re not going to. They’re religious fanatics, and they’re hated everywhere so there isn’t even a place to retire. Yes of course he can bomb things, but that doesn’t solve anything.
Also - what is his end game here? Iran is big and has a large army, he’s not going to conquer the place with a few air strikes. That would require an invasion larger than Desert Storm 2. Does he think that he is going to make the mullahs give up with a bomb or two? Because hot tip - they’re not going to. They’re religious fanatics, and they’re hated everywhere so there isn’t even a place to retire. Yes of course he can bomb things, but that doesn’t solve anything.
I assume that Israel and USA are just going to bomb some military facilities and nuclear research. There are not much to do at this point. He may choose to send in special forces... but I would assume Iran is a much harder target.
Just do a War with USA at this point.....
WWIII, may be? On the "bright" side, it is a lot less likely that Europe will join USA in its adventure, so make the WWIII less likely. However, China does get a lot of oil from Iran...
WWIII, may be? On the "bright" side, it is a lot less likely that Europe will join USA in its adventure, so make the WWIII less likely. However, China does get a lot of oil from Iran...
/// OFFICIAL MODERATION NOTICE ///
We get that it’s a sarcasm and a reference to previous discussions. Please chill, no need to report this one.
At the same time, @Gizmoh : on one hand, if the intention’s not clear, you risk being taken seriously and/or as defending pedophilia. On the other hand, the joke’s in pretty poor taste regardless.
TL;DR please don’t. It’s really hard to convey intent in a text-based medium.
I suppose unless you know it’s a literal Fox News Megyn Kelly talking point it’s easy to miss the sarcasm
Shocking that there might be consequences for a regime executing an estimated 30,000+ civilians. So far, Trump’s foreign interventions have been highly effective. No reason to think this one won’t also be. But the silence around the slaughter certainly says a lot about the people who can’t seem to condemn the regime.
Highly effective at what, exactly? What has Trump accomplished?
Highlight from his first term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Accords
As for the second term (you know, 12 months) -- I haven't heard much from Hamas and Hezbollah lately. How are they doing? The peace agreement, worked out by Trump, actually held up. Then, there's the 12 day war with Iran that didn't escalate into a regional war. Then, there's the Thailand & Cambodia conflict. Ukraine war TBD, but at least there are meetings now that didn't happen before. Then, there's Maduro -- and the behind-the-scenes deal Trump made with the VP (this was easy to miss: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/22/delcy-rodriguez-capture-maduro-venezuela).
And right now, it looks like there's again coordination with Middle Eastern neighbors to scope out the targets that will be hit in Iran and how to respond in case Iran retaliates after slaughtering over 30,000 civilian protesters. That's barely been registering in the other threads, unless I somehow missed the active and ongoing discussion of what's happening there. But sure, it's about the Epstein files and Bill Gates's STD.
So yeah, I guess not much has been going on in foreign policy.
[responding to wavelet's post in the Venezuela thread]
A big part of Iran's threatened retaliation is to hit oil export terminals and big refineries in the gulf (in addition to shutting down the strait of hormuz).
Also Saudi Arabia helping the Trump admin saber rattle:
View: https://x.com/sentdefender/status/2017404498403332273
in completely unrelated news, the US just announced a $9B arms sale to Saudi Arabia on the same day.
A big part of Iran's threatened retaliation is to hit oil export terminals and big refineries in the gulf (in addition to shutting down the strait of hormuz).
Also Saudi Arabia helping the Trump admin saber rattle:
View: https://x.com/sentdefender/status/2017404498403332273
in completely unrelated news, the US just announced a $9B arms sale to Saudi Arabia on the same day.
Unconfirmed explosions in Teheran and in Iran in general happening right now according to sources on X.
Edit: Seems to be a false alarm. Thought it was odd that the US attacked mid-day.
Edit: Seems to be a false alarm. Thought it was odd that the US attacked mid-day.
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Sorry, i guess the fog is still very heavy. The US usually as i understand use the cover of night for such things and i thought it was odd that they would start mid-day.
False alarm i guess.
Well it's not just about that. It's also about making Trump look strong, distracting us from the gestapo and bribery going on at home, and making Israel/Palestine safe for genocide.Hope everyone in uniform is excited to potentially die as a distraction from your president raping kids!
Serious question: if Trump attacks a third party country (Iran) and Iran fights back, does that obligate NATO countries to help the US?
IOW is there a "You went looking for trouble and found it so not our problem" clause in the NATO treaty? Not that I think Iran poses any kind of serious threat to the US. Rather, US attacks on Iran endanger ME oil supply routes and that's a problem for every country that imports oil out of there.
It's going to generate a lot of friction with Asian countries, since that's where most of the oil goes.
Trump has seriously damaged relationships with NATO members, and threatened to invade some of them. Secondly, he’s threatening trade wars with allies over the flimsiest pretenses. As far as the US is concerned, the alliance is effectively dead.
This isn’t the post 9/11 world where the neocons could put together a shaky premise to invade a nation who had nothing to do with those events.
Washington has little credibility at this juncture.
It's a mistake to trust any news out of any country that the US is fomenting a war with that doesn't come from official sources - meaning the government of Iran in this case - and then all it means is that's Iran's official statement, not that it's true. But we've been around this block a few times, where the government and compliant US media and US astroturfing groups are selling us a false or exaggerated narrative coming from those who really want the war.
That happened with Iraq twice.
Maybe you remember the WMDs that Iraq supposedly had, or the involvement with Al Qaeda that they didn't have until after the US opened up opportunities for them there, or the moral panic and invented atrocities when they invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Or the pretext of "endangered medical students" that supposedly prompted the 1983 invasion of Grenada.
I could go on. The US has a long history of lying about its reasons for going to war.
Idk, @Soriak , I feel I'd need to
I mean, your conclusions seem to me so wrong on such a fundamental level that I don't think there's any possibility for a discussion to be had here.
Especially because you're focusing on (questionable) "good outcomes" while ignoring basically all the rest. It's like observing an old-school scale with a 200kg pile of crap on one side and a couple of gold scrap on the other and you decide to focus on the gold scrap. It's a way of doing it but... Not the best, maybe?
format c:\ your entire framework before we could have a meaningful discussion. I mean, your conclusions seem to me so wrong on such a fundamental level that I don't think there's any possibility for a discussion to be had here.
Especially because you're focusing on (questionable) "good outcomes" while ignoring basically all the rest. It's like observing an old-school scale with a 200kg pile of crap on one side and a couple of gold scrap on the other and you decide to focus on the gold scrap. It's a way of doing it but... Not the best, maybe?
On paper, no.
https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/collective-defence-and-article-5
Article 5 was drafted to represent a response to an outside aggressor attacking a NATO member, especially the Eastern Bloc launching an invasion of NATO territory. Especially in a way that threatens the member's territorial integrity, sovereignty, or national security directly. It really isn't structured to be a ringer you call in if the enemy you're attacking punches you back.
The only time in history Article 5 has been invoked was in response to the 9/11 terror attack.
You also have the Cyprus question here, 2 members in an indirect form of war without the official declaration, and article 5 was not involved as far as i understand since the fighting was in Cyprus, which is not a NATO member.
Soriak thought Trump's "annex Canada" bloviation was an actual negotiating strategy which says it all.
No. Article 5 is only relevant to an attack on (some of) the territory of the members. It was explicitly designed not to support colonial or imperial ambitions (e.g. it explicitly excludes relating to territory of the British or French empires outside of the North Atlantic area, see lack of nato involvement in the Falklands for example).
The connection to Afghanistan was weak from the start, and multiple countries just bowed out entirely from the anglophone lies behind Iraq. Libya started as a war fought by Britain+France and only spread after they ran out of ammunition and asked NATO for a) help and b) more bombs. NATO collectively could have said no.
And if they have any sense, and Trump is so shameless as to ask (after lying/accusing NATO of not showing up the only time A5 was invoked) I suspect they will say no. Even Starmer seems to be growing the faintest trace of a backbone and would likely at least pause to think about it before signing up.
Just to be clear: you think we should wait for the government of Iran to confirm how many protesters they have killed to keep themselves in power and not believe a number unless it comes from them? I guess they have confirmed public executions and admitted to some thousands of deaths. But before they managed to shut down Starlink, we have some videos (that I don't recommend watching) of people with machine guns on trucks driving around and firing into masses of people. That body count adds up quickly.
That's what news polarization looks like -- I could say the same. I focus on the policies that matter, not whether Trump offended some people in Davos. The public events at WEF have always been a joke, with people just trying to get themselves in front of a camera -- ideally to sell their product or their investments which are definitely going to be taking off this year with Blockchain and GenAI empowered value creation. This year, you had podcasters inviting other podcasters for interviews in a desperate push for relevance. Trump is just putting the ridiculousness on display: a packed room hanging on his every word, where he talks about how Greenland is really a block of ice and so maybe it should be Iceland, then talks about invading Iceland. And not only is the audience stuck there listening to him (clearly got nothing better to do), they clamor to get into the US house -- which basically ripped off the Colbert set. Some of these geniuses even got scammed by fake ticket sellers.
Which makes the point beautifully: it doesn't matter what they say in front of a camera, they desperately want to be around that kind of attention. Anything that gets them near a camera, and whining about Trump is as good a way to get someone to pay attention as any.
Oh yeah, that was before he was going to invade Greenland. And Iceland. Turns out, none of which happened or was going to happen, which doesn't stop people from hyperventilating about it. Wasn't he also going to go to war against Mexico? I'm probably forgetting a few. You could write many books about all the things some "experts" thought were going to happen that didn't happen. You'd be more informed if you didn't listen to any of them.
Edit: this is now off-topic about the Iran war, but I want to add it here. Remember the whole de-certifying Canadian planes? https://financialpost.com/transportation/canada-jet-certification-underway
It's a weird little thing (maybe he met someone who couldn't get their jet registered in Canada), but for all the pundits screaming about how he can't do this, the Canadian government is just going to certify them and give him what he wants.
I didn't say that Trump was serious, I said that you thought that was an actual negotiating strategy. Which is true.
That the threatener doesn't intend to follow through does not imply that the threat was calculated, nor does it imply that making the threat was a good idea.
It's shameful that I have to spell this out for you, please try harder.
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I think that was actually about as tryhard as it gets.
Grow up. Seriously, you're not that gullible for all that you routinely pretend to be so. Can you maybe disguise your totally-not-trolling just slightly better?
No-one, possibly not even Trump himself, actually knows if those threats were actually serious. Regardless of what may or may not have actually been going on in his head, they were presented sufficiently seriously that the governments of numerous former allies had no choice but to interpret them seriously. And that has splashed not just over Trump's personal reputation as an uncouth bully, but over the country.
That alone is likely to outweigh all of your other claimed benefits of his foreign policy: European dependence on the USA was the greatest coup in foreign policy of the 20th century, and until his second term, it was seen across Europe as a bit of an annoyance and a minor indignity, not a fundamental flaw. Now? Well, I'd phrase it as a 90 year legacy up in smoke
Rinse and repeat across, I dunno, everything he's done in office. History has a fair few moments that we can look back on and broadly agree "and that's where it all went wrong", even if one doesn't ascribe the the common Great Man form of historiography. Trump's second election has all the hallmarks of such a moment in spades, and he's not even out of office yet, let alone dead and stopped digging (to mix in another metaphor).
I always wonder if he is trolling or he lives in a reality that is a lot different from mine. If you consider the world is just a great chess game and win/lost have not real consequence to you, then I can see when some people is coming from. There are always way to win more for yourself and the cost of losing/wrong is not paid by you anyways.
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Having skin in the game brings clarity, and can quickly separate the wheat from the chaff. Those who don’t heed the warnings and make the appropriate adjustments will likely be in a dire situation.