>US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is “setting the stage for a war with Iran,” says a Bush-era official, claiming he sees the same pattern that developed ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
>Lawrence Wilkerson, who once served as chief of staff for former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, made the comments in an interview with nonprofit news organization The Real News Network.
And now the recipe for disaster:
>Powell’s former chief of staff further complained about US President Donald Trump’s unawareness about the current affairs and how war hawks such as National Security Adviser John Bolton take advantage of that in favor of the Israeli regime.
Trump has been soft on Iran. The waivers will be extended. He cares more about the price of oil than what happens in Iran.
Parker Turner
if the US attacks Iran or allows Israel to I won't be voting for Trump next year
John Robinson
Iranian here. Not sure why they would even bother. The USA/Israel/Saudis will never win in Iran. Iran has 5x the population of Afghanistan with the same terrain. The population is a mix of extreme nationalist with a martyrdom complex from Twelver Islam. The army has already reformed to prepare to fight a long term guerilla war and every US military base within 500 miles can be hit by domestic made missiles. About half the country will entrench themselves for the long term.
If the USA tries to occupy Iran they will stick around for 20 years then gets frustrated and go back home.
Aiden Anderson
He will do whatever Netenyahu tells him to do, or whatever Salman pays him to do. He has no plans or ideas himself
yes you will. One thing I have learned in the last 2 years is that there is no red line for Trump supporters. You people are lost you will get fooled again and again and again by the same tricks.
Asher Bailey
holy shit i had no idea 90% of the country was a big fucking mountain range how many people actually even live in iran? it looks like just the coast and that green bit in the middle are inhabitable why would anyone invade this place, it looks like a fucking natural fortress
Jackson Harris
The dollar will collapse immediately if we attack Iran. The war won’t even last a year before there is chaos in the USA.
Kevin Clark
That's pretty obvious. Anyone who needed Colonel Wilkerson to tell them that was never going to figure it out.
Henry Mitchell
whatever it takes too get ww3 going is a ok.
Dominic Reyes
have you seen how bad the dems are? we're desperate and too obese for a civil war.
Attack Iran would be madness. Too big, too much nationalism. Too much martyrdom. Iraq tried with all the money and weapons the world could give, and failed. United States will fail as well.
Grayson Hill
you people realize that war with iran will mean war with russia. also, forget about those bases in iraq who will be sympathetic to iran and you'll have a couple hundred miles of mountainous border between iran and iraq. it will never happen.
Gavin Baker
80million. And they manage to have an unusual amount of crops there. But water is a major issue (due to population)
>About half the country will entrench themselves for the long term. Figured they'd use it as an excuse to GTFO.
Kevin Lewis
AFAIK this treaty is still valid.
Russian Alliance with Iran from 1921 historic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000129/st036.shtml archive.is/sA6ym translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://historic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000129/st036.shtml&edit-text= archive.is/b2s9p >Article 6. Both High Contracting Parties agree that if third countries take an attempt, through armed intervention, to carry out a predatory policy in the territory of Persia or turn the territory of Persia into a base for military actions against Russia if it threatens danger to the boundaries of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic or its allied powers and if the Persian Government, after being warned by the Russian Soviet Government AMO will not appear in the power to avert this danger, the Russian Soviet government will have the right to send troops into the territory of Persia, in the interests of self-defense to take the necessary military measures. To eliminate this danger, the Russian Soviet Government undertakes to immediately withdraw its troops from the Persian borders.
I dont think so. USA is a core economy and core economies dont go through hyperinflation. Our currency will probably collapse though
you don't want a civil war at all. I don't think Dems are as bad as you think. Netenyahu and Murdoch hates them
Evan Sanders
about half the country will want out. I would say about 10-20 million will leave. 20 million will hope the theocracy collapses and the war will be short and will stay and wait for it to be over. 40 million will be part of, or support, the faction that fights to the death. I don't think that's an exaggeration. I mean not all 40 million will pick up guns, but about 40 million if not pick up guns will be actively assisting people who are fighting in the occupation. It's about 45% of the country that supports the Hardliners (the revolutionary guards and conservatives).
Nicholas Diaz
He will let you vote for him first then do it after winning. In reality though it will likely not happen under trump. People like Bolton are hoping for a third term conservative who they can use for that agenda. Iraqs economy was completely destroyed by crushing sanctions for 22 years before it was invaded and the US still didn't get their crushing victory even 15 years after invasion.
The strategic situation in Iran is vastly different in favour of Iran in basically all areas: geography, economy population, access to sea, and potential allies who have legitimate adversarial capabilities. The US would be in an actual real war this time if they fight Iran. They would obviously win if they were committed but does anybody think the current US population could tolerate a war longer, more bloody, and far more costly than Vietnam? I seriously doubt it.
Thomas Wood
>AFAIK this treaty is still valid. did they resign this treaty or do they scratch out USSR and replace with Russia?
If we take a look at the whole middle east, the region looks more hostile to the us TODAY than in 2001.
Bentley Mitchell
>It's about 45% of the country that supports the Hardliners that's alot.
Grayson Gutierrez
Not gonna happen.
Brandon Phillips
The Warsaw conference made it clear that the Israelis and Gulf Arabs want war with Iran...if the US fights it. I think that tells you all you need to know about the real interest groups involved in the US decision making.
What do you make the the Iranian relationship with: >Russia >Turkey >Qatar >Pakistan
Just fly and send paratroopers in, and bomb certain places, I’m not supporting shit but there’s way to get around this.
Nathan Wilson
The Russian Federation is the successor state to the USSR so unless Russia has formally renounced a treaty the USSR made they remain binding.
Turkey is a geopolitical opponent of the US and its masters. The Qatari alliance is probably most telling.
Jaxson Flores
all those could easily create problems. you also don't have iraq on there as iraq would be involved if only indirectly.
Ryder Cooper
Man, I know logically that sounds about right, but being on the ground there, it just doesn't feel like there would be those ratios.
Alexander Hernandez
Ryan Dawson does a lot of stuff on Bolton and the other neocons trying to start Iranian war. Pretty much says we will Syria stlye fuck up Iran by funding two factions in Iran to cause civil unrest/war. We won't boots on the ground for this but will destabilize Iran for Israel
I asked about those countries because all of them appear to be quasi-allies of Iran. However the English language reporting may differ from Farsi news or informed Iranian rumors so I was interested in his take on the nature of their relationships.
I didn't list Iraq because while it is economically closely tied to Iran it's pretty busy trying to get its shit together. Iraq can't really project power outside of Iraq, but all of those other countries can do that.
David Garcia
>the region looks more hostile to the us TODAY than in 2001. Gee, wonder why... I think it's fair to say that you haven't made any friends in the world over the past 20 years. But hey, at least the jews love you.
Owen Davis
was always aware of irans size but fucking christ it would be a nightmare to invade with that landscape. this is a good thing, fuck israel and every star nigga on the planet.
Gavin Gonzalez
do they grow rice of poppy seeds in iran? either way the zog empire have no chance fucking mutts
Brandon Myers
or
Chase Rogers
Russia and Turkey will probably help someway the guerrilla warfare (much like pakistan did with the taliban). Qatar has good relationship with Iran since Saudia Arabia threatned an invasion so there will be a flow of money for sure. Iraq is literally almost Iranian clay, US soldiers have to share the country with armed shiite militias acting indipentently. Those militias mostly were created in order to drive ISIS out of Iraq.
About 10-20% think Khamenei is doing a great job. The rest don't really like Khamenei but they're very conservative in their mindset. If Iran is bombed by anyone these people will all back the Khamenei and the hardliners. Just look at the last elections about 45% of the country voted for hardliner candidates that didn't want to negotiate with the USA at all and wanted to keep the sanctions rather than give up the nuclear rights
Iranian relationship with Russia is temporary. Though Putin is extremely popular in Iran right now largely due to his opposition against Britain and hte USA who are seen as enemies of Iran. But I think everyone kind of understands Russia is not as trustable in the long term as say Iraq, Syria or Turkey. Putin has the politics of a 19th century Great Power where allegiances are temporary depending on what the geopolitical goals might be in the short term
Turkey is seen as our cultural cousins, who should be our close allies. They went stray trying to join the EU but they belong with Iran. Iran and Turkey have always been careful not to antagonize each other because there is an awareness of not wanting to start wars against each other. So there is a cautious relationship here though optimistic
Qatar is seen as a useful ally against Saudi Arabia. Trying to befriend them because Saudis are the real problem
Pakistan I'm not too sure about. They began as pro-Persian. In fact their national anthem I think is still in Persian. However they're trying hard to befriend Saudi Arabia and also turned themselves into a safe space for Wahhabi terrorists like Al Qaeda and the Taliban and refuse to deal with the Wahhabi brand of Islam that grows within their own borders, as well as deal with Baluchi separatists that keep raiding the Iranian border. And befriending them might annoy India, which is a country Iran respects and doesn't want to antagonize either.
Liam Hughes
>Iraq can't really project power outside of Iraq, but all of those other countries can do that. they don't need to. all they need to do is keep having that porous border between iraq and iran. there will be pleny of iraqis and whomever that will love to join the fight.
It would not be 40 million with their guns over night. There would be maybe 1-3 million with their guns at any one time and millions of people providing them with what assistance they can.
If the USA invades, the Iranian armed forces will just hide in the mountains and cities and let the US forces occupy the country. Then they'll just start coming out with ambush attacks. This is what it will look like for ~20 years.
Zachary Rodriguez
nig we have a deal with Iran, we don't want meritards roaming around there anymore.
Parker Torres
Iraq*
Ayden Brown
Literal swamp creature says thing
Evan Evans
Naw, I totally get that. I just mean talking to the average peep on the street in any city in Iran paints a very different picture. But of course, that's a terrible sample size, and very skewed (as in, the ones who speak English and will approach a random white tourist to chat). Which is a shame, because going off that data alone, you'd have another Shah in power within a month.
It depends which city. The urban people and people in the peripheral areas are generally more reformist leaning. Iran is a very decentralized country though most people still live rural and in the mountains and these people are very religious in their mindset. If Iran is attacked it will be perceived as a Israeli-Saudi attack on our faith itself it will turn into a religious war
Jayden Thompson
I dont think we are insane enough to attack no matter what the kikes want.
Of course there could always be the persuasion of "terrorist" attacks
Lincoln Carter
Putin is quite skilled geopolitically. Is Russia helping develop the Caspian sea oil fields for Iran at all. I know they surveyed those fields secretly under the Tsar.
The large US base in Qatar is an interesting wrinkle in that. Trump apparently hadn't been briefed on that before he backed the Saudis in that mess.
Turkey faced pretty intense economic warfare from the US after buying more Iranian oil and planning to join BRICS.
Pakistan is turning more anti-American under Khan so I was wondering if that might translate into a pro-Iranian stance. I kind of wonder if they'll try to go full Kazakhstan and just be geopolitical sluts. Those Baluchi separatists are all CIA assets right?
Christopher Reyes
And that's another shame. Would hope it might spark a cultural revival of Persian values. If nothing else, due to the resentment of the Muslims and what they've done to Iran. One day, Parsi-bro.
Joseph Robinson
A lot of those people who are against the theocracy would reconsider their position if their loved ones would get bombed by the US. Iraq has a Shia majority who were quite oppressed under Saddam, yet they didn’t treat the US forces as liberators.
Aiden Phillips
I don't think the US looks to win. Rather it seeks to disrupt. The US can easily depose other governments, and then the bombing starts. Maybe the plan is to sow chaos in the ME so the region is entirely run by terror cells, thus justifying nonstop war.
Elijah Brooks
A lot of them did at first, but the honeymoon didn't last. The insurgency, aside from Fedayeen Saddam, didn't really kick off for a few months after the initial invasion. Part of the reason Sadr is so respected in Iraq is that he didn't welcome the US like many Shia leaders did at the beginning.
I think the Baluchi separatists are genuine. They're the last major slither of Sunnis in Iran they don't see themselves as Persian and dont like the Shiites. It's possibly that the CIA are assisting them too but I think they are genuine in their origins.
I think you are more up to date on modern geopolitics than I am.
I'm not aware of Caspian Sea oil developments it's not something they would tell us honestly, our own media is full of propaganda too. Most of our oil is in Khuzestan though, on the Persian Gulf. It's good quality light crude and cheap to extract. Hard to sell it off with sanctions in place.
I'm not sure what direction Turkey, Qatar and Pakistan are going to be honest.
I think Putin is smart enough to know his relationship with Iran is more long term than any relationship he can make with Trump, who will not be in power forever.
I will say that people are weary of Russia because historically the two countries have fought a lot in the last 300 years, almost all of that through proxy.
I don't like the Ayatollahs but they're more cunning than any Iranian leaders in the last few hundred years. As corrupt as they are, they're very cunning at geopolitics. But you have to be cunning to rise up the ranks to Ayatollah status anyway so in a way its a better system than the Monarchy because this system produces a better chance of someone with merit getting to the top.
That's more likely imo. The US seems to be moving away from lots of ground troops and instead is training/ supplying militants and conducting operations with commando units. Cheaper and draws less attention
Samuel Allen
for a large part they did. Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq is the major leader among all Shiites, not even the Ayatollahs in Iran have this level of respect. If Ayatollah Sistani had told his followers to wage war against Americans, there would have been a million ready to fight them. He told them not to fight the Americans. It was the followers of the Sadr clan and a few others loyal to Khamenei that fought the Americans but they're an extreme minority. Khameni rules iran but he's not the popular Ayatollah, Sistani is
who are they going to fund in Iran? There's nobody in Iran able to stand against the Revolutionary Guards and Basijis. Not only are they the most martial Iranians in the country but they're the most numerous too. The urban reformists don't have the discipline or appetite for violence to do anything. I'm telling you they won't even bother fighting the government everyone is very much aware who has the guns
Jacob Lee
It would be literally the last major war the US in its current composition would ever fight, the fallout would tear this country apart
Oliver Edwards
Regarding the Ayatollahs I think that competence is the key virtue in statecraft. Have you ever heard of Stephen Kinzer? He's the most pro-Iranian US expert on Iran.
This is all fabrication and misunderstood evidence.
Nobody even knew of Khomeini until the last days of the Revolution. Right up until the last months the Shah and the USA was still worried about the Tudeh Party (the communists) because they were the major political faction opposition to the Shah. Khomeini was a nobody until the last stages, the CIA would have barely known anything about him, just another garlic munching towel head with his desert poems
Ian Baker
probably true. The US would then just cuck out and occasionally bomb stuff
Honestly you guys are probably one of our best friends in trying to bring this shitty system down
Robert Davis
The MEK will suck up most of the money from anti-Iranian powers. I suspect they are basically useless, but considering the US puppet regime in Azeribaijan and the large Azeri population I think that would be the most effective schism to exploit. Beyond that Arabs, Kurds, and Baluch minorities would also be suitable for that purpose.
Why do you think we are now exporting crude? To secure/buy our allies when shot goes down. Our currency will survive thanks to Saudi’s help. This has been in the works for at least a decade
Evan Sullivan
Russia wouldn't support Iran overtly in any war with the U.S. They'd just laugh as the U.S. spends another $5 trillion on Israel with nothing to show for it.
An air war against Iran is useless. The important people would just run into their cave fortresses and you'd never get them. In a ground war you'd have to accept 2 million allied casualties to win and even Israel won't sacrifice that many lapdogs for victory.
This is a great big nothingburger. Israel won't force any wars until Trump's second term in any event.
Daniel Ramirez
I hope the US gov is not as dumb as they look. War on Iran is suicide, imo worst than Vietnam. Fighting Iran alone is already a bad idea as our Iranian friend already told, then you have to consider support from Russia and China. USA may have f-22 but they can do nothing against Iran in a state of total war. And a ground invasion is like sending your soldiers to die, there is no way they can survive the guerrilla on the zagros
David Wright
I haven't heard of him but I will look him up thank you.
MEK is mostly just a money laundering operation these days. My cousin is high up in the organization he flies to Paris every year for their conferences him and his friends all siphon money from the organization for themselves. He and his friends were in the organization since the beginning.
These days their recruits are mostly from the Iranian prison system, all drug addicts and mentally ill. They are perceived as completely illegitimate within Iran because they sided with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War.
I still think the most serious candidate for opposition against the Ayatollahs is Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince living in the USA right now. The problem is he is detached from Iranian society and not so cunning as to what to do. The only way he is taking back Iran is with the American army backing him, although there is a lot of the population in Iran that wants him back.
Aaron Watson
I think Helms and Bush concealing the Shah's cancer from the President, the CIA ordering Sabak to stand down, and the relationship the CIA had with the Mullahs going back to 1953 render the hypothesis compelling.
One of Adam Curtis' early documentaries was about the Islamic Revolution. A man who claimed to be part of the inner circle said that Khomeini was broadly popular, but effectively only empowered the Mullahs as a shock to his other supporters. youtube.com/watch?v=WqL0giCY6NE
Kevin Wilson
I will put it this way. Iran has been conquered a handful of times in the last 1000 years. Each time it took 1-2 generations of occupation from constant guerilla warfare and the country was depopulated 70-90% each time until fighting ended. Even in the case of the Mongols, they were speaking Persian and converted to Islam by the end of it. Things haven't changed so much, Iranians are still generally quite nationalist and religious if the USA attacks it will trigger a lot of emotions due to Israel and Saudis it will not be perceived well by most of the Iranian population.
Elijah Diaz
Foreign fighters, or supporting exisiting fracturing groups. Not hard to resit when youre getting money
Tyler Adams
Am I gonna get drafted to fight guerrillas in the mountains after we bomb everything to the ground in two weeks?
Jack Rivera
Khomeini was popular on a level because in these times the Shiite clergy was still Quietist, meaning they didn't want anything to do with politics and believed Islam belonged in the mosque. There was a mullah like Khomeini back in 1906 called Noori who said the same thing as Khomeini, that Islam should have a larger role in politics, but he was executed and the Shiite clergy labelled him as a traitor and pariah. People trusted Khomeini in the 70's because they were looking back on the past to believe they would do good for Iran. In these times it was the mosque that provided education and healthcare for the people, not the government. And mullahs didn't want to rule the country. Khomeini changed that, he revolutionized not only Iran but the clergy itself. When he became top dog he kicked out all the quietists and stacked the clergy with his brand of reactionaries. Ayatollah Sistani is a Quietist and still the most popular cleric among the Shiites. Khomeini was never hugely popular in fact his government almost collapsed until Saddam invaded.
Your theories make sense if you don't understand what the culture and mentality was like between the 50's and 70's. Times were very different back then. Communists were the biggest threat to the Shah and Khomeini was seen as a central figure that all people oppposing the shah could unite behind. He was not seen as this supreme leader of Iran, he was just seen as a voice of dissent.
Anthony Evans
I don't see these as real threats, they are cats taking on lions.
Juan Reyes
I have to go my son has woken up. It was nice to talk to all of you
Here's some more stuff on the MEK. I think the fact they pay "speaking fees" to Western politicians explains their real staying power. They were reported to be associating with Albanian organized crime in their new home. That fits really well with the criminal element. pastebin.com/HnFAF8iv
The Quietist part is something I hadn't heard of before, but that makes a lot of sense. The US did a lot at the time backing Islamists as a counterforce to Communism. At the time the MEK was itself somewhat Marxist and had assassinated American officers in Iran.
FWIW we told Saddam it would be easy to invade Iran and offered him logistical and intelligence support. Saddam asked our permission to invade Kuwait as well, but we screwed him there too.
