Links - 7th January 2020 (1) (Trump and Iran)

Dancing on the streets of Baghdad after killing of top Iranian general - "People in Baghdad are said to have danced on the streets in celebration after the killing of Iran’s top security and intelligence commander.General Qassem Suleimani died in the early hours of Friday in an air strike ordered by President Donald Trump."

I, Hypocrite - "The attack on our embassy in Baghdad is horrifying but predictable. Trump has rendered America impotent in the Middle East. No one fears us, no one listens to us. America has been reduced to huddling in safe rooms, hoping the bad guys will go away. What a disgrace." - Chris Murphy, Dec 31 2019
"Soleimani was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a question.  The question is this - as reports suggest, did America just assassinate, without any congressional authorization, the second most powerful person in Iran, knowingly setting off a potential massive regional war?" - Chris Murphy, Jan 2 2020
And yet, people are digging up Trump's tweets on Iran and Obama from 2011 and 2013. Apparently Iran attacked the US embassy in 2011 too

Lucas Lynch - "Dear #Iran, The USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people. 52% of us humbly apologize. We want peace with your nation. We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime. We do not know how to escape. Please do not kill us. #Soleimani"
"To think, people on the far left claim to have a problem with Tulsi Gabbard being all buddy buddy with al-Assad, and yet today nobody is clutching pearls harder for a murderous regime than American leftists.It's one thing to think that intervention is immoral or unwise, quite another to prostrate yourself before a terrible regime that murders gay people and enforces Islamic codes on women in supplication and apology.Rose McGowan just went full Gabbard. Never go full Gabbard."

𝕊𝕜𝕪 on Twitter - "I’m Iranian by birth. Iranians are happy. Do you realize that this guy was psychopath? Part of a group that tortured, raped, sodomized its own citizens? Do you have any F***ing clue or do you just want attention? #Soleimani makes Hervey Weinstein look like a saint. Let that sink!"

Will Chamberlain on Twitter - "The reckless move wasn't Trump killing Suleimani The reckless move was Suleimani attacking a United States Embassy"

The Alt-Leftist Empire - "Trump attempts diplomatic solutions to pacify a dictator in NK, the Left goes apeshit: “TrUmP LoVeS diCtaToRs”.
Trump takes out a terrorist supporting, no2 figure in an Islamic dictatorship, The Left: “that was too mean,he should have tried a diplomatic solution”."

Good Ideas Vs Bad: Discussion Group - "While quick to ally themselves with the worst villains Trump Derangement Disordered White left IslamoFeminists are silent when Iran publicly executes LGBTs[1], hangs gay men from crane booms half a dozen at a time, silent when “According to a 2008 British WikiLeaks dispatch, Iran’s mullah regime executed “between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians” since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.” ... They never ask why the Iranian Islamic regime is one of the top executioners of gays the world has ever known.Islamophilic Feminists are silent when Iran shoots protesters[2] opposed to the Islamic regime in both Iran and Iran.They are silent when Iran invades Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.[3] Silent when Iran kills French and US soldiers in Lebanon.[4] Silent when the Iranian mullah’s regime sponsors Jihadi terror attacks in France, Israel and Saudi Arabia.[5] IslamoFeminists are silent when Iran invades a US embassy, repeatedly[3, 5]... IslamoFeminists are silent when Iran openly and repeatedly threatens to nuke the West."

Oz Katerji on Twitter - "On Twitter, lots of Brits and Americans wailing and gnashing teeth over the death of someone most had never heard of before tonight. On Telegram, hundreds of Iraqis and Syrians celebrate the news of Soleimani's assassination. Disparity could not be more stark."
When you hate your countries and fetishise "resistance" and think that the enemy of your enemy is your friend...
Luckily although liberals hate their countries, Iraqis and Syrians don't

Thread by @ksadjadpour - "
1. No man in the world was directly involved in more conflicts, in more countries, over a longer period than Qassem Soleimani. His death is a HUGE loss for an Iranian regime that's actively fighting 3 cold/proxy wars-with America, Israel, and Saudi Arabia-that could all turn hot
2. As Iran's undisputed military commander, Soleimani built a Shia foreign legion that played an indelible role in the region’s bloodiest conflicts, including Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Though he was never going to die a natural death, his personality cult left no clear successors
3. Trump’s inaction after numerous Iranian attacks throughout 2019—against regional oil tankers, a US drone, and Saudi Aramco—led Khamenei to believe, understandably, that Trump was all bluster. Khamenei's open taunting of Trump proved a miscalculation
4. Soleimani wasn't a US ally in the fight against ISIS. His complicity in Assad's mass displacement/murder of millions of Syrians (including via repeated chemical weapons attacks), and patronage of Iraq's violent Shia militias fueled the Sunni radicalism that helped spawn ISIS.
5. Soleimani was a polarizing figure in Iran: Beloved by the regime (both hardline and “moderate” factions), admired by zealous Persian/Shia nationalists for his fight against Arabs/Sunnis, and loathed by many Iranians tired of living under a police state...
8. While many are predicting WWIII, the last 40 years of Iran’s history reflect that what’s paramount for the Islamic Republic is its survival. Tehran can ill-afford a full-blown war w/ the US while facing onerous economic sanctions and internal tumult, especially w/o Soleimani
9. What’s more likely is sustained proxy attacks against US interests/allies regionally and even globally. Iran has a long history of such attacks in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with mixed success; regime apparatchiks are already telegraphing"

Thread by @AlinejadMasih - "For many Iranians Qassem Soleimani was a warmonger who caused massive casualties in Syria. He was no hero to average Iranians who chanted against the country’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas
Unfortunately Western media misses the point by glorifying Soleimani— He was the common enemy for people in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. His Involvement in crackdown against university students in late 1990s was another black mark against him."

Maajid Nawaz - "10 signs to watch for by people posting who know nothing about the Middle East but will now talk as if they do:
1) before yesterday they’d never heard of #Soleimani & still struggle to remember what his first name was
2) they’ll proactively and without invitation, condemn “America in the region” without saying anything at all about “Iran in the region”, thinking this wins them brownie points from brown people from the region. It doesn’t.
3) at some stage, they’ll either accidentally tweet out or otherwise approve of official Iranian state propaganda & voices sent by the theocratic regime, without realising, because they have absolutely *no idea* how to recognise Iranian proxy propaganda voices
4) their narcissistic obsession with hating Trump will be what really guides their Middle East “analysis”, not what’s objectively happening on the ground even at the expense of hundreds of thousands of dead Arab civilians caused by Iran’s militias, and the medieval theocratic oppression of millions of Iranians inside Iran
5) just as they’ll struggle to recall #Soleimani’s first name, they think watching Aziz Ansari on Netflix (no offence my bro 🏽) qualifies as “knowing a Muslim voice” in order to then pronounce their emotionally charged “hot takes” on Middle East politics in “defence of Muslims”
6) they will be unable to recognise or even name Iran’s terrorist militias everywhere in the world (responsible for war crimes that were often on par with or worse, than ISIS in Syria & elsewhere) and all the wars Iran has interfered in
7) they will be unable to tell you which is Soleimanis largest & most effective terror group, who leads it and which country it practically runs entire regions in.
8 ) they’ve never heard the word “Hashd” and cannot tell you what it means
9) nor could they name the entire Arab countries & populations who absolutely despised & hated Soleimani as a genocidal maniac & who will be dancing in the streets with joy right now
10) they will read the above thread and turn very binary on me, by accusing me of being pro-Trump or pro-Saudi rather than understanding the mixed picture I’m painting, without ever having had a relationship with anything in the Middle East, beyond Facebook."

Petraeus Says Trump May Have Restored U.S. 'Deterrence' by Killing Suleimani - "As a former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and a former CIA director, retired Gen. David Petraeus is keenly familiar with Qassem Suleimani, the powerful chief of Iran’s Quds Force, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad Friday morning.After months of a muted U.S. response to Tehran’s repeated lashing out—the downing of a U.S. military drone, a devastating attack on Saudi oil infrastructure, and more—Suleimani’s killing was designed to send a pointed message to the regime that the United States will not tolerate continued provocation...
It is impossible to overstate the importance of this particular action. It is more significant than the killing of Osama bin Laden or even the death of [Islamic State leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi. Suleimani was the architect and operational commander of the Iranian effort to solidify control of the so-called Shia crescent, stretching from Iran to Iraq through Syria into southern Lebanon. He is responsible for providing explosives, projectiles, and arms and other munitions that killed well over 600 American soldiers and many more of our coalition and Iraqi partners just in Iraq, as well as in many other countries such as Syria. So his death is of enormous significance... Many people had rightly questioned whether American deterrence had eroded somewhat because of the relatively insignificant responses to the earlier actions. This clearly was of vastly greater importance. Of course it also, per the Defense Department statement, was a defensive action given the reported planning and contingencies that Suleimani was going to Iraq to discuss and presumably approve.This was in response to the killing of an American contractor, the wounding of American forces, and just a sense of how this could go downhill from here if the Iranians don’t realize that this cannot continue... Iran is in a very precarious economic situation, it is very fragile domestically—they’ve killed many, many hundreds if not thousands of Iranian citizens who were demonstrating on the streets of Iran in response to the dismal economic situation and the mismanagement and corruption. I just don’t see the Iranians as anywhere near as supportive of the regime at this point as they were decades ago during the Iran-Iraq War. Clearly the supreme leader has to consider that as Iran considers the potential responses to what the U.S. has done...
FP: Will the Iraqi government kick the U.S. military out of Iraq?
DP: The prime minister has said that he would put forward legislation to do that, although I don’t think that the majority of Iraqi leaders want to see that given that ISIS is still a significant threat. They are keenly aware that it was not the Iranian supported militias that defeated the Islamic State, it was U.S.-enabled Iraqi armed forces and special forces that really fought the decisive battles."

No, killing Soleimani doesn’t mean war | Spectator USA - "Everybody knows Donald Trump is going to start a war. His critics have been saying so since his first year in office — remember the war with North Korea they predicted right after Trump tweeted about unleashing ‘fire and fury’ on the Little Rocket Man? That war didn’t happen. Nor did an insurgency break out when President Trump moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, an act that the Trump haters were certain would incite waves of violence and unquenchable turmoil. But maybe the third time’s the charm — maybe the killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, in a US airstrike in Iraq will finally give the president’s detractors the war they’ve been anticipating.Or maybe not — maybe the critics are just as wrong as they’ve been every other time: about wars that Trump didn’t start, about collusion with Russia that didn’t happen, about the crash of America’s economy…the list goes on. The president should be reassured to have enemies who are so reliably wrong... President Trump ordered the strike that killed Soleimani because Iranian-backed demonstrators and militias were harassing the US embassy in Iraq and an American contractor was killed in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in December. The Trump administration has said that Soleimani was planning more mischief, which is easy to believe: far from being a martyr to peace and non-interventionism, Soleimani was a man whose business was fomenting war and insurgency"

Lucas Lynch - A leftist I know personally. The ecstatic mourning... - "Rest in peace handsome... #RIP *fist* Who defended the world from middle easten "terrorists" (US own creations)"
"A leftist I know personally. The ecstatic mourning is truly a delusional spectacle to behold."
Comment: "Iran is a Russian ally...and Trump is supposedly his puppet..."
"Is this the new Che Guevara?"
"This thought crossed my mind. Soon we will see t-shirts and posters and paintings hanging in living rooms everywhere."

Tim Pool on Twitter - "I love how Trump is simultaneously starting World War Three over Iran because they are allies with Russia but also that Trump is working for Putin and doing what Putin wants"

Hussain Abdul-Hussain - "For non-Arabic speakers, reporting in the main news outlets NYT and Wash Post is so misinformed (either on purpose or because of incompetence) that you might think that the Iraqi State has officially voted for ejecting US forces from Iraq (because of Trump's miscalculated move to kill Soleimani). What happened is different.
1- Iraqi PM Abdul-Mahdi sent a letter to Parliament in which he argued that US troops exist in Iraq, not based on a treaty ratified by Parliament, but on two letters from past cabinets to the UN. Hence, Parliament has no role in ejection.
2- Iraqi PM is trying to trade disarming Shia militias for limiting scope of mission of US troops. He clearly wrote: "Whoever wants to become a political power, has to surrender arms, join armed forces, and forgo any political allegiance (i.e. to Iran) other than to the military and commander-in-chief."
3- You won't read this in crappy US reporting, but Iraqi parliament barely had a quorum for the session on ejecting US troops. The Sunni and Kurdish blocs boycotted the session (thus taking America's side over Iran), and thus quorum was 170 of 328 (half + six, just like Hezbollah designated a PM in Lebanese parliament with half + four).
4- The text Iraqi Parliament voted on was not a legislation, but a non-binding resolution.
5- To deflect Iranian anger inside Iraq, Abdul-Mahdi said that US troops will have to leave, but according to a timetable. Troops of the Assad dynasty occupied Lebanon for 29 years, with Assad and Lebanese government always saying that withdrawal was on its way, but tied to a timetable. (In most Mid Eastern countries, timetables often mean indefinitely).
6- In his letter to Parliament, Abdul-Mahdi clearly states that Iraqi interest is to maintain neutrality between America and Iran, and that if Iraq antagonizes America, it risks losing its international status (and implicitly oil revenue, just like Iran).
7- NYT is, by far, much more pro-Iran than Wash Post (this assessment is about their coverage of the US-Iran showdown only). The post reported that "tens of thousands" mourned Soleimani in Ahwaz. NYT made the number of mourners "hundreds of thousands." NYT has Erdbrink based in Iran (which means he can never print anything that angers the Mullahs), while Farnaz Fassihi clearly mixes her Iranian patriotism with her allegiance to the Mullahs. Her "sources" provided her with a video of Soleimani's poem about his love of martyrdom, which she Tweeted and called it reporting. What kind of reporting glorifies death (and likely invites people to die like the "fallen hero.")
Bottom line is, Iraqi parliament vote was an Iranian face-saving measure. Iran remains in a bind: If it retaliates against America and does not claim its attack, it does not count as revenge for Soleimani. If Iran claims the attack, regime risks further wrath, in a country whose economy is in free fall.
The most probable outcome of Soleimani's killing is more of the same: Low-intensity Iranian warfare against America, Iran never engaging in direct war, but maintaining her proxy war, fighting America to the last Arab. But with Soleimani out, Iranian proxy war will be much weaker."

UN agency IAEA reports Iran has again violated terms of nuclear deal | News | DW | 09.11.2016 - "For the second time, Iran has surpassed the 130 metric tonne threshold for heavy water, used to cool reactors that can produce substantial amounts of plutonium, according to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)...   In February, a month after the deal went into effect, the IAEA had noted for the first time that Iran had exceeded its allotted limit of heavy water. That time, Iran exceeded the limit by a greater amount, with 130.9 tonnes. Some of the excess was exported to the United States under an arrangement which was criticized by lawmakers in the US congress who saw it as a measure facilitating Iranian violations of the accord. The timing of the report is sensitive, given president-elect Donald Trump's statements on the nuclear deal during the US election campaign."
Some people with TDS were claiming that Iran was abiding to the terms of the deal until recently. When I pointed out they had been violating it in 2018, I was told that I was ignorant because Iran only violated it after the US pulled out. Of course they will have some excuse for this too

Soleimani posted memes antagonizing Trump on social media - The Washington Post - "For a high-level commander in a regime that bans most major social media platforms for its citizens, Soleimani was unusually Internet savvy. That same month, he shared with his nearly 70,000 Instagram followers an image of the White House exploding, which was later archived by the Middle East Media Research Institute. The poster appeared to have been taken from the 2013 film “Olympus Has Fallen,” and doctored so that Soleimani stands in front of the inferno with a walkie-talkie in his hand."

Federalist writer banned from Twitter for speaking out against Iran - The Post Millennial - "David Marcus, Senior Contributor to The Federalist and New York Post columnist has been banned from Twitter for advocating for a massive bombing of Iran, should they retaliate against the American killing of Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard... HuffPo, among other outlets, wrote about what a great guy Qasem Soleimani was. Colin Kaepernick had his own take, claiming that the action against Iran was racist, and had nothing to do with legit concerns... “The big secret is that if you’re on the right, you’re going to get banned, if you’re on the left, you’re going to get celebrated,” Marcus said. “I criticised Iran. I said we should take Iran down. They throw gay people off of roofs, and that’s what I got taken down from Twitter for? Go f*ck yourself, Jack.”   In July, Soleimani’s forces shot down a U.S. drone, and Trump declined to retaliate, since no one was killed. December saw these forces kill an American contractor in Iraq, and support a violent attack against the American embassy in Baghdad"

ZUBY: on Twitter - "Anti-patriotism is now so strong amongst 'the woke' that they will literally defend terrorists and murderers, just to sh*t on their own country. When did treason become so trendy? It's a bad look."
When they hate their countries, championing terrorists and murderers is nothing

Claire Voltaire on Twitter - "I’d like to quit twitter but absurdities hook a reaction. When I see sections of the left holding vigils for terror bastard Soleimani - or Michael Moore’s public acts of self-arousal - I don’t want the modern left to form any government anywhere. They are a threat to civilisation"
"Michael Moore has delusions of grandeur. I may be mistaken, but I don't recall any of these people ever sending Assad, Hamas, Putin, Erdogan, or the Ayatollah letters to stop killing their own and others."

LDR243 on Twitter - Corbyn: "Two days since I asked Boris Johnson these vital questions about the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani and its consequences. And no answer."
"Oh NOW you’re interested in prompt responses. Too bad you didn’t feel that way during the election when asked to call out antisemitism, but for terrorists, we need immediacy."

Tzippy Yarom-Diskind صِپورة on Twitter - "This has been an astonishing day. So many people on Twitter with #MAGA tags & pro Trump pics in their profiles saying how glad they are I found safety in Canada and wishing me well as a refugee. Politics is far more complicated than the labels being thrown around 🇨🇦 ❤️ 🇺🇸 ❤️ 🇮🇱"
"We want to #MAGA by doing the Right thing and if Trump freaks people out I don't mind. Where would you be if Obama had kept 1 of his red lines?"
"This actually was one of my strongest points against Obama. Seeing Syrian children dying with foam on their lips AFTER Obama said that gas attacks would be a red line, and waiting for him to do something and get nothing - I just couldn't forgive him."
Maybe the issue is that some labels are wrong

Aboud Dandachi on Twitter - "This isn't about "far left". If you support #SoleimaniAssassination, you're in favor of violating international law & the ensuing death of Americans & Middle Easterners. It's easy to promote US, a lying warmongering country, when you're safe in Canada...or can easily fly abroad."
"😐 My God you are right. Me, being “safe in Canada”. What gives me the right to opine about Suleimani. I should check my privilege. Only thing is, do you know why Im in Canada right now...? BECAUSE I WAS A REFUGEE FROM THE FUCKING SHIT SULEIMANI DID TO SYRIA!!!!!!"

Frustratedinuk on Twitter - "Did Soleimani violate laws international or otherwise, when he killed or arranged the death of thousands of people. These acts tool place in his country and on the sovereign soil of other countries which straight away violates int law,did we hear you or the left complain? No! Why"

Peter Conroy on Twitter - "How does it violate int’l law to eliminate a uniformed combatant who just days ago organized an attack on sovereign US soil (the embassy)? And while that combatant is on foreign soil himself.. Do people think that being a General makes someone off limits in a war zone?"

Yoni Michanie on Twitter - "I am Jewish. I was not brought up to celebrate anyone's death. However, I am absolutely glad that the man who threatened to commit a second Holocaust by wiping Israel off the map, is gone. That does not make me a Republican or a Democrat. It makes me a human being."