Links - 1st March 2020 (1 - Trump and Iran)

Eliminating Qasem Soleimani was Donald Trump’s Middle East farewell letter | Spectator USA - "Operation Martyr Soleimani, in which Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched 22 ballistic missiles at the Ayn al-Asad airbase in Iraq, demonstrated that they have folded. The Iranians are capable of carrying out precision attacks. They demonstrated that in their drone assault on the Saudi oil processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais in September. But their faux attack on the al-Asad airbase was notable for its impotence. Material damage was slight. There were no casualties, apart that is, from the myth of Iranian resistance.The second take away concerns the mainstream media in the US and elsewhere. The pink dust of Soleimani hadn’t settled before they were shouting about Donald Trump having started World War III. How did you make out in World War III? It was quiet here on the East Coast. I am still not sure how much of the media’s hysterical emoting (it cannot be called ‘reporting’) was due to simple ignorance and how much was due to ineradicable hatred and underestimation of Donald Trump"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Iran's Divided Loyalties - "The killing has it seems united the Iranian people. The scenes of a million wailing, chest beating mourners in the streets of Tehran have been beamed around the globe. But Iranians elsewhere are careful to not set too much store by this reaction. The problem with us says Marnia [sp?], an Iranian food scientist who lives in the UK, but was in Iran on the day of Soleimani’s death, is that we love drama too much. We love heroes and martyrs, and we get too emotional. We get caught up in the shared experience. So it looks like we are united now, but it's not quite true. While I was in Iran, I had to break up so many arguments between my family and friends… coercing and even paying people to attend rallies and protests is commonplace in Iran. He estimates a split between genuine and non genuine mourners there at about 50-50, with all military and government employees forced to attend. I was talking to a friend in Tehran after Soleimani’s funeral, he says. His teenage son was told not to come into school that day, but to attend the funeral procession. And to share with teachers a photo on his phone to prove he'd been there… Her sister who she describes as a normal housewife, claims to be devastated about the general’s death, even though as Zari [sp?] acidly points out, if asked the day before she would not have given a damn about him. Her tone is incredulous when she talks of how people have switched their allegiances, seemingly overnight. These people are what we call Bahdi, says Zina [sp?]. It means they are like the wind. They change direction to whatever is popular at the time. People have been angry for many years about the government supporting foreign wars, when there was so much poverty in Iran... I ask [3 of them] about Soleimani’s success in preventing ISIS taking hold in Iraq, but they all bat the idea away. That's just a smokescreen, says Zina. Soleimani is the right hand man of the Supreme Leader. And the mission of the Islamic Republic is to export the revolution. The ultimate goal is to spread Shia Islam throughout the region… There was so much paranoia and so many rumors that the whole thing was arranged with America, that there was an agreement to sacrifice Soleimani in exchange for John Bolton's dismissal. So many theories… They remember Saddam Hussein being dragged out of a hole in the ground. That's how it would turn out. They can't let that happen to Khameini"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, The war that wasn't - "‘Iran fired ballistic missiles at American bases in Iraq in the early hours of Wednesday morning. But in what seemed a carefully calibrated response, the Iranian missiles didn't kill or injure anyone. And when Mr. Trump responded, he did not repeat his earlier threats to retaliate. Indeed, his UN Ambassador said the US was ready for serious negotiations… given the way the week unfolded in that tense tit for tat moment, are we now forced to ask this question - is Donald Trump, a tactical genius, rather than a reckless gambler?…
‘In terms of taking on Iran, and forcing Iran to do something which looked pretty feeble In response, that was a very shrewd and clever move.’…
‘There are all sorts of signs that even the authorities in Iran were taken by surprise by the domestic reaction to Qassem Soleimani’s assassination, the real fire that came out in ordinary people in Iran was quite surprising and it continues in Iraq and so forth’"
It's amazing how more than 3 years in, liberals still imagine Trump is a rash, stupid idiot who will start World War III

Iran Retaliation for Soleimani Expected, But Options Are Limited - Bloomberg - "U.S. sanctions have hobbled his nation’s economy. Any action that triggered a conventional war with the U.S. would put the Shiite Muslim power at a severe disadvantage.Anti-government protests have also challenged the regime’s dominance in Iraq, Lebanon and at home. Now, in Al Quds commander Qassem Soleimani, Iranians have lost the very man they would have relied upon to craft an effective response... retaliation will likely be measured. It needs to be significant enough to reflect Soleimani’s stature, though not enough to invite an unbridled conflict with the world’s military superpower. Such controlled reprisals could include a strike at diplomatic staff or cyberattacks.“I don’t think either the U.S. or Iran want all-out war,” said Sir Tom Beckett, a former lieutenant general in the British Army and now executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies-Middle East. “The U.S. needed to assert its willingness to take military action alongside its campaign of exerting maximum economic pressure.”... Since at least the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Soleimani’s approach to challenging American power was to assemble and strengthen proxy Shiite militias in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. He then used these to prosecute a hybrid war against the U.S. and its regional allies at arm’s length, without triggering a direct response from Washington... Successive administrations underGeorge W. Bush and Barack Obama chose not to risk an escalation despite Soleimani’s responsibility for U.S. fatalities. Now it’s Iran that will have to weigh the risks of a determined response... Iran is unlikely to reach for a maximal option, such as a missile strike on American bases in Bahrain or elsewhere in the Gulf. To do so would invite suicide, analysts say. “This is an intensely dangerous moment, but as always with Iran, we should be wary of hyperbolic predictions,” said Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “Tehran is well practiced at calibrating retaliation around its real interests, which ultimately concern regime survival and targeting its reprisals with deliberation and precision.”... Soleimani’s network of militias appear to have triggered his death. They shelled a U.S. base in Iraq, killing a U.S. contractor, and then stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, evoking memories of the 1979 U.S. hostage crisis in Tehran... Political risk consultancy Eurasia Group predicted on Friday that Iran’s immediate response would likely involve low to moderate level clashes inside Iraq, with Iranian-backed militias attacking U.S. bases, renewed harassment of shipping in the Gulf and other strikes around the world that could be hard to anticipate. A cyberattack is one option Iranian officials are almost certainly considering, according to some experts... Unlike the political assassination in the Balkans that triggered World War I, the fallout out from Thursday’s attack is likely to be far less widespread, according to Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East Security at the London-based IISS.“This is not a Franz Ferdinand moment,” said Hokayem. “It’s at best an inflection point. Hundreds of thousands have been dying in the region over the last 10 years or so, including at the hands of Soleimani. The U.S. and Iran are already at war.”"

Contra Talking Points, There's Something Between Appeasement and War - "The media appears to be leading the charge, frantically egging the Iranian regime to retaliate through utterly fantastical predictions of what comes next. Much of this hyperbolic reporting stems from the fact that the very thesis of the Iran Deal — and years of Ben Rhodes-generated talking points — are being thoroughly tested.As journalist Seth Frantzman noted, much of the Iran Deal was sold on the premise that, if we did not strike a deal with the mullahs, we were risking all-out war with the Iranian regime. Trump’s partial withdrawal from the deal, combined with the recent killing of Soleimani, reveals that in order for the logic of the Iran Deal to still hold water, war must now be all but inevitable. The Obama administration frequently parroted this false binary, purporting that appeasement and war were the only two options for dealing with the hegemonic aims of the Iranian regime... This consensus also helped shield the administration from criticism, even as $150 billion in Iranian assets were unfrozen and nearly $1.4 billion in U.S. dollars were sent to the regime... as we’re learning under the Trump administration, there are a multitude of options available at the disposal of the United States, including crippling sanctions, legal targeted killings, and highly public threats, such as the one issued by President Trump on Twitter this past weekend, all of which severely decrease Iran’s appetite for full-on war.  Just as we have other options aside from war, it’s worth considering how limited Iran’s appetite for war with the United States actually is, particularly given the current state of its military and the regime’s genuine objectives. For the last four decades, Iran’s military strategy has been a combination of conventional warfare — consisting mainly of its ballistic missile arsenal and its virtually non-existent naval forces — as well as unconventional warfare, mostly executed by the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who guide, train, and support the regime’s vast network of terror proxies throughout the Middle East.  Since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, Iran’s chief priority has been exporting its Islamic Revolution via such proxies, infiltrating places like Syria and Yemen, using as its model the successful transformation of Lebanese Hezbollah from a disorganized grassroots organization to effectively a state actor.   However, chasing this objective has translated into the Iranian regime funneling billions of dollars to, among other things, the development of missile technologies and a burgeoning nuclear program, as well as to various other actors, like Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza. War is objectively expensive, but it becomes even pricier when you’re already spending billions on a pseudo-religious revolution.   Further consider the fact that Iranian defense spending is in sharp decline, following Trump’s partial withdrawal from the Iran Deal. While Iranian defense spending unsurprisingly increased from 2014 to 2018 as a result of increased funds generated by the Iran Deal, the regime has since cut it by nearly 30 percent as a result of reimposed U.S. sanctions and a depreciating currency. The Iranian economy as a whole is crippled, and the regime is facing increased pressure from the Iranian people to shift its attention to domestic issues and away from hegemonic and terror ambitions. Iran is entirely aware that it is ill-equipped to fight the United States in full-scale war, despite the economic boost the Iran Deal provided. Thus, it is likely we will see Iran turn to more unconventional tactics, which prove to be considerably “cheaper” than other forms of warfare... Iran has spent the last four decades being fairly economical in its approaches, despite lacking in conventional military strength.  “This is precisely why Iran has been able to do so much with so little in the past 4 decades.”"

Qasem Soleimani Killing Breaks the Myth of Iran's Power - "Iran is capable of spreading chaos across the Middle East, but it must choose wisely what to do next. Its assets include Hezbollah, Syrian-based militias that work for the Assad regime and Iran, and more than 100,000 members of pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran has also transferred advanced missiles and drones to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. In addition, the Shiite militias in Iraq, called Popular Mobilization Units, have received ballistic missiles from Iran in August 2018 and in 2019. However, missiles don’t win wars. Hezbollah has an arsenal of some 150,000 rockets and missiles, but it lacks much of the precision guidance that would make them a strategic threat to Israel. Iran has drones, like those used to attack Saudi Arabia in September, and it has cruise missiles and swarms of small boats it uses to harass shipping.However, none of Iran’s technology, nor its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is the threat that they have been made out to be, at least to an adversary that actually wants to confront Iran. Iran’s threat is more in its willingness to use force when its adversaries don’t want to be attacked. That is why tactics such as the kidnapping of academics, or the waylaying of a U.K.-flagged tanker, are its preferred methods. When it has used its precision missiles, it was against ISIS and a Kurdish dissident group... If one adds up the balance of attacks, Iran is generally the loser when it chooses to fight militarily. Soleimani’s genius was in building Iran’s influence, mostly among Shiites. This meant arming militias, usually with small arms and some up-armored vehicles. It meant laying the groundwork for Iranian weapons trafficking, such as drones or even air defense and ballistic missiles... Iran’s regime knows that a major war will result in its collapse. Iran’s regime murdered 1,500 protesters in November precisely because they fear the rising anger of average people in Iran"

Iran lacks good options - "What appears to have caused this escalation was the departure by the Iranians from a tacit ground rule hitherto maintained. According to this rule, undeclared but noted by a number of analysts including this author,  the Iranian regime was apparently to be permitted by Washington to strike at US allies with impunity, and could even hit at US hardware, but it would be best advised not to harm US citizens.On December 27, Iran failed to abide by this rule. In so doing, it set in motion the series of events culminating in the death of Soleimani, al-Muhandis and the others... While lacking a clear and coherent regional strategy, US President Donald Trump’s administration has made clear in word and deed over the last two years that it has no interest in major re-engagement in the Middle East, or in new conflicts in that arena of “bloodstained sand,” as Trump has referred to the region. Trump’s statements following the killing of Soleimani confirm this impression. The events of recent days show that the one action which can over-ride this aversion is the targeting of US citizens or personnel. That is, Iran has the incentive of potentially getting to keep much of what it gained in recent years in the Middle East, if it swallows the humiliation of Soleimani’s loss."

Paul Joseph Watson on Twitter - "The same people who try to cancel celebrities for decade old homophobic tweets are out on the streets protesting in favor of a regime that has literally tortured and executed thousands of gay people. Whatever you think of the Soleimani strike, this is some pretty thick irony."

Asher Fredman אשר פרדמן on Twitter - "Let me explain:
Obama kills terrorist= Good
Trump kills terrorist= Questionable
Israel kills terrorist= War crime
White person stabs Jew= Bad
POC stabs Jew= Complicated
Palestinian stabs Jew= Exercising his human right
Happy to help #Soleimani"

typical russian on Twitter - "New York 1941 pro-Hitler demonstration under slogans "Hitler has not attacked us, why attack Hitler?", " Why not peace with Hitler?", etc."

Will Ricciardella on Twitter - "Iran sabotages 6 oil tankers in Strait of Hormuz
Trump downplays it
Iran shots down US drone
Trump downplays it
Attacks Saudi Oil field
Trump does nothing
Iran attacks US embassy
Trump finally responds
America haters: WHY DOES HE WANT WAR?!"

Iraq scales down threats to expel US forces after Trump reaction

Qassem Soleimani Haunted the Arab World - The Atlantic - "Soleimani, a man thought of as invincible and all-powerful in the region, was killed at about 1 a.m. local time, just as he was leaving Baghdad airport. By 4:30 a.m., a group of Iraqis was marching—running, even—though the country’s capital carrying a large Iraqi flag, celebrating his death. In one video, a man’s voice can be heard lauding the killing, saying the deaths of Iraqi protesters had been avenged... More recently, in Iraq, he was instrumental in the violent crackdown against protests that had erupted in October. The protesters’ ire targeted not only the corruption and mismanagement of their own politicians, but Iran’s role in both, as well as its overbearing control over the country through proxy Shiite militias loyal to Tehran. “We in Iran know how to deal with protesters,” Soleimani had reportedly told Iraqi officials in October. “This happened in Iran and we got it under control.” Though Iraqis have continued to take to the streets, more than 500 of them have been killed. Demonstrations in Iran were also brutally crushed—more than 1,000 died in the crackdown there, according to Iranian officials. In Lebanon too, protests that began in October were initially focused on corruption, mismanagement, and sectarianism, but quickly took on an anti-Iran undertone... There was also outrage—on what grounds can the U.S. assassinate anyone, regardless of who Soleimani was? Then again, Iran and Soleimani did the same thing, in Latin America—remember Buenos Aires 1994?—and the Middle East... in parts of Syria, some are passing trays of baklava to celebrate Soleimani’s death"
Looks like the US managed to brainwash many Iraqis with their imperialist propaganda!

Anita's Hall of Social Justice & Intersectional Feminism - Posts - " Soleimani and the Ayatollah Supreme leader of Iran Ali Khameneii are/were both ahead of their times, again proving Islam is a feminist religion, let me explain:Few people know this, but in Iran, if two men are suspected of having sex one of them must get a sex change done and become a woman and then after undergoing gender realignment surgery their partnership is recognized by Islamic religious authority and they are happily married.Iran is so far ahead of us socially that it realizes that when it's people need sex changes it is paying for them to get them done."

The New York Times is tougher on beloved coach than it is on terrorists - "The Times, who infamously published an obituary for Fidel Castro titling him as a “Cuban revolutionary who defied the U.S.,” decided to focus on the negative when covering Cincinnati Bengals coaching legend Sam Wyche... [He was] fined by the NFL for $27,000 after preventing a female USA Today reporter from entering the team’s locker room. Wyche believed that women should not be allowed to walk in on players while they’re naked... The smear by the Times is particularly upsetting when compared to other obituaries, especially recently, calling American enemy of the public Qassim Soleimani the “master of Iran’s Intrigue and Force,” and nothing more."

Lucas Lynch - "Leftists are quick to blame the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda on the fact that America aided them against the Soviets. What's interesting about this, of course, is that tacitly they are saying that Soviet imperialism in the region was a good thing, and they would have preferred that the Soviet Union would have been successful in conquering the region, subjecting the country to yet another foreign ruler - which they are supposedly against in principle. Naturally, this example shows perfectly why this statement of faith is disingenuous at best. Notice they never say the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are a 'natural reaction' to imperialism on the part of the Soviet Union, even though it is always 'oppression' that is pointed to as the cause of terrorism, not religion or ideology. The Soviet Union was undeniably the foreign imperialist oppressor in the case of Afghanistan, sending in tanks and troops to 'liberate' these oppressed people and bring the glories of the workers' revolution to them, a white male Euro-centric narrative wholly foreign to the country... America came to Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the royal family to defend them against Saddam Hussein, and they happily obliged. It was the sight of 'infidels' in the holy land, and the royal family's refusal to use Bin Laden's mujahadeen fighters instead, that turned him against America. It was not out of concern for 'Muslims' or 'Palestinians' or anyone else."

Maajid Nawaz - " 1) the theocrats of Iran have declared they’ll strike back “openly by Iranian forces” at US targets (see NYT article).
2) If true (and the NYT relied on multiple sources) then what I referred to on the very night of Trump’s strike as his “bold gambit” seems to have paid off.
3) This “bold gambit” was: Trump’s direct attack on #Soleimani emphatically ended the post-Obama era of appeasing Iran’s expansionism. Trump exposed our global conceit, the pretence that Iran wasn’t building multiple terrorist proxy militia in many countries, under our very noses
4) In doing this, US signal to Iran was that from now on, any attack by an Iranian proxy against US &allied interests anywhere, will be blamed by the US on Iran directly. This mission effectively pulled the rug from under Iran’s feet, because it defeats the purpose of her proxies"

No, it's not Trump's fault Iran shot down flight 752 - The Post Millennial - "If establishment media be the bellwether, whatever remained of personal agency and responsibility have apparently vanished with Donald Trump in the White House... here we are in clown world where facts, circumstances or assuming any responsibilities go right out the window every time the press smells a calamity they can pin on the U.S. president... it’s worth mentioning that Quds Force has been a “listed terrorist entity” by Public Safety Canada – our version of homeland security – since 2012... [Iran] has become an international pariah for making terrorism among its primary trade exports.Terror groups like Hezbollah are part of Iran’s alignment axis; Houthi rebels in Yemen another. The country is also an OPEC member.Before United States took out Soleimani, over the past year he orchestrated the downing of an American drone, the commandeering of foreign-flagged vessels in the Persian Gulf and a missile attack from Yemen on Saudi Arabian oil facilities.Most recently and egregiously; Soleimani organized an assault on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad; graffiti left by Iranian-backed militia who layed siege on the compound even tagged its walls: they followed Soleimani."
It's only brown and black people who have no personal agency and responsibility

Iran Air Flight 655 - Wikipedia - "Vincennes had made ten attempts to contact the aircraft on both military and civilian radio frequencies, but had received no response"
Clearly exactly the same as Iran's shooting down of the Ukrainian airplane!

Iranian students refuse to step on US and Israeli flags as Trump warns 'do not kill protesters' - "The clip taken at Shaheed Beheshti University on Sunday shows crowds deliberately avoiding walking over the Stars and Stripes and the Star of David before furiously berating those that do.   Ali Khamenei's regime is said to have painted the flags at the main entrance of the university for students to walk over as a sign of disrespect... Trump had earlier sent a message of support to the people of Iran on Saturday evening, saying 'we are inspired by your courage' as thousands of angry demonstrators protested the regime in the streets of Tehran... After initially blaming a technical failure, authorities finally admitted to accidentally shooting it down in the face of mounting evidence and accusations by western leaders... Police briefly detained the British ambassador to Iran, Rob Macaire, who says he went with the intention of attending the vigil and did not know it would turn into a protest.  'Can confirm I wasn't taking part in any demonstrations!' he tweeted. 'Went to an event advertised as a vigil for victims of #PS752 tragedy. Normal to want to pay respects — some of victims were British. I left after 5 mins, when some started chanting.'  He said he was arrested 30 minutes after leaving the area.  The UK said its envoy was detained 'without grounds or explanation' and in 'flagrant violation of international law'"
The CIA must have a huge budget
Of course, if Iran kills them, it'll be Trump's fault for telling them not to do it
I remember all the anti-Western people who believed Iran when it claimed it was a technical failure
So much for Iranians being united against Trump

Obama Should Never Have Appeased Iran - The Atlantic - "After Iran’s turn from ally to enemy in 1978, the U.S. pursued a de facto Iran policy of containment, similar to the U.S. approach to the Soviet Union during Cold War. Starting with the Obama administration, however, U.S. policy has seesawed between appeasement and confrontation, leading to a dangerously volatile situation... When Obama became president, this strategy of containment backed by deterrence was working about as well as could be hoped. The Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini, which was supposed to be a worldwide revolution, had succeeded in taking root nowhere outside Iran except in Lebanon, in the form of the deadly Hezbollah. At that time, there were elements among the Shiite militias in Iraq that were known to be in bed with the Iranians, and Iranian IEDs and other weapons had flooded Iraq’s civil war, but the major political groupings in Iraq, including the Shiite parties, were still openly opposed to Iranian interference in their country. In fact, on the eve of the 2008 election in the U.S., the Shiite-dominated government of Nouri Al-Maliki attacked the Iranian-backed militias that had infiltrated the southern city of Basra... [Obama's] deal itself was seen by many in Tehran as a surrender on America’s part, not entirely without justice considering the U.S. had caved on the key demands in U.N. Security Council resolutions going back nearly a decade. For all these reasons, Obama’s well-wishes notwithstanding, the baseline presumption had to be that Iran would feel emboldened, and it would it would be more, not less, difficult to deal with Iran’s other “nefarious activities.”  And so it proved... To soften the impact on world oil prices, America’s Gulf allies—principally Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—moved to replace the lost Iranian supply. Iran rightly saw all of this as a campaign of economic warfare, and responded by first attacking Saudi and Emirate oil shipments, then a major production facility in Saudi Arabi, and finally a U.S. drone. Yet the U.S. hardly responded to these provocations, no doubt leading many in Saudi Arabia and the UAE to wonder whether it mightn’t be safer to assume a more neutral posture toward Iran.  The U.S. only reacted with force when Iran openly orchestrated a series of attacks on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and other installations in Iraq that left an American dead. The killing of an American without plausible deniability is a redline the government of Iran is not likely to cross again anytime soon. But will the credible enforcement of that redline be enough to shore up the multinational sanctions regime, or establish the level of containment necessary for stability in the region? Any chance of containing Iran depends on strengthening America’s system of regional alliances—and especially on reviving the U.S. alliance with Iraq. Americans may not understand that, but Iran does"

Iran Bulldozed Plane Crash Site Before Outside Investigators Arrived - "The regime originally said it would not share the black boxes with U.S. officials or the American manufacturer of the plane, Boeing, but later it appeared to back away from that position and indicated it might be willing to share the boxes, or at least the data it claims to extract from them, with foreign investigators."

Deceased Iranian General Soleimani surges into 4th place in Democratic primary race – Genesius Times - "“He was a great man,” Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said of Soleimani. “That’s why I am proud to endorse him as my favorite candidate in the 2020 primary.”"

Ilhan Omar Says Iran Tensions Are Triggering Her PTSD - "Omar has previously referenced her post-traumatic stress disorder to excuse a 2012 tweet that said Israel “hypnotized” the world, an anti-Semitic trope... Omar’s PTSD did not appear to affect her behavior later in the Wednesday press conference. She was seen laughing and talking in the background as fellow representative Sheila Jackson Lee spoke about casualties during the Iraq war"
If her health is really so bad, maybe she should be relieved of her duties

Iranian Missile System Shot Down Ukraine Flight, Probably by Mistake, Sources Say - "Abedzadeh earlier on Thursday dismissed speculation that a missile strike took down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752. In a statement, he said this outcome was "scientifically impossible and such rumors make no sense at all.""

London: Hundreds hold vigil for killed Iranian terrorist general - "Video from the rally outside the Islamic Centre of England shows Massoud Shadjareh calling the West the “enemy” and vowing to “make sure there are many many more Qassem Soleimanis.”"
Of course, if you show concern for this you are 'racist' and 'Islamophobic'

Iran’s Retaliation Offers Room for Trump to Calm Tensions - Bloomberg - "The strikes are “very much a measured response,” said Faysal Itani, a deputy director at the Center for Global Policy in Washington who has lived and worked in the Middle East. “Its response has to be dramatic enough to save face, but limited enough so as to avoid triggering an escalation cycle that could lead to overwhelming U.S. military action. This is spectacular enough to ‘count’ but does not force the U.S. to escalate in return.”... Iran’s state media said that at least 80 U.S. soldiers had been killed in the strikes, without offering any evidence to back up the claim. The Iranian leadership fully understands the consequences of all-out war with the U.S., said Razzaghi, hence the initial reports show “they are trying to satisfy people’s demand for revenge without provoking the U.S. too much.”"

Blaire White - Posts - ""LGBT people defending Iran are like chickens defending KFC."
“Praise Iran” was trending on Twitter last night and I found it interesting to see so many wOkE LGBT folks supporting it."

Media Coverage Of Iraq Is A Case Study Of Ignorance And Manipulation - "Millions of casual news consumers began their week believing that over the weekend, Iraq expelled the U.S. military from the country. The United States, they thought, now faced the decision to quickly leave or illegally occupy.Had they flicked through many of the cable or network stations, or read a few headlines on their phones or at the gas station, these Americans had heard the president’s decision to kill the general of Iran’s elite Quds force was made with no understanding of the potential reactions. If they read The New York Times or caught any of its parroting on friendly news shows, they might even think the president had “stunned” the Pentagon officials who had only offered the kill option “to make other options seem reasonable.” The problem presented here is none of these three scenarios is accurate. The U.S. military is not currently under any order to leave Iraq, though in America’s interest they should, and they might. Further, the Pentagon does not present a president with military options that’s ramifications have not been considered, nor does the chairman of the Joint Chiefs ever present the president a fake option. “For non-Arabic speakers, reporting in the main news outlets [New York Times] and [Washington] Post is so misinformed (either on purpose or because of incompetence) that you might think that the Iraqi State has officially voted for ejecting U.S. forces from Iraq,” wrote Hussain Abdul-Hussain, the Iraqi-Lebanese chief of Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai’s Washington Bureau. The vote, he explained, was a party-line vote by Shia Iran supporters in the parliament. Kurdish and Sunni lawmakers had boycotted the session despite threats from the very same Shia militia that kicked off the current cycle of violence, leading to a barely functioning quorum in the chamber.  Of course, to admit threats of political violence from pro-Iranian militia would undermine the media narrative that the parliament, like the militia mob that attacked our embassy, represents everyday Iraqis. What these pro-Iranian lawmakers passed was no United States ouster, but a non-binding, partisan resolution that the United States should leave... “Repercussions mount over U.S. strike, with Iran nuclear deal pullback and Iraq call for U.S. troop pullout,” the Los Angeles Times tells us, waiting 14 paragraphs to explain the resolution is not binding, objectively failing the reader. That the president played golf, by contrast, is treated to the fifth paragraph. The Washington Post, which elected to use the Associated Press’s write-up, didn’t include the important non-binding information at all... The four reporters on the byline found at least two “top military officials” who said they were “flabbergasted” by the president’s call. Notice the information here isn’t sourced. It’s not “according to Pentagon officials involved in the decision process,” “Pentagon officials involved in the drafting of options,” or even Pentagon officials “with first-hand knowledge of the presentation.” It’s what we call “Voice of God”– it is simply said, and so it is. No decent editor would let that pass without digging in deeper, and the Times’s editors certainly did. “Who are your sources?” “What is their knowledge of the situation?” “Why aren’t we naming them?” “Do you have confirmation?” These were all asked as a matter of basic practice, yet none of the answers are even hinted at in the article. Even descriptions of the officials’ level of involvement or reason for request for anonymity were excluded. This, to be clear, requires a level of comfort with displaying an incredible disdain for the reader. Further, is the outlined scenario at all plausible? Keep in mind this is a president the Times has repeatedly and breathlessly warned is crazy, impulsive, callous, vicious, and constantly feared by patriotic government employees doing their best to restrain him. Still, these reporters are willing to believe the career military and civilian leaders of the Pentagon float ideas they consider dangerous or stupid? Of course not, but disbelief is routinely suspended in the face of bias-confirming story lines... “The options that go to the executive are vetted through the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense before they are presented to the president,” Alex Plitsas, who served for a time as chief of sensitive activities for the assistant secretary for special operations under President Barack Obama, told The Federalist. “Legal counsel reviews them, as does everyone else [in the chain].”“You don’t,” he stated emphatically, “do throwaway COAs [course of actions].” There is also zero reason to believe Join Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley or Secretary of Defense Mark Esper were doing any of what The New York Times reported. So why was this a story at all? Short answer: it fit The Narrative of an irrational president making decisions that terrify his own commanders. A Narrative, in this case, teed up for reporters by Obama’s own Iran man.But often, The Narrative is false. Or, as President Donald Trump prefers, “fake news.”"
Maybe the Washington Post is trying to kill democracy with darkness

Iran plane downing: Person who filmed video 'arrested' - "Iran says it has arrested the person who filmed the footage showing a Ukrainian passenger plane being shot down by a missile.It is believed the person being detained will face charges related to national security... Iran initially denied that the aircraft was hit by a missile, but later conceded that the passenger jet was hit by its air defence systems.When the video was shared on social media, it led analysts to say it showed the plane was hit by a missile."

U.S. and Iran Are Trolling Each Other — in China - The New York Times - "the government has so far allowed the war of words between the United States and Iran to continue, perhaps because it deflects attention away from issues in China"

U.S.-Iran Tensions & Soleimani Killing: Alarmists Were Wrong about U.S. Strike - "the dust has now settled, and none of the doomsday scenarios that so many in the media warned about has come to pass... Indeed, none of the doomsday scenarios were plausible to begin with. Iran has a narrow menu of options in terms of escalation against the U.S. It is not interested in a direct war with the U.S., nor are any of its proxies or allies in the region. The regime faces increasingly crippling sanctions imposed by Washington, and domestic unrest is building up with occasional street protests. Also, its allies in Iraq and Lebanon have been under unprecedented pressure from grassroots protests, persistent since October. In Syria, the currency is collapsing on historic levels as more than one third of the country remains outside the control of the Iranian-backed government. Iran is embroiled in domestic and regional crises, and many of the gains it made in recent years are still tenuous... In 2020, unlike the early years after the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. has little footprint in conflict zones such Iraq and Syria. Iran, on the other hand, has invested heavily in keeping its allies in power, almost all of them now under domestic pressure. In other words, in a reverse of the Iraq War dynamics, the U.S. can mess with Iran in many more ways than Iran can retaliate. That is a new reality to which pundits and policymakers in the U.S. still need to catch up. The policy shift toward Iran under the Trump administration — to increase military, political, and economic pressure to weaken its regional hegemony — is exposing such vulnerabilities and demonstrating that the U.S. can deter Iran with minimal costs. The apocalyptic commentary we witnessed this month has become the default response to provocations from Iran or its allies... The point is that the usual pushback against any assertive U.S. policy toward Iran has little basis in reality. It is based largely on exaggeration and fear-mongering that emboldens the regime in Iran and provides it with the space to operate throughout the region with impunity. How else would one explain that Soleimani, who was accused of having American blood on his hands, was making public appearances not far from American forces during the fight against the Islamic State?... Despite alarmism, the circumstances around the killing of Soleimani show that the current policy toward Iran is working as intended. The “maximum pressure” approach is tightening the economic screws on Iran and organizing regional efforts to increase pressure on the regime. The intent is not just to force Tehran to “return to the table” to negotiate its nuclear program, as it is often publicly stated, but to reduce Iran’s ability to dominate the areas around it. The pressure is working not because it was not tried before but because it follows numerous challenges — primarily popular protests and the growing nationalist sentiments that are overshadowing the sectarian tensions that once helped the regime — that the Iranian regime is facing at home and in the areas where it has built deep presence."
The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history - alarmism is always sexy

Comfortably Smug on Twitter - "Washington Post treated Soleimani and Al Baghdadi with more respect than they gave Kobe"

Democrats Block A Vote To Support Iran Protesters

Maajid Nawaz - "IRAN: So far, Iran lost her top-terrorist, inflicted zero US or Iraqi casualties, backed down & Trump deescalated. No WWIII happened. Meanwhile leftists & celebs who had never heard of #Soleimani before, went from hyperventilating to full on cheerleading for a theocracy over a democracy. Brexit (which I didn’t see coming), Trump’s election (by which time I predicted it), the dangers of Corbyn (by which time I was shouting it everyday) & now this #Soleimani thing. Why are the left increasingly so unable to identify reality, while accusing everyone *but themselves* of this? I have started to suspect that the modern left’s dogmatism & serious intellectual decline is caused by a deep, deep narcissism, born of boredom, aloofness & arrogance due to their over privileged luxurious lives (they may not mean to be like this, but nevertheless do it anyway). This means that it’s *their* hatred of Trump (right or wrong) or anyone else, not reality nor humanitarianism nor principles, that defines how they think about issues. The world revolves around *them* & their outrage. Not for example, 1/2 million Syrians Soleimani helped to torture, slaughter and gas. Such behaviour has manifested itself by the western left repeatedly over the last few years & is getting more & more hysterical after each loss. To the point that they sneer, preach & then scream at those of us who are “meant” to support them if we don’t do *exactly* what they say. A black person who doesn’t agree is ‘house’, a Muslim who strays off the colony is a ‘native informant’, a woman who questions gender is abused, a speaker they don’t like is banned. All while grovelling & apologising to some of the world’s worst tyrants, dictators & theocrats, while contextualising and justifing *only* their actions, but never for anyone in the West who is deemed not 'woke' enough. Such thinking has moved from social media to universities, from there to graduate work places. Young professionals are usually studio bookers, hence this decline went from graduate jobs to infesting our media punditry. I worry this represents the intellectual decline of society. A precursor to political decline. Today's left anachronistically cling on to the notion that they are 'anti-establishment', and yet our cultural establishment today is unquestionably and unquestioningly left wing, and tolerates little else in terms of thought. Today's Western left is supremely wealthy, control our nodes of culture and tech, and monopolises thought. It is the left wing cultural establishment's hegemony that must be challenged. Anyone who seeks to challenge power, should include within their work the aim of challenging *this* power. Because politics is downstream from culture. And our culture is weak right now. This is why I’ve written ‘resisting the democratisation of truth’ in social media bios"
The power of oikophobia

How Long Before the Regime Falls in Iran? - "The death of Iranian Quds Force commander General Quassem Soleimani has produced some truly bizarre media coverage. Some Western media outlets are framing Soleimani’s death as the loss of a deeply beloved hero... The closest thing in the podcast to an acknowledgement that Soleimani led a group of armed thugs that viciously suppressed dissent in Iran, including turning their guns on Iranian protestors less than two months ago, was a single sentence in the podcast: “To be clear, there are plenty of Iranians who did not love or respect Soleimani.” “Plenty” seems an inadequate way to characterize the majority of Iranians. Seventy-nine percent of Iranians would vote the Islamic Republic out of existence if given a chance, according to one poll. Yet somehow that torrent of anti-regime, anti-Soleimani sentiment was not deemed fit to discuss when describing how Soleimani’s death was received in Iran. Even more oddly pro-regime were stories blaming U.S. President Donald Trump for the shooting down of the civilian airliner... Far too many of those covering the Iranian reaction to Soleimani’s death never ask whether the crowds walking the streets in Tehran as part of Soleimani’s funeral cortege had reasons for being there that had nothing to do with mourning.As the Iran analyst at the non-partisan Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Alireza Nader, told me, “The regime is good at coercing crowds through threats and intimidation.” Which means media outlets using crowd size as a metric to gauge support for the regime should try to learn how many people are there of their own free will, and how many are, for example, Iranian government employees given the day off from work and ordered to show up. That’s a tactic the regime routinely uses to whip up anti-American demonstrations... If, for example, you assume that because Iran is a theocracy, the majority of the other Ayatollahs support the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, you’d be wrong. He is quite unpopular among the Shia clergy. (I explained why in greater detail in this piece for Foreign Policy.) But the reason his clerical support is weak is that the whole ruling system he’s at the center of, which translates as “the Rule of the Islamic Jurist,” is considered a scam by most Shia clerics. Until Khomeini seized power in 1979, most Shia clerics believed—and many still do, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Iraq—it is not a religious leader’s place to wield temporal power, but to provide wisdom in the form of clerical rulings, and to be a marja, a spiritual guide who lives life in a manner worthy of emulation. Other Ayatollahs have spoken out against the excesses of the “Rule of the Islamic Jurist” including Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who was once Khomeini’s designated successor, but who was placed under house arrest and died there. Which brings us to the other reason why most Ayatollahs don’t like the Supreme Leader. When Khamenei was selected as the successor for Khomeini he was a mid-ranking cleric. Think a monsignor in the Catholic church, slightly above a parish priest, but not by much. Then there’s the fact that Khamenei’s claim to be a bona fide Ayatollah is a bit dubious. The clerical rank of Ayatollah is granted by your peers after they have examined your collected clerical rulings. Khamenei tried to pass that test with a collection of uninspired rulings circulated among the Shia community in Pakistan that hadn’t even been published in Iran. Imagine how popular you’d be in the Catholic church if you promoted yourself from priest to Pope. Khamenei retains the grudging support of much of the Shia clergy, which largely amounts to agreeing to stay quiet and not interfere, by the simple expedient of paying them off to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. This made the news when an Iranian budget document was released in late 2017 and immediately set off demonstrations because spending on items like infrastructure was being cut while clerical subsidies increased. Opposition to the regime is not just to be found in the clergy. It is wide and deep but also unfocused. That is no accident. If there is one thing police states are great at, it is making sure there are no credible opposition leaders to rally around... One man I spoke to believes he knows what will ultimately fire up the opposition to the regime: water. Iran is running out, fast. Nothing to do with climate change, and everything to do with the sort of epic state mismanagement reminiscent of China’s “Great Leap Forward.”"

Melissa Chen - [On the coronavirus] "Did You Know:
Everyone who is an armchair epidemiologist today was a Middle East geopolitics expert just last week"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Japanese Justice and the Fugitive CEO - "You might wonder why an Iranian General Soleimani is being memorialized quite so intensely in one small town over 1000 miles from Tehran. But with a bit of background, it's no surprise. Hezbollah was set up in Lebanon in the 1980s by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, for which Soleimani was in charge of external operations."
A Shia insisted to me Iran had never been proven to be behind Hezbollah