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Title: British navy to Iran: Back the hell off
Source:
HotAir
URL Source: https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morr ... itish-navy-iran-back-hell-off/
Published: Jul 11, 2019
Author: Ed Morissey
Post Date: 2019-07-11 12:09:36 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 15537
Comments: 89
Do the Iranians want a war? They nearly got one overnight, not with the US but with the United Kingdom. The British navy aimed its guns on several Iranian ships attempting to block passage through the Strait of Hormuz of a British oil tanker, which caused the smaller ships to retreat: A British navy ship, the HMS Montrose, “was forced to position herself between the Iranian vessels and [the tanker] British Heritage and issue verbal warnings to the Iranian vessels, which then turned away,” the British government said in a statement. “We are concerned by this action and continue to urge the Iranian authorities to de-escalate the situation in the region,” the statement said. Last month, the Iranians shot down a US drone operating in international airspace, which nearly prompted a military strike in retaliation. The Iranians have now apparently either shifted their focus or broadened it, also in retaliation. The UK seized a Panamanian oil tanker carrying Iranian crude off the coast of Gibraltar, accusing Tehran of violating EU sanctions by selling oil to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Iran called it “an act of piracy” and threatened “consequences” for the seizure. This seems to be the UK’s reminder that even consequences have further consequences. For the moment, anyway, the Iranians got the message. However, they clearly want to start a fight in the Strait of Hormuz with someone, even though it’s becoming clearer that the US and the UK are willing to shoot back now after the attacks on other shipping in the Hormuz area. Iran may not have much choice. Their economy is collapsing again under the weight of US sanctions, and their population is growing restive. The Trump administration announced yesterday that more sanctions are coming now that Iran has openly admitted breaking past the restrictions on uranium enrichment: The United States called an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on Wednesday in response to the Iranian moves, while a senior French envoy was in Tehran exploring ways to reopen negotiations on compliance with the deal. Iran called this “warfare“: Iran’s representative to international organizations in Vienna, Kazem Gharib Abadi, told a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency Wednesday U.S. actions were “neither legitimate nor legal” and should not be accepted by the international community. He says that the “costly” consequences of American sanctions mean “they should be seen as weapons of warfare.” Iran had better be careful before they find out what warfare actually would look like against the US and UK. They’ve been testing Western responses in the Hormuz area for some time, and the British navy gave the Iranians something to think about. If the mullahs are getting nervous about the misery of their population, then they should rethink their nuclear and ballistic missile programs as well as their support for Iranian proxy terror networks in the region. Poster Comment: When the British allies on the British protectorate of Gibralter stopped the Iranian tanker illegally bound for Syria last week, Iran's leader vowed revenge on Britain, suggesting that Iran would seize a British tanker in retaliation. Britain did lawfully interdict a contraband oil shipment destined for Syria contrary to international agreements. Well, Iran tried to seize a Brit tanker and Britain made it clear they aren't going to be victims of Iranian piracy in the Strait of Hormuz. They sent Iran a message. I think they should have punctuated it with sinking one or more of the three Iranian ships to make their point to Iran even clearer. But that will be the next step if Iran tries something like this again.
Three Iranian vessels attempted to stop a British tanker traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, Britain said Thursday, in the latest escalation between Iran and Western powers in recent weeks. The United States on Wednesday accused Iran of “nuclear extortion” and threatened further sanctions against Tehran, which has begun stockpiling and enriching uranium beyond the limits set in the 2015 accord that President Trump has abandoned. Iran says it’s prepared to return to “full implementation” of its landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, but only when matched by the full compliance of “all participants.” …
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#1. To: Tooconservative (#0)
The real hypocrisy here, as I see it, is that the EU/UK/US have already declared war on Iran via crippling sanction and now seizing an Iranian tanker. Seizing the foreign property of another country is called piracy when it's done by a non-state entity, and war when it's done by a state entity. What is the hell is Iran supposed to do? There is no deal in place. Trump, who wrote a book called "The Art of the Deal" is clearly not attempting to create a new deal to replace the one he pulled out of. Iran is obviously technologically advanced enough to make nuclear material and nuclear bombs but no one wants to talk to them about it. At the same time, Iran is supposed to respect sanctions imposed by a bunch of foreign countries on Syria but the EU is NOT supposed to respect sanctions that Iran might want to impose on the UK. This is lawlessness upon the part of the EU. Iran is not provoking. They are being provoked. War has been declared upon Iran. It's just not a hot war yet. The west is simply making life miserable for Iran enough to compel them into firing the first shot. The only way out of this for Iran is for them to create a nuclear weapon. Once they do that, then the US/UK/EU will be forced to actually negotiate, and/or realize that continuing to sanction a new nuclear power is more dangerous than not. Pakistan has nukes, but they aren't getting sanctioned. And Iran will have nukes eventually. There's no stopping that.
So, you are on Iran's side. Okay. I don't think anyone cares if Iran imposes sanctions on the UK. Including the UK. The only sanctions that really mean anything are U.S. sanctions. Because we can force all other trading partners to follow our lead. Or we will impose sanctions on them as well. So, for instance, Germany got mad at our ambassador, Grenell, for telling them to be prepared for a renewal of sanctions. And France and some German pols plotted ways to evade the new sanctions with an assist from the traitor John F'n Kerry. Grenell made the Germans very mad with this, about six months ago. And now? They are toeing the line, exactly as they were told to do. Merkel can turn her vagina inside out in rage but she can't do anything about it. The U.S. alone controls the entire international sanctions regime. Of course, if other countries don't like it, they are free to start their own international economic system. Ask the Russians how well that worked for the old Soviet regime. We strangled the USSR following this same exact containment strategy. Pakistan is different. First and foremost, they are not a rabid enemy of America for the last 40 years. If Iran creates a nuke, we'll increase the sanctions to the point where everyone in Iran just starves. And they are in the midst of a major drought already, due to the insanely bad water management policy of the regime. One of their nicest inland lakes has virtually dried up, much like that huge inland lake did in the old Soviet Union, also due to grossly inept water management policy. And that has ruined much of Iran's irrigation which came from this lake, much as happened to the idiotic Soviet policy that destroyed the fourth largest inland sea in the world, the Aral Sea. A first-order environmental disaster, entirely the fault of ignorant Soviet water policy and ineffective dam/canal design and construction. Trump: Hold muh beer... Go ahead and cheer for Iranian nukes to teach those dirty Brits and us fucking Yanks a thing or two. I'll bet on the Anglosphere to prevail even if the Persians end up being forced to eat their own children to avoid starving. Trump may well prevail with both Iran and the Norks where all our previous presidents have failed. But you go ahead and cheer for the most rabid America-haters on the planet if that's what you prefer. We'll see how it turns out.
Fine. Why not? I refuse to go with the "might makes right" line of thinking which it seems from your post is what you subscribe to. So France and Germany have been whipped into line by a tyrannical and dominating USA! That's how we spread democracy, right? That's what makes us the beacon of freedom, setting an example of how the world should be! I refuse to be a cheerleader for the USA just because I was born there. Me, I prefer morality and justice, and the US treatment of Iran over the last 65 years has been quite unjust. We have exploited that country for their oil. Pakistan doesn't have quite so much, which is probably the catalyst defining the only meaningful difference in relations. And I would trust Iran with nuke weapons before I'd trust Israel which has this final Samson option where they nuke all their enemies in the event they are ever invaded and defeated as a country. Iran has something to lose, and always will have something to lose. Israel is more dangerous in that regard. I will never understand any brand of conservatism that embraces tyranny as you have so aptly described.
So...to punish the US for allowing the CIA to depose the moderate Mossadegh regime in 1953 at the behest of BP who didn't want to see their oil wells in Iran nationalized after the Brits invested so much to develop them, you want to reward the mullahs and their theocracy with nukes some forty years after the mullahs deposed the Shah? Pahlevi was a crap strongarm dictator, supported by America, after the 1953 coup. Not so different from Marcos in the Philippines or Saddam in Iraq or, well, lots of other petty tyrants who ruled with U.S. support, more or less. Many of these were countries that were newly independent, new to democracy. And they were client states of a superpower, much as the world was divided up during the Cold War years. During the Cold War, we found it is difficult to establish durable functioning democracies in the Third World. The Soviets found instilling communism in the Third World no more rewarding. These were the primary duelling white men's burdens of civilization in the second half of the twentieth century. And both were dealing with newly independent countries with a new colonial elite that had formed new national governments after WW II and the final collapse of the European colonial empires across the Mideast and Asia and Africa. However, there was certainly a rivalry between the US and USSR for influence over many of these young countries. Iran was one of those countries at the heart of Cold War geopolitics. India is a similar country, emerged as a new democracy post-WW 2 as a former Brit colony. So maybe we should look a little more at the entire era and not pretend that history began in 1953 with the CIA-organized coup to oust Mossadegh as PM and install Pahlevi as the new Shah of Iran. You are right, of course, that the Shah was a terrible mistake for both Britain and America, even without the further problem of his succession by the mullahs of Iran. A lot of these countries, like Iraq or Iran or India or Pakistan etc., were former British colonies. America was the only real Western power as the British empire collapsed after WW II. Their borders were drawn up on maps as military and administrative districts by generals and diplomats in the Foreign Ministry in London. They were not really nations in the sense that Europe had historical nations like the Brits and the French. And even the Germans and Italians, coming late to their own modern nationhood. Not so long ago, Germany and Italy were regions, not unified nations. It's no coincidence that it was Italy and Germany who succumbed to fascism; they were Europe's newest nations. And that should give us some perspective on the new democracies after WW II that were former Brit colonies that became new countries. And how the US and USSR, as Cold War rivals, competed for influence in all these countries. Of course, we can chew the fat historically in a lot of ways. In the end, it still comes down to whether we would rather see a nuclear-armed Iran squaring off against a nuclear Saudi Arabia along with a nuclear Israel. I oppose any further nuclearization of the Mideast, regardless of the region's rather brief history. If Iran gets nukes, there will be no stopping the Saudis from doing the same. And the Turks would probably try for nukes too. Iranian nukes would likely lead directly to Saudi nukes and possibly Turkish nukes. The world really does not need more nuclear weapons.
Very true, of course. But that's not the question. The question is, can Iran be strong armed into not making them, or will strong arming them inspire and encourage them into making them. We have to accept that as tech progresses, it will only get easier for countries to build them. That's the reality. We also have to accept that the US cannot completely control what Iran and other countries do in terms of pursuing nuke weapons. Too many Americans do think that we can and failure to accept our limitations will only make things worse. I'm posting on Fox News again, and it's very common on the Iran articles to see people practically cheering for war over there. A lot of Fox viewers there think we can rule the world while at the same time being the envy of the world for our "freedom and democracy". We really do need to accept that the world is not a melodramatic place where everyone is either a good hero or an evil villain. We have to accept that political motivations will encourage both allies and adversaries to do both good and evil things. Israel will do evil sometimes. And Iran will do good sometimes. Which is why I can easily believe Israel attacked the tankers to inflame tensions. On the drone, it's a toss up to me to believe Iran vs the US on whether the drone actually entered Iran airspace. Iran may have lied and shot it down to both demonstrate their AA abilities and to get the damn spy plane away. That it cost $120 million is a bonus and could discourage it's replacement from at least coming that close again. The US may have violated Iran airspace or tricked Iran into thinking it had for the express purpose of getting Iran to shoot it down to inflame tensions. Anyway, that's just to show I don't always believe one country and disbelieve another. I look for motives. I see no motive for Iran on the tanker attacks. I do see it for Israel and Saudi Arabia. It's a complex world and treating it as a melodramatic play is naive.
The way you talk it sounds like you are an Iraian. You seem to have a deep unnatural hatred of Israel. The good guys in the middle east. Who could destroy Iran if they wanted to. But they don't because they genuinely want peace unlike the Muslim pieces of shit in Iran who are commanded by their cult book to kill pillage and rape. A sick religion that muslim gutter religion is. The koran would be more useful beint turned into toilet paper to wipe peoples ass with. Much more useful.
It does sound as though some posters here would, in the event of hostilities with Iran, immediately take Iran's side. One has to wonder, given all that we know about how Iran's terror network has operated for decades, just what would it take for the mullah-coddlers to turn on Iran. You suppose they'd finally be on America's side if Iran nuked an American city? Or started a serious pandemic among the homeless hordes in L.A. or S.F. or Seattle? Or would they continue to support the Iranian mullahs and their theocracy?
This is what you are dreaming about? Bad boy.
You are one of those people who would cheer if Iran attacked America or Israel. But you would whine if Iran attacked the EUroweenies who have steadfastly caved in to Iran's demands and been only too happy to provide them with dual-use technology for their missile/nuke programs. So the EU can help Iran build nukes and missiles to harm her allies. Like America. We really need to disband NATO. It's entirely useless if not counterproductive.
I think it is more likely that Cuba will try to conquer USA, as it is closer ;) Think about.
During the Cuban missile crisis, Castro was frothing at the mouth, screaming for the Soviets to launch WW III on America from Cuba. NYTimes, 2012: Twenty years ago, we spent four days in Havana discussing the missile crisis with Mr. Castro, former Soviet officials and American decision makers from the Kennedy administration, including the former defense secretary Robert S. McNamara. Mr. Castro’s interest had been piqued by the declassification and release of Soviet and American documents in 1991 and 1992, which both surprised and angered him. These included long-suppressed passages from memoirs, released 20 years after Khrushchev’s death, in which he wrote that Mr. Castro had become irrational and possibly suicidal and that the crisis had to end before Cuba ignited a nuclear war. In addition, declassified letters between Khrushchev and Kennedy revealed the extent to which Washington and Moscow cut Cuba out of negotiations, refused to consider Cuban demands and eventually resolved the crisis in spite of Mr. Castro’s objections. So to truly understand how the world came close to Armageddon, one must look not to Washington and Moscow but to Havana. ... There are many parallels between communist Cuba in 1962 and our current bad actors, Iran and North Korea, in 2019. These are not countries that should ever have nuclear weapons.
You forgot other "second Hitlers", Milosevic, Kadaffi, Saddam, the endless list. Each made from the same cookie cutter, created in Hollywood long time ago (I recommend Wag the Dog movie). Every brainwashed zombie, that cannot even show a respective country on the map, "knows" well, how wicked their leader is. No knowledge, no understanding, only Pavlovian conditional reflexes. "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
#40. To: A Pole (#39)
I never saw any of them as a "Hitler". Not even Saddam. But I knew more than most people about how our government funded Saddam's military buildup covertly via BCCI, if you recall that chapter of the Iraq-Iran war (which we certainly joined Saddam by providing a manned barge platform and continuous AWACS coverage of the region and served as the air controllers and intel source for Iraq's air force. Our navy was also quite nearby to keep the Iranian navy in check. The mullahs and the Norks are very much in the Hitler mold. The Norks even have a racial purity and supremacy political doctrine. They are profoundly racist as a regime and consider themselves genetically superior to the South Koreans who they are duty-bound to conquer by the sacred principles of Lenin and Stalin. And Iran has their Twelver apocalyptic, their version of Armageddon. It's akin to how evangelicals and Protestants considered that re-establishing Israel in the modern era fit into Bible prophecies about the Christian apocalypse. It's one of the main reasons why Israel gets so much support in Christian circles that go in for apocalyptic Left Behind stuff. Iran has that same sort of thing but they are much more serious about it, including all the senior leadership. They consider that it may be necessary to sacrifice various nations and even themselves to establish the final Twelver Caliphate, the end of history for Muslims. This would be comparable to the thousand-year reign of Christ following the Second Coming, for instance. Both North Korea and Iran are extremist totalitarian regimes that regularly break agreements and foment terrorism. Kim killed his own brother overseas with nerve gas. And Iran's list of crimes as a state sponsor of terrorism is endless. And not just against Israel. Far from it. A country like Nazi Germany shouldn't have nuclear weapons. And Iran and North Korea are both too much like Nazi Germany in the worst ways.
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#5. To: Pinguinite (#1)
The real hypocrisy here, as I see it, is that the EU/UK/US have already declared war on Iran via crippling sanction and now seizing an Iranian tanker. Seizing the foreign property of another country is called piracy when it's done by a non-state entity, and war when it's done by a state entity.
At the same time, Iran is supposed to respect sanctions imposed by a bunch of foreign countries on Syria but the EU is NOT supposed to respect sanctions that Iran might want to impose on the UK.
The only way out of this for Iran is for them to create a nuclear weapon. Once they do that, then the US/UK/EU will be forced to actually negotiate, and/or realize that continuing to sanction a new nuclear power is more dangerous than not. Pakistan has nukes, but they aren't getting sanctioned.
And Iran will have nukes eventually. There's no stopping that.
#7. To: Tooconservative (#5)
So, you are on Iran's side. Okay.
#13. To: Pinguinite (#7)
I refuse to be a cheerleader for the USA just because I was born there. Me, I prefer morality and justice, and the US treatment of Iran over the last 65 years has been quite unjust. We have exploited that country for their oil.
#14. To: Tooconservative (#13)
The world really does not need more nuclear weapons.
#26. To: Pinguinite (#14)
Israel will do evil sometimes. And Iran will do good sometimes. Which is why I can easily believe Israel attacked the tankers to inflame tensions.
#27. To: A K A Stone (#26)
(Edited)
#28. To: Tooconservative (#27)
You suppose they'd finally be on America's side if Iran nuked an American city? Or started a serious pandemic among the homeless hordes in L.A. or S.F. or Seattle? Or
#32. To: A Pole (#28)
#36. To: Tooconservative (#32)
(Edited)
You are one of those people who would cheer if Iran attacked America or Israel.
#37. To: A Pole (#36)
think it is more likely that Cuba will try to conquer USA, as it is closer ;) Think about.
...
#39. To: Tooconservative (#37)
(Edited)
There are many parallels between communist Cuba in 1962 and our current bad actors, Iran and North Korea, in 2019
Replies to Comment # 39. You forgot other "second Hitlers", Milosevic, Kadaffi, Saddam, the endless list.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 39.
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