full-scale war between the US and Iran (1 Viewer)

[steve albino]

What makes you say that Hugh?

 

[hugh]

What makes you say that Hugh?

Much the same reasons as when I said the same thing four years ago on this thread

I think it's all grandstanding. Provoking a war with Iran is too dangerous. The US administration want to maintain the threat of war over Iran but when push comes to shove I don't believe they are going to do it. They may hope for "regime change" and maybe do all sorts of covert stuff to try and make it happen - definitely. The only scenario I can see where the US might engage in a war with Iran is if Israel go off on a crazy one and lob a few bombs at Tehran (this is obviously not beyond the bounds of possibility) and it all blows up.

But, my bet would be that there will be no way with Iran within the next five years (just as there has been no war with them within the last five years since this discussion started). I would guess that the current detente will continue, or there will be some sort of significant shift of power within Iran itself to defuse the situation or there will be period of sanctions.

Who wants to bet?

 

[blairwitch]

I can see where Israel is coming from when you have all these countries especiall iran /iraq with nukes and they wanting to wipe her off the map. If Iran does not stop this nonsense then the u.s/ israel has no other option then to strike first to protect israel and the planet.

 

[shower another shower]

sketch.

 

[steve albino]

I can see where Israel is coming from when you have all these countries especiall iran /iraq with nukes and they wanting to wipe her off the map. If Iran does not stop this nonsense then the u.s/ israel has no other option then to strike first to protect israel and the planet.

Iran and Iraq have nukes? You sure?

 

[steve albino]

Obama Warned Israel May Bomb Iran this Month


August 6, 2010
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Six top former US intelligence and defense officials write the White House to warn "the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. Israel's leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for [the US] to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel. This can be stopped only if you move quickly to preempt an Israeli attack by condemning such a move before it happens."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/080310c.html

 

[taubstumm]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/09/the-point-of-no-return/8186/1/

sometime in the next year, apparently

 

[steve albino]

[h=1]UK military steps up plans for Iran attack amid fresh nuclear fears[/h] British officials consider contingency options to back up a possible US action as fears mount over Tehran's capability


The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government.
In anticipation of a potential attack, British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air and sea campaign.
They also believe the US would ask permission to launch attacks from Diego Garcia, the British Indian ocean territory, which the Americans have used previously for conflicts in the Middle East.
The Guardian has spoken to a number of Whitehall and defence officials over recent weeks who said Iran was once again becoming the focus of diplomatic concern after the revolution in Libya.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/02/uk-military-iran-attack-nuclear


[h=1]Israel Reportedly Considers Pre-Emptive Attack on Iran[/h]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly trying to rally support for an attack on Iran, according to government sources.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are said to be among those backing a pre-emptive strike to neutralize Iran's nuclear ambitions, Sky News reports.
A "narrow majority" of ministers currently oppose the move, which could lead to retaliation.
In response to reports of an effort to gain cabin approval on Netanyahu's proposal, Lieberman said: "Iran poses the most dangerous threat to world order."



Lieberman added that Israel's military options should not be a matter for public discussion.
In response to Netanyahu's proposal, Iran's military chief warned that an Israeli attack on the Islamic nation's nuclear development sites "will inflict heavy damages," according to the Iranian ISNA news agency.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/1...e-that-can-hit-iran-1866648425/#ixzz1caOzXE7l
​

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

That's not gonna end well.Unlike all the other countries the allies* have picked on so far the Iranian's seem to have decent military capabilities that can be utilised beyond their borders.Factor in the Russian/Iranian friendship (and the potential of China wanting to flex its muscle against western aggression) and it could get very messy.
Something that may work in the allies favour is the apparent rift between Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah's but I wouldn't be counting on it if I were the Israeli's,the Ayatollah's do hold the balance of power and it wouldn't be a huge leap for them to just get rid of Ahmadinejad.

*I'm hesitant to use that word but it'll have to do.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I want to go to Iran on holidays

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

I wanna do an axis of evil tour.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

http://rt.com/news/iran-ready-block-strait-hormuz-361/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/01/08/international/i002748S62.DTL

Another step closer.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

US Bases around Iran

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Didn't realise there was that many,poor Iran.Although I guess its safe to rule out the pakistani bases being used?

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Iran and the Terrorism game

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Barak: Israel 'very far off' from decision on Iran attack

Israel believes Iran itself has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb, according to intelligence assesment to be presented later this week to U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Dempsey.

 

[Pedronimus]

They probably can't make one because of the stuxnet virus. This is a good read on it.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/all/1

 

[Psycho Punk]

A speech by Yassamine Mather

It seems such a long time that there have been threats of military action against Iran without them being followed through that some people may have become a bit blasé. It is a bit like the boy who cried wolf too many times perhaps. However, the reality is that his time the threats are very serious.

The reasons why there are serious threats now have very little to do with the Iranian nuclear programme. Most people agree that the Iranian government exaggerates the stage it has reached and the west also exaggerates this - in regard to uranium enrichment, for example - both for their own reasons. I am not dismissing the nuclear issue altogether, but I do not think it is the reason why we are facing these serious threats.

There are other reasons. First and foremost there is the world economic crisis and the fact that the United States is in economic decline. It is feeling the pressure of both the crisis and the partial erosion of its hegemonic position - not to the extent that its hegemony is threatened by some competitor seeking to take over that role, of course. Because of that it cannot tolerate states like Iran - despite the fact that it follows every neoliberal instruction dictated by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and so on. The problem is that politically Iran is not playing the game that the hegemonic power wants it to play. For that reason it has to be taught a lesson. ...
http://www.hopi-ireland.org/c/our-duty-irans-working-class

 

[Psycho Punk]

Ideas to empower the anti-war movement
Michael Copestake reports on HOPI's successful weekend school


“The only thing that is certain is uncertainty,” said Labour MP John McDonnell in his talk at the April 21-22 weekend school organised by the Hands Off the People of Iran at the University of London Union.

Given the negotiations between the five members of the United Nations security council plus Germany and Iran that have just completed in Istanbul and are due to resume next month in May in Baghdad (of all the places to talk peace in the Middle East, could there be a more ironic one?) and the decline in the number of those mobilised on demonstrations and marches against war, the truth of this statement should be well noted by all. The continued threat of direct military action against Iran combined with factors such as the US electoral cycle constitute a heady and unpredictable brew.

The weekend school was part of the continued efforts of Hopi to reorientate the left against both the imperialist war drive and the sickening anti-working class regime of the Iranian state itself. Aiming to provide an analysis of the forces driving to war and the general condition of the Iranian state and society, Hopi brought together a range of speakers, including Iranian activists and exiles, National Union of Journalists president Donnacha DeLong, as well as comrade McDonnell himself.

Irrationality

The speaker for the first session on the Saturday was CPGB’s Mike Macnair, who sought to explain what he judged to be the increasingly irrational military adventures of the United States and its imperialist allies. These tend to end in social chaos, as in Iraq, rather than the imposition of some pax Americana, and comrade Macnair linked them to three distinctive cyclical tendencies within capitalism. ...

Iran working class

Iranian trade unionist and former political prisoner of the Iranian regime, Majid Tamjidi, gave an illuminating and hard-headed assessment of the plight of the Iranian working class, caught as it is in the vice of imperialist sanctions and neoliberal Islamic despotism.

What came through in comrade Tamjidi’s talk was the nightmarish coincidence of the needs of the US and Iranian states, which serves to push both further down the road towards military conflict. The bluster and bravado with which the Iranian regime responds to sanctions and threats of war feed US portrayals of Iran as intransigent and in need of a swift and harsh remedy. The missing element in the narratives of both the imperialist and Iranian governments is the masses themselves, yet they are being crushed under the weight of both sanctions and the neoliberal policies of the theocratic state, resulting in 60% of Iranians living below the poverty line, 12 million on insecure ‘instant dismissal’ temporary work contracts, and at least 30,000 deaths per annum in workplace accidents.

This focus on the desperate economic situation of Iran and the Iranian working class was picked up in a session on the second day on the political economy of Iran, addressed by Mohamed Shalgouni of the Organisation of Revolutionary Workers in Iran and Hopi chair Yassamine Mather.

The audience was straining to hear the words of comrade Shalgouni, not just because he was so quietly spoken, but because of the great interest in the things he had to say. He provided a compelling dissection of the role of the regime in the economy of Iran, of which 70% is directly or indirectly controlled by the state and its related bodies, increasingly under the auspices of utterly phoney privatisations that give ownership of companies to state and military officials technically at ‘arm’s length’ from the government in a kind of pocket-bursting, oligarchic give-away, last seen on a such a scale in the crash privatisations undertaken in the collapsing Soviet Union. That there can be such a bonanza for state bureaucrats and heavies is a legacy of the revolution, which resulted in the expropriation of the holdings of the royal family and a series of nationalisations. This self-interested gangsterism by the state, taken with three decades of increasingly severe sanctions, has led to the ruin of much of what remained of the Iranian economy and, with the possible closure of French car plants under the pressure of the United States, the situation grows more and more dire.

Indeed, the size of the ‘black economy’, much of which is controlled by state, army and militia bureaucrats, and includes imports, currency and the trade in alcohol, is estimated at being worth $60 billion a year: about the same as Iran’s official imports. As comrade Yassamine Mather elaborated, domestic industry, including the production of agricultural staples at a price affordable to the Iranian proletariat, has been deliberately run down by the mercantilist, middle-man interests of the state and bourgeoisie, as it is easier to extort money from the masses when all of the country’s needs are met by imports controlled by the collective state gangster rather than from domestic production.

Speakers from the floor wondered how the supposedly deeply religious government of the clerics justified its privatisations, though the answer was provided quickly that this was done with great ease - and was typical of theologians throughout history, whenever god gets in the way of fistfuls of hot cash. Other questions ranged from the role of the military in exploiting the economy and the possibility of conflict between them and the clerical wing of the state.

Solidarity
More focused on the immediate situation facing the wider world and its working class movement was the talk given by comrade Moshé Machover, co-founder of Israeli socialist party Matzpen. This was also the case with the panel discussion led by left-Labour stalwart John McDonnell MP, who humorously referred to himself and Jeremy Corbyn as the “parliamentary wing” of Hopi, Sarah McDonald, a runner in the previous weekend’s Vienna marathon in aid of Workers Fund Iran, and NUJ president Donnacha DeLong.

Comrade Machover focused on the relationship between Israel and Iran. He believed that the recent Istanbul negotiations with Iran had produced a vaguely positive outcome despite Hillary Clinton’s hawkish rhetoric. Attempting to identify exactly why Israel was so pro-war, the comrade identified two main factors. The first was that an Iran with nuclear arms, or nuclear potential within the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, reduces the relative power of Israel in the region and its ability to be the watchdog of the United States.

The second reason was that the Israeli state is seeking a pretext in order to engage in a further ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, thus solving the so-called ‘demographic problem’ of the growing Arab population of Israel. The acceptance by the Israeli military in its own documents and in the words of some of its own leading figures that the ‘Iranian bomb’ is not a serious threat disproves the notion that this issue is about Iran’s nuclear capability. It is more about provoking a situation of such turmoil that the mass expulsion of Palestinians could be more conveniently undertaken.

The panel discussion made up the final session of the weekend, with comrade De Long recounting his experience of the Iranian regime during his time as an Amnesty International worker and gave an example of the power of the social media in spreading cutting criticisms of the regime than can serve as morale boosters and potential incitements to action for ordinary Iranians.

John McDonnell reported that the word in the Westminster village was that, should there be an attack on Iran, it may be around September time, though the Israelis were suffering from an itchy trigger finger and he did not discount them acting alone. Comrade McDonnell emphasised the correctness of Hopi’s line against imperialism, sanctions and the regime itself and that it was essential that these ideas be spread more widely into the labour and trade union movement as a whole. Whether this took the form of meetings with individual trade union general secretaries and MPs, of cultural events and campaigns such as the film screenings in aid of Jafar Panahi, of direct action or of good, old-fashioned marches and demonstrations was not important: what matters is spreading the message.

The comrade also emphasised another part of what Hopi stands for as particularly important: support for working class and progressive forces and for socialism in the Middle East. We absolutely must not, the comrade insisted, ever refrain from stating plainly that the only progressive force in Iran (and elsewhere) capable of combating imperialism and overthrowing the neoliberal clerics is the working class, and that the only way to lasting peace and prosperity in the whole region is through socialism.

Others from the floor emphasised that, despite real anti-war sentiment - for example, around the Afghanistan debacle - the conclusion that many had reached from Iraq and the endless ‘numbers are everything’ marches organised by the Stop the War Coalition was that war cannot be stopped. That is why it is so essential to link the struggle against war to a rounded, working class politics and that is what Hopi will continue to do.


http://www.hopi-ireland.org/

 

[Psycho Punk]

Full text at link.

War threats and Iran's impoverished workers
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004823

The Iranian people are the main victims of the sanctions campaign, insists Majid Tamjidi

Iranian oilworker: white contracts
Over the last few years western governments have created an atmosphere of war against Iran and in the last few months severe sanctions have come into effect. In addition we face the threat of military attacks by Israel against Iran’s strategic centres, including nuclear facilities.

On the other hand, inside Iran the authorities - in particular supreme leader Ali Khamenei and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - have reacted to these threats with exaggerated bravado. The regime is trying to convince the population that these are just empty threats, that sanctions have had no effect and that Iran is capable of giving a fierce response to any military attack. On sanctions Ahmadinejad’s line is: ‘Even if we don’t sell any oil for two or three years we will have enough foreign currency to survive perfectly well.’ Of course, all this is taking place against the background of both secret and open negotiations with the west.

Both sides imbue their opponents with specific characteristics. The west portrays Iran as a dictatorship depriving its population of ‘human rights’, pursuing nuclear technology and thus threatening ‘world peace’, arguing that in order for a ‘democratic regime’ to be established in Iran, another Middle East war might be necessary. The Islamic regime states that it has no intention of producing nuclear arms and claims to be a state relying on the religious and moral beliefs of its population: beliefs that are superior to western ideologies about ‘human rights’.

It is not difficult to rebuff western excuses for creating this atmosphere of war and sanctions. The west is Israel’s main ally in the region and that country is a nuclear power. The US and its allies have never questioned Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, nor have they threatened it militarily. The imperialist powers’ main interactions in the region are with Saudi Arabia, which must hold the gold medal (or at least silver) for human rights abuses. The western media do not pay attention to the real victims of human rights abuses in Iran, such as Mahmoud Salehi, the labour activist who has spent the last few years in and out of Iranian jails for organising a May Day gathering. The soft war against Iran conducted by media like the BBC Persian service and Voice of America has not mentioned Salehi’s recent trip to France as a representative of the Iranian labour movement, while people like former Islamic guard Mohsen Sazegara and other ‘democracy campaigners’ are getting wall to wall coverage to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish them from these stations’ presenters.

On the other hand, the Iranian people have shown time and again that they have no allegiance to the laws of their country and they have protested against them. The constant arrest, imprisonment and forced exile of many students, women, labour activists, writers and supporters of religious and national minorities is testimony to the fact that the Iranian people do not support Islamic legislation.