> And, given that the us initiated this current round of hostilities
My guess is Article 5 could be invoked as this is an attack on an uninvolved NATO member. I wouldn't count on it though for other reasons
> Countries or governments facing elimination aren’t the most rational actors.
Even in a partially rational logic this is hard to explain. Qatar and Oman were their close friends but attacking might make sense because exerting pressure on the US might be more important, and that relationship is based on fear anyway.
Turkey is quite capable on its own and given this might end with Iran still standing, this is not (another) enemy they want to make
Worse yet, it was reported the US and Israel are planning to prop Kurdish forces in Iran, of which Turkey are fearful of any instance of national ambitions. So, in essence they could have been on Iran's side.
Thanks for the links, which I've reviewed. Allow me to clarify: I meant sources that confirm that the civilian places hit (eg. hotels and residential buildings) were the actual targets.
Local and official news all say that these were hit by debris from intercepted missiles/drones (on their way to somewhere else). There is a major difference between this, vs. if those buildings were directly being targeted.
AFAICT your linked sources indicate that the oil installations and ports were targets, but not the hotels and buildings.
I'm asking in good faith as this makes a significant difference.
I don't see the large difference between a civilian port, a civilian oil facility or a civilian aluminum factory vs a hotel on the topic of whether the Iranians are capable of targeting a civilian data center, however, assuming you are curious, here goes
Finding these take time so I am sorry if this is going to be the last of these sources I'll paste, for example Bahrain luxury apartments building being hit:
> The US-Israeli strikes were launched after negotiations to limit Iran's nuclear programme ended without a deal. The UK did not participate.
The negotiations didn't end without a deal, they were ongoing but not finalized. The next session of the negotiations was scheduled for Monday. And then, Israel and US simply attacked on Saturday.
It is very important to use precise language so as to not downplay the illegal aggression against Iran.
> in order to extract resources from the local government in Iraq and Lebanon.
How evil of them to do that. They should have known only the United States of America has the divine right to invade countries and extract their resources. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4grxzxjjd8o
> That's called Imperialism and was common among european powers in the 19th century
> How evil of them to do that. They should have known only the United States of America has the divine right to invade countries and extract their resources
Yes, OP was already saying Iran is free to act because the US is an imperial power. I was merely stating that he is conveniently ignoring Iran's imperialist behavior
Equating Iran's struggle against a genocide in Palestine with Imperialism is misinformed at best, criminal at worst. Either way, only a zionist could say that, which makes this conversation completely useless.
I was talking about the explanation for hotels only.
The general strategy makes a lot of sense for a desperate regime: Instead of striking Israel(densest AA network in the world, long flight path so lots of time to intercept) they will force US to expend AA material all over theater and make US allies question credibility of defense. It's not like only hitting Israel or US will improve their reputation.
> The general strategy makes a lot of sense for a desperate regime
The issue is that they are also attacking their closest friends in the region, as opposed to the other gulf nations which were merely pressuring the US not to attack due to fear.
They have thrown the stone in the metaphorical glass house towards the oil facilities very early in the conflict.
I think this is more an issue of mismanagement rather than strategy. They probably do have a very acute command and control issue due to the strikes.
It's also a good preview of how Iran with nuclear weapons would play out
Iran attacked US and Israel military targets in Bahrain and Dubai. Iran says Israel attacked ARAMCO in a false flag and the Saudis have indeed said that Iran was not behind the bombing.
I am not privy to the inner workings of sociopaths' brains but it might be because they are supplying fuel to the US bases, or the word "American" in the company name, or maybe they are mad that Saudi Arabia got Bill Burr cancelled.
You are flatly wrong. These countries are internationally recognized sovereign nations and members of the UN. They have independent, often conflicting interests and foreign policies. Meanwhile the US bases are held under formal leases, not through force.
I think it is, seeing as she says 'While the Republic of Cyprus was not the target'
>While the Republic of Cyprus was not the target, let me be clear: we stand collectively, firmly and unequivocally with our Member States in the face of any threat.
This comes after attacking US, French bases and civilian infrastructure in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE as well as their close friends and mediators in Qatar and Oman
I would love to know which Iranian proxy Israel "directly created". You might be confusing Hamas with Ahmed Yassin's previous charity, which ran schools, mosques and clubs. Even that charity was not "directly created" by Israel, Israel merely allowed them to operate.
Well yeah, but they still had a chance to play the victim after the US/Israel strikes (especially if some of the reports about how the negotiations went down are true). Lots of people are still primed to listen to it. But they're not interested in making it easy for their apologists, I guess.
Assuming that happened, I guarantee it was a targeting error. The US and Israel have no actual reason to target children, seeing how they have plenty of useful military targets and want (or at least need) the Iranian people's support for regime change.
For what it's worth, Iran has claimed their strikes on Oman were mistake, and I believe that too, since Oman seems to have genuinely been trying to help them. Just Oman though. They apparently feel fine about all the other strikes on bystander nations.
Wow, I did not expect this type of reply. I reject it. In South Korea, there was incredible civil violence between protesters and police. I'm talking about stolen automatic weapons by protesters, then used against the police after decades of unchecked violence by the police against protesters. In hindsight, it looks like a low grade civil war. It was brutally hard and violent for South Korean to gain their democracy. (When you listen to South Korean boomers talk about how much their treasure and defend their new-found democracy, it will bring tears to your eyes. They really lived the violence and found democracy.) Taiwan needed the last dictator to die. Once his son took over, he quickly devised a plan to transition to an authentic democracy. (They had rigged election for years.) Still, they had 40 years of the "White Terror" where secret police kidnapped and murdered thousands of protesters.
Related: Indonesia also had a very violent transition into democracy, but the old dictators didn't kill as many innocent people as Taiwan or South Korea.
As I understand, the US had very little influence during the democracy transition of these three nations. Regarding Taiwan, the US provided security gurantees against mainland China, but did not interfere with the gov't. South Korea, similar security guarantee against the "Kimdom". Again, did not interfere with the gov't. Indonesia: Provided no security guarantee and did not interfere with the gov't.
I can only see the US insistence on many bad foreign decisions in the name of democracy done in the Middle East by multiple administrations, that without much knowledge of the situation in East Asia, I venture to guess it is not a coincidence that US allies turned into democracies
I also am not sure about Indonesia as an example of a US ally, I don't think it is similar to the other two
Effectively both SK and Taiwan were completely dependent on US for defense, I doubt this had no bearing
Jordan political system is much older than Iran, as well as the Saudis and others. Iran theocracy is a new phenomena in the Middle East, ushering the implementation era of political Islam, later continued by ISIS, Hamas and the milder Qatar and current Turkey
Not debating who came first. I’m also not debating that Saudi’s are equivalent to the French to the Iranians (if they were England in my UK analogy, or Texas for the US one).
I also don’t think that, in general, there’s any animosity there just talking size and influence over the region. Iran and Saudi are/were it. It’s a really interesting dynamic of faith, tradition, authoritarianism, and manipulation.
That's what the French and the a Swedes thought when they had a Muslim population under 10 or 20 percent. Look at any area - any, your choice - where Muslims represent 50 or more or the population and tell me how tolerant they are.
Don't let your values and your tolerance blind you to believe that your values and tolerance are universal or axiomic.
> Modern Western Christians are centuries removed from experiencing religion-as-politics.
That's news for those of us that are living through the decades-long effort by christian dominionists to take over the US.
> Western atheists, who share Christian values
It's the other way around: Christians share basic morality with people operating on morality from first principles. Plenty of western christian values are orthogonal to morality.
> Muslims who move to Christian-majority lands do not assimilate or convert.
This is false and flat-out defamatory. It's also the type of statement that gets used before bad people do a bunch of bad things.
The Catholic Church exerted strong influence in Quebec until the 1950s. Of course since then Quebec has become the most secular region in North America.
My guess is Article 5 could be invoked as this is an attack on an uninvolved NATO member. I wouldn't count on it though for other reasons
> Countries or governments facing elimination aren’t the most rational actors.
Even in a partially rational logic this is hard to explain. Qatar and Oman were their close friends but attacking might make sense because exerting pressure on the US might be more important, and that relationship is based on fear anyway.
Turkey is quite capable on its own and given this might end with Iran still standing, this is not (another) enemy they want to make
Worse yet, it was reported the US and Israel are planning to prop Kurdish forces in Iran, of which Turkey are fearful of any instance of national ambitions. So, in essence they could have been on Iran's side.
Hard for me to figure out a strategy here
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