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American politics

It just occurred to me, but does anyone think that the puppet Trump and his merry men is just about the next phase in the foreign policy of the American Empire, which is to attack Iran and divide that country up (thereby making it weaker)? They did Iraq, Libya, effectively Syria (by creating Isis and arming "moderates"). All countries with leaders who have defied the USA at one time or another.

They change the puppets, red and blue, but the military goes on and on, spends more and more and there is always a war to wage. Iran is already "on notice." Perhaps that's the real big picture, the rest of it is a sideshow? Let's wait and see if war with Iran happens.
 
the dza said:
It just occurred to me, but does anyone think that the puppet Trump and his merry men is just about the next phase in the foreign policy of the American Empire, which is to attack Iran and divide that country up (thereby making it weaker)? They did Iraq, Libya, effectively Syria (by creating Isis and arming "moderates"). All countries with leaders who have defied the USA at one time or another.

They change the puppets, red and blue, but the military goes on and on, spends more and more and there is always a war to wage. Iran is already "on notice." Perhaps that's the real big picture, the rest of it is a sideshow? Let's wait and see if war with Iran happens.
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The military hurdles to attacking Iran are enormous, though. Iraq was a relatively flat, dry country (favorable to rapid mechanized advances) with a deeply unpopular government and a crippled military establishment that lost nearly all of its most experienced command staff, communications networks, air defenses and effective fighting units during the Gulf War (with the exception of the Republican Guard units, which remained clustered around central Iraq throughout the invasion in 2003). Coalition forces also had full knowledge of Iraqi radar positions, infrastructural nodes, unit dispositions and (remaining) chain of command by dint of the experiences of the Gulf War and a decade of surveillance and sanctions enforcement afterward.

Despite this, the initial three-week war devolved into a devastating occupation that lasted eight long years and cost the lives of close to 5,000 coalition personnel, roughly 1,500 contractors and approximately 17,500 Iraqi security personnel, alongside at least 113,000 documented civilian deaths (and approximations of close to 300,000 more) and roughly 110,000 military wounded or otherwise injured.

Iran is a very, very, very different case. Its government enjoys broad public support - it is also an explicitly Islamic government (an Islamic Republic), embodying Shia governance in a land where 90-95% of people are Shia (as opposed to Iraq, where the Ba'ath Party was alternately secular and pro-Sunni in a largely Shia country, which sparked resentment among the majority). It is far larger than Iraq, with a heavily mountainous, rugged landscape that greatly favours defenders and insurgents over advancing forces and greatly limits the effectiveness of air support in ground operations. It is more than twice as heavily populated as Iraq, with a people and a culture far more united by the concept of being 'Iranian' than the Iraqi population was by the concept of being 'Iraqi' at the start of the Iraq War. And, finally, it is considerably more capable militarily than Iraq was in 2003 - the Iranian Ground Forces and Air Force are professional, experienced entities, hardened by their success in adverse circumstances in the Iran-Iraq War and their relatively robust domestic doctrinal development organizations and arms industries (necessary to get around the sanctions). And that's excluding the IRGC (which is an army in itself, hardened and well-attuned to irregular warfare by dint of their experience in the Iran-Iraq War, Lebanon and now Syria) and Iranian irregular allies like Hezbollah and the Shi'ite militia groups in Iraq, who would presumably come to Tehran's aid in the event of an invasion.

Then there's the logistics of invasion. Exercise Millennium Challenge in 2002 showed that, unlike in any invasion of Iraq, an offensive action against Iran conducted via naval assets in the Persian Gulf would be very exposed to fast boat attacks and land-based anti-ship missile batteries, given Iran's long, rugged coastline and the relatively small areas available for carrier strike groups to maneuver in the Persian Gulf. Iran has only improved those capabilities via their experiences helping the Houthi rebels sink Saudi ships in the war in Yemen. So, more likely is an overland campaign conducted with ground forces advancing from Iraq and (possibly) Turkey or Pakistan, with air support provided from air bases in those countries and across the Gulf.

And that, again, would be a *hard* ask - going across all that mountainous, sparsely-developed terrain to get to major Iranian cities, all the while facing irregular attacks and conventional forces all hardened and able to resist air campaigns by dint of the terrain and their battle-proven Iran-Iraq War experience.

And, once you've secured those cities, you have to govern them in the face of an incredibly hostile, largely united population unlike anything you've seen in Iraq.

There will be blood. I think far too much for the U.S and the West to stomach, if we try something along those lines. So it's probably not going to happen - or, if it is, it'll just be bombing them in a manner similar to Kosovo or the aerial enforcement of the sanctions against Iraq in the 1990's.
 
scaramanga said:
Whilst I think Obama is pretty clean here (and Trump probably quite dirty), I just can't see how that would work in reality.

The President is the link between the DoJ and the various security services. He would absolutely be needed if one of the other agencies wanted to involve the DoJ early on in an investigation.
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The statement is fairly broad in that sense. They didn't order a wiretap or interfere with an investigation is what he is saying. He has not denied being aware or being involved in conversations about it.

But Trump tweeted this out while he was having his morning dump and I am starting to believe he doesn't have a proper strategy in mind when he spouts his nonsense. Even scarier is that he clearly doesn't need one as his supporters just say "fake news" and carry on waving their confederate flags.
 
LutonSpurs said:
But Trump tweeted this out while he was having his morning dump and I am starting to believe he doesn't have a proper strategy in mind when he spouts his nonsense. Even scarier is that he clearly doesn't need one as his supporters just say "fake news" and carry on waving their confederate flags.
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I think that Trump was trying to divert attention from the links between his regime and Russia.
 
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