Iran 3

NDPP wrote:

US Assassinates Top Iranian General As 4,000 Troops Readied For Iraq

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/03/iraq-j03.html

"The targeted assassination of the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force commander Major General Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad's international airport early Friday morning has sharply intensified the spiraling conflict between the US and Iran, placing the outbreak of a catastrophic new war in the Middle East on a hair trigger..."

 

John Bolton Cheers Airstrike that Killed Iran General Qassem Soleimani

https://nypost.com/2020/01/03/john-bolton-cheers-airstrike-that-killed-i...

"Congratulations to all involved in eliminating Qassem Soleimani. Long in the making, this was a decisive blow against Iran's malign Quds Force activities worldwide,' Bolton said in a tweet. 'Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran,' he added. The attack, which was approved by President Trump, killed a total of seven people..."

 

'Tens of Thousands Take to the Streets of Tehran and other Cities to Protest Against American 'Crimes' After US Strikes'

https://twitter.com/amalsaad_lb/status/1213086985344180224

"Why the scare quotes around *crimes*? In international law a judicial killing outside the context of warfare is a violation of the UN Charter and hence illegal, while the use of force against the territorial sovereignty of another state (Iraq) is a crime of aggression."

"So...the US chooses to assassinate one of the top leaders of a sovereign state with which it is not at war while the guest of another sovereign state still reeling from the US slaughter of a million or more of its citizens and all for political convenience."

https://twitter.com/StanleyCohenLaw/status/1213073219537620992

 

But...but...Trump's anti-war!

lagatta4 wrote:

Not to mention the infantile cheering about murdering human beings. Are they video-game addicts?  The Iranians I know here, while no fans of either the mullahs or the Shah before, are furious.

The Iranians I know are extremely divided and not wanting to talk to each other about this.

I know some that are not very political but see this man as the Iranian "Rambo" and somewhat of a hero and the attack against national pride.

Others have a different view - they view this man as part of the problems the country has. They view him as a key figure in oppression behind the deaths of many in the unrest that swept the country recently. Iranians with this view demonstrated in Toronto in favour of the killing.

As you can imagine well, Iranians in Canada are divided between those who support the government (there are students here for example with no intention other than to return home). There are people who have imigrated to Canada for personal reasons with mixed or positive views of the government. There are those here who hate the government and this man in particular.  I know of people in Iran with this opinion who of course would be unlikely to want to express this latter view publicly but who share it with family.

Some people may be happy that there is more pressure on Iran's government hoping for change and feeling that things are so bad something has to happen. Others are worried about a wider conflict and people dying -- whether or not they support the government is secondary to this fear. The anger of the US doing this is also not entirely divided along support and opposition to the givernment. Not everyone against the government is in favour of the killing. Generally, supporters of the government are furious.

This man was a controversial figure - a hero to hardliners, a strong figure for people whoa are nationalist and a hated figure among others - especially those upset that Iran spends so many resources outside the country at the cost of those resources inside and at the cost of Iran's progress internationally. This man was a long-time architect of this policy of involvement in other countries in the region. This policy is both hated and revered depending who you talk to. 

Many Iranians are aware of this man's reputation as the architect of many of the deaths of demonstrators in Iraq and many in Syria along with support for Assad to maintain a land bridge across the region. Some call him a child killer. His death divides people.

The IRG has tremendous power in Iran and there is a lot of connections it has -- if you want to do much there you need this connection. Some owe their standing to it and so are fiercly loyal. Others are angry about the corrupt preferences. People talk about deep state on this site. For Iranians that is a different thing: the power lies with the Supreme leader and revolutionary Guard. The elections produce a government that has less power. Think of the Supreme leader and IRG as the deep state and you can imagine the bitterness of those opposed to it voting for different directions only to have them be controlled. But if you are on the same side, this figure is the second most powerful person after the Supreme Leader of that deep state. They control everythig from who gets contracts, jobs and many things.

Apart from all this there are fears about what will come next. These fears are shared by people in Iran and Iraq. Iraq fears that it will be the battleground for the US-Iran conflict and that this killing on Iraqi soil only increases this. Iranians are also concerned that violence could move into Iran and so could the cost. The richest oil fields of Iran is a small area in the south-west corner. It lies to the west of a mountain chain running north south. An attack on these field could increase the crisis in Iran as would an attack on refining. Gas is cheap there, even after the increases, but the people have faced inflation in costs across the board with deflation in the value of their money so even modest fuel increases cause great hardship (the unrest that just occured was over fuel increases and rationing).

I do not think that you would get any consensus from Iranians on this action. It is likely there are strong feelings on both sides and that those who do not express them wish to kjeep them private but still hold them. It is possible that you might hear only one side because some will not want to express an opposite opinion among a prevailing group. I was at a home last night with an Iranian who shared with me what she really thought but avoided saying so becuase we were at a place where the people had the opposite point of view. They probably assumed she agreed with them.

The Iranian community in Canada is small. It sometimes has fights within itself but in many places people try to avoid dividing the community where they can even as some stand strongly on one side or another. People in Toronto may be more vocal as the community is bigger there and you can easily find people on the pro-or anti side of government. Here in Ottawa, the community is so small that many fear speaking about politics as they could be isolated from the rest of the community. I think this is on both sides. Persians enjoy social and Farsi language events as you would expect and there is a cost when it comes to stands like this.

Some Iranians I know personally are celebrating this death and they are definitely not pro Trump and still are worried about what will happen. Some may be happy that he died but unhappy that he was killed - like those who would celebrate Trump going of a massive cornonarybut would never want to see him turned into a martyr.

I hope I have explained some of the differing emotions and thoughts I have been hearing.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Maybe here we can end the opinion that some here had that Trump was less likely to use American military power aggressively?

Trump has been dead set on a conflict with a Iran from day one.  He's Neocon Don.  But there many who said Clinton, not Trump, was the warmonger.  Like the line about the Goldwater voter who said, They told me if I voted for Goldwater, there would be a war in Vietnam.  And they were right.

At least Bernie seems forthright: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/03/bernie-sanders-condemns-tru...

lagatta4 wrote:

At least Bernie seems forthright: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/03/bernie-sanders-condemns-tru...

some Democrats are being exposed for what they are.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Trunp tweeted this:

"American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!"

He is threatening a war crime of attacking nonmilitary cultural targets.

The Orange Dove of Peace

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Anyone know if a US President has ever directly threatened to attack historic or cultural places before?

What did Truman say before he razed almost every building in North Korea. I don't remember what Obama said before they bombed universities in Libya but I remember Hillary's reaction to another extra judicial killing.  They are all war criminals.

I do not think they threatened this in advance. That is unusual. Proof in a crime of intention by prior statement is significant and unusual.

I have no doubt that war crimes have been committed in the past by US Presidents and that cultural and historic places have been targeted.

I have not known of a President announcing this intention in advance.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Lets all look at the Orange Herring.

I fully accept that not every thing that is discussed is of interest to you. That is why there are so many threads and so many comments to follow. Should I flag every comment that I find uninteresting or sneer at it like you often do?

No, it is not earth shattering - (neither is most of your comments). But when you have a person in this position so flagrantly fly the flag of their guilt it is interesting for a few reasons even if they are substantially the same as others were in the past in terms of behaviour.

To use the threat of attack on important sites of culture to intimidate others into doing or not doing something is not usual. It is also not mere words. This threat is an action in itself.

When you are able to proclaim your guilt that takes a level of confidence, a level of destruction of the previous boundaries. It is an escalation to proclaim your guilt on an international stage. It does say something about the people who are expected to tolerate it (he might still win election). For the President of the US to say this means that he at least eblieves (and may be correct) that his people do not mind threatening and destroying cultural sites. While it has been done before, my question of whether it has been admitted before is valid.

Yes, war criminals have existed in the past. Very few are so confident that war crimes are entirely okay as to announce in advance that they intend this. I asked if there was precedence of this coming from this position.

If you find this uninteresting, I suspect there are a number of threads here that are boring to some but interesting to you.

cco wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Yes, war criminals have existed in the past. Very few are so confident that war crimes are entirely okay as to announce in advance that they intend this. I asked if there was precedence of this coming from this position.

Depends on your definitions. Every American president since Eisenhower has been publicly committed to killing hundreds of millions of innocent civilians in the name of avoiding retreat from Europe and the Pacific Rim. Most citizens of NATO countries have rationalized this with terms like "deterrence".

Don't get me wrong, I despise Trump, but it's worth a good long look at why so many of us seem to consider the destruction of buildings, statues, and prayer sites more significant than the murder of actual people. It sometimes feels like if something lasts longer than a human lifetime, we mourn it more than a human.

BTW it is not just the aggressors and the people who enable them who consider that the destruction of sites worse than the murders of some people. The victims in many, many cases do as well. Many poeple consider that what their societies have built, are expected to last longer than themselves and represent a shared public good and well being for their people. There are many, many people in the world who will die to defend some of these sites. This is not me saying that their destruction is worse than murder -- this is a message that you hear from almost every culture.

Of course I understand that there is religious fervour and propaganda driving this. I understand that every society that I know of values these things more than their own people. Some of it is symbols some of it is a bias for the material and the wealthy establishment. this is the same reason why a celebrity dies and people get into a mass upset but thousands of poor people can die of starvation and get barely a thought.

whether you like it or not -- some of these places do hold meaning for some people who may have nothing personally. There are very poor people who value their historic site of culture more than anything else in part becuase they have nothing else. We can sneer at the propaganda if wew like but the reality is that the pain of loss of these sites and sybols is felt by the poorest and many of them as accute as a threat to their own lives -- if you take them at their word.

cco wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

This is not just a statement about the behaviour of the Americans which is not that much different than it has been, but a statement about the evolution of the US national character such that it is more open about committing these crimes. This is in tandem with Trump's pardons of Americans guilty of war crimes. This is no longer about the US denying that it commits war crimes. This is about the US proclaiming that committing war crimes is fine so long as you are American.

It is a change.

You can even say that the dead are still dead but the US government has been at times restrained by attemtps at covering up its crcimes. What Trump is saying directly is that he and the US are no longer restrained by attemtps at denial or attempts to white wash. They are freerer to committ cromes they admit to in the broad daylight of the visibility of their own people. They do this becuase they think that the US gives widespread support for US generated war crimes.

A real pity that you insist on not seeing this as I simply do not believe that it is too difficult or that you are not up for understanding this.

Not sure if you're talking to me or kropotkin, but the argument against Trump by David Frum types, since the beginning, has essentially been that he's a special kind of evil because he admits publicly to what Obama, Bush, Reagan, Nixon, etc. had the good manners to lie about. Frum has a good career on the talk show circuit these days talking about how terrible Trump is, having apparently recovered entirely from writing the "axis of evil" speech telling Americans why they needed to destroy Iraq (done), Iran (pending), and North Korea (remains to be seen).

I have friends and coworkers from Iran. I'll have to ask, but something tells me they wouldn't be much happier to see Hillary Clinton talking about how much she regretted having to accidentally destroy their cultural sites while invading. Those lies are for [i]us[/i] (Westerners), so we can tell ourselves we're governed by responsible leaders doing only "necessary" mass murder. Their absence really complicates things for Trudeau. He might even feel some pressure to stay out of the Iran war.

I may be the minority here but I do not think they were all lies. I think the US in the past wanted to achieve as much as they could for their imperialist aims without hitting certain sites because these would enrage populations against them and anger the domestic population in the US. At times it is true the US was oblivious to them. Also they weighed hitting nonmilitary sites as a cost and did it anyway at times but routinely would try to avoid them if their aims could be achieved while doing so. They prided themselves in smart bombs to "only kill the bad guys and not others." This has long been part of the US rhetoric and it has affected the actual prosecution of US military aims. This is not being kind either: the US understood the retaliation and anger and additional resistance such actions can inspire. 

The extreme analysis popular here that they never had such restraint considerations is simply false. Examples exist of atrocities but that does not mean that there was not a desire to be seen to avoid such sites and to do so where they could (and still get what they wanted most). The exceptions are famous becuase they are exceptions. This is an important distinction becuase it means that the US has been a bit restrained at times when now the President is not only not restrained but targetting these sites. It is using them as part of terror against the population that lives around them and uses them as well as those attached to them emotionally and any who would go there for refuge.

It is also wrong to say that this is about cultural sites over people. Cultural sites have long been refuges in conflicts due to widespread belief that the enemy would more likely show some restraint in those places. This statement from Trump is telling the Iranian civilian population that they are not safe anywhere and could be targetted when seeking refuge in a historical, nonmilitary cultural or perhaps religious institution. Let's be honest for a moment here: while people on this site may deny this reality, the victims of aggression are aware of it and routinely seek shelter is such places when their cities are threatened. Trump has now told them that there are no limits and no places in the world as he is not restrained and will target them.

It is important to note -- as my Iranian friends have reminded me -- that these cultural sites do not lie in the middle of the desert either. They are in the centre of civilian populations -- city centres. Trump is threatening dog whistle-style an attack deliberately targeting civilians. Go look on twitter and see how this is being recieved on both sides. The Trump cult is happy the US has stated that it will kill indescriminately and destroy anything. All sides see this as a change -- except here.

This is like a threat of the Blitz except it can happen in minutes due to new military technology. Trump routinely speaks in code about his racism. Here he is doing it about his threat of terror on populations around the world whose governments are in military conflict with the US. People here are too blinded to see this as an escalation. Pity.

The threat is itself a war crime.

This is the problem with the extreme analysis that is often so popular here. When you call everything the extreme you are no longer able to recognize escalation.

This means that the US is deliberately welcoming an era where governments consider such sites to be a target they can threaten and hit. And by these sites - I stress it means civilians targetted not just on purpose as a cost considered rarely but as the target threatened in advance as a means of coercion. Trump's tweet is a terrorist act.

The US according to Trump is effectively threatening to use a tactic mass killers sometimes use: create a second bomb designed to kill people running from a first bomb.

I asked if such threat had ever been made before and was not predicting (although I should have) people saying that it makes no difference. 

The idea that this is not an escalation (as some here might claim) is contradicted by the fact that many over many years have chosen to hide in such places for safety believing they would not be as likely to get hit; that often many governments co-locate things at these sites when they want to avoid them being targetted. 

This is a change and those in opposition to the US may also be encouraged to demonstrate to the US what these tactics mean. Trump's threats put US and US allies' civilian and cultural assets in danger. This is not about Iran either: this is a statement meant to be heard by everyone everywhere. As we have seen individuals who are twisted react to these kinds of statements as well as organizations and potentially governments. Look at the violence inspired by Trump's rhetoric in other contexts.

This deliberate threat from the President of the US to target civilian non-military places is a major escalation and it is an increased danger literally to every such place in the world and civilians around the world regardless of their politics or alliances. 

Most recently, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, declared that Iran has an adequate supply of 20% enriched uranium., “Right now we have enough 20% uranium,” he told the Iranian Students News Agency, ISNA, “but we can produce more as needed”. He added that the country is resuming uranium enrichment at a far higher level at the Fordow nuclear facility — an underground uranium enrichment facility which is reportedly located on one of the bases of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC­­) — injecting uranium gas into centrifuges and operating 60 IR-6 advanced centrifuges.

This marks a dangerous phase in Iran’s nuclear defiance. Tehran is now using a kind of prototype centrifuge that enriches uranium almost 50 times faster» Majid Rafizadeh further wrote.

cco wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

I asked if such threat had ever been made before and was not predicting (although I should have) people saying that it makes no difference. 

What I said is that deliberately targeting civilians ('countervalue' strikes) has been part of American (and Canadian) policy since John Foster Dulles formulated "massive retaliation" with nuclear weapons in 1954. This isn't the same as blowing up an airfield and not caring that houses next to it will be destroyed as well. It's direct targeting of cities with the goal of maximizing civilian deaths as a "deterrent" to conventional military action, in exactly the way Trump is threatening Iranian civilians if Iran retaliates for the assassination.

The fact that the nuclear war in question hasn't actually happened yet has led to people forgetting about the horror of this policy, or reclassifying it as some kind of brilliant strategy, but it's always been exactly as simple as promising to target civilians. Every president since Truman has maintained it, with some variation in the exact details (target allies or just Russia? Start with a small city or nuke Moscow immediately?). The only sense in which this is different is that the threat is against a non-nuclear power, and even then, that's hardly unprecedented. Again, this doesn't mean that Trump's threat isn't horrifying, just that it's [i]nothing new[/i]. The US only tries to avoid civilian casualties when it knows it can win without them. Winning is more important to the Pentagon than pesky things like war crimes treaties.

I disagree with all of this and  I was not asking about what they did.

I asked if they have ever threatened this before publicly.

Please give examples becuase I cannot find any.

--

By the way this tweet from Trump according to Iranian friends is very effective in turning those who actually were somewhat supportive of the killing against. 

Many people disliked this man (many others really liked him). those that disliked him were already upset about how he died and the risk to people from that. With the Tweet more support is flowing to the government.

Trump is intentionally doing this or that incompetent. He lies or is nuts when he says he does not want a wider war given everything he is doing to make sure one happens.