It's like these fuckers WANT to start a war they know Biden would have to resolve on his own. Reported just today via The Week:
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear scientist who has been suspected of leading Iran's nuclear weapons program, was shot and killed Friday while traveling in a vehicle east of Tehran, Iranian state media said. He was apparently taken to the hospital for treatment, but doctors were unable to save him. Fakhrizadeh has long been a top target of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif believes Jerusalem was behind the assassination, but a spokesperson for the Israeli military refused to comment. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed retaliation against the perpetrators. Not much is known about Fakrizadeh, believed to be 59, but a 2007 CIA assessment said his role as a physics professor was likely a cover story, and it later became clear he was in charge of Iran's warhead development, The New York Times reports.
Refer back to what happened at the very start of this year, when trump and his administration ordered a public strike in Iraq killing a top Iranian military official. What I said then:
This isn't like the strike Obama called on Bin Laden back in 2011. Bin Laden by then was a pariah figure among most Muslim power brokers and nations with few allies to defend or mourn him. The backlash against his death was meager (and in some ways welcomed) across the Middle East. This is different. Soleimani was a high-ranking figure within the Iranian government itself, a major player with ally Syria, and someone well-connected among the Shi'a militia forces threatening much of Iraq and Kurdish areas not yet flattened by Turkey/Russia.
This is like Iran calling an airstrike on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The kind of thing that would trigger a major political and military response from us. The kind of thing where a declaration of war would be a rational response.
And yet it wouldn't surprise me if trump and his remaining foreign policy/military advisors would welcome this move. trump thinks war is a game and probably thinks this is the kind of thing that will win him more support and silence his Democratic critics.
But war for political gain is no longer a smart move. War for conquest and resources ends up squandering both...
It's telling that the cooler heads prevailing from that mess were the Iranians, who know damn well getting into a straight-up fight with the United States will hurt them as much as it would hurt us. Most evidence seems to point to Iran doing their best to survive trump's bullying until Biden enters the Presidency and resumes diplomatic efforts that would benefit them.
Today's attack - suggested to be an Israeli strike but with U.S. and Saudi backing, considering the reports coming out that Netanyahu and his head of Mossad (intelligence agency) secretly met with U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo and the crown prince Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia about four days ago - is another attempt to goad Iran into war, something that would fulfill trump's self-promotion as a military genius who knows better than the generals as well as start a quagmire he wouldn't have to worry about after January 20, 2021.
This is serious shit. Again.
Referring to Cheryl Rofer at Balloon-Juice, who has a background in foreign policy and nuclear proliferation, this is not good news:
Israel, and the Trump administration, have been trying to break the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) so that it cannot be revived. The JCPOA froze and even pushed back Iran’s nuclear weapons program, putting it under greater international scrutiny than any nuclear program in the world.
But war with Iran is what Mike Pompeo and other Trump advisors have wanted. It is also what Netanyahu wants, as long as the losses are primarily America’s.
On top of the devastation of the Iraq War, a war with Iran would tear the Middle East apart. Those desiring war imagine that it would destroy Iran without extreme damage to themselves...
I'm not an expert on these matters the way Rofer is, but I'd wager she would agree with every point I've made about why a war with Iran is a bad idea.
How much of this is trump thinking a declaration of war against Iran - if he can provoke them into making a massive attack against U.S. forces in the area - would allow him to suspend the election transition is pure speculation. It wouldn't work because the election is hard-wired into the Constitution and he can't stop what's coming this January 20th.
We should consider this is trump's way of getting his mobs to cheer him on as a war hawk, while leaving the bills to get paid by Biden as a vindictive Fuck-You parting gift.
The year that is 2020 isn't done with us yet...
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