Iranian military chief says overnight attack ‘achieved all its goals’, adding that US bases are under threat if it backs Israeli retaliation.
Iran has warned Israel of a larger attack on its territory should it retaliate against Tehran’s overnight drone and missile attacks, adding that the United States should not back an Israeli military action.
“If the Zionist regime [Israel] or its supporters demonstrate reckless behaviour, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response,” Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement on Sunday. ⠀
However, in a signal that Iran’s response was calculated in an attempt to avoid any major escalation, the Iranian foreign minister Amir Abdollahian said that Tehran had informed the US of the planned attack 72 hours in advance, and said that the strikes would be “limited” and for self-defence.
That did not stop more aggressive language from other officials, with the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, warning that Tehran would retaliate against any Israeli attacks on its interests, officials or citizens.
“From now on, whenever Israel attacks Iranian interests… we will attack from Iran.” ⠀
“The matter can be deemed concluded. However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe,” said a statement.
It added that the US should “stay away” from the conflict, as it is an issue between Iran and Israel.
… the US should “stay away” from the conflict, as it is an issue between Iran and Israel.
Yeah no shit, we should stay away from any country that’s mass killing children and other civilians. Fuck Israel, bunch of goose stepping nazis.
I’m thankful we don’t have Bush and Cheney in the whitehouse right now. Cheney had the biggest hard on for an Iran war.
That man from the trump administration with the goofy moustache also
I forget his name
Going to guess you mean John Bolton, the infamous warmonger who loudly started calling for immediate, “far stronger” US response yesterday. He’s a draft dodger who has admitted he joined the National Guard and then went to law school just to avoid going to Vietnam. “I wasn’t going to waste time on a futile struggle,” he has written, adding “I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy… I considered the war in Vietnam already lost”. Yet the whole time he advocated for keeping other US soldiers fighting in the war. He didn’t fight in the war of his time, he won’t ever go to war now that he’s old, but by damn is he ever sure that the US should send people to fight everywhere from Iran to Cuba.
In 2019, Democrat Seth Moulton, who actually served 4 tours in Iraq, called both Bolton and Trump “chickenhawks” because they’re hawkish for war but completely unwilling to fight it themselves. (Trump reportedly “avoided service in the Vietnam War after his father called in a favor with a doctor, who wrote a note saying that Trump had bone spurs on his feet, making him ineligible for the draft.”) To use the popular Franklin D. Roosevelt quote - “War is young men dying and old men talking.”
draft dodging is good actually. sending people to die in war is what makes them despicable.
The problem is not the draft dodging. The problem is then turning around and being a pro war advocate and building policy that puts others in combat.
Bolton.
Trump’s administration also had a lot of old Bush folks that wanted to antagonize Iran.
John Bolton
John Bolton, warhawk whispering (and often yelling) nothing but “WAR WAR WAR” for decades. Trump sacked him in 2019 when US was already 5 minutes from attacking Iran, but Iran shown that it wasn’t easy target and are determined to defend itself, so US did U turn from war in like 2 days, Bolton was pretty slow with realigning there, so got sacrificed. He then wrote very salty book accusing Trump of things like having tiny bit of common sense left, not being absolute berserker and even being able to notice an ocean on map. Pretty funny and ironic actually.
Of course the rep warhawks needed to be appeased after such a serious setback and to have last word US assassinated general Soleimani short time after.
John Bolton?
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💀
Unfortunately escalation threats are catnip to Netanyahu at the moment.
Isn’t it Iran’s MO, when attacked by superior enemies, to make some kind of response that’s not very damaging, make a threat and hope it all goes away?
Yes, and Netanyahu’s MO is to manipulate the US into a war.
In terms of direct responses, Iran tends to behave extremely rationally in like game theory terms. Most countries do, though obviously some misjudgements of each others capabilities can happen. With that said, Iran does very transparently fund terrorists to do their dirty work for them (not that this is unique to Iran).
With that said, Iran does very transparently fund terrorists to do their dirty work for them (not that this is unique to Iran).
This is a mischaracterization of how force works. Guerilla war is far superior to “<country> doing the dirty work themselves”. You can train a guerilla force as part of your main military, but by its very nature it needs to be decentralized or it’s not effective, it needs to be distributed or it’s easy to decapitate, and it needs to be constantly shifting in response to conditions. In essence, using guerilla forces IS doing the dirty work yourself, it’s not delegating it to another group so you don’t have to get your hands dirty.
The terrorist label is a useless term anyway. Terrorism is strategy for using civilian terror to effect change. The USA military uses the strategy of terrorism, they call it “shock and awe doctrine”. But calling rank and file soldiers “terrorists” doesn’t make any sense. Similarly, guerilla fighters don’t actually use terrorism, IEDs target military caravans. Shooting rockets at air defense systems to understand their limits is a military intelligence campaign. Enforcing a blockade/embargo is a core military function. Hit and run tactics works. Urban warfare is as necessary as mountain warfare and jungle warfare. In essence, the USA invented the label of terrorist to vilify people instead of tactics, and then drifted its usage away from “using civilian terror” towards “guerilla tactics”. This became enshrined in law in the USA as “enemy combatant”, a third label never before seen in law. Previously there was civilian and military. There’s a thousand years of law and jurisprudence using those two categories, from international treaties to domestic military courts to penal codes. This new third status, invented by the USA, discards all of that and allows the USA to do anything they want to anyone they deem fits this new legal category, which maps directly to whoever they call a “terrorist” which, as I think I’ve established, is far more about fighting guerillas than it is about fighting terrorism.
Yes. This was classic “we need to do something to save face domestically, but are going to be as ineffective as possible to avoid actually getting caught up in the conflict.”
They straight up said afterwards “we consider this matter concluded” (i.e. even stevens).
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there was even backchannel communication with ‘Western’ intelligence as it was occurring to ensure it didn’t get out of control.
I really can’t think of a response from Iran that was more tepid.
People need to remember that a lot of the Middle Eastern governments are much more afraid of radicalized domestic threats than foreign nations and need to do a song and dance to not appear too weak or ineffective against the West to those interests.
Iran didn’t realistically have the option of doing nothing, and it’s amazing they did as little as they ended up doing (which I think reflects just how fucking nuts they think Bibi is right now, something that should scare the shit out of his allies).
Yeah, loathe as I am to say anything kind about the Iranian regime, this is still a remarkably constrained response given the circumstances. Isreal blew up their embassy, killing two of their top generals. Obviously, in an ideal world you’d work out a purely diplomatic solution, but then in an ideal world Isreal wouldn’t have blown up that embassy in the first place. The Iranian government know they have to show strength or else the backlash among their people would be insane. They were put between a rock and a hard place and picked a pretty smart way out.
And they know damn well that this whole thing kicked off in the first place because Netanyahu is trying to engineer a war. He knows he’s losing international support with his genocide in Gaza, and a war with Iran would effectively reset the field. As soon as its “ally vs enemy” all the other questions go out the window. Isreal gets a clean slate, and probably wipes out or at least seriously damages several enemies in the process. The only question is how he can make it happen in a way that will draw the US in.
I got an idea.
Aggressively develop and move everything to non-fossil fuel technology. Share that technology with the rest of the world. Then, boom: Iran loses 70% of it’s GDP, and everyone wins without any shots fired.
China is doing it and guess what, the US is complaining about it.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/08/janet-yellen-china-visit-remarks/
Would be funny if the world finally gets motivated to save the planet from climate change only so that the genocidal state can continue genociding in peace.
Fucking over saudi Arabia has been my motivation for years now.
Aggressively develop and move everything to non-fossil fuel technology. Share that technology with the rest of the world
Only one thing is standing in the way of that happening.
Marg Bar AmerikkkaWar is like really super profitable though. So, on one hand we could potentially save the planet… but on the other hand we could get some short term profits. Tough call.
Moving away from fossil fuels aside, how come your solution for “everyone” to win here is just to punish Iran for being attacked and retaliating in a very minor way but not punish Zionists for waging a genocide in Palestine and attacking a recognized external State?
I think we know why
Good luck with that. The US is the world’s largest oil producer and therefore it has a vested interest in preventing the development of sustainable energy alternatives.
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Marg bar Amerikka, of course
Is this how WWIII starts?
It kinda feels like it.
…along with the receding line of defense against Russia in Europe.
Yeah, when it comes to WWIII I’m more worried about what NATO/EU is going to do if Ukraine starts collapsing than Israel vs. Iran. If Russia takes Ukraine and starts eyeing other Eastern European countries, or strongly anti-Putin EU countries decide they are willing to go to war to stop him then things could get messy FAST. That’s why it’s so important that the US doesn’t stop funding for Ukraine (like a some politicians, especially Republicans, seem to want). Ukraine is legitimately the bulwark against Russian aggression that could bloom into something much worse.
Israel vs. Iran would be bad, but I don’t think enough countries would join in on Iran’s side to make this a world war. I’d expect more of a new Gulf/Iraq/Afghanistan War than WWIII.
Agreed. The lifetime KGB agent turned president is actively destabilizing all non-NATO nations on his border, while pushing his way through Ukraine. If he’s successful in taking Ukraine, with the allegiance of Belarus, he’ll have Poland on two borders.
Poland will go absolutely fucking postal if Russia starts something. There’s some deep down, righteous grievance there.
As there should be. That didn’t stop Putin from suggesting Russia’s rightful ownership of Poland during the Tucker Carlson interview.
All Iran needs to do is hit an American target for supporting Israel and that would be it. Then everybody’s gonna get involved.
If WWIII is knocking on the door it started with Russia trying to invade Ukraine.
It tried? I’m fairly certain it did.
It depends on what you define as the endgame.
If Kiev is the end game, then Russia haven’t succeeded. If Kiev isn’t the endgame, the Russian 64km long column on its way to Kiev just becomes more than the pathetic failure of Russian military strategy it was at the time.
Capturing Kiev requires invading Ukraine first. Russia has invaded Ukraine. It has demonstrated absolutely zero intent so far to march troops into Kiev.
A 64km long column moving towards Kiev is pretty much “marching troops into Kiev”.
Serious question, have you been able to find ANY Western reporting about any Russian feints during the first week of the invasion? I haven’t been able to. Which is strange, because we have West Point saying that during some counter-offensives there were Russian feints, appearing to earnestly be asking the question of whether deception is still a major part of war. If you read the Wikipedia article about that 64km convoy, it’s pretty much relying entirely on Western reporting, and the reports are pretty silly. Soldiers captured from that convoy only had 3 days of rations? Does that sound like a viable approach to capturing and holding a capital city? I don’t think so. Just read that article and the sources critically - it doesn’t look like a serious maneuver. It looks a lot like a feint.
So if Russia is known to use feints, but NONE of the initial maneuvers were reported as feints, then we are left with either A) Russia launched zero feints, or B) we haven’t labeled which maneuvers were feints. That convoy looks A LOT like a feint to me. And how would a successful feint be reported by Western propaganda rags? As a victory for the West for having defeated such a great maneuver that also demonstrates the silliness of the opponent. That opponent, by the way, has destroyed Ukraine and there is no chance of Ukrainian victory at this point. So, do we trust the analysis that the convoy was an earnest maneuver, or do we see the evidence and think “perhaps this was a feint”?
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Yeah well considering how Russia and Iran are buddy buddy, that makes sense. But I would say Russia vs Ukraine is the oil, and Israel was the spark as soon as they deliberately hit the Iranian embassy in Syria.
Na, that’s just a large interstate.
Throw in Chinese expansionist policy, Trumps divisive attitude and a healthy dose of resource shortages… now were looking at world conflicts
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No. Civil war in the US is how it starts.
Russia backs the right, Europe the left and the US becomes the setting for a proxy war that quickly escalates and gets completely out of control when state vs state conflict begins to involve nuclear posturing.
Lmfao this is the funniest thing I’ve read all week. What alternate universe are libs living in?
When/if a civil war or working-class revolution ever reaches the heart of the imperial core — the US — it will be after most of the world has overthrown capitalism to become socialist (assuming capitalism doesn’t kill us all by climate change or a nuclear war by then), not at the start of a hypothetical major war.
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Not that way. War takes a heavy toll on the environment and we can’t afford to fuck it up any further right now.
It does, but if a catastrophic war, including one with nuclear weapons, brought us down to 2 billion from 9, those nukes wouldn’t even touch the current course of heavy industry of 9 billion that we recklessly became without a thought in the world about whether our only habitat could support it.
Because shooting wars end, even if through attrition. Industry just keeps metastizing if you let it, and pretty lies like “but we planted trees! That evens out all the shit we’re pumping in the air and water!” are just pretty lies.
If we cared about our species having a future, heavy industry would be scaled back to food/medicine, we could sow our own clothes, go back to horses, breed less, communaly build our own structures, and whittle our own shelf crap, and we could perhaps still provide a future to subsequent generations. We do not.
Sure, let’s go back to the middle ages and ride horses and whittle our spoons and forks and knives. 🙄
I mean you’re right about the world population being too big. But birth rates are already decreasing all over the globe. The problem is this capitalism that’s always trying to produce more and keep this continuous growth.
But we can still find balance with the environment with the technology we have. We just don’t have the will power from our governments because of their attachment to capitalism.
The fact that making significant sacrifices in abandoning many of the decadent comforts of this period at our only habitat’s irreparable (on a human timescale) damage expense is met with ridicule shows how determined we are to wreck this place.
Imagine mass famines and frequent catastrophic weather events a couple generations from now. I’m guessing they’ll look at us being above living with our once kind, nurturing habitat with disdain and bewilderment when they’re steeped in the fruits of our lifestyles.
Im not saying going back to the dark ages, im not advocating rejecting knowledge, only the rushing around and consumerism. There’s no more reasonable room for growth, growth is killing us, and robbing us of meaning.
If we can’t live with this paradise, the idea of us spreading to hostile, unforgiving worlds within reach like Mars or Titan is a bad joke. Unlike the infinite mistakes we get to keep making here without instant death, one major mistake out there where we didn’t evolve, and poof everybody dead instantly thanks for playing space faring civilization. That isn’t a game humans can pull off. Maybe some small crew of exceptional people, but certainly not a colony of regular people.
This is what we got. So yeah, maybe spending our time whittling stuff we need and moving at the speed of horse would be better for humanity long term than racing to grow our GDP into extinction.
Whats the endgame of all this growth and “innovation” if it wasn’t killing us as it is? To have Google ad AI generated amalgums of our dead relatives transmitted directly into our brains to convince us to buy more crap?
Killing a bunch of poor people in war isn’t going to save the planet. And countless animals die and have their habitats destroyed. Earth would benefit from a lot less wealthy humans.
But i don’t want to die 🥺
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it’s like listening to a little yappy dog that thinks he’s got all the power in the world
We’re all being played. It’s just a chess game for them and for us to drink the Kool aid. Just like the fake rap beef these days. Skeletor out…
Iran had a consulate bombed and wants to establish to Israel that it’s not allowed to do something like that. I don’t see how anyone is “being played” by that.
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Iran isn’t a credible threat to Israel or the US. I hate US Foreign policy as much as any good leftist, but Iran isn’t the anti-US champion I’m backing. The enemy of my enemy isn’t a friend I have principals and they don’t involve theocracies.
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Iran isn’t a credible threat to Israel or the US
This is just false. US war games in the past have shown Iran is fully capable of thwarting a US invasion. And is that really even surprising? Vietnam and Afganistan have done it, and Iran is on a different level.
Iran isn’t the anti-US champion I’m backing
Iran is funding anti-imperialist organizations/governments like Hezbollah, Ansarallah, Hamas, and is a close ally of the Syrian government. They are not socialist like the USSR-backed South Yemen, PFLP etc, but they are anti-imperialist governments that any socialist with “principals” should critically support.
The utopian perfection you desire does not exist in the world right now; by not supporting the actually existing anti-imperialists, you are doing the imperialists’ job for them.
I hate US Foreign policy as much as any good leftist
Clearly not. You wouldn’t specify “foreign policy” if you did.
Nah. If you are compromising on the immortal science, you are just as shitty as Kissinger. Fuck off.
you are just as shitty as Kissinger
Lmfao
but Iran isn’t the anti-US champion I’m backing. The enemy of my enemy isn’t a friend I have principals and they don’t involve theocracies.
“The unquestionably revolutionary character of the vast majority of national movements is as relative and peculiar as is the possible revolutionary character of certain particular national movements. The revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a revolutionary or a republican programme of the movement, the existence of a democratic basis of the movement. The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such ‘desperate’ democrats and ‘Socialists,’ ‘revolutionaries’ and republicans as, for example, Kerensky and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory, of imperialism. For the same reasons, the struggle that the Egyptians merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British ‘Labour’ Government is waging to preserve Egypt’s dependent position is for the same reason a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian origin and the proletarian title of the members of the government, despite the fact that they are ‘for’ socialism. There is no need to mention the national movement in other, larger, colonial and dependent countries, such as India and China, every step of which along the road to liberation, even if it runs counter to the demands of formal democracy, is a steam-hammer blow at imperialism, i.e., is undoubtedly a revolutionary step.” — The Foundations of Leninism
Iran isn’t a credible threat to Israel or the US
Based on what? Iran has been successfully waging a proxy war for the better part of 20 years against the US across Iraq and Syria. The US’s own war games have exposed the threat posed by Iran to the US Navy as well.
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I think there is a pretty big difference between being impervious to US invasion (afterall the US hasn’t successfully invaded anything since 1863) and being a credible threat.
