The All Things Political Topic - A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt

[Zoraptor]

Yep, should keep Netanyahu safely in power for another few months so Mission Accomplished from his pov whatever the result. Completely predictable, especially when the US made it obvious they'd back Israel under any circumstance.

[uuuhhii]

why did anyone thought bomb embassy was a good idea

if usa and uk are stupid enough to back this people need to start checking if their city build any nuclear shelter during cold war era

[Malcador]

Palestinians can suck it as a result of this, too, I guess.

[BruceVC]

6 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

why did anyone thought bomb embassy was a good idea

if usa and uk are stupid enough to back this people need to start checking if their city build any nuclear shelter during cold war era

Iran doesnt have nukes  yet,  no need  to worry 

[BruceVC]

Update  the Iranian  attack  and what  we  know

 

• majority of drones and missiles shot down, I dont think any casualties. Several countries helped Israel which include France, UK  and  the US and ostensibly some ME countries
• The US intelligence gathering was correct AGAIN and they warned the attack was imminent
• Iran wont launch further attacks unless its attacked by Israel
• US wont participate in a direct attack on Iran

We now need to see what Israel does and will this lead to further escalation?

Edited April 14 by BruceVC

[Malcador]

Israel will probably go assassinate some other IRGC official. Good to know the US holds the leash, although I could see Biden caving and sending Israel help if they do decide to bomb Iran.

[BruceVC]

54 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Israel will probably go assassinate some other IRGC official. Good to know the US holds the leash, although I could see Biden caving and sending Israel help if they do decide to bomb Iran.

Maybe but IMO this is definitely  not the right  time to  bomb Iran  back to the stone  age and  definitely not because Israel  was attacked,  if the US was  directly attacked by Iran that would  be a  different story  but Iran uses its proxies with the dozens of recent attacks on US interests  

If the  US is going to  go  to  war with Iran there  has  to be  a legitimate reason to  justify it and I agree  with Biden on this

 

[ShadySands]

At this point I'm not sure Israel isn't trying to make sure Biden doesn't get reelected.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

32 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

At this point I'm not sure Israel isn't trying to make sure Biden doesn't get reelected.

Bibi has definitely made it clear that he favors the Republicans pretty damn heavily and uhhhh....Bibi may have intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump. So would not be particularly surprising to me.

I think the most damning thing for Biden comes from Biden himself, whose unwillingness or inability to rein in Israel makes him look callous or weak. Joe is going to lose to Trump because he can't even call out a guy who hates him for doing war crimes, let alone stop sending weapons to him. More and more I think the Dems just like losing.

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

More and more I think the Dems just like losing.

The trouble is that this is fundamentally a lose/ lose situation for Biden. If he's hard on Israel he'll lose votes, if he ignores Palestinians and Israeli war crimes he'll lose votes. There's very little at risk for Trump who can say what he likes on the issue; anyone pro Palestine or (unironic usage this time, to be clear) Rules Based Order or nuanced responses to international affairs is never going to vote for Trump anyway, and he isn't in power. In this case I don't think Biden has a smart play, from a purely political perspective, only bad and worse.

(While a lot of people including myself would like Biden to make a Moral Play and actually use the US influence to, well, stop the starvation, collective punishment, destruction of educational institutions, deliberate targeting of health sites and workers, targeting of journalists, targeting of diplomatic structures, targeting of aid workers, targeting of civilian structures etc etc instead of mildly pontificating about it I struggle to think of a single time a US President has actually made a genuine Moral Play, ie (try and) do something because it's simply the right thing to do, knowing that it'll potentially hurt him politically)

[BruceVC]

8 hours ago, ShadySands said:

At this point I'm not sure Israel isn't trying to make sure Biden doesn't get reelected.

But with all the domestic political  issues in the US are large numbers of people really going to vote because of the Israeli vs Palestinian conflict?

I know within some US media circles  this gets raised as a  " possible " influence on election outcomes but I will be surprised if that will be an important factor or influential factor 

I have also never seen a single current  poll that includes this current war or even Israel as a main reason that people vote for?

I have seen R vs W, border security, increased crime and inflation\economy as the most important reasons that will decide the election

But I might be wrong, do you know anyone who will cast there vote based on perceptions of how the US is dealing with this latest war in Gaza?

 

 

 

[BruceVC]

So we know more about the Iranian attack on Israel and its objectives

So the Iranian hardliners had to " respond " due to domestic pressure   after Israel attacked its embassy in Syria but they want to avoid a war with Israel and the US which they know they will lose but any country that attacks Iran will suffer consequence because Iran is not  a pushover 

So Iran makes it unofficially known they will attack Israel and 99% of the missiles and drones are destroyed and no real damage is done to Israel which was the Iranian calculus but they have also satiated the domestic nationalist fervour for a response 

And the US unofficially makes it known they wont support an attack on Iran which ostensibly had an influence on the Israel war cabinet decision 

Because the reality is the US has leverage on Israel and not the other way around which is what most of the Israeli\Jewish conspiracy theories misrepresent 

And the US doesnt want to be  dragged into a war with Iran especially if its not justified and IMO you cant justify a war with Iran considering no real damage was done to Israel and Israel did attack the Iranian embassy with was the reason for the Iranian response 

We dont know what Israel is going to do but I doubt they will attack Iran without US support so maybe Netanyahu is hoping Trump will win in November and that Trump will support a military attack on Iran. But thats also not a given  because we dont know how Trump will respond considering his capricious nature 

 

 

 

 

[Chairchucker]

Hello just a brief report from Australian politics.

 

IYKYK

[uuuhhii]

usa military plan to cut education benefit

amazing out of the trillions military waste the only useful part is waht they want to cut

[Malcador]

https://twitter.com/MattSeyler/status/1781132976123678791

Israel's response underway apparently.

 

[uuuhhii]

iran and iraq bombed

entire meddle east will be at war soon

[Lexx]

I don't get it. Didn't israel strike first again iran? Who then retaliated, and now israel realiates the retaliation? Why the hell are we giving those people weapons.

Edited April 19 by Lexx

[BruceVC]

14 minutes ago, Lexx said:

I don't get it. Didn't israel strike first again iran? Who then retaliated, and now israel realiates the retaliation? Why the hell are we giving those people weapons.

Its not that complicated to understand the sequence of events 

In summary

• Israel attacked an Iranian embassy in Syria : Iran is outraged
• Iran attacks Israel with missiles and drones : Israel is outraged
• Israel attacks Iran : Iran is outraged

But all these are limited attacks in a reality of Iranian proxies attacking  US interests and destabilizing the ME like the Houthis and the Red Sea terrorist attacks 

Also an attack on an embassy doesnt mean you " have to respond because its the same as an attack on the sovereign country " 

In 1983 the US embassy in Lebanon was attacked by Hezbollah\Iran  and dozens of US citizens were killed  and the US didnt attack Iran because of that. But saying that an attack on any embassy is unacceptable and embassies should always be off-limits

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing

And the international arms trade is a legal business and  every country in the world has the right to buy military equipment, I dont think there is a single  country in the world that doesnt have some sort of military budget

Its not the selling of weapons thats an issue, its what states and governments do with those weapons thats a problem 

 

 

 

 

[Zoraptor]

That isn't even the correct wikipedia article Bruce. Which about sums that post up in terms of its accuracy. The US did nothing about its embassy being bombed then because... they didn't know who had done it.

Arms wise, a pending ICJ judgement of genocide against Israel would be a massive problem for Germany (and Britain, France) as it would mean they'd been abetting it, especially since the ICJ prelim was that there is a case to answer. Though I'd suspect Lexx's objection is more moral than legal.

In any case, the retaliation seems to have been a damp squib, and almost literally so. Hopefully that's the end of it.

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

That isn't even the correct wikipedia article Bruce. Which about sums that post up in terms of its accuracy. The US did nothing about its embassy being bombed then because... they didn't know who had done it.

Arms wise, a pending ICJ judgement of genocide against Israel would be a massive problem for Germany (and Britain, France) as it would mean they'd been abetting it, especially since the ICJ prelim was that there is a case to answer. Though I'd suspect Lexx's objection is more moral than legal.

In any case, the retaliation seems to have been a damp squib, and almost literally so. Hopefully that's the end of it.

My bad, it was the wrong link. That was another attack on US forces but Iranian proxies  were responsible for US embassy attack and they acknowledged it , to quote your link " A pro-Iranian group calling itself the Islamic Jihad Organization took responsibility for the bombing in a telephone call to a news office immediately after the blast. The anonymous caller said, "This is part of the Iranian Revolution's campaign against imperialist targets throughout the world. We shall keep striking at any crusader presence in Lebanon, including the international forces."[8] The group had earlier taken responsibility for a grenade attack in which five U.S. members of the international peacekeeping force had been wounded.

[Zoraptor]

They didn't even think IJO actually existed at the time but was just used by anyone attacking the US and France in Lebanon. It was all a bit fraught given the genocidal rampage by western and Israeli supported Phalangists at Sabra and Chatila had happened only six months prior. So the obvious candidate was a Palestinian upset the US was running interference for 3000 civilians getting murdered. Plus ça change, plus ça même chose there.

In any case it's fundamentally a poor example because there was retaliation once they'd decided who had done it. The guy who they think ordered it got blown up in Damascus by a CIA car bomb, and there was also another infamous incident (which the US denied involvement in; the CIA had 'just' trained and supported with intelligence the 'anti terrorism' task force that did it) where 80 civilians in Beirut were killed by a car bomb aimed at another person they thought was responsible.

[BruceVC]

9 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

They didn't even think IJO actually existed at the time but was just used by anyone attacking the US and France in Lebanon. It was all a bit fraught given the genocidal rampage by western and Israeli supported Phalangists at Sabra and Chatila had happened only six months prior. So the obvious candidate was a Palestinian upset the US was running interference for 3000 civilians getting murdered. Plus ça change, plus ça même chose there.

In any case it's fundamentally a poor example because there was retaliation once they'd decided who had done it. The guy who they think ordered it got blown up in Damascus by a CIA car bomb, and there was also another infamous incident (which the US denied involvement in; the CIA had 'just' trained and supported with intelligence the 'anti terrorism' task force that did it) where 80 civilians in Beirut were killed by a car bomb aimed at another person they thought was responsible.

Okay fair enough

Its a bad  example and anyway it was  30 years ago and my view is embassies should never be targeted

I remember during the Cold War and US or Soviet spies  or citizens just had to make it to  the embassy and they  were  safe. And thats  how it should  be 

But not  all   countries respect that, Ecuador recently raised  the Mexican embassy to find a suspect

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/why-did-ecuador-raid-mexicos-quito-embassy-2024-04-06/

And  there justification was " Ecuador, which requested Mexico's permission to enter the embassy at the start of March to detain Glas, contends the asylum offer was illegal, because under international law, people facing charges should not be granted asylum "

Serious irony there  considering how Assange was allowed  to hide  in the embassy in UK for years?

 

 

 

 

Edited April 20 by BruceVC

[Lexx]

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/bloomberg-reveals-that-the-entire-irgc-command-wing-in-syria-was-assassinated-798031

The Bloomberg television network revealed overnight into Saturday that

in the attack attributed to Israel at the Iranian consulate in Syria, the entire command hierarchy responsible for the activities of the Revolutionary Guards in Syria and Lebanon was killed. According to the report, "the senior officers were pivotal for Hezbollah's activities in the region."

Heh, guess that explains some things.

[BruceVC]

57 minutes ago, Lexx said:

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/bloomberg-reveals-that-the-entire-irgc-command-wing-in-syria-was-assassinated-798031

 

 

Heh, guess that explains some things.

Yes  but  this was always the reason  for the Israelis attack,   it  was legitimate people actively   involved in planning attacks  on  Israel  that they targeted but you still  cant  attack an  embassy 

 

 

Edited April 21 by BruceVC

[Zoraptor]

Well now.

You can read the actual Bloomberg article on the matter here, via MSN to avoid the pay/ nuisancewall. If you do you'll see why JPost fails to actually link to its source. I mean it looks like it links to Bloomberg, but it actually links to another JPost article, and says its source is the nicely nebulous 'Bloomberg TV'. Which is a slight red flag for it having been manipulated by the Military Censor. A red flag hardly dispelled by the rest of the article*. The actual Bloomberg article says repeatedly that the 'Axis of Resistance' including Hezbollah has not been significantly degraded and retains its contacts/ coordination etc with Iran.

*in actuality the Syrians absolutely loathe the Israelis, especially so the Syrian government. They might be compromised/ the intelligence source via other means, but all Bashar al Assad would give anyone for leaking that meeting to the Israelis would be a one way trip to Sednaya. If they even bothered with that. There have been a lot of extremely badly sourced and to be frank utterly delusional 'Syria/ Russia forces fight Iranian proxies' articles, tweets etc over the years.