A pretext to war?

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

Here's a lnk that I tink will someday be used as a reason to go to war.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8442940/

[Klinglerware]

Originally Posted by CHEMICAL SOLDIER

Here's a lnk that I tink will someday be used as a reason to go to war.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8442940/

Probably not. The DPIK was actually sponsored by Saddam--as noted in other threads, most of the militant groups Saddam supported were anti-Iranian. Not only that, the DPIK are marxist-leninist. Why would the the US throw its weight behind a terrorist group with communist tendencies if there are other groups without such baggage (baggage being relative, of course)?

An enemy of an enemy is not necessarily our friend, especially if they were in cahoots with another enemy (Saddam)...

[Greyroofoo]

Do we really need a reason to go to war anymore?

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by CHEMICAL SOLDIER

Here's a lnk that I tink will someday be used as a reason to go to war.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8442940/

By war, do you mean "state sponsored assassination", or a general war? I can't see this as an invasion pretext. Of course, I sort of agree with what Greyroofoo says, so I'm can't see much these days.

[jeff061]

It's a reason to take a more hostile and aggressive stance towards Iran which will eventually lead to actions that will justify an invasion.

And people call me a cynic, ha.

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by jeff061

It's a reason to take a more hostile and aggressive stance towards Iran which will eventually lead to actions that will justify an invasion.

And people call me a cynic, ha.

I don't think the government will need this if we decide to invade. The "possible nuclear weapons" thing is bigger.

[jeff061]

They spent that card, unless Iran starts parading their weapons I don't think it will work until years after Iraq is nothing but a memory.

In any case, this isn't what will spark a war. This is what the US will use to provoke Iran to do something stupid. Which will be used instead.

In any case, I'd imagine covert ops will be the way to go for the next several years.

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

The past 3 days have been ''Dig dirt on Iran's President day.''

[Wolfpack]

And that's a bad thing considering his possible role in the storming of the embassy in 1979?

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

Im not saying its a bad thing Im wondering why it didnt surface before.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by CHEMICAL SOLDIER

Im not saying its a bad thing Im wondering why it didnt surface before.

It's probably easier to let this kind of thing slide when the fella in question isn't the new head of a state with questionable intentions regarding their nuclear program.

[Leonidas]

I'm wondering, if the guy really was one of the hostage takers, why deny it. This would make him a hero in Iran. The embassy has been turned into a museum for crying out loud. It's not like this would be a political liability for the guy in his own country, quite the opposite. It's also not like Iranian politicians have shown and kind of sensitivity to what America thinks about them. He's really got no good reason to deny this if he really did it.

[CraigSca]

Except for the political implications outside his country.

[SackAttack]

Speaking of, in another example of outstanding American journalism, the Los Angeles Times ran a story in yesterday's newspaper to the effect that American officials don't believe the man in the photograph is Iran's new President. They aren't ruling out the possibility that he may have been involved, but after analysis, they have concluded that he is probably not the man that the former hostages are comparing him to.

Now, when the story broke that he might have been involved, it was banner headline, front page news.

Now that the story isn't quite so sexy, it's buried on page 12. Ain't America great?

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

I'm wondering, if the guy really was one of the hostage takers, why deny it. This would make him a hero in Iran. The embassy has been turned into a museum for crying out loud. It's not like this would be a political liability for the guy in his own country, quite the opposite. It's also not like Iranian politicians have shown and kind of sensitivity to what America thinks about them. He's really got no good reason to deny this if he really did it.

Will the real Iranian Hero please stand up.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

I'm wondering, if the guy really was one of the hostage takers, why deny it. This would make him a hero in Iran. The embassy has been turned into a museum for crying out loud. It's not like this would be a political liability for the guy in his own country, quite the opposite. It's also not like Iranian politicians have shown and kind of sensitivity to what America thinks about them. He's really got no good reason to deny this if he really did it.

NPR had some Iranian experts on the other day and apparently nowadays the hostage-takers aren't really popular people in Iran. Modernists don't like them because they feel the ill-will the hostage-taking generated from the rest of the world hasn't helped Iran move forward. The conservative theocrats apparently don't like them either, but I forget what the rationale for that was. I think it was something along the lines of the hostage-taking being basically a revolutionary & secular undertaking that the theocrats don't want people reminded about (probably so they won't get revolutionary ideas of their own).

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

NPR had some Iranian experts on the other day and apparently nowadays the hostage-takers aren't really popular people in Iran. Modernists don't like them because they feel the ill-will the hostage-taking generated from the rest of the world hasn't helped Iran move forward. The conservative theocrats apparently don't like them either, but I forget what the rationale for that was. I think it was something along the lines of the hostage-taking being basically a revolutionary & secular undertaking that the theocrats don't want people reminded about (probably so they won't get revolutionary ideas of their own).

Maybe they are not popular anymore, and if so, perhpas it is not well documented who the Iranians are voting for these days.

The current Iranian vice president and head of the Environment Department, Massoumeh Ebtekar, was the chief interpreter and spokeswoman for the radical students who took over the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

Dubbed "Sister Mary" by the American press because her heavy head scarf resembled a nun's habit, Ebtekar gave almost nightly interviews during the standoff, denouncing the hostages as spies and accusing the United States of committing crimes.

Some of the former students have said Ahmadinejad opposed the takeover and played no role in it, even though he was a member of the hard-line Islamic student group that seized the embassy.

Ebtekar, who is also one of Iran's six vice presidents, has been the highest-ranking woman in the moderate-leaning government of President Mohammad Khatami.

She acknowledged her part in the U.S. Embassy takeover in remarks to reporters in 1998.

"The generation that is in executive and policy-making jobs is a revolutionary generation that played an active role in every stage of the revolution," Ebtekar said then.

A report in The New York Times that year had detailed her involvement, which was not listed on Ebtekar's biography.

She was an 18-year-old freshman at Polytechnic University in Tehran when she became the public voice of the student takeover. She spoke English better than others in the student group because she had lived in suburban Philadelphia as a child and had attended American schools.

She once told an ABC News reporter that she could imagine being provoked into killing the hostages.

"Yes," she said. "When I've seen an American gun being lifted up and killing my brothers and sisters in the streets, of course."

In the turbulent early days of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad was more concerned with putting down leftists and communists at universities than striking at Americans, former students said. During the long standoff, he was writing and speaking against leftist students, they said.

[Leonidas]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

Except for the political implications outside his country.

Has the Revolution ever been concerned about this except maybe for how it plays in Damascus?

[dawgfan]

I have a hard time believing that this administration would be willing to take on the responsibility of occupying Iran while we're still suffering daily casualties in Iraq and growing pressure mounting from the American public to pull our troops out.

Bush will want the leverage of the threat of invasion in negotiations with Iran to keep them from moving forward with their nuclear program, but I think that this would be viewed as an absolute last resort given the Iraq situation. We're looking at the probability that we're years away from feeling comfortable enough to hand over all security within Iraq to their new government, and manning that occupying force and the one in Afghanistan is straining the capabilities of our military.

Add to that factor the probability that military action would be unlikely to go as smoothly as it did in Iraq. Unlike Iraq, the majority of the Iranian people don't hate their government. While it is still more theocracy governed behind the scenes by the Mullahs than a true democracy, this is not a case of an upopular tyrant ruling his oppressed people with an iron fist. We'd still be able to invade and depose the government, but we'd likely be fighting a lot more of the general populace than we did in Iraq. It would also greatly strain the ties we have with moderate Muslims in the Middle East, as such an action would be further proof in the extremist's eyes that this is strictly a religious war.

I think what the U.S. is hoping is that the European powers will act as the "good cop" to our "bad cop" and convince Iran to forego their nuclear program, with the threat that the Europeans would be willing to support a U.S. led invasion if necessary (with Europe taking a significant role in occupation). We would've been much better off in Iraq with more support from the rest of the west and Russia in helping shoulder the load of nation-building, and I think it would be near-impossible to try and do the same with Iran while we're still nursing Iraq into stability.

Besides, I think the target that Bush would really prefer next is North Korea. Their hope is that the Iraq experiment succeeds, whereby the country serves as a model for the rest of the region in terms of governance, economic success and successful integration with the western world as well as serving as a warning to other rogue regimes that they could be next if they aren't careful; this allows them to shift their focus somewhat from the Middle East to other trouble spots, with North Korea being a major one given what a nut-job Kim Jong-Il is.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

I have a hard time believing that this administration would be willing to take on the responsibility of occupying Iran while we're still suffering daily casualties in Iraq and growing pressure mounting from the American public to pull our troops out.

Bush will want the leverage of the threat of invasion in negotiations with Iran to keep them from moving forward with their nuclear program, but I think that this would be viewed as an absolute last resort given the Iraq situation. We're looking at the probability that we're years away from feeling comfortable enough to hand over all security within Iraq to their new government, and manning that occupying force and the one in Afghanistan is straining the capabilities of our military.

Add to that factor the probability that military action would be unlikely to go as smoothly as it did in Iraq. Unlike Iraq, the majority of the Iranian people don't hate their government. While it is still more theocracy governed behind the scenes by the Mullahs than a true democracy, this is not a case of an upopular tyrant ruling his oppressed people with an iron fist. We'd still be able to invade and depose the government, but we'd likely be fighting a lot more of the general populace than we did in Iraq. It would also greatly strain the ties we have with moderate Muslims in the Middle East, as such an action would be further proof in the extremist's eyes that this is strictly a religious war.

I think what the U.S. is hoping is that the European powers will act as the "good cop" to our "bad cop" and convince Iran to forego their nuclear program, with the threat that the Europeans would be willing to support a U.S. led invasion if necessary (with Europe taking a significant role in occupation). We would've been much better off in Iraq with more support from the rest of the west and Russia in helping shoulder the load of nation-building, and I think it would be near-impossible to try and do the same with Iran while we're still nursing Iraq into stability.

Besides, I think the target that Bush would really prefer next is North Korea. Their hope is that the Iraq experiment succeeds, whereby the country serves as a model for the rest of the region in terms of governance, economic success and successful integration with the western world as well as serving as a warning to other rogue regimes that they could be next if they aren't careful; this allows them to shift their focus somewhat from the Middle East to other trouble spots, with North Korea being a major one given what a nut-job Kim Jong-Il is.

If it makes you feel any better, Iraq ended the 1991 cease-fire agreement in 1991. It then took 12 years of diplomacy before we decided regime change would require military action.

While 12-years of diplomacy with a rogue state is dangerously long, the process to start military action in Iran or North Korea (outside of air-strikes or missle strikes) takes years.

Also, I'm not even sure if regime change in either country is even a goal of the western nations.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by Dutch

If it makes you feel any better, Iraq ended the 1991 cease-fire agreement in 1991. It then took 12 years of diplomacy before we decided regime change would require military action.

While 12-years of diplomacy with a rogue state is dangerously long, the process to start military action in Iran or North Korea (outside of air-strikes or missle strikes) takes years.

We could rehash this debate, but I'll leave it at this - I didn't think it was necessary to invade Iraq when we did because a) I don't believe they were a legitimate, direct threat to the U.S., b) we had not yet convinced enough of our traditional allies to support us in both the invasion and more importantly the occupation and nation-building tasks, and most importantly c) I don't think we had spent enough time working out the details of what to do after we'd deposed Saddam.

That's not to say that such an action shouldn't have eventually taken place - I just wasn't convinced that enough of the conditions to do so had been met in a satsifactory way. I do think the over-arching goal, to make Iraq a model for the rest of the middle east and to serve as a warning to other rogue states is a good one, and I think for better or for worse we need to see this job through to a satisfactory conclusion (a stable Iraqi state that can handle the bulk of their own security concerns and is open to the West) even if it means we have to go it alone and suffer continued casualties. That's not to say that I don't think we shouldn't continue to try and get support from more allies in meeting this task, and that I think we're doing everything correctly in terms of our occupation.

Originally Posted by Dutch

Also, I'm not even sure if regime change in either country is even a goal of the western nations.

I'm less convinced that regime change is a goal for Iran - as much as certain aspects of that country worry the West, there are reasons for optimism that Iran can slowly move towards a less theocratic, more truly democratic society that is willing to engage the West in normal relations and join the modern world. North Korea on the other hand is a horribly oppressed nation run by a complete crackpot, and an element of extreme instability in a region that has enough to worry about with the China/Taiwan situation. Europe might not care so much about North Korea, but China, Japan, South Korea and to a certain extent Russia sure do. The success with which the U.S. can come to a mutually acceptable understanding with China about what to do with North Korea will be a crucial part of our foreign policy moving forward.