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Monitoring the situation in Iran



Side stories abound. Military action in Ecuador and also it seems like Cuba is ready to fall. Cuban Americans have waited more than 6 decades for liberation of their families on the island. This includes the family of Secretary of State and Man with All the Jobs on Earth meme Marco Rubio

I still firmly hold to my belief that Marco Rubio is the most powerful man on earth right now. The dramatic foreign policy shift over the last 6+ months has his fingerprints all over.
 


Side stories abound. Military action in Ecuador and also it seems like Cuba is ready to fall. Cuban Americans have waited more than 6 decades for liberation of their families on the island. This includes the family of Secretary of State and Man with All the Jobs on Earth meme Marco Rubio


God I hope the Cubans can get their country back from the monsters in charge. Never seen a harder working group of people than the Cuban Americans.
 
The White House is saying Spain has bent the knee on base access, but Spain is denying it.

Blaming President Trump for the manner of the Afghanistan withdrawal seven months after he was out of office is patently ridiculous. Literally no chance whatsoever the withdrawal would have been carried out in such a clownish -and by the end, cowardly (by the administration)- manner under President Trump.
 
Once again Trump lied out his ass which no one should be surprised about.


Spanish government is denying the claims of the white house.
Wow, what a shocker /s.

The White House is saying Spain has bent the knee on base access, but Spain is denying it.

Blaming President Trump for the manner of the Afghanistan withdrawal seven months after he was out of office is patently ridiculous. Literally no chance whatsoever the withdrawal would have been carried out in such a clownish -and by the end, cowardly (by the administration)- manner under President Trump.

Once again why is it ridiculous when it was his plan?
Again he literally set thousands of Taliban fighters free as he was making these plans and didn't communicate at all with the Afghan government about it, please actually go back and read up on what happened.
Biden literally just allowed Trumps plan to transpire....

This isn't an opinion this is a statement of fact.
Trump doesn't have a real plan here either, he never has a real plan he just does things that was no different.
Refusing to elaborate on what the actual goal in Iran here is isn't some master genius 4d chess thing it's because he actually has no clue whatsoever.
You can absolutely blame Biden for not deciding to clean up after him and actually handle it better but that still doesn't change the fact that it was his doing.

There seems to be a lot of '' dear leader '' people here tho so it's like talking to a wall.
 
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There were key differences, mainly Trump being viewed as more powerful.

IssueTrump PlanBiden Execution
Agreement with Taliban?Yes – negotiated and signedHonored the agreement
Original Withdrawal DateMay 1, 2021Extended to Aug 31, 2021
Conditions EnforcementThreatened return to force if Taliban broke termsDid not re-escalate when Taliban advanced
Afghan Gov RoleExcluded from negotiationsInherited that framework
OutcomeDrew down troops but did not complete withdrawalCompleted withdrawal; Taliban took over



True. But Iran is not the same, they are not barbarians.
Once again why is it ridiculous when it was his plan?

Notice how you avoided the post above and just doubling down on bullshit?

You're not here for a serious or honest debate.
 
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Wow, my prediction of Azerbaijan taking advantage of Iran's weakness to grab a piece of Iran may become reality very fast. And even if they do nothing, it will make sure that a part of the IRGC will have to be directed to Iran's NW border and create more chaos in Iran.
 
Once again Trump lied out his ass which no one should be surprised about.


Spanish government is denying the claims of the white house.
Wow, what a shocker /s.
wait till you learn about the theory of "2 sides to every story"

but i guess if spain says it then that has to be the truth and only trump lies... Grrr orange man bad.
 
Sure, but those procedures aren't purely technical. The decision trees themselves are built around legal and moral constraints like proportionality, civilian risk, and escalation. Something, doctrine, law, or policy, has to define what counts as an acceptable risk or a justified strike. Those judgments come from legal and ethical frameworks as much as they do calculation.

We're talking about two different things anyway. I wasn't claiming risk analysis doesn't exist or that militaries don't constantly run calculations. My point was about the alignment behind the decision, especially when multiple governments were involved in the intelligence sharing.
I understand you disagree with the outcome. But we don't have the same information as the people who made the decision anyway.
 
wait till you learn about the theory of "2 sides to every story"

but i guess if spain says it then that has to be the truth and only trump lies... Grrr orange man bad.

I bet it's a case of the US now using the bases and giving a whole 'and what are you going to do about it?!'

Plus, I doubt most of the Spanish military care for what their politicos are bleating about.
 
Once again why is it ridiculous when it was his plan?
Again he literally set thousands of Taliban fighters free as he was making these plans and didn't communicate at all with the Afghan government about it, please actually go back and read up on what happened.
Biden literally just allowed Trumps plan to transpire....

This isn't an opinion this is a statement of fact.
Trump doesn't have a real plan here either, he never has a real plan he just does things that was no different.
Refusing to elaborate on what the actual goal in Iran here is isn't some master genius 4d chess thing it's because he actually has no clue whatsoever.
You can absolutely blame Biden for not deciding to clean up after him and actually handle it better but that still doesn't change the fact that it was his doing.

There seems to be a lot of '' dear leader '' people here tho so it's like talking to a wall.


Execution of a plan is just as important as the actual plan.

You are trying to treat this like a chain reaction that Biden could not interrupt. That is the dodge. Biden had full authority to change course, delay with conditions, or change the way the withdrawal was executed. He did not just inherit a date, he chose a strategy and he owned the sequencing and made it his own plan.

The problem is he failed in execution.

Biden removed the support structure the Afghan forces depended on, then gave up Bagram in early July 2021, and left the evacuation plan effectively dependent on Kabul airport just as the Taliban were closing in. At the same time his administration publicly downplayed the speed of a potential collapse even though U.S. assessments were already warning Kabul could fall far faster than advertised. When the collapse came, the evacuation started late and under maximum pressure, which is why it turned into a scramble. You can argue the original agreement set the stage, but the failure was the operational plan, the timing, and the contingency planning, and that was Biden's responsibility.

There is absolutely no way around it, this is typical unaccountable behavior. Almost 2016 bot unaccountable before AI learned to act somewhat human and take responsibility.
 
Person A: "Hey, I have a plan to go eat a pile of dog shit...on second thought, you do it."

Person B: "OK! Hey, why am I throwing up and everyone's calling me Puppy Chow? It wasn't even my plan!"
 
Wow, my prediction of Azerbaijan taking advantage of Iran's weakness to grab a piece of Iran may become reality very fast. And even if they do nothing, it will make sure that a part of the IRGC will have to be directed to Iran's NW border and create more chaos in Iran.
It also puts into a perspective another thing - the deal that Trump made last year between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Plus just when there was a build up at the borders, JD travelled to Azerbaijan and Armenia.
 
It could be from this..

Iran hostage crisis - Wikipedia https://share.google/uOpkNnwM6ka0QmtNE

I was 6 years old at the time.

Not only that. The hostage crisis was something from the first part of the revolution, when the US was an ally of the Shah.

Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I read the Iranian revolution begin as a "democratic revolution" against a despotic monarch supported by the US and with ample support from the civil society (liberals, merchants, communist, I believe even the Kurds in one moment, etc).

Many expected that Khomeini would be only some sort of spiritual guide like what Gandhi was to the Indians, sharing power with the groups that supported him. It received indirect support from the USSR via communist parties as a counter balance to the US and Israel in the region.

What happened after Palahvi deposition was that Khomeini became the Sid Meier's Civilization version of Gandhi. He centralized power, using and then crushing every other movement besides his own. This movement surprised even the USSR, but was still seen with good eyes by them.
 
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It also puts into a perspective another thing - the deal that Trump made last year between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Plus just when there was a build up at the borders, JD travelled to Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Did Trump get Armenia and Azerbaijan to make peace just so Azerbaijan would be free to invade Iran when the opportunity arose? How many dimensions of geopolitical chess would this be?



TIL there are more Azeris living in Iran than in Azerbaijan. I get the impression they would like their people back
 
We have to just remember one thing.

IMHO allowing Azerbaijan and the Kurds to carve pieces of Iran basically scratch the Artesh (Iranian army proper) as a force to depose the current government.

One thing that I've noted on every single US and Israel briefing. The Iranian army doesn't show in any list of targets until now.

bold GIF
 
That takes time. There's people there who are there on business, family vacations, etc. There should have been a plan in place once the strikes began, like immediately. The administration had no plan because the Americans on the ground weren't important... Just the attack.
Well, there was a week or two of "we are building up our capacity in the area!", so if that didn't convince you to maybe bug out of Iran, not sure what else would. Not sure what you really would want to gov't to do, set up a travel agency to pay for everyone's tickets out of an "axis of evil" country?
 
There seems to be a lot of '' dear leader '' people here tho so it's like talking to a wall.
You are the one arguing President Trump is so powerful he can impose detailed operational plans of withdrawal upon a future administration and force them to unquestioningly follow these plans up to seven months into their term.

He cannot by the way. The Biden administration inherited an agreement which amounted to 'withdraw from Afghanistan on approximately this timeline', and then because it was so incompetent, it managed to step on every possible rake on the way out. It's difficult to imagine how the withdrawal could have been executed more clownishly, given the monumental disparity in military capability between the two sides.
 
Did Trump get Armenia and Azerbaijan to make peace just so Azerbaijan would be free to invade Iran when the opportunity arose? How many dimensions of geopolitical chess would this be?



TIL there are more Azeris living in Iran than in Azerbaijan. I get the impression they would like their people back


Not even that, just connecting the Nakhchivan enclave to Azerbaijan proper would be a massive win, and if there ever is the moment it's now.

We are about to witness the complete collapse of Iran which is not fantastic news unfortunately.
 
What happened after Palahvi deposition was that Khomeini became the Sid Meier's Civilization version of Gandhi. He centralized power, using and then crushing every other movement besides his own. This movement surprised even the USSR, but was still seen with good eyes by them.
This made me lol. I swear when I play civ 90% of the time Ghandi is the first one to use nukes when getting crushed.
 
Not sure I understand your point about multiple governments being involved in the intelligence sharing. Do you believe Israel pressured the U.S. into acting earlier than they would have preferred?
In fact the opposite seems to be true, I read that it was the US that pressured Israel into getting started the moment they realized they had an opportunity to take Khamenei out at this meeting they knew was going to happen so they moved their timeline up and got it done
 
Khamenei was Azeri.
The country of Azerbaijan is in a land once called Caucasian Albania... which was next to Caucasian Iberia, or modern Georgia. The Greeks ran out of names, I guess.
That same Twitter post mentions they purposely chose an Azeri (Khamenei) to install as Ayatollah because the Islamic Republic so greatly feared an Azeri uprising

Now Khamenei is gone and there's nothing stopping that from happening since the Islamic Republic is about to fall and the decades-old Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is finally over
 
I just googled it. Heres a YT demoing it too. In daytime, cant see anything. But at night, those red streaks are crazy.


Us and after the Falklands war many navies got phalanx like systems.

Why has it taken so long to get something similar for land for drones?

Drones aren't exactly stealthy not the shit Iran and Russia uses. Can easily be shot down by tracked system and mass bullets.
The UK using f35s and expensive air to air missiles to shoot down 20 dollar drones. Madness
 
It amazes me how left wing extremists support jihadists so much. They make the most extremw religious right christian look like a liberal. If the shah was still in power women would not be brutally murdered for having their hijab on crooked. That actually happened.
 
I still firmly hold to my belief that Marco Rubio is the most powerful man on earth right now. The dramatic foreign policy shift over the last 6+ months has his fingerprints all over.
Being able to sip a mojito and smoke a cohiba in Havana and then fly to Tehran and see the plethora of historical sites there was not something I ever thought possible, but might be a reality in just a few years!
 
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