American Politics

[Va-Va-Voom]

Trump confirms US military had green light to start a war with Iran but then he changed his mind at the last moment:

Translation: my uppers wore off around 4PM and a general was able to grab me before I started sundowning and explained that a war in Iran would cause 10x more American casualties than Iraq.

I'm in tears

Loooool

[Phil71]

So Trump is more peaceful than Obama then?

Confirmed.

Trump = peace

Yeah lets ignore that Trump has done everything in his power to deteriorate their relationship with Iran up to this point including breaking the Iran deal for virtually no reason and reintroducing sanctions.

Also this is far from over and i wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing a new war by the end of the year.

What about the Iranians planting mines on commercial oil tankers in the gulf?

[LMAO]

This has Bolton all over it. c*** is actually out here trying to play CoD Modern Warfare irl

[StLGooner]

Is our economy doing poorly or something? That's when the Repubs usually start a war, it gives a boost to the economy.

[Highbury Hillbilly]

No, it's just standard fare ahead of a Repub incumbent's re-election campaign. First rally was a couple of days ago.

Need more fearmongering now that NK has moved out of the news cycle and Assad, Iran and Russia have sent IS into a death spiral.

[StLGooner]

No, it's just standard fare ahead of a Repub incumbent's re-election campaign. First rally was a couple of days ago.

Need more fearmongering now that NK has moved out of the news cycle and Assad, Iran and Russia have sent IS into a death spiral.

Actually you're probably right. Get all the Repubs riled up to go kill some Muslims, that usually gets the votes swinging.

[Phil71]

Trump has been described by a senior CIA man as being ‘the adult in the room’ when the decisions were being taken last night.

He’s not the war mongering fool some of you make him out to be.

[Royal Gooner]

Trump has been described by a senior CIA man as being ‘the adult in the room’ when the decisions were being taken last night.

He’s not the war mongering fool some of you make him out to be.

Agreed. If he was, he'd have fired the rockets and said damn the consequences. The fact he stopped when told how many would die after weighing up proportionality shows that there is much more to Trump than the public persona.

[Zedie]

Trump has been described by a senior CIA man as being ‘the adult in the room’ when the decisions were being taken last night.

He’s not the war mongering fool some of you make him out to be.

Agreed. If he was, he'd have fired the rockets and said damn the consequences. The fact he stopped when told how many would die after weighing up proportionality shows that there is much more to Trump than the public persona.

You two crack me up. Put down the daily mail and fox news.

[Highbury Hillbilly]

Trump has been described by a senior CIA man as being ‘the adult in the room’ when the decisions were being taken last night.

He’s not the war mongering fool some of you make him out to be.

He's a savvy politician, and knows that Just beating the drums of war will be enough to get the neocons on board. Plenty of neocons wanted Hillary in office because her foreign policy was openly interventionist and big business loves nothing more than swooping in to newly failed states to grab fat contracts for economic reconstruction.

Trump knows his bread and butter is getting the news to focus on him 24/7. If a war starts and bodies start coming back, the media might actually start talking about the war and not breathlessly covering every tweet he makes while taking a shit.

[Phil71]

Trump has been described by a senior CIA man as being ‘the adult in the room’ when the decisions were being taken last night.

He’s not the war mongering fool some of you make him out to be.

Agreed. If he was, he'd have fired the rockets and said damn the consequences. The fact he stopped when told how many would die after weighing up proportionality shows that there is much more to Trump than the public persona.

You two crack me up. Put down the daily mail and fox news.

I don’t read or watch either of them. I form my own opinions.

What I definitely don’t do is listen to the endless stream of left wing liberal celebrities and journalists who seem to spend their whole life bleating about him.

[Zedie]

Trump has been described by a senior CIA man as being ‘the adult in the room’ when the decisions were being taken last night.

He’s not the war mongering fool some of you make him out to be.

Agreed. If he was, he'd have fired the rockets and said damn the consequences. The fact he stopped when told how many would die after weighing up proportionality shows that there is much more to Trump than the public persona.

You two crack me up. Put down the daily mail and fox news.

I don’t read or watch either of them. I form my own opinions.

What I definitely don’t do is listen to the endless stream of left wing liberal celebrities and journalists who seem to spend their whole life bleating about him.

Strange you seem to keep mentioning their manicured talking points that misrepresent reality.

You're referring to Iran apparently planting mines on Japanese tankers as a pretext for trump to escalate war invoking measures. No real evidence of it other than a grainy video that his administration has now walked back from.

This latest stunt was about Iranians shooting down american spy drones in their airspace. They got caught and now him apparently stopping a missile strike is him being a strong leader...

Flimsy pretexts for being moments away from war and somehow hes a master tactician?

I guess you were a massive fan of blair and his shower of shit in iraq.

What does America even need to be involved with Iran for? This is the man that ran on an anti war ticket while claiming Hillary was a war monger.

The adult in the room would look to de escalate an uneasy situation. The adult in the room wouldn't simply tear up existing agreements on a whim. The adult in the room wouldn't be using flimsy YouTube videos as a pretext for escalating now stoked tensions. The adult in the room wouldn't be looking to kick off WW3 because it played well with his base coming up to election season and distracted from his crimes in and out of office.

I'm really not sure how you guys are finding a way to excuse this nonsense.

[EliteKiller]

If you ignore who the Potus is and look at what is actually happening ...

The US is squeezing the life out of Iran with sanctions against not only Iran but any country or company that deals with Iran ... for a country where >80% of it's exports come from oil and gas, the slow squeeze on these commodities is really hurting, oil exports are now down over 50%, but why not 100%? ... well if the US had cut off all the Iran exports in one go the oil price would have spiked, to avoid this the squeeze has being slowly applied, thus allowing other countries to take up the slack ... this has worked and the oil price has remained fairly stable.

Now that squeeze is back on Iran's oil and gas exports will be 75% down from two years ago, that means they are going bankrupt, pretty much all cash reserves (not frozen in overseas accounts) have gone ... the economy is shrinking 2% a quarter, inflation has risen to 30% and is still rising ... and what's really worrying for the Iranian leadership is that the population are getting restless ... a currency that's worth just 10% of it's 10 year value, failing infrastructure, big price increases ... for an Iranian what's to like? the chanting crowds and USA flag burning is all well and good, but it doesn't put food on the table ...

So why does this matter? Well it matters because what we now see playing out in the Middle East all comes back to maintaining control for Hassan Rouhani, he needs the US stranglehold to break or he knows Ali Khamenei or the people will replace him ... his only real play is to goad the US into some kind of aggressive action that will necessitate Russia and or China coming to his aid ... in reality he must get the oil and gas flowing again

How does he do that? His options are limited, he can't win a war with the US but then neither can the US win a war with Iran both sides know that Middle East wars are never ending ... so he has to try and goad the US into throwing a few punches, hence the drone kill, and it very nearly worked ... but it didn't ... the US saw the trap and avoided it, just!

So what next, well his only other option is to disrupt the oil flow through the straits of Hormuz, this will drive up the price of oil and with increased demand Iran will be able to sell more oil ... can he do this? He can try, mining tankers is very hard to prevent, the US has a substantial force in the gulf and they will know this action is coming ... still tankers are easy targets.

So what can the US do, well firstly they don't need to do all that much, the sanctions are clearly working just tightening that squeeze will break Iran, so bearing in mind that Iran's only option now appears to be increased military action of some sort, then what the US needs to do is get it's allies and the UN lined up before it takes any military action ...

So if you look at the big picture the US were right to pull the plug on retaliation, the US demonstrated (planes in the air targets locked) that it could take down the Iranian air defence, posturing if you will, but decided that dialogue was the best course ... a big tick with other world powers for the show of restraint.

Of course POTUS is Trump, so the media will spin his actions all ways to Sunday ... that's just where we are ... but if you can get past the fact that a slimy, misogynistic, racist is in the chair ... what the US did was near perfect both militarily and politically ... losing $180m drone but gaining the moral high-ground is a big win.

The big question is will Russia and China fall in behind the US by doing nothing, or will the bail out Iran economically .... interesting times ahead can the Orange one hold it all together?

[LMAO]

Russia and China won't go to war with us over Iran. Russia's military is more bark than bite, and China has too much to lose economically (the same is true for the US going to war with China unless absolutely necessary).

[Highbury Hillbilly]

Russia and China would love nothing more than to see the US piss even more money and blood away in a Middle East conflict while they sit back and continue to consolidate power in their own spheres of influence.