Posted on 05/07/2019 4:09:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last week, it was Venezuela in America's gun sights.
"While a peaceful solution is desirable, military action is possible," thundered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. "If that's what is required, that's what the United States will do."
John Bolton tutored Vladimir Putin on the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine: "This is our hemisphere. It's not where the Russians ought to be interfering."
After Venezuela's army decided not to rise up and overthrow Nicholas Maduro, by Sunday night, it was Iran that was in our gun sights.
Bolton ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln, its carrier battle group and a bomber force to the Mideast "to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force."
What "attack" was Bolton talking about?
According to Axios, Israel had alerted Bolton that an Iranian strike on U.S. interests in Iraq was imminent.
Flying to Finland, Pompeo echoed Bolton's warning:
"We've seen escalatory actions from the Iranians, and ... we will hold the Iranians accountable for attacks on American interests. ... (If) these actions take place, if they do by some third-party proxy, whether that's a Shia militia group or the Houthis or Hezbollah, we will hold the ... Iranian leadership directly accountable for that."
Taken together, the Bolton-Pompeo threats add up to an ultimatum that any attack by Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, or Iran-backed militias -- on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE or U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria or the Gulf states -- will bring a U.S. retaliatory response on Iran itself.
Did President Donald Trump approve of this? For he appears to be going along. He has pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions. Last week, he canceled waivers he had given eight nations to let them continue buying Iranian oil.
Purpose: Reduce Iran's oil exports, 40% of GDP, to zero, to deepen an economic crisis that is already expected to cut Iran's GDP this year by 6%.
Trump has also designated Iran a terrorist state and the Republican Guard a terrorist organization, the first time we have done that with the armed forces of a foreign nation. We don't even do that with North Korea.
Iran responded last Tuesday by naming the U.S. a state sponsor of terror and designating U.S. forces in the Middle East as terrorists.
Iran has also warned that if we choke off its oil exports that exit the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait could be closed to other nations. As 30% of the world's oil shipments transit the Strait, closing it could cause a global crash.
In 1973, when President Nixon rescued Israel in the Yom Kippur War, the OPEC Arabs imposed an oil embargo. Gas prices spiked so high Nixon considered taking a train to Florida for Christmas vacation.
The gas price surge so damaged Nixon's standing with the public that it became a contributing factor in the drive for impeachment.
Today, Trump's approval rating in the Gallup Poll has reached an all-time high, 46%, a level surely related to the astonishing performance of the U.S. economy following Trump's tax cuts and sweeping deregulation.
While a Gulf war with Iran might be popular at the outset, what would it do for the U.S. economy or our ability to exit the forever war of the Middle East, as Trump has pledged to do?
In late April, in an interview with Fox News, Iran's foreign minister identified those he believes truly want a U.S.-Iranian war.
Asked if Trump was seeking the confrontation and the "regime change" that Bolton championed before becoming his national security adviser, Mohammad Javad Zarif said no. "I do not believe President Trump wants to do that. I believe President Trump ran on a campaign promise of not bringing the United States into another war.
"President Trump himself has said that the U.S. spent $7 trillion in our region ... and the only outcome of that was that we have more terror, we have more insecurity, and we have more instability.
"People in our region are making the determination that the presence of the United States is inherently destabilizing. I think President Trump agrees with that."
But if it is not Trump pushing for confrontation and war with Iran, who is?
Said Zarif, "I believe 'the B-team' wants to actually push the United States, lure President Trump, into a confrontation that he doesn't want."
And who makes up "the B-team"?
Zarif identifies them: Bolton, Benjamin Netanyahu, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.
Should the B-team succeed in its ambitions -- it will be Trump's war, and Trump's presidency will pay the price.
History has vindicated me on this one. Look how thoroughly repudiated that retarded baboon George W. Bush is right now -- even right here on FreeRepublic where he used to be considered a demi-god.
I am not a Republican. I am a nationalist and a patriot. I won't waste my time with any political candidate who has sold his soul to left-wing globalists.
Iran is long overdue for some payback
They have been taking shots at us for years .
Just little enough to think they can get away with it .
But some of us remember .
VIED’s in Iraq and AFG have killed how many Americans?
And where did they comes from ?
I believe we have a stash of neutron weapons somewhere .
We should daisy chain them across central Iran and all their major population centers .
Agreed. Saudi Arabia and Israel would both love or us to take care of this problem.
Only it ended up catastrophic last time and will this time.
Not to mention with the sauds, we’d be helping out a country that has donated BILLIONS to terrorism and likely at the LEAST knew about 9/11 and at the worst, were in some way complicit.
STAY OUT.
>>>But what if, with just a little push, we could topple the mullahs? Most Iranians would be ecstatic to see them.
We will be greeted as liberators. Where have I heard that before?
yeah. stay home. thats the answer. As if Trump is a dictator and can just “make it happen” by just snapping his fingers.
If you are too stupid to realize that Trump has done/is doing/will continue to do everything he can legally do with the resources and congress he has at his disposal, then sure go ahead and stay home and enjoy President Buttigieg or whomever else will rape whats left of the US blind.
BTW, can you recommend someone who you feel WILL DO better then Trump is? I’ll certainly consider giving him my vote. You have anyone in mind?
Yeah, that was the same line of chit we all heard about Afghanistan.
Eighteen years on and nearly a trillion dollars spent and the same azzhoes who said it the population would be ecstatic to see the Taliban go are still saying that while they mumble and shuffle trying to explain away the fact that more of the Afghan population supports the Taliban now than when we showed up.
On the bright side, annual opium production there is up from about a hundred and fifty tons when we arrived to well over 6,000 tons now and the street price of heroin is so low that dealers are spicing it up with Fentanyl or stepping on it fewer times in order to compete with one another.
I hold Republicans in Congress responsible for those failures (which is just one more reason why I'm not a Republican).
But failures in the area of foreign policy are unforgivable, because Congress has hardly any role at all. In sports jargon, these are what is known as "unforced errors."
No worries. The boys will be home before Christmas. (Just which Christmas I can't tell you.)
This is so amateurish that it's pathetic.
After all that's unfolded over the last two years here in the U.S. with regard to FISA warrant abuse and domestic surveillance, it's astonishing there any Freepers left who are dumb enough to believe anything that comes out of our national security/intelligence agencies.
No wonder these quarterly fundraisers never end. It seems like most Freepers with a brain have either left or passed away.
I see the Putin puffers are out in force...lol
The same thing was said about Iraqis and Saddam, and look what resulted from that. Should the mullahs be overthrown, don’t expect to get a Jeffersonian Republic in its place.
He will have 400 miles of wall built by next year and there will be no war in Iran. Course the NeverTrumpers have to NeverTrump.
IF we get to November 2020 ...
The threat from Iran to Americans home and abroad is real, but the best way to defeat them is to diminish the value of what they suck out of the ground. Trump is doing that.
If that were our only threat to them, though, they’d dramatically accelerate their campaign of violence while they had the chance, and direct it against the “Big Satan”. Encourage the US to replace Orange Man with someone more Iran-friendly. A credible military threat would put a stop to that. That’s all I see Pompeo presenting here, not “warmongering”.
Foreign policy decisions like this (Iran) one are often difficult calls.
Because what if this is another Rhineland moment? In 1936 Hitler marched into the demilitarized Rhineland. If the Allies would have acted then, Hitler would have been toppled. And maybe then there would have been no WW II.
But for neocons like Bolton, EVERY moment is a Rhineland moment. Gotta kill a few people (or a few hundred thousand people). Gotta send a message!
Any time Bolton says “yes”, I say “no”.
Some odd stuff going on:
Iranian general defects.
Gaza launches attack on Israel.
Rocketman meets with Putin.
We go on heightened alert on Iran.
Rocketman shoots off missile.
China talks suffer a setback.
Pompeo cancels meeting with Merkel.
Looks like a show meant for the masses to consume.
No, I noticed your threat because Trump has done nothing in your books. He has done more than any President since Reagan and in many ways more against tougher opposition, but not enough for you.
It is bizarre how in about a week’s time, there has been talk of moving military assets to two oil rich nations, because we apparently want war. If any other country was as militarily involved in so many countries around the world, we would be horrified. This country went haywire at some point, long ago.
If John Bolton was mildly retarded and had no self-respect, he'd be Max Boot.
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