I was hoping it would. This is what I voted for:
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.
Baloney. Bolton exposed himself as a Sunni Muslim propagandist back in the 1990s when he became a public cheerleader for the U.S. military campaign against Serbia on behalf of the radical Islamic insurgents in Kosovo.
Bolton has spent most of his career working at Beltway swamp think tanks. If you want to know what he "understands," just find out which corporate interests and foreign governments provide the funding for those political propaganda machines that employed him.
In his inimitable and typical fashion, Obama took a bad situation and made it worse.
I'm usually honored to have a "scarlet letter" on these issues. I still wear the anti-GWB one I got in the mid-2000s with great pride.
That dope still has a few apologists left here on FR, but I had him pegged as a globalist sh!t-bag 15+ years ago.
Are you talking about me?
I know NOW that Al Gore would have been better and we could have had a solid, unified Muslim Caliphate that stretched from Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, & eastward through Indonesia./S
Obama almost pulled that scenario off without whimper from the Rinos.
Iran is a terrorist state. We need to sanction the chit out of them unless the world wants them to get nukes.
Thank God that I don’t have to count on you wishy-washy Freepers. You run and hide at the first sign of conflict. You are not Trump supporters you are Trump baggage. Stay home please.
Aint that the truth! I know an Iranian here and he’s shown me pictures of how they party in western clothes with western music and alcohol when behind closed doors.
Syria should show you the difference between Trump and Obunghole etal.
Dear AC
Congress has hardly any role at all ???
Just that thing called ‘power of the purse’
You list 3 things undone that will make you help the socialists by staying home and then concede Trump not to blame for 2 of them.....??
I wonder what the current administration’s reaction to Benghazi would have been?
Pat Buchanan is another American who has refused to acknowledged that Iran DECLARED WAR on the United States when it seized our embassy on Nov 4, 1979 and it did NOT END when the hostages were released on Jan 20, 1981, after President Reagan was inaugurated. We have been at war with them, at least in their eyes since the seizure of our embassy. John Bolton is one of the few in government who understand that.
I think Trump is doing as best he can with the Afghan and Middle East security conundrums left by his two immediate predecessors.
I think Russia has demonstrated what happens when the U.S. creates a power vacuum in events in the region - someone, or multiple bad actors will step in.
It is a myth the Soviets propagated into the American Left (and which the American Left successfully sold all over American society) that the world’s conflicts only arise in the presence of the U.S. as a super power, and if the U.S. would just go away, the conflicts would cease and there would be no bad actors to worry about.
The mullahs of Tehran are not bad actors in the region because of any past U.S.-Iran relations. They hijacked any true “nationalism” that came from that and subverted everything to their Shia Muslim, messianic, theocratic mission to dominate the Muslims of the Middle East. That is written into their “revolutionary” DNA as they so plainly and constantly admit. They declared war on the U.S. from the start and their rallies and speeches continue to preach “death to the U.S.”.
Wars are usually AVOIDED when truly weaker opponents observe that a stronger adversary is willing to take any action it thinks necessary. Trump is not behaving recklessly, He is demonstrating to the Mullahs in Tehran that it is in their interest that they should not behave recklessly. Already we know they are. It is clear that recent events in Gaza were precipitated by an Iran-allied group in Gaza breaking a peace the other groups had agreed to while negotiations on that peace were ongoing in Egypt. Once Israel had to respond, Hamas felt compelled to join the fray, and then came the many different missiles supplied to them by - IRAN.
And what does “Persian” & Shia Muslim Iran have to do with the contest between Israel and the Sunni Muslims of Gaza and the West Bank? For the Shia Muslim mullahs of Tehran it is a venue they are inserting themselves into in a play to win over Sunni Muslims in the region - a religious play trying to say: See we Shia Muslims leaders are truly representing Islam’s interests (in retaking all of “Palestine”) more than your Sunni leaders. For the mullahs of Tehran it is war for their religion’s sake. THAT is a war the Sunni of the region - particularly Egypt, Jordan and recently Saudi Arabia have tired of. Egypt and Jordan have peace treaties with Israel and Saudi Arabia and Israel’s ties have grown closer.
Trump is sending signals. Not provoking conflict.
I was hoping it would. This is what I voted for:
Please read what I said again before posting this nonsense. I said no such thing.
We are all in awe of your principles.
Why, thank you. :-)
The US , through economic sanctions pretty much goaded Japan to attack Pearl Harbor.
We applied trade sanctions on raw materials and talked Allies to cut off oil and other material from SE Asia and the East Indies.
Just sayin’.
At the same time I don’t think we want to respect the Persian Gulf as a “no go zone”.
It works better if the President has a bulldog on a leash while negotiating. Think about it.
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