Posted on 07/30/2019 12:05:07 PM PDT by detective
With each passing week, the tally of Iranian provocations that feed fears that the Middle East is on the brink of war continues to grow. Iran’s firing of a middle-range missile in violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution and its seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker came after a series of other incidents, including the shooting down of an American drone and sabotage of other shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
President Donald Trump’s critics have depicted these actions as the inevitable result of his policies. Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Iran nuclear deal and the imposition of crippling sanctions on the Islamist regime has, according to his critics in the foreign policy establishment and the media, left Tehran no choice but to strike back in the hope that Western European nations and some of Trump’s more isolationist-minded supporters will persuade him to step back from the brink.
These incidents have made headlines and increased worries that the United States and its allies may be forced at some point to respond with force that could escalate the conflict in a way that neither side anticipates. But the more important storyline involving Iran may be happening in plain sight without getting the same attention. Iran’s hostile actions in the Persian Gulf are hardly surprising for the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. But while Tehran flexes its muscles, it has also been sending strong signals of a very different character to the West.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
This is a complete reversal from the previous Iranian declarations that it would never renegotiate the nuclear pact it obtained from an Obama administration.
Iran tried to get the European countries to violate the sanctions and isolate the United States. European companies did try to continue to do business with Iran. That is over.
Faced with the choice of commerce with the United States or an increasingly impoverished Iran, the Europeans have no choice but to swallow their pride and follow Trump’s lead in isolating Tehran.
Good or bad, they have to have respect. They saw Clinton, Bush and obamy as weak.
Sorry, Bush’s Shock and Awe was shockingly not so awesome.
Looks like the ploy to get Trump to attack Iran went as well as the ploy to get Trump to attack NK.
Excellent!
The sanctions are powerful, smokeless effective weapons. Iran is experiencing ruinous inflation, food shortages and social unrest. The mullahs do not have the hard currency to pay their goon squads, thugs and soldiers. They are becoming increasingly desperate as evidenced by their actions. Yet they know that if they draw first blood, many of them and their acolytes will achieve their oft stated desire for martyrdom. Trump means to prevent the survival of the mullah regime and will not allow them to acquire nuclear weapons. Trump is not Obama. There will be no pallets of cash arriving in Iran. Trump will not fire the first shot but the squeeze will continue.
Excellent.
It is always best to negotiate from strength.
As old LBJ used to say: “Trump has the Mullah’s peckers in his pocket.”
The very day Reagan was sworn in, they held the plane with our embassy hostages on the tarmac in Tehran until Carter was out of power.
Reagan, the class act that he was, assigned Carter to fly to our airbase in Germany and greet the hostages as soon as their plane was safely into international air space.
Just curious as to how many Freepers remember that detail. I was in college at the time.
The President seemed to invite them to the table, with a recent tweet, to the effect that the Iranian regime has never won a war, or lost a negotiation.
Time is on our side, because of how the President has structured the sanctions on Iran.
Sorry, Bush’s Shock and Awe was shockingly not so awesome.
The threat to Iran - caught between Iraq and Afghanistan - collapsed when they saw the support from the opposition in the U.S., and their insistence at not widening the war into Iran. When Iran found there were not only no repercussions for fighting a proxy war in Iraq, but support from the Left, that is when things collapsed.
These things are, indeed, results of Trump’s policy as will be Iran’s collapse and or willingness to meet American terms in new negotiations,requirements.
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