Posted on 10/23/2012 9:22:01 AM PDT by Uncle Slayton
Mitt Romney is not particularly new to gaffes but when it comes to one about the relationship between Syria and Iran, he has shown extraordinary courage in repeating it at least six times just in the past year.
During last night's foreign policy debate, Romney said: "Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Don’t they speak Syrian in Syria?
“In case you haven’t noticed, Irans and Iraq haven’t been on speaking terms for 30 years. “
In case you haven’t noticed, Saddam Hussein was in charge of Iraq for most of that time and even started a war in the 80’s. Iran and Iraq are much closer now.
“Iran is going to build a natural gas pipeline through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean Sea so gas can be sold to Europe. “
Well, there we go.
He’s channeling Xenophon:
Thalassa! Thalassa!
Iran has a long coastline along the “Persian” Gulf and the Arabian Sea. However, access to the Mediterrean is problematic, and the logistical difficulties substantial. The eastern Mediterrean gives them access to Israel.
Obviously he meant the Mediterranean.
Indeed. Many lefties say that Bush’s elimination of the Hussein regime has given Iran considerable control over Iraq.
Another post explains it. This is from another poster named WhiskeyX:
Romney was speaking in the context of the debate topic on foreign policy and the sanctions restricting the finances and trade of Iran. Although Iran is indeed located on the seacoast of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, the international trade sanctions have restricted and impeded its ability to transport armaments and other goods through its own seaports. To defeat these trade sanctions, Iran has resorted to using its air transportation to transport goods through an air corridor in Iraqi airspace into Syria and its seaports, such as Latakia.
Iran flies through Iraqi airspace to Syria for what that is worth.
What Mitt referred to was Iran's inability to use its own seaports due to international sanctions. This necessitates Iran flying exports via an air route through Iraq to Syrian seaports like Tartous, Borj Islam and Lattakia.
This is the remarkable detail of which Romney is clearly aware, and which his detractors are lying about by not mentioning, the despicable filth.
;-\
Anyone who calls THAT a gaffe is ignorant of modern (1970+) Middle East history and politics ...or lying
Mitt is right on about Syria being Iran’s route to the Sea- the Mediterranean Sea
Iran among all OPEC supplied the penniless Syrian dictator al Assad with oil for the past 30 years in return for Syria’s loyal (well, rented) support of Iran during contentious OPEC relationships during the Iran-Iraq war
In the 90’s Syria provided Iran with access to its airfields and an airbridge bridge into southern Europe when Tehran began sending a flood of arms and Iranian Rev Guard “advisors” to muslims fighting the Serbs...an action that spurred Bubba Clinton and NATO to intervene in the Balkans to prevent a muslim radicalization of the Kosovars and an Iranian presence in strategic southeastern Europe.
Syria now provides Iran with access to send weapons and advisors to help Syrian and Lebanon based terror groups targeting Israel. Although the Syrian civil war has temporarily diverted the Assad regimes ability to project itself abroad.
So, for decades, Iran’s buddying up to the penniless Syria, which had nothing to offer Tehran except its geography and political support, has kept Iran a player in the so-called “Palestinian” struggle and also kept Lebanon and Iraq (and to a lesser extent Turkey Jordan and Israel) off balance and forcrd to consider Iran’s interests in the Levant.
Iran and Syria have long had a strategic geopolitical alliance (also bolstered by their military relationship with Russia) that Mitt has recognized, and which complicates current options for the US to intervene in the Syrian civil war....making obama’s clumsy back-channel gun running through Libya (if that is what triggered benghazi) a very dangerous affair
The fact anyone ridiculed Mitt Romney’s statement ..... means they need to get out and read a little more.
They can dislike Romney, but would it be too much to ask if they at least find an honest objection?
Yeah, Iran has shown such respect for Iraq’s borders.
I forgot about Iran using Syria to evade sanctions
Good point- thanks
No, Romney was extremely accurate from a recent (30+ years) geopolitical perspective
and then there is this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9092853/Iranian-naval-ships-dock-in-Syria.html
If you re-establish order in Syria, Iranian planes have no allied airports to land planes. Iran could fly over an ever-increasingly chaotic Iraq, but the major point is, confine Iran so that it has pretty much nowhere to go.
Thanks, if that’s the case, then Romney has really been up to date on the news.
Iran, which can’t export things directly because of sanctions, is circumventing the sanctions by smuggling things, mostly by air, across Iraq and into Syria, where they are loaded in Syrian ports.
This was a foreign policy debate, and about Iran and the sanctions. Romney was accurately stating how Syria is helping Iran get around the sanctions, and how the Obama administration isn’t effectively controlling this.
My concern here is where there may also be influences from the Russians or Chinese, but Obama thinking that being suspicious of the Russians is so 1950s or 1980s, isn’t willing to do!
Retards. What would they say to the statment: “All roads lead to Rome.”
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