Posted on 10/17/2017 6:39:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
With his declaration Friday that the Iran nuclear deal is not in the national interest, President Donald Trump may have put us on the road to war with Iran.
Indeed, it is easier to see the collisions that are coming than to see how we get off this road before the shooting starts.
After "de-certifying" the nuclear agreement, signed by all five permanent members of the Security Council, Trump gave Congress 60 days to reimpose the sanctions that it lifted when Teheran signed.
If Congress does not reimpose those sanctions and kill the deal, Trump threatens to kill it himself.
Why? Did Iran violate the terms of the agreement? Almost no one argues that -- not the UN nuclear inspectors, not our NATO allies, not even Trump's national security team.
Iran shipped all its 20 percent enriched uranium out of the country, shut down most of its centrifuges, and allowed intrusive inspections of all nuclear facilities. Even before the deal, 17 U.S. intelligence agencies said they could find no evidence of an Iranian nuclear bomb program.
Indeed, if Iran wanted a bomb, Iran would have had a bomb.
She remains a non-nuclear-weapons state for a simple reason: Iran's vital national interests dictate that she remain so.
As the largest Shiite nation with 80 million people, among the most advanced in the Mideast, Iran is predestined to become the preeminent power in the Persian Gulf. But on one condition: She avoid the great war with the United States that Saddam Hussein failed to avoid.
Iran shut down any bomb program it had because it does not want to share Iraq's fate of being smashed and broken apart into Persians, Azeris, Arabs, Kurds and Baluch, as Iraq was broken apart by the Americans into Sunni, Shiite, Turkmen, Yazidis and Kurds.
Tehran does not want war with us. It is the War Party in Washington and its Middle East allies -- Bibi Netanyahu and the Saudi royals -- who hunger to have the United States come over and smash Iran.
Thus, the Congressional battle to kill, or not to kill, the Iran nuclear deal shapes up as decisive in the Trump presidency.
Yet, even earlier collisions with Iran may be at hand.
In Syria's east, U.S.-backed and Kurd-led Syrian Democratic Forces are about to take Raqqa. But as we are annihilating ISIS in its capital, the Syrian army is driving to capture Deir Ezzor, capital of the province that sits astride the road from Baghdad to Damascus.
Its capture by Bashar Assad's army would ensure that the road from Baghdad to Damascus to Hezbollah in Lebanon remains open.
If the U.S. intends to use the SDF to seize the border area, we could find ourselves in a battle with the Syrian army, Shiite militia, the Iranians, and perhaps even the Russians.
Are we up for that?
In Iraq, the national army is moving on oil-rich Kirkuk province and its capital city. The Kurds captured Kirkuk after the Iraqi army fled from the ISIS invasion. Why is a U.S.-trained Iraqi army moving against a U.S.-trained Kurdish army?
The Kurdistan Regional Government voted last month to secede. This raised alarms in Turkey and Iran, as well as Baghdad. An independent Kurdistan could serve as a magnet to Kurds in both those countries.
Baghdad's army is moving on Kirkuk to prevent its amputation from Iraq in any civil war of secession by the Kurds.
Where does Iran stand in all of this?
In the war against ISIS, they were de facto allies. For ISIS, like al-Qaida, is Sunni and hates Shiites as much as it hates Christians. But if the U.S. intends to use the SDF to capture the Iraqi-Syrian border, Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia could all be aligned against us.
Are we ready for such a clash?
We Americans are coming face to face with some new realities.
The people who are going to decide the future of the Middle East are the people who live there. And among these people, the future will be determined by those most willing to fight, bleed and die for years and in considerable numbers to realize that future.
We Americans, however, are not going to send another army to occupy another country, as we did Kuwait in 1991, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003.
Bashar Assad, his army and air force backed by Vladimir Putin's air power, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, and Hezbollah won the Syrian civil war because they were more willing to fight and die to win it. And, truth be told, all had far larger stakes there than did we.
We do not live there. Few Americans are aware of what is going on there. Even fewer care.
Our erstwhile allies in the Middle East naturally want us to fight their 21st-century wars, as the Brits got us to help fight their 20th-century wars.
But Donald Trump was not elected to do that. Or so at least some of us thought.
I wonder.
Since we hold all the cards... do we just need to enforce the existing sanctions and initiate more?
No need for fighting... unless THEY provoke
I have been wondering my whole life why we haven’t leveled that God forsaken country!
Wasn’t it always? /rhetorical
We owe them a punch in the nose for what happened in 79’. Trump knows it and will make them pay.
We can only keep it under the rug for so long, sadly enough.
Iran shipped all its 20 percent enriched uranium out of the country, shut down most of its centrifuges, and allowed intrusive inspections of all nuclear facilities. Even before the deal, 17 U.S. intelligence agencies said they could find no evidence of an Iranian nuclear bomb program.
War with Iran was always inevitable. Anybody who ever believed otherwise was only fooling themselves.
I used to like Buchanan.
But he has become an isolationist that thinks it is in our best interest to ignore everything else on the planet, no matter how much they threaten us, call for our destruction, and plot against us.
Iran has been fighting a proxy war with us for nearly 30 years, and has constantly been calling for our destruction the entire time.
But Pat thinks it perfectly OK to allow them to dominate the region and export war and destruction all over the globe.
I’m sorry, maybe my memory is foggy. Who bombed our Marines in Beirut? Who took our embassy personnel hostage? Who was behind the bombing of the Khobar Towers? Who recently seized our sailors in the Persian Gulf? Who actively supports terrorism around the world?
War with Iran?!?! They are certainly at war with us. But hey, Pat Buchanan doesn’t think so.
Why don’t we just surrender? That’s what obozo would do. Send them some more cash and appease them for a while. It has worked so well with North Korea over the years.
Because the day we do there will be no longer any effective local counterweight to a Sunni hegemony and a likely militant expansionist caliphate.
They've done mean actions against us for sure, but we aren't without sin either in this relationship.
Provide the means for the freedom loving people in Iran to topple the evil Mullah Islamic regime in Iran.
Ronald Reagan only provided air support to topple Marcos in the Philippines.
Give them air support and logistics support.
didn’t begin in 1979?
Donald Trump was elected president because Americans are tired of this sh!t. The proof of it is that Yeb Bush was the GOP front-runner in 2016 and turned out to be less popular than Osama bin Laden among Republican voters.
A bunch of BS. We have been at war with Iran since the Islamic revolution. We just ignored it.
Iran is using Venezuela’s narco/terrorist government to utilize cartel drug routes into the US. Drugs, weapons, human traffic and terrorists have been streaming accross the border for years.
Guns used for “Fast and Furious” have been found in terrorist attacks in Europe.
I can’t believe there are people on this thread appoligizing for thier behaviour.
Let me add, we didn’t lose on Syria or Kurdistan. Actually, the GCC won, with our backing.
The paradigm has shifted. We are no longer taking the lead in these conflicts. We now work with our allies to help them solve thier own problems. Then we leave.
The Iran problem will be solved by middle east states. We will be there to help them. The same will happen with North Korea btw.
Problem is elect another Obama and the sanctions go unenforced or even reversed. Frankly Iran is a side region of Russia-China axis of evil which I do not care much if they have a nuke because Russia and China already have thousands of them. What is needed is to make a point of stationing small nuke rockets in Kuwait and fck the whole lot them with it until they withdraw Iran for inspections.
It seems we have not learned from the success of Cuban crisis.
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