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[Trekkin]

Meanwhile, Jeanine Pirro has been going on about how Trump's moving the embassy to Jersusalem is just as the prophecy foretold.

[Dunamisdeos]

She says Israeli intelligence proved that Iran was already violating the nuclear deal and developing nuclear weapons. I guess the implication is that this is why Israel blew up Iran's stuff in Syria, and that Trump is a mind wizard that osmosed the info from the Aether, thereby justifying his withdrawal from the deal.

I don't think that's a thing.

[Teneb]

She says Israeli intelligence proved that Iran was already violating the nuclear deal and developing nuclear weapons. I guess the implication is that this is why Israel blew up Iran's stuff in Syria, and that Trump is a mind wizard that osmosed the info from the Aether, thereby justifying his withdrawal from the deal.

I don't think that's a thing.

Also while the Mossad are pretty damn good at getting info, they are not exactly a trustworthy source for anyone other than the Israeli government.

And that article wants to villify Iran so hard.

[Dunamisdeos]

Ya I don't like, put it past them to find something like that out, but I am unable to find any reference to any proof to that effect, anywhere.

[scriver]

The Iran deal was such a dramatic and contentious reversal of US foreign policy that it is practically a textbook case in why the Constitution requires ratified treaties. So far as America's allies are concerned, we're back to business as usual with our credibility restored.

Most of your allies were participants in the deal. It wasn't a USA-iran only thing.

[Dunamisdeos]

France is pissed AF. But Bush Jr. told us it was cool to hate France so they don't count.

http://www.france24.com/en/20180511-iran-france-usa-europe-business-push-back-against-unacceptable-sanctions-nuclear-trump

[Trekkin]

Meanwhile on the domestic front, Michael Avenatti has tweeted photographs of Michael Cohen apparently meeting with Ahmed al-Rumaihi, head of Qatar Investments, after which al-Rumaihi would go on to brag about bribing white house officials. The photos are apparently from the C-SPAN Trump Tower lobby video, and were accompanied by an invitation for "various parties" to "keep pushing [them] #consequences" .

Not a good look for anyone involved, really.

[Shazbot]

First, lifting the sanctions and giving Iran "its own money back" is how they gain access to foreign currency, euros and dollars, that have the international value needed for arms purchases. Their foreign assets were frozen and financial transfers sanctioned to prevent money laundering. Their oil exports are turned into arms imports and foreign funding. Nobody wants the Iranian rial, everyone wants the petrodollar.

All this talk of military spending relative to GDP being the defining characteristic of this arms race is absolutely beside the point. A conventional arms race, say battleship construction in the lead-up to WWI, might be measurable in such a sense. But Iran is distinctively not engaged in a conventional arms race. They do not need F-16's to strike deep into Israeli territory to bomb precise targets and minimize collateral damage for the sake of foreign press. They give proxies the plans to make short-range rockets out of stove pipes and propane tanks with hacksaws and TIG welders, then they buy S-300 SAMs with their oil money to protect their nuclear reactors of plutonium breeding peace.

For example. I had an IDF buddy inform me of over two dozen Iranian copies of the Kornet laser-guided anti-tank missile being fired at his tank company from a mosque in Gaza (said mosque lost a minaret at the 26th missile). These are heavy, crew-served ATGMs similar to the American TOW system you may be familiar with. One hit is enough to kill a tank.

A Merkava IV costs 3.5 million. A Kornet launcher and ten missiles is 0.8 million. Were it not for the TROPHY system ( 0.3 million, which was damaged on the 26th missile ) Israel could have been out fifteen to thirty million dollars for less than a million in Iranian-supplied arms, plus the immeasurable loss in human capital to Israel. A reservist with a day job as a mechatronic engineer's death impacts Israel significantly more than the five thousand dollars a formerly-unemployed Palestinian martyr earns his family.

https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing-middle-east.asp

That said, the assertion they are somehow weaker than Israel and Saudi Arabia is not shared in circles which look beyond the budget alone. Iran fought against Iraq as quantity versus quality, right down to child minesweeping. The nation has a far higher pain threshold than Israel and perhaps Saudi Arabia insofar as casualties are concerned.

Oh, and Saudi Arabia is now allowing Israel-bound airliners to use their airspace. First time in seventy years. But they're in an active arms race and totally not uniting against Iran, right?

Iran is threatening to release the lists of Westerners bribed to bring about the Iran deal. Oh no. Please. Don't do that.

The American embassy moving to Jerusalem is causing a mass... jubilee.

I haven't seen them this happy in fifty years.

Very obscure pun there. Ten points if you spot it.

Oh, and speaking of Avenatti! You know he got $8 million dollars just before taking on Stormy's case from... well, somebody unimportant, I'm sure.

[Dunamisdeos]

I know Orthodox Jewish things! I get it! 10 points to House Llamador.

Iran is threatening to release the lists of Westerners bribed to bring about the Iran deal. Oh no. Please. Don't do that.

I feel like at this point that's something they could sell us if they wanted. That's like "clean your room, or I'll buy you a cheeseburger"

[Trekkin]

The American embassy moving to Jerusalem is causing a mass... jubilee.

And the 2200 Palestinians injured by tear gas and live gunfire (not to mention the 52 dead) were...what? Celebrating too exuberantly?

[Shazbot]

The American embassy moving to Jerusalem is causing a mass... jubilee.

And the 2200 Palestinians injured by tear gas and live gunfire (not to mention the 52 dead) were...what? Celebrating too exuberantly?

Well, they were attempting to break into Israel to kill people, although combining the injuries from tear gas with those from gunfire (rubber bullets can be called gunfire too guys! Did you also pad the number with that) is a bit disingenuous. It is also important to remember what they're up to. They are throwing molotov cocktails at soldiers, lighting kites on fire and releasing them over the fence to try and start brush fires, and generally demonstrating which is the civilized side of the border.

Some Jews were arrested for praying on the Temple Mount by Israeli authorities. They play by the rules and all.

And I completely agree, Dunamisdeos. Although we can't pay with dollars, those come back to the world economy a little dirty, as I've detailed.

[Dorsidwarf]

I mean, a rubber bullet can easily kill you. Theyre less-than-lethal weapons (IE the main goal isnt to kill you), not "oof ouch my little bruise". 2400 injuries doesnt become less injuries if some of the bullets breaking peoples shoulders weren't lead

[Reelya]

They give proxies the plans to make short-range rockets out of stove pipes and propane tanks with hacksaws and TIG welders,

Bro, that shits on the internet, and it's WWII-era tech. Iran doesn't need to be an evil mastermind for old-tech home-made rockets. They regular concoct more advanced devices on the Mythbusters TV show and similar.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

To suggest Iran is behind plans for "stove pipe / propane tank" improvised weapons is to suggest there's a lab in Iran somewhere where they ship random junk so that the engineers can devise plans for turning the junk into weapons, and that this lab specifically restricts itself to only using tools available to Tim The Tool Man Taylor. The whole idea is basically preposterous. People with junk locally work out how to turn it into stuff, there are no "junk labs" in the seats of power. Such a lab would literally be the set of "Mythbusters" except minus the cameras, and there isn't a single thing that that lab could create that couldn't be created by the dudes on Mythbusters. How to make a rocket from a stove pipe and a propane tank isn't secret enough to need special plans.

People in e.g. Lebanon or Gaza don't need Iran to tell them how to make home-made weapons, it's been going on there for decades. It's just a convenient kludge to claim that Iran is behind all locally homemade weapons, the same as how they kept claiming the soviets were behind the union movement in the USA.

* The narrative is actually more revealing if you think a little: they're focusing on locally home-made rockets then claiming Iran is behind the "design" purely because there is no actual evidence of Iranian technology in the rockets. It's confirmation bias and sort of like a "god of the gaps" argument - we're just going to assume Iran is responsible for insurgent rocket attacks in Gaza, Lebanon etc, and when it's been pointed out that none of the materials or tools used had any connection to Iran, we'll go "oh well Iran is 'clearly' responsible for anything that we haven't accounted for yet - e.g. the design". e.g. classic "god of the gaps" logic. e.g. the assumption is that Iran's responsible, and when available physical evidence contradicts that, we don't change the theory, we just assign any remaining unknowns as being the "proof". e.g. when the propane tank and stovepipe and firing mechanisms all turn out to be locally available junk, then we go "ah, but maybe an Iranian told them how to connect them". That's a big "maybe" and it's circular reasoning, since the thing we claim we're trying to prove is Iranian involvement.

 That's what you can glean from the focus on "design" for stove-pipe bombs/rockets. However, that would necessarily imply that there would be some place in Iran which focuses on building, firing and testing stovepipe / propane tank rockets and is only allowed to use improv. tools you'd find in your average garage. Which is a place that basically doesn't exist. What the rockets are, are locally-constructed rockets made from locally available materials, with locally available tools, based on pretty low-tech stuff. Where's the smoking gun that this has anything to do with Iran, especially when "home-made rockets" in general are something that predate Iran's involvement - or even existence - by decades? Look at domestic terrorists such as the Oklahoma Bomber or similar: guy builds a massive carbomb and takes out a government building. That guy didn't need any "plans" from a secret overseas government agency, he just used information from the local library and perhaps the internet. And 20 years later, that information is easier to get now.

[Dunamisdeos]

2200 injuries in the course of trying to actively murder people is kind of completely different from 2200 injuries just because, like, Trump, you guys.

I feel like that's not 2200 people who were going to live peaceful, coexistant lives with their families and neighbors and pet Molotovs they apparently had lying around for barbecues, i guess, until Trump recognized Jerusalem and they decided to throw em' at some Jews.

[Teneb]

Also totally doesn't have anything to do with having a massive population being forced to live in poverty on a territory too small for their numbers, denied basic resources by people who are now occupying their former land because some foreign power said so.

Trump recognizing Jerusalem is the US pretty much stopping to even pretend that they give a shit about the palestines.