Israel and US hit Iran

sixandahalf

Oreo

Anyone with balls?

Oh dear, you re in serious danger of making a complete twit of yourself.

Hmm, wonder if this is classed as rude, such as using the word crap?
Have you anything actually interesting to say about Starmer?

Basgetti

Just heard that Iran launched a missile at a US base in Southern Turkey, intercepted thankfully.
Does what’s left of the Iranian leadership have a death wish or are they just mad? Turkey has the second largest armed forces in NATO, highly trained, well-equipped and a whole lot closer to Iran than the US.
Was anyone else surprised to hear about this particular incident?

Yes, I certainly was.

Oh, so the US obviously has a big enough defence budget to fight several countries at once?

A few months ago, people were saying no.
I said yes.

I looked it up today.
The US [depending on where you look]by itself, spends 37-40% of the total world military spending.

Persoanlly, I dont think many of us have much idea of quite how big and strong the US is.

It is 70% of Nato.

Scary stuff in the wrong hands.

Definitely.

The Republicans in the Senate shut down the War Powers resolution.

They own this war now.

All this bloodshed, terror and grief in order to stop some men in frocks
(because that’s what most clerics are)
from forcing women on pain of torture or execution to wear a piece of fabric on their heads in a certain way.

Extreme misogynistic religions, perverted inadequate egotists and their hypocrisy and greed.
What a combination, what a world.😞

I don't think this war is about Iranian women.

The US declared war on Saddam Hussein because of WMD, which proved to be a false claim. Now they are fighting Iran because of nuclear threat, we know they have nuclear ambitions, they have admitted they have the enriched uranium to produce them, they are a much greater threat to the West than Iraq.

Iran is a terrorist government with religious fanatics willing be martyred for the cause, do we really believe they wouldn't use nuclear weapons if it had them.

The pentagon made a very rare statement contradicting Trump last week.

Iran does not pose a nuclear threat for the foreseeable future.

Diplomacy and negotiation served both Iran and us in good stead in previous years.

That is the only answer.

War will never succeed where diplomacy does.

Churchill knew that Mr Trump!

Not only that David49 the current form of Iranian theocratic government means that Israel will be under constant attack. Sitting on the fence seems the worst option for Starmer but the UK doesn’t have the resources to fight with Israel and the USA even if it wants to.

Israel has nuclear weapons, doesn't admit to it but they do . They are also not a signatury to the Nuclear arms proliferation treaty. Perhaps that's why Iran wants a nuclear deterrent? Fwiw I'm not a supporter of this Iran regime nor frankly the current Israeli one under Netayahu.

I think there is a modern day idea that all wars are solved by negotiation, they frequently aren't, but rather by force. I would say Churchill probably knew that.

This should be a war between Israel and Iran without the wider world being involved.
Netanyahu's regime has razed Gaza to the ground and killed many thousands of the people.
Now they want to do the same to Iran and have manipulated Trump into joining them. Netanyahu looked positively gleeful when asked if he had dragged the US into his war.
History has shown us that the west being involved in middle eastern wars never end well.

Starmer isnt ‘ sitting on the fence’. He’s refusing to join America in its illegal war. That takes courage, especially when it’s clear the current Iranian regime is a risk to world peace. Not as much of a risk as the current American regime though.

Regime change in the Middle East forced by western ie American intervention has a history of making things worse. I’m in Manchester, a pro Iran demonstration took place in our city yesterday. I’m not defending the regime but inevitably, many will.

To understand Churchill’s attitude to war and peace, I have copied a piece from an article which explains his attitude.

The Sinews of Peace (speech 1946)

………… His core message was that peace could best be preserved if the western powers demonstrated sufficient unity and strength to deter aggression.

Iran already featured in the geopolitical crisis surrounding that speech. At the time, Soviet troops had failed to withdraw from northern Iran despite wartime agreements. The episode formed part of the early tensions that would harden into the cold war. Churchill therefore already viewed Iran through the lens of great-power rivalry.

That perspective had deep roots. During the second world war, Churchill had travelled to Tehran in 1943 to meet Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the first conference of the allied “big three”. The gathering took place in the capital of Iran because the country had become a crucial logistical corridor through which allied supplies flowed to the Soviet Union.

But Churchill’s thinking about Iran did not stop with cold war diplomacy. In 1953, during his second premiership, Britain and the US supported a covert operation that overthrew Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and restored the authority of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The coup was organised largely by the CIA, under the direction of Kermit Roosevelt Jr., but Churchill enthusiastically backed the plan. When Roosevelt later described the operation to him at Downing Street, the ageing prime minister reportedly declared that he would gladly have served under his command in such a venture.

That episode suggests that Churchill could certainly favour forceful action when he believed western interests were threatened. Yet it also highlights a historical irony. The overthrow of Mosaddegh became one of the central grievances invoked by Iran’s revolutionary leaders after the Iranian revolution. Since 1979, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly invoked foreign intervention – particularly the Anglo-American coup – to legitimise its rule and to portray itself as the defender of Iranian sovereignty against external domination.

In other words, the legacy of western interference in Iran has become one of the regime’s most powerful political weapons.

How might these instincts translate to the present crisis? Churchill would almost certainly have regarded Iran’s regime with deep suspicion. His cold war mindset inclined him to see international politics in terms of ideological confrontation and strategic balance. He might well have argued that weakness in the face of aggressive regimes invited further challenges.

At the same time, Churchill rarely believed that military action alone could resolve geopolitical disputes. His preferred approach was to combine firmness with diplomacy – to negotiate from strength while maintaining channels of communication with adversaries.

Trump’s invocation of Churchill therefore rests on a simplified image of the wartime leader as an instinctive advocate of military action. The historical record reveals a more complicated figure: a strategist who believed in strength, certainly, but also in diplomacy, alliances and the careful management of great-power rivalries.

If Churchill were alive today, he might indeed be urging western governments to demonstrate resolve. But he would probably also recognise that Iran’s political system has been forged in the memory of past foreign interventions – and that any new conflict would risk reinforcing the very forces it seeks to weaken.

Churchill once observed that war, once unleashed, rarely follows the tidy paths imagined by those who start it. That warning may be as relevant as any of his more famous phrases.

Richard Toye professor of modern history - Exeter.

X posted there AGA4. Here’s hoping our government holds firm and isn’t triggered into joining

Interesting things to say about KS? He's a disappointment but at least he is articulate and credible on the world stage.

I am so pleased he hasn't joined Trump's call to arms.

As an aside, I like what Sanchez has to say.

Starmer can’t join with Israel and USA as we don’t have the resources to fight.

Maremia

I don't think this war is about Iranian women.

Its not. But some are justifying the war by saying it is: and of course many hope it will be so in the diaspora:

but look what happened to women in Afghanistan. It got worse in the end.

I repeat what I said much earlier, it would be different if there was a solid opposition to take over the reigns of power, and money to rebuild a nation on a different basis.

But there are neither. If the US does a deal with the reminder of the current regime, they may have nipped their military power in the bud, but not their ideology as regards women.

Iam64

X posted there AGA4. Here’s hoping our government holds firm and isn’t triggered into joining

I hope so too. I don't want any of our brave military or any British citizens killed or injured in a war that we should not be involved in.

ronib

Starmer can’t join with Israel and USA as we don’t have the resources to fight.

That is the result of years of neglect of the military. Something the government announced soon after being elected, it would work to improve.

Lack of resource isn’t the reason the government isn’t fighting. It’s because it’s an illegal war