Trump says he bombed Iran

[FlyersFan]

Not sure what they mean by this ...

Iran threatens 'complete destruction of the regions military and economic infrastructure' if the United States continues it's military operations.

Not sure if Iran is saying that America will destroy the regions infrastructure, or that Iran will attack it's neighbors and do it.


HERE

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Wednesday threatened the “complete destruction of the region’s military and economic infrastructure.”

 
“The continued mischief and deception by the United States in the region will come at the cost of the complete destruction of the region’s military and economic infrastructure,” read a statement aired on state television, according to The Associated Press. 

 
The IRGC also alleged, without evidence, that U.S. forces are using “civilian facilities... as cover.”

[SomeStupidName]

Is it just me or should we have stuck to we don't negotiate with terrorist. The way I see it I would hope if I was being held hostage that my government would aim the nuke directly at my location. If you give a terrorist a cookie it's probably going to want milk. If you smash it with a hammer it won't come back.

[angelchemuel]

And our Government is still late to the table.
They still haven't proscribed the IRGC, unlike all our EU friends and Commonwealth countries!
We have only just summoned the Iranian Ambassador FFS! He should have been summoned last weekend when shit started hitting the fan.
Oh, and we will be sending one of our frigates to protect Cyprus...... but it wont leave our port here until the earliest next week! In the meantime the Greeks have sent 2 ships and even Macron is on manouvers heading out there with ships.
WE ARE A WORLD WIDE LAUGHING STOCK!
Angry Rainbows
Jane

[Oldcarpy2]

And our Government is still late to the table.
They still haven't proscribed the IRGC, unlike all our EU friends and Commonwealth countries!
We have only just summoned the Iranian Ambassador FFS! He should have been summoned last weekend when shit started hitting the fan.
Oh, and we will be sending one of our frigates to protect Cyprus...... but it wont leave our port here until the earliest next week! In the meantime the Greeks have sent 2 ships and even Macron is on manouvers heading out there with ships.
WE ARE A WORLD WIDE LAUGHING STOCK!
Angry Rainbows
Jane

Sadly, yes.

[Maxmars]

If we’re to use logic we’ve been at war since the hostages, it has a lot of holes in it.

One of them being the fact we sold missiles to Iran after the hostages as I noted.

The other being the US government protecting Saudi Arabia by leaving Saudi involvement out of the 9/11 commission report. Families had to sue to get some of that released, yet we still prop up their government.

Also, we have a former high up Al Qaeda leader who was arrested setting up explosives in Iraq leading Syria now. He visited the White House just a year after having his $10m bounty lifted.

These conflicts aren’t about “imminent” threats to America or Americans. We lost more troops in Iraq and to suicides after than 9/11 itself. These wars are about elitist interests, often time socialism. Socialize oil company loses and privatize the gains. We go into Venezuela because they turned back on US oil deals, so we use the military and foreign policy to make sure they’re made whole.

We’re steamrolling through our most advanced bombs and interceptors for a non peer country. We can’t replenish those stocks for years, not because of money but because of supply chain restraints. 

Iran is a problem for Israel now, but not us. We have other countries we need to be prepared for in the coming decade. Iran certainly wasn’t one, especially if we’re to believe Trump obliterated their nuclear program. They couldn’t make one in 28 years of Bibi trying to goad us into war… how in the hell would they be close starting from scratch in under one year.

The politicians are full of shit, and people just willfully trust them now because it’s their guy. In a few years, people will do the same thing they did with Bush and Obama, they’ll say they never really supported them or the wars, it was just a lesser of two evils at the time.

I referred to this as a forever war because Iran has 'always declared itself so, since at least the 1979(?)

We have adopted a social engineering posture deployed to the news cycle to shift public focus as is politically expedient... politicians are full of shit indeed.

In that time, since hostages were taken by the - generally speaking - 'regime,' we have been subject to a theatrical production of pro and con theater.

I just want it known that the world isn't a media snapshot... it is a continuum.  And we shouldn't ever pretend that in the last 50 years, we weren't the targets of their war-time angst.

I am the first to admit that war is a path we should never "have to" undertake in any ideal situation.
Their is no good will in war... the best possible outcome yields the least death and destruction... not the most.

But no party - on either side - can be forgiven for subjecting their own people to treatment even they reject.
Something is deeply broken in Iran...

And the 'currency' the Iranian leadership invokes to "manifest" as a constant irritant to every other neighbor is repugnant to most observers... even among their own community.

Of course appearances can be misleading... I make no claims of understanding much especially well.

The politician's favorite thing is to 'provide narrative context' by inserting whatever the hell they peddle...
the media amplifies that ... they call it 'reporting.' <insert scoff here.>

[Moon68]

I referred to this as a forever war because Iran has 'always declared itself so, since at least the 1979(?)

We have adopted a social engineering posture deployed to the news cycle to shift public focus as is politically expedient... politicians are full of shit indeed.

In that time, since hostages were taken by the - generally speaking - 'regime,' we have been subject to a theatrical production of pro and con theater.

I just want it known that the world isn't a media snapshot... it is a continuum.  And we shouldn't ever pretend that in the last 50 years, we weren't the targets of their war-time angst.

I am the first to admit that war is a path we should never "have to" undertake in any ideal situation.
Their is no good will in war... the best possible outcome yields the least death and destruction... not the most.

But no party - on either side - can be forgiven for subjecting their own people to treatment even they reject.
Something is deeply broken in Iran...

And the 'currency' the Iranian leadership invokes to "manifest" as a constant irritant to every other neighbor is repugnant to most observers... even among their own community.

Of course appearances can be misleading... I make no claims of understanding much especially well.

The politician's favorite thing is to 'provide narrative context' by inserting whatever the hell they peddle...
the media amplifies that ... they call it 'reporting.' <insert scoff here.>

Iran backed Hezbollah were taking Americans hostages from early 1980 until at least the fall of 1986, most times from Lebanon. That was the initial basis of what would become the Iran-Contra Affair. Every year we would trade some rockets and repair parts to Iran thru clandestine NSC operations and Hezbollah would release some hostages.

[CriticalStinker]

Iran backed Hezbollah were taking Americans hostages from early 1980 until at least the fall of 1986, most times from Lebanon. That was the initial basis of what would become the Iran-Contra Affair. Every year we would trade some rockets and repair parts to Iran thru clandestine NSC operations and Hezbollah would release some hostages.

Israel hit the USS Liberty in 1967, and had Jonathan Pollard spying in the US into the 80’s.

Several US officials also accuse Israel of passing some of that intelligence over to the USSR. There is some evidence from Israelis that corroborate this coming out since then.

We call them our greatest ally and are doing their bidding right now. People in this very thread have tried dunking on our members from the UK because they didn’t lose enough troops in the war in Afghanistan.

Yet Israel has never sent their troops for our wars, but we always have to defend them for theirs.

Take a look around. Iran’s government is and has been a very oppressive and hostile regime. But the world is a dirty and competitive space. Sometimes your “friends” are willing to harm you as long as their best interests come first. To me, that is worse than a known enemy/adversary… yet here we are doing Israel’s bidding.

The whole narrative Iran was an imminent threat is only said by the people who have to cover their asses. Look at any reports before the summer conflict and before this one, that’s not the official case. Rubio himself said we ultimately acted because we had intelligence Israel was going to.

[putnam6]

If we’ve been at war with them for 50 years, why did Reagan sell them missiles in the 80’s?

errr that was a bit of a scandal for exactly that reason dont ya know... 
 

The US has not been at formal war with Iran for 50 years (or at any point), though relations have been deeply strained since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent US embassy hostage crisis in Tehran, which lasted until early 1981. This led to severed diplomatic ties, economic sanctions, and an arms embargo against Iran. Despite that backdrop, the Reagan administration did secretly facilitate the sale of arms—including over 2,000 TOW anti-tank missiles and HAWK anti-aircraft missile parts—to Iran between 1985 and 1986 as part of what's known as the Iran-Contra affair. 
The primary motivations, based on declassified documents and investigations, were twofold:

• Securing the release of American hostages: During the mid-1980s, seven US citizens were being held captive in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a militant group with ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Reagan was personally driven to free them, viewing it as a presidential duty, even though it contradicted his public stance against negotiating with terrorists.  The arms sales were pitched by intermediaries (including Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and Israeli officials) as a way to build goodwill with supposed "moderate" elements in Iran's government, who could influence Hezbollah to release the hostages.  In practice, the deals resulted in the release of three hostages (Benjamin Weir, Lawrence Jenco, and David Jacobsen), but three more Americans were kidnapped in their place, yielding no net gain. 
  
• Funding anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua: The administration diverted profits from the overpriced arms sales (around $30 million) to support the Contras, a rebel group fighting Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government. This was illegal under the Boland Amendment, a series of Congressional laws from 1982–1984 that prohibited US government funds from being used to overthrow the Nicaraguan regime.  Key figures like National Security Council staffer Oliver North and National Security Adviser John Poindexter orchestrated this diversion through a network of private intermediaries and shell companies, bypassing oversight. 
  

Additional rationales included broader geopolitical aims, such as countering perceived Soviet influence in Iran during the Cold War and potentially opening a backchannel for improved US-Iran relations amid the ongoing Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), where Iran was desperate for weapons.  The sales were initially routed through Israel to maintain deniability, with the US replenishing Israel's stockpiles. 
The scandal broke in late 1986 via a Lebanese magazine report, leading to Congressional hearings, an independent counsel investigation, and convictions for several officials (though most were later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush).  Reagan initially denied the arms-for-hostages aspect but later admitted in a 1987 address that the initiative had "deteriorated... into trading arms for hostages," calling it a mistake that ran counter to his principles. 

[CriticalStinker]

errr that was a bit of a scandal for exactly that reason dont ya know... 
 

That AI answer didn’t show it was a scandal “for exactly that reason”

It even started off saying we haven’t been at war with them.

[Truthhurts]