Yesterday, Trump assassinated Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s military leader.
Ironically, Soleimani was on a peace mission in Iraq invited by the Iraq prime minister.
Following the assassination near the Baghdad airport, the Iraqi Parliament Voted unanimously to Expel U.S. Troops.
Iraq’s parliament voted Sunday to expel U.S. troops from the country, after the killing of an Iranian general put the country at the centre of an escalating conflict between its two key allies.
The nonbinding resolution urges Prime Minister Adel-Abdul Mahdi to rescind the invitation for U.S. forces that Iraq called upon for help after Islamic State overran around one third of the country in 2014.
Lawmakers during and after the session chanted: “Out, out, occupier! No, no to America! No, no to Israel!”
In his address to parliament on Sunday, Mr. Abdul-Mahdi said he had been due to meet Gen. Soleimani at 8:30 a.m. on the morning he was killed as he left Baghdad International airport. Mr. Abdul-Mahdi said Gen. Soleimani was carrying Iran’s response to a message Iraq had conveyed on behalf of Saudi Arabia aimed at easing tensions between the two countries in the region.
Nonbinding Request
The request is allegedly nonbinding because the US installed a puppet government in Iraq with certain conditions pre-attached.
Trump Beats the War Drums
After illegally assassinating Soleimani , while on a peace mission no less, President Trump renewed threats to hit back at Iran “VERY FAST AND VERY HARD” in the event of further strikes targeting Americans or U.S. assets.
Warmonger fools like senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) piled on, pressuring Trump to ‘Crush Iranian Economy’ By Targeting Oil Refineries After Assassination
Hey, let’s carry out an illegal assassination and then for good measure, in an undeclared war, follow up by blasting Iranian oil refineries.
Left Wing “Liberal Media” Cheers War and Assassinations
As I noted yesterday, the Left Wing “Liberal Media” Cheers War and Assassinations.
The list includes CNN, NBC, the WSJ, CNBC, and USA Today.
Iran to Scrap Nuclear Agreement
In response to the above events, Iran Shifts on a Landmark Nuclear Deal. Tehran said in a statement that its nuclear program would “have no limitations” on enriching uranium.
The statement said: “The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuges. Therefore Iran’s nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion.”
But the government said Iran would continue its cooperation with International Atomic Agency and return to the nuclear deal if the sanctions against it were removed and Iran’s interests were guaranteed.
The nuclear agreement had ended many economic sanctions on Iran in return for its verifiable pledge to use nuclear power peacefully. The European parties to the deal, including Britain, France and Germany, had struggled to preserve the agreement amid rising tensions between Washington and Tehran.
Iran’s statement Sunday did not include details about its enrichment ambitions. And the country did not say it was expelling the inspectors who monitor its nuclear program.
Huge Crowds Protest Assassination
It was difficult task but Trump managed to unite nearly all of Iran against the US.
Well done, mr. president.
Why does Iran Want Nukes?
Please ask yourself: Why might Iran want nukes?
No doubt some of you will conclude to attack Israel, but the real answer is to protect itself from US aggression.
Iran and North Korea can both see what the US did to Iraq. Only by having a credible threat can Iran protect itself from the likes of Trump.
Addendum – Not Just Trump
Bush, Cheney, Obama, Hillary, and Trump all have made serious major mistakes in the region.
Addendum Two – Every Reason to Hate the US
A friend replied …
I read an article by an Israeli defense analyst several months ago who said that Iran would be stupid not to develop nuclear weapons. We knocked their government over before and put in place a puppet who abided by US oil interests. This started a chain of events including the hostage crisis in 1979.
The past two US administrations have sent this message to the world: Give up nuclear weapons and actively help identify those who are passing along nuclear secrets.
Libya did that and its leader was killed. ISIS and Al Qaeda now run the country. Lovely.
Be a proliferator like Pakistan and you are an ally. Develop nuclear weapons and missiles and threaten to fire them on Japan and the United States and the president is in love with you.
Addendum 3
Most Pertinent Thought of the Day
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Sure enough (see my post below) Trump seizes the opportunity to get the hell out of there:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-army-tells-iraq-it-preparing-move-out
This is wonderful! Iraq wants US troops to leave, so now Trump can over-rule the swamp warmongers and bring the boys home. I’m all for letting the muslims fight each other without the US being involved.
TIME TO WAKE-UP
The question is not if Iran want or does not want nukes, because they already have a small number of nukes ready to test. Mossad know that. The technological progress in IRAN have been exponential since the war with Irak. They now produce themselves all their arms (some are quite sophisticated like their 2000 km range precision guided missiles) and munitions.
The centrifugal devices have not stop running for 15 years now and already in 2013 the Atomic agency Controllers found evidence of past test bearing on the special explosives devices triggering the nuclear bombs explosion.
All what Trump, their allies (Israel, Saudis) and the US foreign politic promoters (industrial-armement deep-state billionaires)
are doing now is to prepare and justify to the world a severe bombing of Iran in order to annihilate their modern military assets especially the ones hidden underground.
You must understand that the game is very dangerous. if they declare their real intentions and Iran believe they will do it, within a few hours the least would be that all Sunni crude oil refineries and fields in the Gulf could be destroyed by Iran ( The “Houtis drones” attack on Saudi facilities were a starter) That would be a preemptive revenge from Iran in such case as their quite sophisticated missiles would be lost anyway.
Technology always moves forward. What was hard yesterday is easier today. Some technologies progress faster than others during certain periods, but eventually Congolese militias will shot at each other from African engineered Teslas on Mars.
Clinging to a world where only some people; exactly whom always to be determined by some half literate, self promoting Dear Leader of course; should be “allowed” to have fire, or cell phones, or nukes, or soda machines, only serve to aggrandize the above Dear Leaders and the leechocracies closest to them. At the expense of everyone else, Iranians as well as Americans.
Instead, the questions which need to be solved, by each individual, is: How do I best make arrangements for a world which is always progressing, where other people, like myself, will be availing themselves of stuff they don’t have today, whether that is CO2 emitting SUVs or ever fancier weaponry. And all of it without violating anyone’s God given individual freedom to do as he sees fit, unless he, personally and obviously, poses a clear, present and non ambiguous direct threat to someone else.
My prediction of a nuclear conflict in north Africa or the middle east in the 2020s will come true. Some country is going to get wiped off the planet. My guess is Libya.
Why Libya? That country barely exists now.
Exactly. North Africa is geographically important because of access to the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Russia, China, Iran, Turkey and the west all have strategic reasons for expansionism into north Africa. Yesterday Turkey said they deploy forces to Libya.
Just one quick question for those that are defending Trump here, what would you have said and done if it was 2012 and Obama did the same thing? Sorry. What was I thinking, you could never be honest about that could you?
Iran is evil and their general got exactly what he deserved, but the legality of the killing and the consequences to follow make me ask was it worth it?
I don’t recall any criticism when he took out Bin Laden, even though it upset Pakistan quite a lot when US Forces conducted an unauthorized operation on Pakistani soil.
Bin Laden was an individual international criminal, and wanted person in every nation including Pakistan. Nobody outside the jihadist Islamic world defended what he did and recognized the legitimacy of his neutralization.
Only a Trump fanatic with no brain could try to make the comparison between him and Soleimani.
It is very hard to say that the guy did not have it coming because he did, but the difference is that Soleimani did not kill thousands of people on US soil, he has not been tried for crimes, and the result of killing bin Laden were never risking world war and economic upheaval. And, what Obama did to bin Laden was both proportional and LEGAL. He had the international authority to do it as well as congress’s specific approval for it. Trump did not.
Since I have never supported Trump, and didn’t vote for him, your reply is inherently false. In fact, the last Republican that I voted for for President was Nixon. Your post only serves one purpose, to accentuate that hate fills the debate at both ends of the spectrum, and that reasoned discussion has been lost in the process. I will add that while I think Trump is a detestable human being, he’s done a far better job as President than I expected, though I didn’t have very high expectations.
How would we respond to Obama acting similarly?
Good question.
I don’t recall widespread condemnation when Obama+Hilary took down Libya.
Soleimani led Iran’s projection of force, mostly via proxies, to the rest of the world. So much so for peace mission.
That said, I’m curious about the logic leading to killing Soleimani at this point. One can surmise it is in retaliation of the attack on the Saudi oil installations or the attack on US interests in Iraq.
It is believable that Soleimani attacked US interest for many years. Suppose it is believable, then why now?
Given that the US Public School system made a conscious choice to omit the teaching of history between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Crusades, it is not surprising that Americans in general are unable to fathom the historical context for what we are seeing. Few people I have ever met can even tell me one thing that happened during that time period.
Ali Arouzi@aliarouzi
At Solemani’s funeral procession in Mashad one of the organisers called on all Iranian to donate $1 each in order to gather an $80million bounty on President Trumps head.
Jan 5, 2020
https://twitter.com/aliarouzi/status/1213789412653457408
“but the real answer is to protect itself from US aggression.”
Iran can’t be as big of a regional bully as they want to be without nukes. Tehran is a true aggressor which doesn’t respect the individual rights of its own citizens, let alone its neighbors. Kind of like Saddam’s government. Whether or not you think the US should have gone into Iraq, or anywhere else in the middle east (I do not), “aggression” is not the right word for smashing a despotic regime. That is NY Times-speak.
Would “genocide” do ? You are aware of the true civilian casualty figures in the various countries that have had their “despotic regimes smashed” I assume. Those figures are created by comparing existing reality to how it “would have been under the despots had conditions remained the same”, but obviously as they were despots they were hiding much worse plans, and so “we are the saviours” ?
I was only referring to the Iraq war, because that was Mish’s principal example of US aggression. Btw, Saddam had the blood of one million souls on his hands just from his war with Iran. US actions do not compare in quality nor magnitude. I am not saying the US has not committed atrocities. But “genocide” is exaggeration.
“Aggression” is exactly the right word for every single piece of state N’s military personnel, material or operation existing outside Ns national border. Just as “entangling alliance” is the right word for every “deal” or other arrangement between N and a foreign entity.
I think using a country’s borders as the standard for whether or not its military is overextended is silly. The libertarian notion that no military action is legitimate until after an attack on one’s soil is impractical because it would turn a blind eye to any build-up of military capabilities and intent of enemies.
I think the correct standard for military action is the same as the correct standard for all government actions: the defense of the life, liberty, and property of the country’s citizens. This may entail defusing imminent threats — the identification of which is a technical, practical problem.
Don’t forget what we did to Libya after Qaddafi decided to comply with US demands. The country went from model nation to the trash heap. Kim Jong Eun is smart not to give up his nukes. He doesn’t want to be ass raped & murdered by the US figuratively & literally like Qaddafi.
Look, it’s like this….If I live in a neighborhood where the guy down the street (the US) constantly bullies everyone around because he has guns. Why in the hell wouldn’t I do everything in my power to get a gun. Now imagine the bully tries to tell everyone else that they cant have a gun. Iran has every right to retaliate against this assassination.
History bears witness that Iraq throwing the US out of their country is equivalent of a homeowner throwing a serial killer out of his household. We need Putin back in the area to keep the peace but the last time he intevened in Syria, they could only stay for 4 months. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/01/04/putins-hour-is-at-hand/
We have no intention of leaving Iraq, so we’re going to either ignore this vote or come up with an excuse (a lie, possibly a false flag) for staying. All of the Q-tards crowing about 4D chess will be sorely disappointed very soon.
Trump has gone full neocon after resisting overtures to attack Iran for a few years. The reason why this happened isn’t important at the moment. For now, people need to realize the gravity of this situation and acknowledge that there will be war with Iran, plus major escalation in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
Trump voters should be extremely reluctant to support this war. After all, if this is what they wanted, why didn’t they choose Jeb or Rubio (or Hillary) in 2016? They could have had war with Iran years ago!
“General Qassem Suleimani posed a threat to all our interests and was responsible for a pattern of disruptive, destabilising behaviour in the region.
Given the leading role he has played in actions that have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and western personnel, we will not lament his death” Johnson
Which sort of avoids addressing the legitimacy of the US action, but also witholds any clear commitment to it.
Quite. So one of Mr Trumps closest allies won’t clearly support him. Which makes it a very clear statement.
The Guy Who Wants To Bring Back The Draft https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/political-confessional-the-guy-who-wants-to-bring-back-the-draft/
Nice strawman there Irondoor.
No one believes “Soleimani always was a man of peace”
And the fact is Iran has every reason to despise the US, and only idiots fail to see it.
Of course the “hitler card” is portrayed, and once again people do not understand what Iran said and how it was translated.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155
By the way, when has Iran invaded another country?
Oh, about 300 years ago.
The comparison to Hitler is damn idiotic (at best)
Mish,
You always provide thoughtful commentary.
Iran hasn’t invaded other countries directly.
But indirectly through proxies. Yes , yes and yes.
Smarter on their part.
Less costly in blood and treasure.
Iran plays the “long game”.
Iran has been exporting terror and violence and destabilizing nations in order to set the stage for control of the Islamic world since the end of the Pahlavi dynasty.
Iran was instigator: Tensions between Iraq and Iran were fuelled by Iran’s Islamic revolution and its appearance of being a Pan-Islamic force, in contrast to Iraq’s Arab nationalism. Despite Iraq’s goal of regaining the Shatt al-Arab[note 2], the Iraqi government initially seemed to welcome the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was seen as a common enemy.[72][71]
It is difficult to pinpoint when tensions began to build, but there were frequent cross-border skirmishes, largely at Iran’s instigation.[37]
Thus began the 8 year war between Iran and Iraq, LARGELY AT IRAN’S INSTIGATION.
Iran is great at playing up the “Who, ME?” game when they instigate one crisis after another after another. They are very clear about their goals which is a pan Islamic state under their control stretching from Morocco to New Guinea, from Sarajevo to Maputo. All of central Asia.
There is no way around this, Islam as practiced by Iran is a ruthlessly repressive cult managed state and they seek to spread it by terror and force. The only way to handle it is via containment. It is a barbaric state that seeks to export it’s barbarism. And all the while it hides it’s guilt behind proxies that are nothing but the thinnest of pretenses. And if they wish to play with nuclear fire then they should be prepared to be burned by it themselves.
Nicely done, Herkie. So, let’s just call a spade a spade. What does the Axis of Evil have in common? First, let’s name them off; Iran, China, N Korea, Russia. The common thread? Dictatorship. Ruthless decimation of internal opposition. Determination to spread their ideology by any means possible— Iran by proxies, China by buying influence and stealing technology, N Korea is a one-man cult with his finger on a nuke button, Russia is a kleptocracy with Putin for life, suppression and killing/imprisoning his internal opposition and the use of force externally.
Mish has trouble seeing all this and lacks the ability to see that our role in the world is to identify and attack the scourge of totalitarianism. So, why do we ally with Saudi Arabia, who has many of the same characteristics of Iran? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Plus the petrodollar.
Amazing how Trump and Obama are alike,2 Amateurs and Chief,Obama with his drone strikes slaughtering thousands now Trump,sellout will live to regret this ,only banana republics or miltary juntas pull this chit.Even Maduro got more class than Trump’s sorry ass.
Yes, General Soleimani always was a man of peace. In fact he has a 20 year history of it. It is rumored that his next stop was Jerusalem to apologize for the Mullah’s threats of “Death to Israel”. All puppy dogs and rainbows,
This “peace message” BS can only remind us of Neville Chamberlain on his return from a meeting with Herr Hitler. Waving a piece of paper and declaring that he had the little man’s promise that if only Britain would acquiesce to Germany’s seizure of various pieces of sovereign countries, he would refrain from further adventures.
Russia and China are happy to use Iran as their attack dog and reap the cheap benefits. For Russia, it’s about control of their Syrian bases and freedom to build pipelines for natural gas sales. For China, access to deeply discounted oil from Iran and a base on the Arabian Sea or the Gulf.
Iran is the nexus of all the evils now being perpetrated in many parts of the world. Every thinking person knows this. Soleimani was the architect of the death and destruction carried out by Iran’s proxies. Trump has decided that the world is better off without him and now hopefully he can develop a plan in conjunction with Saudi and Israel to destroy the Shia power center. We can only hope and pray that they are successful.
The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was what is considered to be the immediate cause of the First World War. So was this illegal assassination with an unsubtle missile strike worth risking war. We don’t know because we don’t really know what the threat was.
You do recall that Trump campaigned on removing us from foreign wars and entanglements. So did Obama and so are all the current Democrat candidates. So now, Trump kills Soleimani and the Iraqis demand that we leave. So let’s use this as an opportunity to get the hell out of there.
Trump keeps his promise to leave Iraq and maybe Afghanistan too, and takes a bad guy down to boot. But now, the Democrats are up in arms that we’ll be leaving and are totally pissed off that Trump didn’t submit to a floor debate on his right to kill a Terrorist, who, by the way, had been labeled a Terrorist by the United States and the UN.
This is a win-win that will soon be turned into a lose-lose by the Democrats.
You are going to have a difficult time working out who is really seizing what from who in the middle-east, versions vary. I don’t think the US is in a position to virtue signal though, so it reduces to might and strategy. I don’t like this most recent change in US strategy, it doesn’t bear well, it is asking for open war. Some people want that, they are not likely to be the ones in the line of fire, or at least don’t plan to be, unless you count Israel in as US.
I agree with you. And it is a difficult and confusing situation in which it seems no matter what transpires the killing and destruction continue. I don’t know that there is a peaceful way out for the world, as the people of the Mid East just are content generation after generation on killing and maiming each other. All they produce is children and when they leave the sand and immigrate to democracies, they set about destroying those countries as quickly as possible. All the outside parties do, us included, is supply them with the means to do it. I do believe that if God or whomever had not gifted them with the curse of oil nobody would give a damn if they want to totally destroy each other. It’s that Sunni-Shiite thing, you know. Thank God we don’t have Baptists and Catholics at shooting war with each other here in the US.
“Russia and China are happy to use Iran as their attack dog and reap the cheap benefits. For Russia, it’s about control of their Syrian bases and freedom to build pipelines for natural gas sales. For China, access to deeply discounted oil from Iran and a base on the Arabian Sea or the Gulf.
Iran is the nexus of all the evils now being perpetrated in many parts of the world. “
Yup. No doubt about it! The whole world is a conspiracy. Always between scary sounding hobgoblins the MSM have been naming bogeymen for the past few decades. But which virtually none of the rah-rah fistpumpers cheering for “war” have ever been personally slighted by, nor even met. But hey, The Man on TV, the lobbyists and Dear Leader’s political strategists say “those guys” are ge-nu-ine bogeymen, so pump our fists and flash out bucked tooth we must!!
Yes, Trump created a bigger mess than he cleaned up with this drone strike.
Right on the money as usual Mish.
Golds come off it’s opening highs. Now at $1575, I wonder how stocks will do this week.
“Mish, Your TDS is showing.”
No Matrix, Yours Is!
Mish,
Your TDS is showing.
Accusation of TDS = projection.
What’s all this negativism? It’s time to come together to Support The Troops that are going to be dying for… well I don’t know what, but on our behalf…. and gather behind our dear leader, President Trump, forever may he reign!
This impeachment nonsense needs to stop right now, as a house divided cannot stand. If you don’t support President Trump, you support the mullahs in Iran!
I hope the antiwar left that disappeared as soon as Obama replaced Bush in bombing the Middle East will come back.
If there is one thing the ragged (unorganised) left are good at, it is protesting wars. Some things are just beyond partisan, or political ideology, or tactical justification. Further war now is a forward escape that might upend the position of the US and bring unimaginable losses to our own. Look at history, these events happen from time to time without any proper reason or warning, and people then spend the next century trying to understand – but they never do.
US foreign wars have been a disaster at least since WWI. Perhaps it’s time to leave the Middle East completely.
Not even a sliver of perhaps about it.
Then, leave everywhere else as well. Aside from perhaps letting a tiny patch around The Capitol.
And turn the Pentagon into a VA hospital.
One Party In America : The War Party Of The Rich …. Ex Democrat BillionaireTrump, Ex Republican Billionaire Bloomberg, Ex Republican Warren , etc etc etc.
Get the picture ? All hold hands now for War … Demopublicans and Republicrats alike ( as they’ve always been). Ask Ron Paul