Why is no one talking about Iran?

A lot of attention is being paid to the rising tensions between Russia and the U.S. over Syria, and for good reason.
A military confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers is not just stupid and immoral but completely insane. It's like playing Russian Roulette with every chamber loaded.

The New York Times reported that in 2012 General Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that imposing a no-fly zone in Syria “would require as many as 70,000 American servicemen to dismantle Syria’s sophisticated antiaircraft system and then impose a 24-hour watch over the country.”
And this was before Russia got involved.

While Global Nuclear Annihilation tends to get your attention, there is someone even more committed to the Assad regime than Russia that the American media seems to have forgotten about.
While some morons think we can bluff Russia into backing down, and that is possible, there is zero chance that Iran will back down.

At least six generals from the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have been killed in Syria since 2013, according to an official of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue....
Experts say the deaths of so many senior officers in Syria underscore the Iranian commitment to preserving Assad’s government in a “rump” Syria that includes most of the country’s major cities and the coastal province of Latakia, the traditional center of Assad’s religious sect, the Alawites.
It also is a reflection of the difference between Iran’s fighting tactics and those of Western militaries, whose senior officers usually direct operations from heavily protected command centers far in the rear.

To understand Iran's depth of commitment in Syria, consider Aleppo. Our media is telling us about Russian bombs, but says little about the troops on the ground.

As deadly airstrikes pounded Aleppo, Syria over the weekend, a major foreign ground force was also converging on the region. As many as 3,000 Iranian-backed fighters have arrived in Aleppo supporting the Syrian regime in its fight to crush the rebellion, two U.S. officials confirm to Fox News.
There are an estimated 250,000 Syrian civilians trapped in Aleppo facing an onslaught of Russian and Syrian bombs, according to reports. The Iranian-backed Shiite militias include fighters from neighboring Iraq as well as Afghanistan, officials say. Many of those fighters had already been in Syria but recently descended on Aleppo.

Iran has lost hundreds of Qud soldiers, including generals, thousands of proxy soldiers from Lebanon and Iraq, and billions of dollars that they couldn't afford to spend in order to prop up the Assad regime.
Iran started sending thousands of their own soldiers to Syria to fight four years ago (in response to Washington arming the Sunni rebels), and they doubled down on their support this year.
Iran's commitment to Syria dwarfs Russia's.

Iran is ALL IN for Assad. They not only won't back down, they can't back down. The fate of the Iranian regime rests on the fate of Assad, and that means they will do whatever it takes to keep him in place, including risking war with us.

So while the politicians and news media focus on whether Moscow will back down or not, consider if Moscow does allow us to invade Syria. How will Iran react?

Velayati, who is an adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said the US has suffered a defeat in military campaigns both in Afghanistan and Iraq and a third adventure, in Syria, would hand Washington its third defeat — a more stinging one.

“If the Americans take military action in Syria, it will be a suicidal action; and their third [military] defeat in the region after Afghanistan and Iraq will be a stronger defeat.”

To be fair, most Americans are not aware that we are losing in Afghanistan. Nor do Americans realize that we left Iraq in 2011 with our enemies unconquered.
Now think about what it would be like being in a ground war with a nation three times the size of Iraq.

Wait, you say. Who says it will be a ground war? Why can't we just bomb them?
The answer is simple: Obama deployed 5,000 American troops to Iraq. It already is a ground war.

Aha! You say. That's Iraq, not Iran or Syria.
The answer to that statement lies in the article above about the government forces advancing on Aleppo. "The Iranian-backed Shiite militias include fighters from neighboring Iraq".
Yes, those very same Shiite militias we are working with to defeat ISIS in Iraq, the exact same insurgent groups that killed hundreds of American soldiers during the occupation of Iraq, we would have to bomb in Syria.
How do you think they would feel about that in Iraq? Do you think they'll be forgiving and understanding?

Factions of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are threatening to attack US troops that participate in the battle to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State (IS), but the Iraqi government hopes to smooth things over.
However, many are not convinced. Hassan al-Kaabi, a member of the PMU backing up the Iraqi government forces, rejects the presence of US troops in the battle for Mosul and believes they are not keen to help Iraqis fight terrorism.
“I will fight them wherever they are," he told Al-Monitor. "They are an occupation force that pretends to be assisting us."
Kaabi joined the PMU on June 14, 2014, one day after Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling for the PMU's formation. Kaabi said, “Iraqis are capable of liberating their cities on their own." He is but one of the thousands of PMU fighters who think the presence of US troops does not serve the interests of the Iraqi people.
Late last month, PMU leader Rayan al-Kaldani issued a threat, saying, “The PMU will be dealing with any illegitimate and foreign forces in Mosul the way it deals with the gangs of the Islamic State."

I sense a "Blackhawk Down" moment in our near future.

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Maybe it'll give the warhawks/Putiin-haters a pause to think.

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Steven D's picture

Posting it to TOP was a waste of your time, unfortunately. You had a few good comments, a few DBAD ones, and mostly this important topic was ignored by the CTR trolls over there. You see, it wasn't on message.

Now If you had only added, "This is why we must vote for Hillary!" to your title, I am certain it would have made the rec list, probably zooming right to the (pardon the pun) TOP.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

can you please post a link.
thanks. curious to read the comments

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Thank you so much for the work you do to post these essays here. The information is often very difficult to read, absorb, and SO important. Been a while since I really followed the news. Was a daily reader of the New York Times, Washington Post - and then just gave up on them and most of the MSM.

Notice you're posting from Fox News too. Reading it myself now, no longer making fun of it and calling it "faux news" as I did for a long time. My apologies to anyone who read my nasty cracks at them!

Thank you again for the work you do, and information you find and share with us.

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But that doesn't make them always wrong.

That's something I always hated about TOP. The litmus test of your sources on TOP was political, not factual.
Personally, I only cared about what the truth was. But truth on TOP was secondary.

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from major news outlets are long gone. Nowadays a Fox version of events is just one story among many. Infowars are raging all across the media spectrum, to the extent that multiple sources should be cited and verified, for a reasonably accurate picture of any given situation.

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native

gulfgal98's picture

commented on it. IMO, this is an extremely important topic and the "reality community" sadly has chosen to ignore it or worse, attack the diarist.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Wink's picture

Williams playing a gay role, "Iran just doesn't do it for me."

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

flowerfarmer's picture

Full armor is in order.

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Bollox Ref's picture

with regard to actors doing what to whom, that it makes the Schleswig-Holstein problem (that led to two wars) seem like early afternoon tea.

I can just about comprehend the issues revolving around Denmark and the Duchies, but for Syria, we need a flow chart to just encapsulate the thing.

(Edit)

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Big Al's picture

balkanization project led by the U.S., along with partners Israel, Saudi Arabia, Britain, France, and a few others, using a proxy army of terrorists, jihadists and mercenaries.

The Libya regime change operation is even listed commonly in Wikipedia, as will the Syria one when all is said and done.

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Late Again's picture

one that doesn't look like something an angry 2-year-old scribbled - but I just moved all my images off my phone and can't find it again via Google.

I'll jump on my desktop in the morning and post it for you, if you like.

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"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." - Mark Twain

Bollox Ref's picture

If you could post your chart, that would be helpful.

Keeping tabs on all the small groups doing what to whom and for what reason in Syria and Iraq (and who they're allied with) is hard.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Late Again's picture

obviously it needs a little updating:

Syria Web of Alliances.jpg

It's still a good start, though.

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"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." - Mark Twain

Bollox Ref's picture

I wonder if there's a list of all the participating groups of fighters. Not speaking Arabic, the names become a blur and it's hard to keep up.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

The general says that a no-fly zone would require going to war with Syrians and Russians, and senators didn't like the answer and seemed to believe no war would be required. Seemed like a Gen. Senseki moment where he told the truth about the troop levels will be required in Iraq and was promptly fired.

As Patrick Cockburn has noted, Syria has become an either or battle of life or death for Shia and Sunnis and that includes Iran.

And our response is clever neocon clusterfuck gamesmenship and more and more violence.

And these neocons are willing to risk a nuclear war over getting rid of a leader of a country that has nothing to do with American security at any level.

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solublefish's picture

The US has always had a hard time believing that 1. other countries have the right to have a foreign policy just like the US does; and b) that other countries might have as deep an interest in what happens in their "backyard" as we have historically had in ours.

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The worst thing Putin could do is let the neocons have their way.
He's loading up Syria will missile systems, which is sure to cause us problems.
Within days of us bombing Assad's forces, the Iraqi militias will turn on our forces in Iraq and besiege them.
Except not with IEDs, but with TOW missiles and Abrahm tanks that we've been sending them since 2014.
If PM Adabi tries to stop them, while we are killing Iraqis, Adabi will get overthrown by Maliki, who's been winning a power battle in Baghdad.
Remember that we had Maliki kicked out of office a few years ago.
Within weeks of bombing Syria, we would be forced to withdraw from Iraq by popular demand.

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snoopydawg's picture

but didn't write anything about how the Obama administration and the CIA have been doing the same thing.

snoopydawg gjohnsit Oct 04 · 11:35:23 PM
It isn't just Putin that is loading up Syria with TOW missile systems. The Obama administration along with the CIA has done the same thing.

The delivery of the TOW missiles — which have also been provided by the CIA — will increase the capabilities of the FSA against Syrian armor, and it would enable them to more effectively battle against Assad's recent military advances.

"Five hundred TOWs is not an inconsequential number," Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at The Washington Institute, told Business Insider.
Israel’s Debkafile website reported on April 7th that two Syrian terrorist groups, the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Revolutionary Front, both of them linked to al-Qaeda, were supplied with advanced US-made weapons, including armor-piercing, optically-guided BGM-71 TOW missiles.

Time magazine reported last month that Obama was considering giving our al-Qaeda terrorists enemies manpads, which are surface-to-air missles capable of shooting down commercial airliners

I've heard this giving arms to terrorists classified as ´shifting positions´ in the war on terror. I call supplying our enemies with arms an act of treason.

I'm sure you have read Hersh's article about how the CIA gave the sarin nerve gas to the 'moderate' Syrian rebels who used on the Syrian people.
And that those 'moderate' terrorists that we are arming, training and funding and who is fighting alongside our troops.

I wrote in another comment about how our troops are upset with arming Al Quada and giving them funds because they don't want to hear in the future the terrorists bragging that the United States military gave them the equipment when they turn and attack either our troops, our country or another country.

I'm beyond words to describe how I feel knowing that Obama, Hillary, the CIA, the military and anyone else who knew that the sarin gas attack was a false flag event committed by the rebels but blamed on Assad in order to give Obama the excuse he needed to overthrow Assad because he tol our allies that they couldn't get their hands on the Syrian resources.
Allies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey among others!
Good God! Think about how horrible those people died from the sarin gas!
That's the definition of a war crime, yet people either don't know about it or worse. They don't care.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

The question being investigated was who caused the sarin gas attack in Ghouta, Syria, on 21 August 2013, that killed over a thousand victims, and that U.S. President Barack Obama has used as his basis for going to war to bring down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad?

A US intelligence consultant told me that a few weeks before 21 August he saw a highly classified briefing prepared for [Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin] Dempsey and the defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, which described ‘the acute anxiety’ of the [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan administration about the [U.S.-Turkey-Saudi-Qatari-backed] rebels’ dwindling prospects. The analysis warned that the Turkish leadership had expressed ‘the need to do something that would precipitate a US military response’. [In other words: Turkey’s leader, Erdoğan, ‘expressed’ to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that they needed to do something that would ‘precipitate a US military response’ against the man Erdoğan wanted to bring down, Assad. He was advising what’s called by the intelligence-services a ‘false-flag attack.’ Erdoğan wanted a false-flag attack, so as to enable U.S. President Barack Obama to have a publicly believable excuse for invading Syria and doing what Erdoğan wanted done.] …

You can read the rest of this disturbing article here.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/seymour-hershs-news-report-banned...

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Thanks, I was already disturbed. Now I'm more so.

Only I will never be down with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkhfL0pnMPQ

Disturbed - Down With The Sickness (Explicit) (Official Music Video)

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

lotlizard's picture

like the U.S. administration and congress have agreed to give Israel.

Sauce for the goose . . .

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fakenews's picture

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"Democracy is technique and the ability of power not to be understood as oppressor. Capitalism is the boss and democracy is its spokesperson." Peace - FN

Big Al's picture

the purpose of our government being there is. Our government has been there for 15 years, it's not about winning anything. The goal for victory is to position the U.S. as the sole superpower on earth, the country exercising hegemony over the rest of the planet. Afghanistan isn't about defeating the Taliban, it never has been about that. The Afghanistan "war" is part and parcel of the entire Empire's plans. so the question of whether our government and who controls it is "winning" in Afghanistan has yet to be answered. Eventually of course, they will loose because their insane quest for world hegemony will not happen.

Relative to the Iranian propaganda from Fox News and the NY Times, citing anonymous officials, I'd need a little more than that to believe the assertions from those propaganda rags about what Iranian troops and officials are or have been in Iran. There's no doubt Iran is an ally with Syria and Iran can't afford to lose another ally, so Iran has been involved in not only the U.S. instigated Syria war but the Iraq and Libya wars also. They don't really have any choice because if Syria falls, Iran is clearly next.

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Hawkfish's picture

Or at least the nuclear deal. Round and round about last year's pie fight while the world changes around them.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

I've been seeing lots of information about the western propaganda White Helmets and our insane Syria/Russia policy but I didn't know Iran had troops in there too. Full on proxy war - the Sunni/Saudis, Israel and US looking to weaken a Russian/Shia/Iran ally, the latter wanting to hold onto what they've got. I think that pretty much makes us the evil empire, as we try to reset the balance, at the cost of thousands killed, maimed, displaced - whole nations laid ruin.

Hard to believe that John Kerry, who fought and watched people die in a stupid, wasteful, useless war in his youth, is now pushing this equally stupid, wasteful, useless war in his old age.

Also, should be prefer not be involved in a nuclear war:

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/02/obama-warned-to-defuse-tensions-wi...

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lotlizard's picture

money changes everything.

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is one of the wealthiest statesmen in our history, as he is a member and descendant of the Forbes family. He is also Skull and Bones.

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thanatokephaloides's picture

Kerry married money, and as Cyndi Lauper sang,
money changes everything.

We'd have been far better off, then, if he had married Cyndi Lauper instead. But then that raises the question of whether or not Ms. Lauper would have had him.

Wink

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

McCain throws a major hissy fit. Bad answer General!

Doesn't sound like things are going too well right now for Joystick Johnny and the rest of the regime change cabal.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

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Cassiodorus's picture

A military confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers is not just stupid and immoral but completely insane.

In fact, the elite rule we currently have is insane across the board.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

This doesn't look good.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has warned Turkey that it risks triggering a regional war by keeping troops in Iraq, as each summoned the other's ambassador in a growing row.

Relations between the two regional powers are already broadly strained by the Syrian civil war and the rise of the Islamic State militant group.

Turkey's parliament voted last week to extend its military presence in Iraq for a further year to take on what it called "terrorist organizations" - a likely reference to Kurdish rebels as well as Islamic State.

Iraq's parliament responded on Tuesday night by condemning the vote and calling for Turkey to pull its estimated 2,000 troops out of areas across northern Iraq.

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fakenews's picture

Excerpts from article by Rostislav Ishchenko.

Link to article

Putin has deliberately and demonstratively humiliated the US. He has shown that it is possible to talk tough to the US, even tougher than the US itself has gotten used to talking down to the rest of the world.

In addition, with these actions, Russia has seriously undermined the international prestige of the US by showing the whole world that America can be beaten with its own weapons. The boomerang has come back. Given such dynamics and turn of events, we might see hundreds of representatives of the American elite at the dock in the Hague not only in our lifetime, but even before the next American president serves their first four-year term in the White House.

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"Democracy is technique and the ability of power not to be understood as oppressor. Capitalism is the boss and democracy is its spokesperson." Peace - FN

thanatokephaloides's picture

but even before the next American president serves their first four-year term in the White House.

That's a rather Freudian grammar error you've got there.

Proper grammar would have the number of Presidents serving at any given time match the pronoun, so "his" or "his/her", not "their".

But then, we are talking Clintons here.

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Shia militias

The Shiite militias, who have fought alongside U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces against Islamic State in Iraq, are now fighting Syrian Sunni rebels, some of them armed and trained by the U.S.

More than 1,000 Iraqi Shiite militants have traveled from Iraq since early September, joining the ranks of as many as 4,000 others already on the ground near Aleppo, the militia leaders and Syrian rebels said. They make up about half of the regime’s estimated ground force of 10,000.

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link

The many skeptics of the cease-fire were not surprised by its fate. But its dissolution had less to do with Russia’s duplicitousness than with the fact that Russia never should have been the main interlocutor to begin with. Of the outside backers of the Bashar al-Assad regime, Iran — which has sent hundreds of its troops to Syria and facilitated the involvement of several thousand non-Syrian Shiite militants to prop up Assad — has the most influence in Syria.

Russian and Iranian objectives in Syria are not the same, and there’s no reason to think Iran’s interests are well represented by Russian negotiators. If the United States hopes to achieve any measure of peace in Syria, it can’t avoid directly negotiating with Iran — which is not to suggest that peace will be the immediate result.

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