Lots of threats going around
Usually it's the president or some senior State Department representative that throws around threats against a foreign nation. However, this week the Pentagon skipped right past the executive branch and threatened Iran directly.
The Pentagon issued a rare public warning to Iran on Wednesday against a potential transfer of hundreds of unmanned drones to Russia for use in the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.“We would advise Iran not to do that,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at the Pentagon today. “We think it’s a really, really bad idea. And I’ll leave it at that.”
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US officials say Moscow has used up much of its precision-guided missile stockpile since its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which has bogged down amid intense Ukrainian resistance and flows of heavy weapons from US and its Western allies.
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Neither Austin nor Milley specified what steps the US might take if Iran does transfer the drones to Russia, though the Pentagon typically has a variety of options, both overt and covert, for White House officials to choose from. Any such response would be a matter for US policymakers, Milley suggested today.
No, it wouldn't be up to US policymakers, because the Pentagon, the standing army of the United States, is directly threatening a foreign nation for selling arms to a third-party that we are not at war with. That sound very Late-Roman-Empirish.
It doesn't sound like something a democracy would do.
Top Air Force General, Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, also used this arms sale, as well as China's successful economic contacts to say, “Something will occur that unleashes that planning and that preparation against us.”
These weren't the only threats being thrown around. Our NATO ally Turkey had a warning to give.
"The US needs to leave the areas on the east of the river Euphrates, this is our conclusion at the Astana [talks]," Erdogan told a group of journalists who accompanied him to Tehran on Tuesday for a trilateral summit with his Iranian and Russian counterparts.
"It is the US that feeds the terror groups there; it would ease our work if the US withdraws or cuts support to these groups."...
The operation, if it goes forward, will be the fourth of its kind mounted by Ankara in northern Syria since 2016, and will be conducted with the declared purpose of combatting threats to Turkey from the Islamic State (IS) group and PKK-allied Syrian Kurdish groups, as well as enabling the resettlement of internally displaced Syrians.Erdogan said Iran and Russia were in agreement against the PKK and YPG, and the group was also hurting the Syrian government.
“This terror group is sucking the oil wells in the east of the river Euphrates, they exploit them and then sell them to the regime,” Erdogan said, adding that the US was still aiding and abetting the Syrian Kurdish groups.
He added that US officers were still training the YPG militants while they raise the Syrian government flags. “They believe that they can trick the Turkish military by waving the Syrian government flag as they attempt terrorist acts against the Turkish soldiers,” he said.
If Turkey invades our Kurdish allies have said that they will switch to backing the Syrian government. At which point we'll have 900 soldiers behind enemy lines.
The U.S. has only said that it's "monitoring the situation."
Comments
WTF, over
breaker, breaker ..
we've a cabal of warring idiots in the pentagoon league
who's primary objective is to make the USA pay the
weapons industry everything that is not otherwise
bolted down
sounds like suicide to me
is Syria really worth it when
Russia and Iran have already drawn the line?
guess those 900 *troops* may have to fall back
or
If it's not been validated lately, let me say it
The country I was born in no longer exists. Yes, Virginia, there is no Great American... just a bunch of militarily trained, career war criminals who failed in their attempt to invade Cuba as a starter, so they've become an out of control teenager with controlled experiments, disinformation and budding terrorism ever since. Go ahead... name your institution, they are very much out of control and it is now beyond "out of control". Look at the way people have accelorated their fear, how chaos has been thrown at us, not to mention loss of civil liberties.
I feel that by the end of this summer, a lot of people are going to be a lot wiser about this.
Mr. Mickey
has a very smart Mom.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Fear, chaos and and restricted rights devolved into
Patriot Acts and became the noble cause to destroy the world
That was the play we watched during the twin tower fiasco
Cuba never had a chance after JFK was murdered
Most of the world now considers the USA a terrorist regime
with good right, given their law breaking destruction of sovereign
nations. Unfortunately, when other nations tell the US military to take a hike
that is the same as asking to be bombed.
@QMS I'm reading James
I'm reading James Douglass's very excellent JFK and the Unspeakable, which, thankfully, the library doesn't want back yet. I've read some other excellent resources not he subject, many over the years, but Douglass gets the pattern and detail correct.
There is good detail of the secret dialogue between Khrushchev and Kennedy that I hadn't read every before. It describes the very beginning of a new dialogue and Kennedy wished to make clear, finally in his 63 speech to American University , made clear that it was not only a peace in our time, but a peace for all time.
It's pretty clear now they want none of that.
Douglass, very
good and important book, and very influential within the Kennedy family. Interesting note on the American Univ speech is that it was the only speech dealing with FP/national security that Kennedy didn't send to the Pentagon, State and CIA for clearance, as was normally done and probably still is.
RFK Jr wrote a great piece a few yrs ago on his uncle's FP and the resistance it met within the NatSec establishment. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-f-kennedys-visi... One item I wasn't aware of: after Kennedy's Test Ban Treaty was ratified by the senate in Sept 63, Khrushchev sent him a warm letter that set out specific proposals for continuing along the path towards ending the Cold War. But someone at State who apparently didn't like this type of dangerous dialogue intercepted it, and Kennedy never saw it. Dallas happened 6 wks later. Nearly a year later, the hardliners in Moscow sent Khrushchev packing, and we were left with cold warriors Johnson and Brezhnev and the world got 25 more years of Cold War.
As was revealed under Reagan --
The President can be whatever nonentity happens to be there at any particular moment, and the Powers that Be will just carry on regardless. Wasn't second-half-of-second-term Reagan afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease?
"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
And yet, ironically
it was the diminished second-half of the second term Reagan who was the most rational and reasonable Reagan as with dealing with Russia and Gorbachev and achieving the arms control agreements. Reagan and the world caught a huge break when reform-minded Gorby came along. It's a shame G isn't more respected in Russia today.
We just all have to
get with the program. There are the 5 branches of government...legislative, executive, judicial, capitalist and military. It's all there in the constitution and the bill of rights, you just have to read those white spaces between the lines.
It would seem
our military leaders, and the civilian officials who lead them, have barely evolved from the barely-sane situation of the early 60s when they were almost in open revolt against the president they saw as weak. Kennedy was just able to keep them somewhat in check by replacing the marginally rational CJCS Lemnitzer with Gen Maxwell Taylor, who, although overall loyal to the president, was nonetheless a war hawk on VN.
And there was one other rational person on the Joint Chiefs: Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup, a non-crazy hawk on VN back then (though inclined at the time to support more US military involvement) who soon evolved into being antiwar. His speech at Pierce College in L.A. in 1966 was noteworthy for being a fairly early antiwar position taken by a major military figure (from his wiki entry):
Sounds like Gen Smedley Butler. He would go on later to speak out more directly against the MIC. I'm not aware of any similar highly-ranked military official, current or retired, who is talking like that in our time.
Who is the audience for the threat against Iran?
I doubt if Iran is impressed with the threat. Do the Israelis want to get in the middle of that mess? Seems like power plays among US government deep state war mongers. Winner is those who want war with Iran. Which is all around bad news.
This admin has done very well so far
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Looks like Russia has a dearth of accurate long range weapons and it's probably a good thing if Iran doesn't sell them armed drones.
I'm not sure what exactly the US could do that Iran wouldn't like but there are probably people that have some pretty good ideas working for our military.
As for making threats to Iran they don't even move the needle on the outrage meter. Iran regularly calls for the annihilation of Israel. Russia just started the biggest war in 70 years in Europe in an attempt to satisfy it's imperialist tendencies. Telling Iran to watch it's step sounds like something we probably do often.
I think Iran and Turkey are a lot more concerned with Syria than Ukraine.
The US should just top Russia's offered price and buy the drones delivered to Kiev.
What else we could do?
Well, we are seizing their ships. We are hacking their IT systems. We've prevented them from importing medicine for their sick. We're doing the same to Syria (plus illegally occupying a third of their country in order to steal their oil).
What exactly has Iran done to us? Please be specific.
Israel assassinates Iranian citizens. They commit terrorism against Iran. They regularly bomb their forces in Syria, that are there to fight ISIS and al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, Israel has been proven guilty of helping ISIS.
Who exactly is the bad guy here?
gjohnsit,
you are on fire tonight! You go, guy!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981