Is McChrystal dovish on Iran?

1) Where is the outrage on this blog? If Israel did by accident one twentieth of the mischief that Iran does against us on purpose, Walt would be apopletic while posting about it twice daily.

Israel DOES do mischief ON PURPOSE against its enemies. The only difference is that when 'Iran' does mischief by providing arms and training to its Southern Iraqi Shiite co-religionists, their antics are exposed on NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX and all of their affiliates. When Israel bloodies its hands, usually the only recourse their victims have are blogs that a bunch of snooty armchair critics and bloggers read.

2) Does this give any confidence at all that Iran is prepared to be a positive influence?

Actually it's largely irrelevant. If anything it further proves the foundational principles of Realism. Powers will always act in self interest. In Afghanistan during the closing days of Khatami's governemnt there were open efforts to aid 'Our Boys' in ousting the much hated Taliban and returning the more amenable Northern Alliance back to power. Ethnic Hazara Shiites would be helped in doing this, and Herat would firmly be returned back into the Iranian sphere of influence. The fanatical, Saudi-funded Taliban regime was a constant threat to Shiite Iran.

3) Finally, a thought experiment: With nuclear weapons, would Iran be more confident, or less confident, about continuing their covert war against our troops.

Probably more confident. But that's the point! Nuclear deterence is the only viable way of preventing Cowboy Presidents and their War-mongering minions from meddling in your neighborhood. Again, Realism proved. If there's one human being you want to thank for Iran going nuc-U-lar, thank Dubya.

I'm "pro-Israel" and also gravitate towards realism. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. If your comment was referring to Waltz's "more may be better" theory, I don't think that is necessarily a central tenet of realism. I'm also not worried about Iran actually using a bomb-- I am more worried about nuclear handoff to terrorist organizations and Iran using the bomb as leverage in order to intervene in Arab politics (Bahrain, for example). That, plus the conventional arms race and possible nuclear arms race that would follow. Iran gets the bomb, Egypt wants it, Syria wants it (and could get help from Iran), Saudi Arabia wants it, etc.

Also, no one is saying that Arabs and Muslims aren't "rational actors." That's a really bold generalization. Under Sagan's logic, it is clear that Iran wants the bomb for security and prestige purposes. Just how rational is Iran's leadership, however? The Revolutionary Guard sends cash, arms, help with training, etc. to countless terrorist organizations. What about nuclear technology? Definitely a possibility.

You see, that's the problem right there.

People who see the world in duality. We don't see the world with scientific impartiality. We see it as Israel Ultimately Good and Victim, Iran Essentially Bad and Blood thirsty.

This totally disregards the fact that for the majority of Israel's existence up to and likely including now, it and Iran have shared the same enemies. It disregards the fact that both peoples see themselves as surrounded by barbaric and hostile Arabs and their sympathizers.

Ultimately Israel's safety is not threatened by a band of street thugs in Lebanon or the Gaza Strip, regardless of who's arming them. Its major strategic concern is losing its sole claim as the region's only heavyweight.

As for denying that Israel dictates terms, its not a moral judgement that I'm making, I'm saying its common sense. Both peace deals came after battlefield humiliations where Israel emerged with the upper hand. Jordan tried to get the West Bank back and Shamir thought it was too generous, Hussein sued for peace anyway. Sadat tried to secure economic aid from NATO members and win back the Sinai. After getting a world of pain from the Soviet bloc he suceeded in getting both. And then got chewed out by the Baathists and kicked out of the Arab League (psh... who cares? whoopdi friggin' doo).

That's all we should read this as. Self Interest, power enhancement and preservation.

Israel and the AIPAC driven fear mongering that is allowed to happen in the US media are the ones trumpeting the so called Iran threat.

Iran is not threat to the US. The Iran issue is 100% Israeli created.

When Iranian nukes are mentioned the double standard with Israel should be immedietly pointed out.

Israel pre-emptively invades their neighbors and is the unstable, belligerent, aggressive, apartheid force in the Middle East.

Demonizing and warmongering Iran to protect Israel is wrong. Again, the Iranian 'issue' is 100% Israeli.

Unlike Iran, Israel simply has way too much to hide and wants to keep it that way.

When is Israel going to sign the NNPT and allow IAEA inspections ? Which Iran has done.

The US and Israel want Iraninan nuclear transparency? Then Israel better be just as transparent.

Silence about Israelis nuclear weapons and lack of membership to the NPT while maintaining such harsh rhetoric towards Iran's nuclear program, which is legally allowed to enrich uranium as a NPT member is an example of the kind of outright double standard BS that the United States has been following in its foreign policy.

When will Obama hold Israel to the same standards that Israel is demanding of Iran and anyone else who threatens Israel's hegemonic agenda? Level the nuclear playing field or get rid of it.

It is in line with Israeli rhetoric to demonize Iran. It takes the focus off them and it’s their intention to agitate elsewhere so the world does not focus on their ulterior hegemonic motives.

Let's not forget, whatever Israel accuses another country of doing you can bet they themselves have already done it.
To wit, Mordecai Vanunu provided info and photos to the London Sunday Times in 1986 about Dimona.

During the Kennedy years,Israel allowed American nuke scientists to make ‘visits’ to Dimona but these proved to be so ineffective they were eventually discontinued.
When the scientists were allowed into the plant they were rushed through and never allowed to see what they needed to see to confirm that Israel was not developing nuclear weapons.

Of course, a full inspection of the Dimona plant would have revealed that this was exactly what Israel was doing.
Tel Aviv needs to be dealt with before Tehran.

It is telling that President Ford, in 1976, encouraged Iran (then under the US-backed shah) to build both uranium enrichment as well as plutonium processing plants. How is it that what was permissible then under the 1970 NPT, has now become forbidden – under the very same treaty?

Because Israel wants nuclear monopoly in the Middle East even as it breaks international law with impunity and no consequences.

Ahmadinejad is not liked in Tel Aviv because of his strong criticism of the long and brutal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for a democratic one-state solution for the Middle East conflict, which means that Israel as a "colonial entity" or a "racist sate" will be "wiped off the map" and replaced by a state where Jews and Arabs live side by side peacefully and equally.

But Israeli officials and their media pundits, and people like you who insist in propagating this misinformation keep misquoting the Iranian president, who has recently suggested that he even accepted the two-state solution, if it brings justice to all Palestinians.

After wiping Palestine off the map, Israel currently occupies the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem; the Lebanese Shabaa Farms and the Syrian Golan Heights.
Israel will not even deny or admit to its truly "clandestine" nuclear program. If you want to talk about nuclear ambiguity, look to Israel.

Much of Iran's willingness to divulge its civilian nuclear program has been exactly that--Iran willingly, and not by any requirement of the NPT, to disclose its nuclear activities.

Why has Iran crossed the supposed rubicon of trust. Because it is not an ally of the U.S. or Israel.
Because it may give a terrorist organization a nuclear weapon? These are ignorant and essentialist views that do not stand up to the facts. It's not Iran that preemptively invades, threatens, taunts, and warmongers their neighbors. That's Israel.

Parts in IEDs and weapons in general have been traced back to Iran.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/5477283/Iranian-weapons-getting-through-to-Taliban.html

http://www.cfr.org/publication/13692/

I'm sure I'll be criticized for a CFR link but whatever.

The maintenance of a racist genocidal Zionist state in Stolen and Occupied Palestine is no more an obligation of the USA than maintaining the Confederate slave state in the Southern USA was an obligation for the UK, and in the end because the cost of the US-Israel alliance currently totals approximately $7-9 trillion dollars and is rising rapidly, the USA will be better off the faster the State of Israel is consigned to the garbage dump of Israel.

Anyone that does not believe in the reality of Jewish Zionist false-flag operations or agents procateurs simply does not know either his Zionist or his Jewish history.

Taming Obama by Pruning Advisors references the history of dubious casus belli since the Spanish American War. It is interesting that the USA was brought into WW1 by the Zimmerman Note, which may have been created by Zionist agents provocateurs and which may have been the real explosive technology with which Weizmann helped the British war effort.

We are still living the disaster -- especially in the Balkans in the 90s -- that the US entry into WW1 with subsequent British and French victory created. A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin describes the mess that the vivisection of the Ottoman Empire created especially with the establishment of the perversion of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, but we must remember that the carving up of the German and Austrian empires was at least as dangerous, and that inter bellum Czechoslovakia was almost as much an atrocity as the State of Israel is today.

Anyway, the Taming Obama blog entry describes some of the effort that Israel Advocates have made to create the phony threat of al-Qaeda, and as I point out:

Nowadays, the US government appears to believe that the Pakistani Khalid Shaikh Muhammad (KSM), captured by Pakistan in Pakistan, was the planner of 9/11, but he had one or at most two brief meetings with Osama bin Ladin (UBL) while religiously and ethnically he simply was not the sort of person with whom UBL would collaborate.

Afghanistan and UBL almost certainly had as little connection to 9/11 as Iraq did, and there is no reason to take seriously KSM's confession obtained under torture.

We may never learn the real truth about KSM and 9/11 as the Zionist subversives operating in the Bush administration surely intended.

Just as foreign policy analysts have spent a lot of time in learning the intricacies of Islamist politics since 9/11, they really should spend at least as much effort on Jewish Zionist politics. Introduction: Jewish Historical Political Economics is a good place to start.

BTW, in re the last quote:

With Israeli missiles neutralised, Muslim countries could overwhelm Israel with their superior numbers, conventional armor and short range missiles.

Note that Hart prefaced that passage with the following:

Even without attacking Israel, the mere capabilty of Iranian missiles to lay waste to Tel Aviv would create a 'strategic umbrella,' preventing Israel from using its superior strategic assets in a conventional war.

In other words Zionists are worried that Israel might have to negotiate in good faith, return stolen properties, and repatriate the population that Zionists ethnically cleansed according to plans that can be traced back to 1881.

This dreadful possibility makes me shed rivers of tears for Zionists and Jewish racists.

Jews legitimize growing hatred of Jews throughout the world as long as they refrain from unequivocally and categorically renouncing and denouncing Zionist ideology, which in all forms assumes that Jews have the right to plunder and to kill non-Jews with impunity.