Iran Nuclear Deal

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
622

[quote=“Gkhan, post:617, topic:210298, full:true”]
Then why didn’t we bomb Syria after it was first used before the Russians got there? You never answered that question, not here, not in the other thread because if you did you would be proven wrong. Admitting this would be admitting not backing up the red line threat with military action made America look weak.

Tell me how it makes America look strong? The Russians came in, took Syria’s chemical weapons, the Syrians used Chlorine, a chemical, which you now agree is a chemical weapon, yet we did nothing to retaliate against the Syrian regime. How does that make America look strong? [/quote]

You are a bundle of confusion.

Again:

This

has

precisely

nothing

to

do

with

the

post

you

excreted

into

this

thread,

initiating

this

disagreement

between

you

and

me.

I reproduced that post of yours word for word a half hour ago, and in doing so I showed you beyond the possibility of doubt that the point you made vis-a-vis the JCPOA/Syrian Chem weapons deal was

A. Dumb

and

B. Utterly unrelated to this ^ above.

I then told you all about whether or not I was going to follow you through an addled, free-associated ad-lib of non-sequiturs on which I have previously destroyed you in debate. Here’s that part:

[quote]
Jesus. You’re so confused about this that you don’t even know what your own argument is. It’s astounding.

None of this ^ has anything at all to do with what you posted in opening this little tour of your own ability to befuddle yourself…

[On the topic of what] you are suddenly and inexplicably babbling about: I (and Bis, Sexmachine, and Varq, iirc) already held your hand through the “red line” over the course of a painful thread that is fully in the past. I will not be doing anything of the sort a second time. Dig the last one up if you want to relive the thrill of wasting other people’s time.

I’m not going to respond again unless your next post makes logical sense and suggests to me that you have read and taken the time to understand what I wrote here. I promise to you that I am really good at following arguments and this is a precise and perfect summary of ours. That I had to summarize for you a discussion to which you were party is troubling and pathetic, but so it goes.[/quote]

Again, I already spent a bunch of time in a long-gone thread within which I tried to help you work through your extravagant confusions relating to the red line, what happened before it, what happened after it, what the chem weapons deal told us about Assad and Putin’s belief in Obama’s willingness to bomb Syria, and so on. That thread was fun while it lasted, mostly because of Varqanir, but it was also an absolute disaster from the perspective of someone who is looking for a good debate. Because – and this was apparent to everybody – you didn’t really know the basic facts about the situation, and the rest of us were forced to teach you all about what it was you were trying to argue about with us. Now:

I

am

not

going

to

do

that

again.

Aight?

623

This is a good look after 1 year at Iran deal. I reposted it as a couple of our members got into a row and it was lost in the shuffle - surprise, surprise. Worth your time though.

http://foreignpolicyi.org/content/irans-nuclear-ambitions-what-they-said-then-what-we-know-now

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624

I never said it was BETTER for Iran to become a nuclear weapons state, I said the JCPOA granted them money that could be used for funding terrorist operations and building up their military.

Tell me something, if the JCPOA is such a great idea, why on earth did Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby try so hard to have Congress defeat it? Why did Netanyahu accuse the Obama administration of exposing Israel to a second Holocaust? Why don’t they believe this treaty will work? Why do they fear the millions will be used to arm terrorists & buy sophisticated weapons like the ballistic ship killer missiles?

625

Once again, we cut a deal with the Syrians, but IT DID NOT KEEP THEM FROM USING CHEMICAL WEAPONS. IF THEY ARE SO AFRAID WE WILL ATTACK THEM, WHY ON EARTH ARE THEY USING CHEMICAL WEAPONS. Do explain.

Now you keep bringing up the names of other posters, people like Varqanir & Sexmachine…I miss Varq because although he & I did not agree on a lot, we had mutual respect for one another. I’d like to hear what Sexmachine has to say about this since he and I agreed on a lot of things, but he was driven away from these boards by idiotic posters. And where’s Thunder been? Another great poster gone.

And again the question remains unanswered. As it will always be.

Typical.

loppar, what’s your take on this? If you have been following this and had the fortitude to wade through a multitude of childish insults and literal wall of unrelenting babbling text, you’d know what I am saying is correct.

626

Not lost…I’ll read it when I have time. It’s most likely to be ignored or rejected by most of the Obama ball-hangers if it does not follow their agenda.

627

Well it didn’t get addressed by the 2 posters that have held JCPOA in highest regard. I can even get on board with Bismark’s verification>containment>war continuum, if we are dealing with a straight player & smh’s stance that Iran wants nuclear weapon to easier allow its proxy support using conventional arms.

Here are the issues regarding Iran to me: They had a secret weaponization program for 18 years, it took 12 more years to hammer out an agreement, German intelligence says Iran still trying to procure equipment through front companies in other countries, missle testing has continued, there is dissension within the country against the JCPOA, Russia cozying up with advanced military equipment, & Iran / North Korea nuclear ties.

It is no stretch of my imagination to think they have a clandestine nuclear weapon program.

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628

I don’t hold it in the highest regard, but maybe it seems that way because a number of people in this thread flatly lied about (or, more likely, didn’t know) some very basic things about the JCPOA. My central purpose in this thread was to illustrate that it is objectively (as in, numerically) false and stupid to claim, as so many do, that the deal somehow advanced Iran’s nuclear interests. It did precisely the opposite. The Arak reactor calandria is already destroyed. 32 tons of heavy water are already gone. The thousands of pounds of urianium, too, have been confiscated. Fordow is mostly dark and filled with on-line monitors. The breakout window has risen for the first time in decades. As I said before, two presidents dealt with an open Iranian nuclear movement. Under one of them, all markers and indicators of Iranian progress (number of operating centrifuges, amount of enriched uranium, etc.) rose sharply. Under the other, they all fell sharply. There is no question about whether or not this is true. Though one does not get the impression that many people around here were aware of it, it is a simple numerical fact, and it is not controversial.

Now, you are free to argue that the deal was deficient in this or that way, or didn’t do enough, or was utterly flawed (as all diplomacy is, always), but none of what I’ve written here is affected by that.

This brings me to your link, to which I will respond when I have the time, because some of it is good and some of it is misleading nonsense. Overall it, like so much relating to the JCPOA (for and against), is propaganda, and I will show how it is so.

629

[quote=“Gkhan, post:624, topic:210298, full:true”]

I never said it was BETTER for Iran to become a nuclear weapons state, I said the JCPOA granted them money that could be used for funding terrorist operations and building up their military.[/quote]

A perfect, microcosmic illustration of your inability to follow even a single step in a logical exchange. Pay attention:

ACT I: Smh says, in response to one of the dozens of piles of quivering fecal mass Gkhan threw at the wall in the hope that something might stick (this particular one being the ludicrously stupid contention that Iran can achieve the geopolitical end-goals of its nuclear program by virtue of its assets being unfrozen), that…

ACT II: Gkhan responds explicitly to Smh’s above-quoted words with the sentence “here’s how full of shit you are,” followed by a series of links relating to the financial incentives afforded Iran by the JCPOA.

INTERLUDE: HOW LOGICAL STRUCTURE AND ENGLISH-LANGUAGE SENTENCES FUNCTION AT THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL: When Person A makes the claim nobody thinks that Iran with unfrozen assets is within the same universe of threats as Iran with a nuclear-armed warhead, and Person B directly cites these words, claims that they are “full of shit,” and adduces a collection of links in evidence…Person B is unambiguously claiming that his links show it to be false that, as Person A originally claimed, nobody thinks that Iran with unfrozen assets is within the same universe of threats as Iran with a nuclear-armed warhead. This is a structural feature of argument in English. It is a logical result of the sentences that you and I exchanged. Keeping it in mind, back to your regularly-scheduled slow-motion cranial-rectal collision…

ACT III: So, we know with certainty that either

A. You were lying (or, as so often seems to be the case, terribly confused) when you told me I was full of shit and tossed a bunch of links at me

or

B. Within those links, you can find me the explicit claim that an Iran with unfrozen assets is a comparable threat to an Iran with nuclear weapons capability.

You have one single post to resolve this dilemma by either producing for me the excerpts in which the cited authors “claim that an Iran with unfrozen assets is a comparable threat to an Iran with nuclear weapons capability” OR by admitting that you were lying/confused.

If you don’t do this, you have wasted my time by literally making (and making me deal with) an argument that you either didn’t understand or didn’t mean, and now you are being a dishonest worm by refusing to face up to your behavior. In which case I will not give another of your posts legitimate consideration, and I will not respond seriously to you again.

Edit: Btw, that bit of American Thinker agitprop you linked to may be the most ludicrous, geopolitically illiterate pile of shit I’ve read this year. It is a bunch of bumbling conspiracy theory wrapped up in predictions that unanimously failed to come true, seasoned with an inability to understand even the most basic shit about Iran, like where it lies on the Sunni-Shia divide. You should be ashamed of yourself for having peddled it.

630

I was in a perfect location a couple of days ago to contribute to this thread, but it seems that the Islamic Republic or at least my hotel’s ISP didn’t allow access to this den of depravity that is T-nation.

1337×1617 217 KB

The thing is, very few people understand Iran, and shia islam in general, and tend to project their fears and doomsday scenarios onto them, like with the USSR during the Cold War.

The similarities with the USSR don’t end there - the best way to understand Iran is to imagine it like a smaller version of the USSR - not Putin’s Russia but the USSR. Instead of the semi-deified Lenin and the Party, you’ve got Khomeini and Islam. Even the Council of Guardians behaves just like the Politburo of old, with semi-senile geriatrics fighting a shadowy war among themselves and sending confusing, mixed messages to the outside world.

So the apocalyptic scenario where the mullahs would launch a nuclear/dirty bomb attack against Israel or the US is simply not consistent with their inherent philosophy. Why didn’t the Soviets resort to such an attack against the US, when they had the means?

Let me get one thing clear - Iranian leadership is a bunch of ruthless bastards who have no qualms about killing their own or foreign citizens, supporting terror groups like the Hezbollah, but they’re rational and they’re not dumb. And they don’t want to die.

Their primary concern is responding to economic and social challenges facing the country, ruthlessly suppressing dissent from a vocal urban and increasingly secular (at least in mind) minority while performing a delicate balancing act between hardliners and nationalists.

And most important of all, to continue existing corrupt practices which enable their kids to drive Lamborghinis and Ferraris and post annoying Instagram pictures and making sure neither them nor their offspring end up hanging from a lamppost in case of political or economic unrest.

That’s why they were ready to give up the nuclear program - they are hoping that the economic benefits of ending the isolation would placate the population for a while, thus delaying the problem of the lack of jobs for their booming population.

So you see, these guys are in survival mode, they do not have a glorified death wish nor are they in a rush to see their allotted virgins.

The danger of nuclear Iran stems primarily from a regional nuclear arms race between them and the Saudis. Oh by the way, if anyone is worrying about a bunch of apocalyptic lunatics with the bomb, look no further than Pakistan.

Another aspect is naturally shia islam - I do not have time to dwell into this fascinating topic, but just a few major points - many scholars have rather convincingly argued that sunnis and shias are actually two separate religions and that using the blanket term “muslim” is incorrect.

Most importantly, shias have a strict religious hierarchy, similar to early Middle age Christian churches, and more importantly their religious doctrine can evolve and has evolved over time - something conspicuously lacking among the sunnis taking their religion seriously.

Strick religious hierarchy means control. No rogue preachers, no “radical” strain, no missionary zeal to convert the unfaithful and make them join the umma.

Shias are proud of the fact they’re a rather exclusive club and they’re begrudgingly accepting semi fake shias such as Alawites for political reasons. They’re not interested in convincing some Pakistani guy from Hampshire to blow himself up.

If you lok at their propaganda, “true islam” is strongly suffused with Iranian nationalism and actual political and geopolitical goals - control of the fertile crescent and Iraq. No apocalyptic ISIS like visions of Rome burning, babbling about the crusades - even the Great Satan rhetoric is significantly toned down - now it’s all protecting the country, true believers, holy shrines and true islam (that all means killing sunnis in Syria).

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631

You Europeans really take admirable care of your fingernails :grinning:

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632

Never, the JCPOA is iron clad and can never be broken!!

Just joking of course.

633

They can. Idiot. They are doing it. They have increased their influence in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Yemen, with influence with Russia, with the purchase of highly technical weapons…all which is addressed in the articles I posted.

The fact that they are spreading their influence around the Middle East has NOTHING to do with

I never claimed anyone did …YOU brought this up. It is your argument you are trying to say I started which I did not.

I could say the same thing about you:

Now since you refused to answer my other question from the last post I do not expect an answer to this one either, because it is your
modus operandi to attack people based not on something they wrote, but something you did, while ignoring the important questions raised by these same people.

They have increased their influence in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Yemen, with influence with Russia, with the purchase of highly technical weapons…

Prove this is not true.

You can’t do it and you won’t do it.

And I know this.

634

I would say Person A is wrong.

I never said they were in the same universe.

I said Iran is doing it NOW without nuclear weapons. If they had nuclear weapons of course it would be worse, only an idiot would think otherwise.

The point I was trying to make which went right over your head is the money Iran will be getting will make them stronger militarily and with influence in the region. So, in other words, holding your hand through this conversation, is this treaty has good points but it also has some bad points…

If this is not true, please explain why, if not shut the hell up.

Don’t put words in my mouth. Don’t tell me what I was trying to say.
Answer my questions I have posed.

635

All of those articles claim Iran without nukes is pretty damn dangerous.

I wasn’t lying or confused. I stand by what I have written: Iran will use the money to gain influence in the Middle East by buying superior technical weapons, fortifying it’s military and supporting terrorists.

Prove they’ll use the money for peaceful means and I’ll believe you.

Now you have one post to prove what I have posted is wrong. Show me one expert who says Iran will NOT use the money to grow it’s influence in the region in the ways I have explained.

Now show me some articles that say otherwise or admit I was right.

636

As I showed you in your own words and beyond doubt, you explicitly denied my claim that no one believes a moneyed Iran a remotely comparable threat to a nuclear Iran. You adduced links that did not, upon inspection, evidence this denial. Now you are ignoring the simple reality that has been demonstrated to you in your own words. This is intellectual dishonesty, and stupidity. I don’t play that game.

637

:atom::radioactive::fireworks:

639

I really think that this thread pretty much sums up my feelings about the ME…

Often times that are no “good” choices…only bad ones and horrific ones…

It seems to me that there were two options when it came to Iran:

1) IN AN AGREEMENT REACHED WITH THE PERMANENT MEMBERS OF THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL and Germany ; significantly curtail Iran’s Nuclear Program while backing it up with on-site verification and significant sanctions (and force, if needed) for non-compliance.

This was NOT and agreement predicated on Iran reducing the chaos they create throughout the ME…it was meant to curtail adding Thermonuclear Capability to that Chaos.

2) Continue the sanctions (which while hurting their people, seemed to only ACCELERATE their march to Nuclear Capability)…and not ONLY would we end up with an Iran fermenting War and instability throughout the ME…we also end up with one with Nuclear Capability.

What about Israel?

Israel does not depend on the “word” of others or their agreements for Her security and intelligence. In many ways, Israel is the “silent partner” in this agreement in that she simply will not allow Iran to become a Nuclear Power.

No doubt it’s an extremely imperfect agreement. However; no one has clearly articulated (IMO) a viable alternative.

(By the way; I am very open to hearing the ways in which “The sanctions were working!”)

640

This is VERY important to add:

The International Coalition that supported sanctions against Iran (which is EXTREMELY important for sanctions to truly work…the U.S. can’t do it alone); was beginning to unravel.

641

Are you talking about our recent betrayal of the Kurds.

642

This is all you need to know about what Obama meant. All this alternate interpretation is pure horseshit.

Paneta was there and knew exactly what was meant. He said it was a mistake, damaging and a missed opportunity. And he is a Democrat and was part of the administration… Either Panetta is a liar, or the “Red Line” was a grave mistake.
This should be the end of it.

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