Originally Posted by jwb

I would say it's already been proven not to work as said bulwark. Iraq already formally voted for us to leave and Trump responded with the threat of sanctions if they force us out. Which means we are engaged in a de facto occupation of a country ruled by a Shia majority with close ties to Iran that now wants us out.

And we're the ones who installed said Shia government, banning the Sunni Baath party and thus alienating the Sunni minority and leading to the creation of first the insurgency and then later ISI$. That leaves only the Kurds as serious allies in that country. I'll return to this point later in my post.*

I was only commenting on why it's understandable that it's not very big news with everything else going on. If there's not a real risk of conflict here then a peace deal is cool but probably not massively important news. Especially since while Israel is a large military power, the UAE isn't.

You're dreaming, imo. Getting Iran to the table in the first place was incredibly difficult. The relatively radical and hawkish Revolutionary Guard has a massive influence over Iranian foreign policy and if anything, assassinating Soleimani assures that not only will we not get a better deal, we won't even get the original deal back.

The moderates in Iran stuck their necks out in the first place by signing a deal with the US. The fact that we tore it up at first chance made them look stupid. The fact that then we killed a cult icon and a top level official in their country made them look beyond stupid. There were protests over the economic situation in Iran leading up to his death and that strike completely took the air out of any sorta resistance to the govt and their military objectives.

... We literally just took soldiers from northern Syria and shifted them to other parts of the middle east when we saw the Turks mobilizing for a likely invasion. We stayed in the other parts of Syria, or as Trump put it we "protected the oil", and then eventually later on we ended up redeploying troops to northern Syria.

* There's literally no silver lining you can put on this. We didn't disengage from the region, we didn't bring our people home. We stepped aside to let an ethnic cleansing happen. Against the only allies we actually had left in the region. So now we've effectively ****ed over and pissed off the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds each in their own unique way.

Originally Posted by SoundgardenRocks

I gotta be honest, I didn't realize that we simply shifted our troops from Northern Syria, rather than pulling them back home. That definitely gives me pause and makes me reconsider my thoughts on it.

I did know about Iraq's formal vote for us to leave the region. I wish Trump's administration would give 'em what they want. But, I fear that regardless of if Trump or Biden wins, we're still going to maintain a presence there.

You could very well be right about getting Iran to the negotiating table at this point, after Soleimani's assassination. I know the Revolutionary Guard are filled with hardliners and they will do almost anything to avoid the appearance of weakness or appeasement. We'd probably have to completely crush them economically to the point where the regime would lose serious legitimacy with the Iranian public before they would be willing to negotiate. It certainly would've been easier before the killing of Soleimani.

Originally Posted by elphenor

I'm going to write-in Hillary Clinton this year

Originally Posted by Lucem Ferre

Why not write in Sanders? ****ing Chomos.

Originally Posted by Lucem Ferre

Why not write in Sanders? ****ing Chomos.