| Shadow1980 said:
Yep. If anyone wants to read more about it, here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
The U.S. government has stuck its nose in places it had no business sticking it, ostensibly in the name of fighting communism but just as often just to protect Western business interests. During the Cold War, the U.S. government firmly felt that they had the right to dictate what kind of governments other countries would have, and many times they decided that deposing democracies and replacing them with tyrannies best suited their strategic and economic interests.
These other countries don't "hate us for our freedom" or some other vapid bullshit like that. They hate us for a very good reason. That doesn't excuse regimes that have fostered terrorism, but it does explain why they don't like us. We've effectively fostered a lot of terror, misery, and heinous human rights abuses in our own right. The shitshow in the Middle East today is largely the fault of the U.S.'s foreign policy blunders in the Cold War.
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John Bolton earned all the headlines for his anti-Iran views, but he was never the only one.
John Bolton resigned as national security adviser in September at the nadir of his influence in the Trump administration. Left on the sidelines of talks with North Korea and the Taliban, Bolton grew isolated, his notoriously hawkish designs for the world relegated to the backbench. Or so the theory went.
No other Trump administration official was willing to state the quiet part in such loud, blunt terms, but Bolton was far from alone in cheering for this particular outcome. With Bolton out of the picture, three senior officials—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and diplomat Brian Hook (who is responsible for coordinating the US government’s approach to Iran)—have picked up where he left off, ushering in the most tense period of Iran-US relations since the 1979 revolution.
When talking with reporters back in 2014, Pompeo, then a member of Congress, pushed for an attack inside Iran against nuclear facilities. “This is not an insurmountable task for the coalition forces,” he said. Once Barack Obama reached a deal with Iran in 2015 to halt nuclear weapon production, Pompeo didn’t mince words. “The Iranian regime is intent on the destruction of our country,” Pompeo said in a press release. “Why the President does not understand is unfathomable.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/iran-hawks-inside-trumps-administration-mike-pompeo-bolton-robert-obrien-brian-hook/
Mike Pompeo has always had questionable relationship with Saudi Arabia:
The United States wants to build a coalition of European and Arab partners to deter Iran after an attack on Saudi Arabia that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described on Wednesday as “an act of war” against the world’s top oil exporter.
“This is an attack of a scale we’ve just not seen before,” Pompeo told reporters traveling with him before landing in the Saudi city of Jeddah for talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “The Saudis were the nation that were attacked. It was on their soil. It was an act of war against them directly.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-pompeo/pompeo-says-attack-was-act-of-war-on-saudi-arabia-seeks-coalition-idUSKBN1W32AG
His trip to Saudi after Jamal Khashoggi's murder was sketchy:
Saudi Arabia's king and crown prince are shielding themselves from the Jamal Khashoggi murder scandal by using a roadmap drawn up by the US secretary of state, a senior Saudi source has told Middle East Eye.
Mike Pompeo delivered the plan in person during a meeting with Saudi King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, last month in Riyadh, said the source, who is familiar with Pompeo's talks with the Saudi leaders.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/pompeo-handed-riyadh-plan-shield-mbs-khashoggi-fallout-says-source
Handing them an award for counter-terrorism work while they're committing genocide in Yemen?
Crown Prince Muhammed bin Nayef was presented with the George Tenet medal by CIA director Mike Pompeo during the new chief's first overseas visit to Turkey over the weekend, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
The medal was awarded in recognition of Prince bin Nayef’s “excellent intelligence performance, in the domain of counter-terrorism and his unbound contribution to realise world security and peace“.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/cia-saudi-arabia-crown-prince-muhammed-bin-naye-medal-counter-terrorism-work-intelligence-a7577221.html
One thing that many don't realize is that the USA has been sending troops to Saudi Arabia since May:
The United States is sending nearly 3,000 more Army troops to the Mideast as reinforcements in the volatile aftermath of the killing of an Iranian general in a strike ordered by President Donald Trump, defense officials said Friday.
Prior to this week's troop deployments, the administration had sent 14,000 additional troops to the Mideast since May, when it first publicly claimed Iran was planning attacks on U.S. interests.
https://fortune.com/2020/01/03/us-sending-troops-middle-east/
And now we are told to expect Iranian retaliation within the next few weeks (or even months? lol); basically, whatever happens in the future, no matter how far in the future, will be considered a retaliation through which a full blown escalation will take place. Wars don't start over night, and it seems that the Saudis (and many others) have enough voices in the white house to push their agenda forward. A war with Iran is likely, and to me, "who is starting it?" is not a question at this point.
Last edited by LurkerJ - on 05 January 2020
