TSR Foreign Affairs Hub

There have been reports of Shi'a pilgrims from Iran being captured and kidnapped by Islamists. The FSA have actually captured them and stated they are members of the IRGC. Considering they're all adult men I'm inclined to believe them:

This has happened a few times now, e.g remember the five iranian "electrical engineers", didn't the FSA say they were IRGC that time too? Either way, the last few times iranian and turkish officials met and turkey got them out. IIRC, one time a turkish journalist was released by Syrian officials which was quite obviously a prisoner exchange deal.

I'd expect the same sort of thing happening again.

In other news, Saudi has invited Ahmadinejad to some unorthodox islamic regional meeting of some sort.

In an extraordinary, unprecedented and surprising move; israel points finger at iran on egypt cross-border attack!

http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=280209

Then it describes the culprits as "global jihadists" in the same paragraph...

Make up your mind will you...

The attack has made this an interesting moment for Morsi.

Sure, but don't you think there's a reason that underpins every presidential candidate's rhetoric for Israel instead of Taiwan?



Romney has been considerably more vociferous in his attacks against China than Obama ever has. However, unlike China's currency manipulation, its massive **** off to copyright, and US presidential candidates claiming to put an end to it if they become president, which will never happen, strikes on Iran's nuclear reactors could easily occur under President Romney for two reasons:

(1) he has been beating the drums of war for quite some time now, labeling Iran as the biggest threat to Israel, the US and the world; and his foreign policy can be summed up in four letters an I, an R, an A and an N. Rarely does he ever mention anything else he would do as president - only recently, for example, did he mention Syria and the Islamists' win in Egypt.

(2) the Iranian nuclear weapon clock, according to Netanyahu, Romney and various other neocons, is still ticking. Every month there's a new interview detailing Iran's programme and how Israel will not sit idly by and let it acquire a nuclear weapon - there's a good chance in the next four years, as false information is acquired about Iran, that Commander-in-Chief Romney will succumb to the Israeli pressure and to donors who funded his campaign.

I rather like Barak Obama, but your logic on this is characteristically degenerative.

Your first point about Iran is that it is the reinvigorated cold war of today. What could be more important ?? It's being fought through proxies in Syria today ... Even the French government takes occasional time to emit heavy premonitory words. Surely, in your astigmatic world view, they're about to nuke Iran (or, as I noticed in your cheerledding sophistication: I, R, A, N ... woop!!) and garnish that with some contemporary Protocols-of-Zion (or "Israel controls US policy") garbage then apparently we're going to nuke Iran ....

I think there is very little grounds to engage in military conflict, and there is very little appetite & intellectual teeth for it in both candidate circles ... and I would heavily advise against it at the moment.

I rather like Barak Obama, but your logic on this is characteristically degenerative.

Your first point about Iran is that it is the reinvigorated cold war of today. What could be more important ?? It's being fought through proxies in Syria today ... Even the French government takes occasional time to emit heavy premonitory words. Surely, in your astigmatic world view, they're about to nuke Iran (or, as I noticed in your cheerledding sophistication: I, R, A, N ... woop!!) and garnish that with some contemporary Protocols-of-Zion (or "Israel controls US policy") garbage then apparently we're going to nuke Iran ....

I think there is very little grounds to engage in military conflict, and there is very little appetite & intellectual teeth for it in both candidate circles ... and I would heavily advise against it at the moment.

Haven't you been calling military action on Iran for some time now?

Reading an interesting article that argues one of the main reasons so many states like Libya and Iraq fail at nuclear weapons programs is not because of external pressure but because of internal dysfunction. Too much pressure on scientists and coercive efforts to make them work harder can be the biggest reasons for failure. This could cause the end to the Iranian nuclear program if the men at the top apply too much pressure and cannot run the program properly. A second factor that could cause the program to fail is that in Iran loyalty is valued higher than skill, so many of the men invlved in Iran's program may be there because of regime loyalty rather than ability. Might go some of the way to explaining why we keep hearing how Iran is always 5 years from a bomb, apparently the US predicted a bomb in 200 2005 2010 and now 2015.

Depending on how much is actually known of the internal workings of the Iranian nuclear program, not just the technology but management, political pressure and such it could be better to just watch Iran fail rather than bombing or murdering scientists. Assuming of course they are working on a bomb, could equally be applied to if/when they do too.

Or maybe because America's predictions has been propaganda used to justify war/action against Iran rather than actual intelligence? If they're not pursuing a bomb then America's predictions are nonsense and they have never been 'almost 5 years away from a bomb'.

What if Israel/USA keeps on bombing it's facilities? I doubt Israel is just going to stand by and allow it's nuclear hegemony to be threatened considering their reaction to Syria and Iraq. You can't just suddenly create a nuclear weapon. You'd have to go through a process that would take a year minimum, by that time I'm sure Israel/USA could locate Iran's nuclear facilities and bomb it. After a while (3 strike or something), Iran would just give up because of the costs.

Would be pretty hard to do considering the technological devices possessed by NSA. That kind of action would probably be countered before it could realistically happen. Doubt it. How exactly are the North Koreans going to help? They won't give **** to Iran because they're already in poverty and their latest attempts have been failures. Plus, the US could strike some deal with them (probably violate it but should buy time). North Korea is under new leadership.

Where exactly is your proof for this statement? Do you realize how big of a time frame 5 years is? Manhattan Project finished in 4 years. Israeli and American (possibly British as well) intelligence have been working to undermining nuclear program since 80s and monitoring since 70s. If this was true, why would they publish National Intelligence Estimate saying Iran's abandoned it's nuclear ambitions in 2003? If the report is true then it follows that Iran's been pursuing nuclear weapons before 2003 thus the statements by various officials aren't all that surprising and all it shows is the success of their efforts to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions.

So why do they keep making them and why have they not gone to war yet? ropaganda loses its effect over time, saying the same thing again and again and being wrong every time hardly makes for good propaganda

Did I ask you for proof of pursuing nuclear weapons? No. I asked you for your proof that America claims Iran has nuclear weapons for propaganda purposes and not based on intelligence.

"A number of the [hostages] are retired members of the Guards and the army," Mr Salehi was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students' News Agency as he flew back from Turkey.

"Some others were from other ministries."

That source does not provide sufficient evidence for the claim you've just made i.e. "both CIA/Mossad agree Iran has not yet decided to build a nuclear bomb". The anonymity of the source discredits it's use as evidence. You know how much anonymous bull**** supposedly former officials have been spouting? Russia Today and Alex Jones have been using them.

Even if I accept that to be true, it does NOT provide evidence for your claim that Iran was never planning on building a nuclear bomb and all those claims from 1990s up until now have been stated because of propaganda and not what the intelligence states. In fact, there's evidence to say it was because the 2007 NIE report that came out stated Iran abandoned it's nuclear ambitions in 2003 thus signalling that before then they did in fact pursue it.

Haven't you been calling military action on Iran for some time now?