Breaking News: Oil Tankers Attacked in the Gulf of Oman

Oh dont be such a petulent child. They have already found no evidence and blamed Iran regardless.

No ****?

Do you even know what the word moaning means or are you just being your usual childish self and lobbing insults?
See above for your "evidence" comment.

Pfft of course you do.
Almost every analyst and specialist is in agreement that any attack on Iran will do nothing but strengthen the governments there. I say Governments seeing as there are effectively two. All war will do is weaken the elected one no end and bring back someone who will make Ahmadinejad look like a jolly nice fellow.

Let me put it this way, who does it suit more for such actions to happen? The HAwks in Washington who are salivating at the chance to kill some Iranians, the Israelis/Saudis/UAE who want to see Irans wings clipped with a few air strikes. Or Iran, who know full well the firepower aimed at them not but a couple of hundred miles away (not to mention the fact a head of state is current there). You may call the Government there whatever you like but they are realists and rationalists above all else.

When you've got religious zealots in government who believe it's Allah's Will to destroy the Great Satan, rationality doesn't always come as the top priority.
It really wouldn't surprise me if the Pasdaran have been operating outside the realms of the normal chain of command - after all, they're conmanded by the hardline Supreme Leader rather than the "elected" Iranian government.

Compared the Ayatollahs, and Ahmadinejad for that matter, the current Iranian president is a moderate. Who says that the Pasdaran aren't using the current tension with the US over the uranium enrichment/sanctions to put pressure on Rouhani's govt in order to force it down a more hardline route?

Edit - pressed Post before I meant to.

It's also worth mentioning how Iran's government needs to distract its populace away from its poor handling of the recent floods there and the current state of the economy that's in a deep recession.

https://www.rferl.org/a/iranian-officials-criticized-as-severe-flooding-wreaks-havoc/29859256.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/29/irans-recession-is-driving-growth-slowdown-in-oil-exporters-imf.html

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/irans-revolutionary-guards

But as I've said earlier, if Iran is going to get punished for the tanker attacks, there does need to be substantial evidence. I agree that the intelligence community failed miserably during the Iraq War. That said, that community has also learnt lessons from that and I do trust that professions want to go their jobs correctly even if I don't particularly like nor trust the current US National Command Authority.

Cui bono? It certainly is not Iran. Meanwhile, the U.S., which has steadily increased its naval presence in the Gulf as of late, and has been itching to topple the Islamic Republic since the mullahs toppled the U.S.-backed dictatorship in Iran prior to the 1979 Revolution, clearly benefits from such attacks.

In addition, the fact that Iran was a key player in preventing the U.S., Israel, the Gulf states and their lapdogs in Western Europe from toppling the Assad government has only increased their desire for conflict with Tehran.

I have never seen such a blatant false flag attack.

USA are the good guys who play by the rules. Iran is governed by theocratic nutjobs who are untrammeled by the norms of civilized behavior ?

tl;dr: it is Iran yeah ?

USA are the good guys who play by the rules. Iran is governed by theocratic nutjobs who are untrammeled by the norms of civilized behavior ?

tl;dr: it is Iran yeah ?

If creating complete and utter chaos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria is "playing by the rules", "the norms of civilised behaviour", and a requirement for countries seeking to join the "good guys" club, you may want to rethink the following: "playing by the rules", "the norms of civilised behaviour", and a requirement for countries seeking to join the "good guys" club.

And regarding the theocratic nutjobs, wasn't it the good ol' USA, along with jolly, spiffingly good Britain, that interfered in Iranian politics by overthrowing Mossaddegh, turning the Shah into their puppet and, in doing so, giving rise to conservative Islam in the first place which toppled the Shah and is why Iran is ruled by theocratic nutjobs today?

USA are the good guys who play by the rules.

Iran is governed by theocratic nutjobs

who are untrammeled by the norms of civilized behavior ?
Lol

As if any of you actually know what's going on

"the norms of civilised behaviour"

Yes, Iran is the only country to ever use nuclear weapons (twice), kill over a million civilians in Korea with indiscriminately aerial bombardments, attack 4 million Vietnamese with 20 million gallons of chemical weapons (including 11 million gallons of agent orange), brutally massacre 500 civilians in the My Lai Massacre, arm and help Saddam use chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds, then launch an illegal invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam and kill over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, illegal extrajudicial drone strikes across the globe that kill civilians 90% of the time, etc...

The US cannot tell anyone about "civilised behaviour".

The Europeans have been even more brutally violent in their short history of relevance, more people were killed by Europeans in a 30 year period in the 20th century than the Persians or Arabs could ever hope to kill in their millennia of empire. The greatest massacre in human history was committed by Europeans barely 70 years ago as they carted millions of Jews off to extermination camps.

The Europeans and Americans are the most bloodthirsty creatures to ever roam this earth, the Middle East is the birthplace of civilisation - a word you should not even dare to mutter.

My gut is putting me on Irans side in the current situation.. I can't see why they would want to provoke the US or other nations at present, yet I can see a reason for the US, or one of its Allies to provoke the conflict.

But.. and its a big but..

Your post above is historical nonsense. There is absolutly nothing, in history or in the modern era to suggest that arabic or islamic nations or empires are any less brutal or blood-thursty then western nations when (and this is the key bit) they have the military capability and technology to do so.

Pre-industrial arabic empires were just as bloodthirsty in conquest as their European counterparts, engaged in torture, slavery, sacking of cities, raping/pillidging etc, just as europeans did. The conflicts between the two, and with other forces don't show any moral superiority for either side.

What then happened, was one side advanced far beyond the capabilities of the other in terms of military technoloy, and used it to brutal effect. Do you think, had the situation been reversed, things would have been different? Had an arabic nation developed the same military and technological superiority as Europe did, that they wouldn't have brutally conquered, enslaved and taken over the world?

The reason that the arabic nations don't have the bloody record that western nations do in modern times, is because they spent the majority of modern times conquered and subjigated by the west.. they were the loosers of the conflict, and the technologically infior force, they never had the opportunity to dominate and conquer as western nations did. By the mid 20th century, where many were getting their freedom, the era of massive wars, empires and conquering was mostly over, and no nation is now in a positions to do what the Europeans did a few hundred years ago. They have also still been infior technological and military forces, throughout modern history.

put it this way, if you have two mass murderers and you give one a gun, and one a knife.. The one with a gun is going to kill far more people, but is he more evil? They both wanted to kill as many as possible, just one had far greater capability to do so. In terms of modern history, that's been the situation with Europe and islamic/arabic nations. When they both had (figurative) knives, they both did similar amounts of harm.. but when one was given a gun, they did far more.. does that make the one with a gun more evil?

Also, for your last sentence.. The middle east is the birst place of civilization, but Europe is the birthplace of modern civilization. Something the much of middle east should adopt rather then stoning gay people to death, maintaining slavery in modern times, and subjugating women. Most of the middle easts current success comes from adopting modern western ideas and values, economic systems and cultural ideas, its no surprise that the more middle eastern nations westernize, the richer and more successful they become.

Word to the wise, don't call Persians Arabs... they tend to take rather a lot of offence.

true - I shouldn't be so lazy in my grouping of them together. It doesn't change my point, as the point of capability is equally relevant to both, but I still should have differentiated more or used a better grouping term for both.

There are worse crimes to commit but Arab/Persian and Shiite/Sunni ... yeah they tend to not like being mistaken for each other much.
Indeed, Although in fairness to the Iranians they were never colonized by the Europeans as such.

They were defeated multiple times, as well as being conquered and occupied by the British and the Russians. For my point, the distinction between being beaten and occupied and being made into a colony doesn't matter.

Being beaten in battle is one thing, they remember turkmenchay and WWII with a vengeance but the Europeans (Britain/Russia) having influence there is quite different from what happened to the rest of greater Asia..?