The war between the US and the countries with large Shia populations and corresponding Shia militias has been started by the US by murdering Suleimani, a top Iranian general, on a diplomatic mission between Iran and Saudi Arabia mediated by Iraq. He had to give to the premier of Iraq the answer of Iran to a former message send by Saudi Arabia. These negotiations have been suggested by the US. So, we have one of the worst imaginable crimes in international diplomacy - murdering participants of negotiations. The reaction of the Shia militias of different countries, in particular, of Lebanon and Iraq, as well as of Iran, has been immediate and strong. They have all promised revenge, and revenge in the form of dead US soldiers. The Iraq parliament has voted that the US forces should leave the country. On January 8. 2020 Iran has attacked US bases in Iraq at the same time when Suleimani was murdered. Two of the Iraqi Shia militias have also announced the start of their revenge actions, and a US base has been attacked by Iraqi militias too. The Hezbollah in Lebanon has announced that in case of a US retaliation they will also start rocket attacks against Israel, which they consider as being involved in the murder of Suleimani too.
While you may call them an act of war, they do not demonstrate yet a declaration of war. A declaration of war means considerably more than an act of war, which are easier to claim. As of this moment Iran is not at war with the USA. I doubt very much that Iran will formally declare war on the USA. However the situation is fluid and ongoing. Diplomatic efforts may be effective in de-escalation, but then again may not be. The Trump administration appears to be yet again attempting to cover up another foolish and impulsive decision that makes no strategic sense. What we are seeing currently is a venting of outrage towards Trumps actions. The USA may have to let it all happen before the rage subsides. It depends on Iran and Iraq as to how serious this turns out. The next 24 hours will be critical...
It looks like this early attack opens a possibility to stop the war. This immediate attack was powerful enough to satisfy the Shia population. Iran has clearly shown that they are not afraid of war. The Iranian officials have said that these rocket attacks have been their retaliation. The third wave will follow only if the US retaliates, immediately at the time of a retaliation. There has been no reaction of the US air defenses, despite the fact that the US forces have been in high alert. This shows that the US air defenses are not a problem for Iranian missiles. Given this situation, an immediate retaliation by the US would be stupid in already from a purely military point of view - the US bases around Iran are yet easy targets, and the US does not have powerful enough attack possibilities nearby, and after this attack, it is clear now that there is no hope that Iran will not react against some retaliation. If we remember how much time the US needed to prepare its troops to start the Iraq war, it seems easy for Trump to justify that there will be no immediate retaliation. Moreover, there have been explicit statements by various US politicians (Pelosi, Rand Paul) against starting a war. So, a reasonable and defensible line for Trump will be no immediate reaction, but start the preparations for a full-scale war. With the retaliation delayed until these preparations have been finished. This could be sold as sufficiently tough but nonetheless reasonable. So, Trump can shift that officially simply delayed start of the retaliation against Iran to some time after the elections. That means, Iran and the US will remain in a sort of ceasefire up to the elections. But this is, of course, not all. Because there are also some other forces. Namely, first of all, the Iraqi Shia militias. For these forces, the murder of Suleimani needs revenge too. Moreover, the US has explicitly attacked them and, together with Suleimani, murdered some high-level leaders. So, this sort of ceasefire with the Iran is irrelevant to these forces. They will fight the US bases in Iraq and have already started this today. Iran will not bother about this, and the US has no possibility to blame Iran and retaliate against Iran for initiating or supporting these attacks, even if this would be not a fantasy but if there would be real such support. Why? Simply because of the ceasefire above. So, the US bases in Iraq will be under attack of the Iraqi Shia militias, despite the ceasefire with Iran, which stops only rocket attacks from Iranian territory. Actually, these bases have not simply enough personal to defend themselves against them without any defense from some other Iraqi forces. Of course, the Shia militias have much less power than Iran, but nonetheless the bases have not been prepared for this situation. It is one thing to have bases in agreement with the government of a country, and another one to fight large parts of the army of that country without any other support. Moreover, the US relied heavily on the belief that nobody will attack them in fear of retaliation - which is no longer the case. So, even simply from a military point of view, even if the decision would be to start a war with Iran, it would be reasonable to leave those bases as essentially indefensible in this situation, until the preparation for a war against Iran has been finished. So, Trump has now the chance to look tough enough, preparing the US forces for a serious war against Iran during the next year until the elections, but at the same time to leave Iraq as well as Syria. After the elections, this war will be forgotten. The last formal declaration of war by the US was that of WW II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States Neither Korea nor Vietnam, even less Afghanistan and Iraq, were wars according to your criterion. I think nobody cares about this. I have speculated that Iran may formally declare war without attacking immediately, but this attack against the US bases is a much more powerful reaction. After this, to declare war makes no sense for Iran too. Yes. But Nasrallah has already said that he does not believe and promised in the case of a US retaliation against Iran to start attacks against Israel too.
In general terms I agree with most of what you have posted. Perhaps it is worth drawing the distinction between war with a nation and war with an ideology. Vietnam and Korea were wars against the forced spread commumism. Same with the Soviet Union. The USA was at war with communism and not nations persee. The USA is currently not at war with Islam, however threatening to destroy cultural sites could provoke one. Again, most people, leaders etc know fully well that Trumps actions do not speak for the USA, yet they have to deal with the fallout his sheer folly generates. I would bet that the Pentagon etc have just about had a belly full of this unprofessional conduct by the POTUS. As typical, all media reports, esp from about 3 hours ago onwards are to be treated with a grain of salt. All gov announcements need to be considered as political manipulations. Truth degradation in full swing. Meanwhile Kim of NK is sitting there monitoring all of this and yet another Trump failure may come to the fore.
Some time ago I remember hearing a fly buzzing around these parts, rambling about how wonderful it would be to destroy American soft power by having Trump as the US president and less diplomacy. I wonder if it's still happy with this shit.
In his usual low-level jargon, CptBork wrote: US soft power has been destroyed a lot. The US murdering a diplomat on diplomatic mission initiated by the US is essentially the worst case of destroying soft power. Trump has now two possibilities - to accept the ceasefire on Iranian conditions and to leave Iraq and Syria. This destroys the remaining US soft power in the Arab world, where the weak ones are simply despised. Or to start a full-scale war with Iran. Which will predictably end like the Vietnam war. And will destroy a lot of US hard as well as soft power too. If Trump chooses the first variant, I will be happy. If he chooses the second, I will be on the side of Iran, and wish them success. I will not be happy about this, given that a lot of innocent Iranian civilians will be murdered during this war by the US (they cannot do anything beyond bombing). But the expected outcome - the US running away like from Vietnam - will be fine too.
In talks with a couple of Iranian refugees/migrants here in Australia the general consensus is that the death of Sulemani was a good and expected thing. They all suggested that he did not work for the military directly but was more a Government "Intelligence" employee/operative.. The reason I stated that I thought his assassination made no strategic sense and that the drone strike was an act of impulse from Trump.: The excuse offered that Sulemani was planning an attack on USA interests is not true. Sulemani was but only one cog in the Iranian chain of command. His replacement may be considerably worse. To assassinate one person in such a manner does not change anything of strategic importance regarding any planned attack whether real of just fantasy. Strategic planning is on going regardless....as you would expect any military organization to be doing. The assassination was for other reasons. There was no pre-prepared media statement or even a credible reason for such an attack offered immediately after the assassination. The Pentagon was caught on the hop so to speak with incorrect and mistaken letters etc. suggesting confusion existed when there should be none. No communication with Congress. Pleading classified, need to know etc. Trumps administration was seen to be playing catch up.
Iran's scorched Earth policy against the US has apparently started... with lots of burnt grass. Hopefully the reports of zero casualties amongst US and Iraqis prove to be correct. In other news, Schmelzer's boner has dropped from a record 4" back to 3" as the previous night's vodka withdraws and feelings of Russian inadequacy settle back in.
Not necessarily because it was a ''bad'' idea, that guy sounded like another Hitler of sorts. But, because of the potential escalation in the region due to what the retaliation might look like, is probably why Israel is distancing itself. Truth is, Israel wasn't involved in the decision, but I don't think that Iran believes that.
Hezbollah would love the distraction, given that their own people are growing sick of the leadership driving their country into the dirt. Assuming there were indeed zero US casualties, it would be dumb to play into Iran's hands and continue escalating instead of being satisfied with all the damage the US just did to them and the continued uprisings throughout the middle east against the Khamenei regime.
I don't fully understand how a ''proxy'' works? Hezbollah basically aids Iran, when necessary, so it will respond on behalf of Iran should the US continue to escalate its involvement?
Only Hassan Nasrallah knows the answer to that but they've been threatening it for years and have upped the rhetoric especially of late in that regard. Given the nature of the protests currently engulfing Lebanon including in the majority Shia areas, and the recent US action vs. Iran, it seems like Hezbollah might be dumb enough to believe that starting another war with Israel will provide a suitable distraction, and when Israel inevitably retaliates it's tough to say whether the Lebanese street will be dumb enough to buy into it. It's ironic considering how many Nazis go around trolling on the web, including this site, accusing Israel of starting every war America gets mired in.
Fine, Trump has used the possibility given to him by the Iranian attack. He claims no US victims so that he can pretend that there is no necessity to retaliate, and all that follows are new sanctions. So, on the direct front US vs. Iran we have now an accepted ceasefire. Up to now, the US claims that they will remain in Iraq. We will see. Sources from the ground in Syria claim that they have already left two more bases in Syria. And there have been already two strange stories with US giving information to local governments (Iraq and Kuweit) that they will leave, which, after this has been published by those local governments, have been denied. In the case of Iraq, it was claimed to be sent in error, in the case of Kuweit the information was claimed to be placed by some hackers. I think the decision to leave has been made but will be officially announced only later, after the fact. This makes sense, given that if the Shia militias think that they will stay, they may spend more time on the preparation of the attacks against the bases. If they would know that they leave, say, today, the local militias would know that this is their last chance for revenge and attack immediately. Whatever: something unimaginable even a few years ago has happened - Some country has attacked US bases and not received any retaliation for this. And this was not Russia or China, with their strong enough nuclear weapons sufficient to scare off the US, but Iran.
The whole retaliation thingo appears entirely staged to placate the angry masses. As a apart of the cover up of Trumps crazy decision to assassinate someone for other reasons. The Pentagon doesn't know whether it is supposed to prepare for withdrawal as originally requested by Trump a while ago or whether Trump intends to escalate... A hoax Orchestrated building damage at the base and so on.... It is even possible and surprisingly plausible that Iran organized the assassination via Trump as Sulemani may have been responsible for the Saudi oil field and shipping attacks a few months ago and was planning on escalating tensions even more... Sulemani could have been a rogue general and had to be neutralized. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Extent of damage to base... How many missiles did Iran fire? lol
You're grasping at straws, the US army isn't a pile of fetal alcoholic crap like your Russian army; there's nothing unprecedented about the US not retaliating for an attack that produces no casualties. As Osama Bin Laden's killer pointed out (perhaps unwisely), Soleimani's funeral alone was infinitely more devastating in casualties than this rocket strike. If Iran and its proxies now end their attacks on US bases then the US can rightly claim victory in this exchange and seek diplomatic progress instead, otherwise if they keep shooting you can expect massive retaliation beyond the sanctions now being added. The US handling of the situation is very much unlike how it would have been handled in Russia, where 300 experienced veteran soldiers get thrown away to the Americans like drunken pawns and Putin has to tell their families to keep quiet or they disappear too, or when you almost nuke Moscow with your Burevestnik and have to suddenly shut down all the nuclear monitoring sites in the country because of a "computer glitch". WW3 might come one day but for now I recommend sticking to porn, it doesn't get you as worked up as seeing America succeed at stuff.
One of the main persons involved in the quite similar protests at the same time in Iraq has described now openly what has happened: Mr. Abdul Mahdi spoke with an angry tone, saying: The American President's threatened the Iraqi Prime Minister to liquidate him directly with the Minister of Defense. The Marines are the third party that sniped the demonstrators and the security men: Abdul Mahdi continued:
Don't forget Sulemanis posthumous online activities....sure you can quote from them as well...lol Edit: Don't be surprised if Sulemani made use of cloud data, email storage and send as a deterant...to his assasination. Things could become very interesting indeed over the next couple of weeks or so...
