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Cathy Gunn's avatar

WMD V2.0? Is anyone foolish enough to believe the made up story this time? :-(

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Malcolm Lumsden Clark Smith's avatar

Brilliant piece, Leah.

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Graham Alexander Fordyce's avatar

Excellent analysis. Thank you.

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JB's avatar

Tulsi Gabbard has now apparently "clarified" her position, stating Iran could make a nuke weapon within weeks to months.

Reports are available via various media outlets.

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Russ McBryde's avatar

How do I unsubscribe

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James Galt's avatar

So the Islamic Republic of Iran is a good thing? Remember the Islamic Republic is not Iran. The Iranian people deserve a new start, there is no guarantee that they will get anything better if the Islamic Republic falls, however if it falls there is at least the chance that they will.

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Leah Gunn Barrett's avatar

The best way to respond to your comment is to refer you to Jonathan Cook's substack today because I couldn't explain it any better:

"When Iranians elected the secular reformist Mohammed Mossadegh, a lawyer and intellectual, as prime minister in 1951, Britain and the US worked to topple him. His crime - he took back control of Iran’s oil industry – and its profits – from the UK.

Within two years, Mossadegh was overthrown in US-led Operation Ajax, and the Shah re-installed as dictator. Israel was drafted in to train Iran’s Savak secret police in torture techniques to use on Iranian dissidents, learnt from torturing Palestinians.

Predictably, the West’s crushing of all efforts to democratically reform Iran opened up a space for resistance to the Shah that was quickly occupied by Islamist parties instead.

In 1979, these revolutionary forces overthrew the western-backed dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Paris to found the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Notably Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Ali Khameini, issued a religious edict in 2003 banning Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. He considered it a violation of Islamic law.

Which is why Iran has been so reluctant to develop a bomb, despite Israel’s endless provocations and claims to the contrary.

What Iran has done instead is two things that are the real trigger for Israel’s war of aggression.

First, it developed the best alternative military strategy it could muster to protect itself from Israeli and western belligerence – a belligerence related to Iran’s refusal to serve as a client of the West, as the Shah once had, rather than the issue of human rights under clerical rule.

Iran’s leaders understood they were a target. Iran has huge reserves of oil and gas, but unlike the neighbouring Gulf regimes it is not a puppet of the West. It can also shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the main gateway for the flow of oil and gas to the West and Asia.

And as a Shia-led state (in contrast to the Sunni Islam that dominates much of the rest of the Middle East), Iran has a series of co-religionist communities across the region – in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere – with which it has developed strong ties."

You can read his whole piece here: https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/israels-attack-on-iran-the-violent?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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Neil Harris's avatar

And who will be the new leader of Iran should it fall? None other than the Shah Pavlavi’s own son who has been brought in as a neo con puppet a la Juan Guaido. It is utterly naive and actually imperiously arrogant to suggest that this type of skullduggery would be beneficial to Iran or its people.

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Leah Gunn Barrett's avatar

Exactly right, Neil. Israeli and American hubris is astounding. Israel is currently being pummelled by Iranian rockets and is crying for the US to save it. It can dish it out, but can't take it.

This time, the Zionist entity has seriously overreached and if the US joins this disaster, both are going to go down - fast.

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Neil Harris's avatar

Let’s hope these lunatic psychopaths don’t decide to take us all with them.

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