Блиски исток

120,000 U.S. troops

Poland's ambassador to Israel @mmagierowski was attacked outside the @PLinIsrael embassy in Tel Aviv. His assailant has been arrested.

Polish Prime Minister @MorawieckiM has condemned what he says was a 'racist attack' and 'xenophobic act of aggression' https://t.co/PDzUmV0QDo

— Notes from Poland (@notesfrompoland) May 15, 2019

Let's not get carried away w/ the line that Bolton is dragging Trump into war with Iran. It seems quite plausible to me that the NYT is correct here in reporting that Trump is just annoyed that Bolton is getting too much credit. https://t.co/3T8Pcf9phL pic.twitter.com/gDLw9YqdVm

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) May 17, 2019

Take It From an Iraq War Supporter—War With Iran Would Be a Disaster
David Frum

...
The project of a war with Iran is so crazy, it remains incredible that Donald Trump’s administration could truly be premeditating it. But on the off, off chance that it is, here’s a word of caution from a veteran of the George W. Bush administration: Don’t do it.
...
Inside the Bush administration, we thought we were ready to remake Iraq for the better—but we were not. We were ignorant, arrogant, and unprepared, and we unleashed human suffering that did no good for anyone: not for Americans, not for Iraqis, not for the region. Almost two decades later, the damage to America’s standing in the world from the Iraq War has still not been repaired, let alone that war’s economic and human costs to the United States and the Middle East.

The idea of repeating such a war, only on a much bigger scale, without allies, without justification, and without any plan at all for what comes next staggers and terrifies the imagination.

The Trump administration is very probably bluffing in its current menaces to Iran. President Trump dislikes foreign military interventions and has tried to withdraw American forces from Syria and Afghanistan. It seems unlikely that he would willingly launch a major war against a near-nuclear state of more than 80 million people. But bluffs do get called—and then the bluffer must rapidly make some hasty calculations. Wars of words can escalate into real wars, real fast.

If the goal of some inside the administration is to goad Iran into striking first—thus forcing Trump’s hand—that’s a ruse that risks igniting a conflict much bigger than the one with Iraq, and one even less likely to succeed.

...

The supposed provocations by Iran cited by administration sources as the reason for a U.S. response look petty, even assuming they are genuinely Iran’s doing.

Iran is a formidable state, home to a great civilization. And while the Iranian regime has acquired even more regional enemies than 2003 Iraq, its interests also converge in ways Iraq’s never did with the interests of other major powers, Russia most of all.

Iran’s theocratic state rightly inspires protest and complaint inside Iran. But there’s no evidence that Iranians would welcome military action by foreigners against their cities and military. The regime can mobilize shows of support and participation when it wants to. It rules by repression, not by terror. The regime has demonstrated global reach, sponsoring terror attacks in Europe and Argentina. U.S. officials have alleged that Iran even planned an assassination attempt against the Saudi ambassador to Washington in 2011. If the U.S. attempts surgical air strikes, Iran has proved it can retaliate against American allies. And if the Trump administration intends outright regime change, it has evidently done none of the requisite planning.

The administration has not made any public case for war. What would that case sound like, if anybody bothered to articulate it? By 2003, Iraq had spent more than a decade repeatedly cheating on the terms of the 1991 cease-fire that ended the first Gulf War. It had menaced Kuwait again in 1994, carried on forbidden military operations against the Kurds, been caught in a clandestine chemical and biological program in 1996, and evaded sanctions via a complex system of bribes and payoffs.

But in 2019, the U.S. is the international scofflaw. It ripped up a multilateral nuclear arms–control agreement with Iran. Whatever that treaty’s deficiencies, few inside the U.S.—and nobody outside it—deny that Iran complied with its terms. Iran’s behavior in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza is vicious and destructive, as it has been for decades. But where’s the casus belli here? What declared-in-advance U.S. red lines has Iran tripped? Any U.S. military action will look to the world like a bolt-from-the-blue act of aggression. It will look that way for the excellent reason that it’s precisely what it would be.

In any conflict with Iran, the U.S. would find itself without allies except for Israel and the Gulf states. The Trump administration would find itself even more isolated politically at home. Most Americans do not support, trust, or respect Trump’s leadership. There is no Colin Powell–like figure in this administration, no senior official who commands respect across party lines. Pitifully few people in this administration command respect even within party lines. The administration’s record of casual incompetence at minor tasks raises terrifying questions about its capacity for a gigantic undertaking like a land war against a Central Asian state.

Even as a bluff, the war talk violates the rule: Don’t threaten to do something so obviously stupid, nobody will believe that you would actually deliver on your threat. You get the worst of all worlds in that case. The threat will not frighten, because it will not be believed. That, in turn, will either push you to do the obviously stupid thing you never intended to do, or force you to walk away from your threats and expose yourself as a bullying blowhard.

If you will not do it, you should not talk about it. If you are thinking about doing it, stop. And if you are talking without thinking? The U.S. and the world have had more than enough of that from Washington, and not only since January 2017.

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/05/take-it-iraq-war-supporterwar-iran-would-be-disaster/157099/?oref=d-river

Take It From an Iraq War Supporter —War With Iran Would Be a Disaster
David Frum

KinderLad wrote:Ja bih smeo da se kladim da ce se odigrati neka vrsta vojne akcije protiv Irana. Ne mozda masovna invazija, to bi bilo previse, ali...nesto.

Sotir wrote:Од других вести, процурео извештај OPCW да је наводни хемијски напад на Думу који је послужио Трампу као изговор за ракетирање (једног истраживачког центра са 100 ракета) - био стажиран.

http://syriapropagandamedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Engineering-assessment-of-two-cylinders-observed-at-the-Douma-incident-27-February-2019-1.pdf

Потврђено је да је извештај аутентичан.
По рупама на плафону је закључено да се ради о експлозивном средству а не цилиндру са гасом који је нађен у соби. По оштећењима на цилиндрима се види да су вероватно пали на земљу под углом, те да су донесени у станове и сликани.

паће wrote:Досад се стажирало тако што одеш па стажираш док не накупиш колико месеци већ треба... сад то већ може да се наручи да ти ураде.