You are no longer an opposition leader in need of Iranian support for your existence and for your political survival in the face of Saddam's brutality...Since the Iranians were here on diplomatic business, you must have a diplomatic note.
Yes, massah.
When he criticized the Iraqi president Talabani for meeting at the border with al-Quds Commander Suleimani himself, Talabani explained that Soleimani did not want to come to Baghdad because he was afraid that he might be arrested.
But the US bully had made his point. ZKh writes,
I am convinced that if we had combined diplomatic engagement with forcible actions we could have shaped Iran's meddling decisively. If we were not going to engage the Iranians, I felt that we should have used other means, including force, to thwart their strategy.
Sounds grim, but ZKh just gave the Iranians a slap. Schoolyard bullies don't usually kill.
First stop Venezuela
"We'll make sure there's a big popular demo. Remember Cairo in 2013? That will scare the bejesus out of Maduro. Maybe he'll wimp out like Yanukovych in Kiev, and, oh yah, Milosevic in Belgrade. It's a win:win. Guaido gets a free pass to take over, or we just keep up the pressure til Maduro is, by chance, assassinated. Keep our hands clean."
Nex stop?
My reading of The Envoy suggests to me that Mr Chameleon won't changed his colour on Iran. His 2008 UN sanctions are now even tighter. Bolton and Israel would love an invasion but ZKh knows it won't work. Maybe he got the ear of Trump, who is also a chameleon, and on impulse, decided to put the Afghan wunderkind once again at the heart of the empire.
The bluster by Bolton and Pompeo about MEK overthrowing the Iranian government is just schoolyard name-calling. Maybe even ZKh's idea. It's to scare Iran and get it to give up aiding Hezbollah and Gaza, keep out of Iraq. Trump is reckless and loves gambling.
It ain't gonna happen. But Iran is helpless until Trump reinstates the nuclear deal and ends sanctions. Just like the crisis over the US budget. Trump in the wrong on both counts. Is there another corner Trump can back himself into? Can he admit he's wrong?
2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the revolution. Ahh. So easy and beautiful, it was in 1979. Then 40 years of war, subversion and isolation. For Iran, 2019 is the equivalent of the Soviet Union in 1957, which is when the Russian revolution really blossomed, once the US had got used to it.
How ironic, even though the Russians, the communists, were the Cold War enemy, they still had it easier than Islamic Iran has then and now. True, the Soviet Union had nukes. The US just assumes that Iran wants them too. Bully think.
But they've survived four decades without them and made it clear they're not interested in nukes. What more does Trump want? Why do Trump and Zal fear Islam so much?
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