Quote (fender @ Jan 8 2020 07:44pm)
while tend to agree (the only truly principled stance they have is to defend literally everything trump does), they still pretended to be non-interventionists in order to justify his blunder with the kurds - so i think it's just fair to point that out...
that's only true if by 'american interests' you mean the interests of neocons. pretty sure most americans would rather see the two countries overcome their differences diplomatically, and don't want iran to have nukes. that said, in this thread you have already comprehensively demonstrated you don't understand, and more importantly, don't WANT to understand anything about the iran nuclear deal, which demonstrably halted their nuclear weapons program (one of the key goals, so much for question 4), so i'm not surprised you're doubling down on your ignorant stance.
as to your comment on 'shia terrorism', that's a bit of a non sequitur. even if i accepted your severly generalised characterisation of its organisation and funding, the recent events still have significant recruitment and legitimisation potential.
Among Iranians, possibly. How many Iranians is the United States fighting in Iraq? Killing Iraqis for months on end is a poor strategy, one that Soleimani no doubt hoped the administration would fall into. The focus is back on Iran, and the United States has never had to worry about good Iranian publicity.
By "American interests" I mean the foreign policy interests of the state. What you think most Americans would rather see is irrelevant, although I guess it bears mentioning that a majority of Congress opposed the deal in the first place. Iran used the billions in funding the deal (directly and indirectly) provided to fund Iranian expansionism in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Saudi Arabia's foreign policy (see war in Yemen) is a direct consequence of Iranian empowerment. Iran's control over Iraq has led to the further alienation of the Sunni population, and is one of the principle motivators driving Iraq's Sunnis to ISIS. Iranian support for Assad has been critical to that regime's survival.
As for the deal itself, Iran is on the record as saying that military sites were off limits. Perhaps the IAEA thought it had the authority, but just never got around to actually asking the Iranians if that was ok. At this point, I don't think we'll ever be able to say.
Quote (IceMage @ Jan 8 2020 07:45pm)
Most Trump voters are swayable on a myriad of issues(if Trump is doing the swaying). That's why we call it a cult.
Most voters don't have hard and fast opinions on foreign policy. We all collectively recognize what a disaster Iraq was, and so Trump gets credit for a viewpoint that most Republicans struggle to say.
This post was edited by bogie160 on Jan 8 2020 09:11pm