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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Yes I understand Iran objectively lied and never told us, directly or indirectly, based on the evidence. The rest of this sounds like your opinion. And as though mistrust should be taken towards our officials.

    Well, I believe them, and I agree with their stance on Iran.

    This is no longer a factual discussion, and I won’t be continuing.

    And I picked up on the attempt to incorrectly frame what was said in the quote. Miller did not say all the things you’re claiming.



  • Where is Damascus? Unless that’s in Iran, directly attacking Israel the first time seems like an escalation to me…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2024_Iranian_strikes_against_Israel

    The attack was the largest attempted drone strike in history, intended to overwhelm anti-aircraft defenses. It was the first time since Iraq’s 1991 missile strikes that Israel was directly attacked by the military of another state. Iran’s attacks drew criticism from the United Nations, several world leaders, and political analysts, who warned that they risk escalating into a full-blown regional war. Israel retaliated by executing limited strikes on Iran on 18 April 2024.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/13/middleeast/iran-drones-attack-israel-intl-latam/index.html

    In a statement released on Telegram, Iran’s Foreign Ministry claimed the attack showed Iran’s “responsible approach to regional and international peace and security at a time [of] illegal and genocidal actions by the Zionist apartheid regime against the Palestinian people.”

    However, a host of countries from the Middle East to Europe and Latin America voiced concerns over the possibility for escalation, many of them condemning Iran’s actions.

    UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, saying he was “deeply alarmed about the very real danger of a devastating region-wide escalation.” Regional powers Saudi Arabia and Egypt voiced similar concerns, with Egypt saying it was in contact with “all concerned parties to try to contain the situation.”

    Various European countries condemned the attack and expressed support for Israel, with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, describing it on X as “an unprecedented escalation and a grave threat to regional security.”

    The UK and France both reiterated their commitments to Israel’s security, with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saying Iran had “once again demonstrated that it is intent on sowing chaos in its own backyard.”

    The Netherlands, Austria and the Czech Republic also condemned the attack and expressed support for Israel, while Spain and Portugal called for de-escalation.

    China has also expressed “deep concern” over the escalation, calling on “relevant parties to exercise calm and restraint to prevent further escalations.” It called the attack a “spillover of the Gaza conflict” and urged an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

    Over the past months, American officials have urged Beijing to use its leverage over Iran to help prevent a regionwide conflict. China has been Iran’s biggest trading partner for the past decade and buys 90% of Iran’s oil exports.

    In Latin America, Chile and Mexico both condemned the use of force, while Argentina’s President Javier Milei cut short a trip to Denmark to fly back to his country and form a crisis committee. His spokesperson Manuel Adorni said the meeting was to “take charge of the situation and coordinate actions with the presidents of the Western world.”


  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Israeli_strikes_on_Iran

    On 19 April 2024 at 5:23 a.m. IRST, the Israeli Air Force launched airstrikes targeting an air defense facility within Iran. The limited airstrikes targeted an air defense radar site at an airbase near Isfahan, in central Iran. Israeli missiles appear to have hit their target directly. Satellite images suggest that a surface-to-air missile battery was damaged or destroyed. There was no extensive damage to the base itself. The attack was launched in response to the Iranian drone and missile strikes in Israel, which itself was an Iranian retaliation for the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

    Iranian media and social media reported minor explosions near Isfahan, where Iran has nuclear facilities, a drone manufacturing facility, and a major airbase. Iranian state media said that Israeli drones flying over the region were shot down by the Iranian Air Defense Force. Three Iranian officials confirmed to The New York Times that Israel was involved. US officials confirmed that at least three missiles from Israeli aircraft had struck Iran. No strikes were reported on Iran’s nuclear sites.

    According to a senior US official speaking to ABC News, Israeli aircraft, operating beyond Iran’s borders, launched three missiles targeting an air defense radar site guarding the Natanz nuclear facility. The official further stated that the assessment indicated the successful destruction of the targeted site. He also said that the objective of the strike was to communicate Israel’s capabilities to Iran without escalating tensions further. An Iranian official told Reuters that the explosions were from Israeli drones being shot down, and claimed that there had been no missile attack on Iran.


  • https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-october-1-2024/

    QUESTION: And then both you and the National Security Advisor just a few minutes ago talked about this being a brazen and unacceptable escalation. But does the administration see anything that Israel has done over the course of the last three weeks as escalatory?

    MR MILLER: So certainly they have done things to expand the conflict, but if you look at the actions that they have taken, they were bringing terrorists to justice, terrorists who have launched attacks on Israeli civilians. If you look at what Iran did today – we have been warning for some time about the threat posed by Iran arming and funding terrorist groups across the Middle East. And the attack today just demonstrated the danger of those actions. What you saw was Iran launching a state-on-state attack to protect and defend the terrorist groups that it has built, nurtured and that it controls. So there is a difference between the actions that we have seen Israel take to defend its civilians —

    QUESTION: Okay, well I’m not suggesting that they’re —

    MR MILLER: — and what we’ve – I just – and what we’ve seen Iran take.

    QUESTION: I’m not trying to suggest that they are equivalent. I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t see —

    MR MILLER: No, you – we have certainly seen Iran – or – we’ve certainly seen Israel expand the nature of its attacks against Hizballah, but it is a very – it is a very different type of attack than what we saw today from a state – a state actor against another state.

    QUESTION: So given that the Secretary and the National Security Advisor just said that this attack by Iran is sort of definitively escalatory in nature. I know that State – you’ve been telling us, the Secretary even told us that for months they’ve – you’ve been encouraging the Israelis not to respond to attacks and provocations in such a way that escalates anything further. Are – is the Secretary going to offer that same advice to the Israelis now in the wake of these missile strikes?

    MR MILLER: I’ll say a couple things about that. First, of course Israel has a right to defend itself, as any nation does. In terms of what Israel’s response will be, of course there must be consequences for Iran for this attack. We’ve made clear that there must be consequences. I’m not going to get into what those consequences are today.

    But there are things on which we will be coordinating with our Israeli counterparts, and I think in the immediate aftermath of this attack we are going to coordinate with them on what any response might be. I think it’s important that we are able to defeat this attack through successful work with Israel and with our partners, and we will work with them on what a response might look like. But I’m not at the position, just two and a half hours after this event occurred, to offer what that might look like today.

    QUESTION: The Iranian foreign ministry people have said that – now that they gave the U.S. – I don’t who – a head’s up in advance of these missile strikes today through diplomatic channels. Is that true?

    MR MILLER: That is absolutely false. We had no kind of warning from the Government of Iran that they were going to launch such an attack. Yeah.






  • I’m hoping the new Mexican president in conjunction with the next US president (I’m personally rooting for Harris) will be able to put a dent in this. It is certainly on their respective radars.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2024/10/01/claudia-sheinbaum-mexico-first-female-president/75448711007/

    At the same time, Mexico has been engaged in a massive effort to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. border. Sheinbaum will be under immediate pressure to keep it up, even as the rising number of migrants stuck in Mexico risks angers the Mexican public. She will be under pressure from the U.S., as well, to target the dangerous criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl and migrants to the United States.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harris-visits-us-southern-border-trump-focuses-immigration-2024-09-27/

    “We will pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat violators, and if someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border unlawfully, they will be barred from receiving asylum,” she said.

    Harris emphasized her goal of a “humane” immigration program, saying she would with Congress to create a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers” - hundreds of thousands of people brought into the U.S. illegally as children. They were a priority for Democrats for a decade but were left out of a failed immigration bill that Biden had backed.

    “I reject the false choice that suggests we must either choose between securing our border or creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”














  • I truly don’t understand what you think I’m saying. I think that a response to a second direct attack being massive does not preclude it from not escalating (unless there’s a less conventional definition specific to military responses I’m not familiar with). Is Iran’s second direct attack on Israel not considered an escalation, and do you think that is not massive, despite rhetoric from the Ayatollah?

    Or is Israel not supposed to respond to this?