Best Of

It's such a crime what the Israelis are doing to Lebanon.It is one of the nicest places in the world with a really beautiful gentle population They deserve so much better than their grotesque belligerent neighbours and their American allies. It makes me so angry. Just watch some of the interviews with the young population. They use three languages often in a single conversation. They go from English to french to Arabic. The f***ing Israelis have just bombed the Ramada Hotel which is in the Christian area. They are gung-ho morons.

It is not a crime to fight Hezbollah.

If you want peace for Lebanon then regime change in Iran, so that Lebanon can finally rid itself of Hezbollah, is the best way of achieving that.

I really don't want to engage with you at all. You sometimes make me feel physically sick. But Hezbollah are not what you think they are. In rough figures Lebanon is 60 ;40 Moslem Christian. There are sub groups and sub groups of sub groups all going back to the civil war which went on for about 20 years.

The barbarism and devastation that went on during that time has been explained to me many times. I have found myself working in a studio with active members of up to 4 different factions. All now friends again.

The executives and producers I worked with spent the war years at Universities in Paris Canada or London so the fighting didn't touch them. It is NOT a classless society. But for many it was an incredibly brutal affair. ......

It started with roadblocks set up by the Palestinians which led to the blowing up of a school bus by a Christian Militia which killed 42 children. ....And then it began.....Hezbollah was set up at that time to look after their communities and wipe out corruption

They set up schools and housed the homeless and when the Israelis joined in it was Hezbollah the communities looked towards to protect them. ...................

So when the civil war was over and a recognised government took over they were given seats in the new multi party parliament and given ministries.

My producer who is a Lebanese Christian does not consider Hezbollah to be terrorists and to describe them as such just shows a lack of understanding

Who murdered a judge and some journalists when the official Lebanese government enquiry into the port explosion started asking about Hezbollah’s involvement with importing the fertiliser/explosives that went bang.

For example.

I think my explanation was inadequate but their purpose was essentially charitable and not to be confused with Hamas. Certainly when they were founded their intentions were not belligerent

They sure like murdering political opponents now.

https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/2030598834221416717

The UAE has struck a desalination plant in Iran -Israeli Media

Would be the first confirmed UAE strike on Iran, and follows a pattern of escalating strikes against critical water infrastructure in the Gulf region

I thought you hawks were doing this to unshackle the Iranian people, not for them to die of thirst.

I think that annoucement is quite extraordinary in that a gulf state on it's own decision and with its military attacks Iranian infrastructure

This is an escalation directly as a result of Iran firing drones and missiles at and over friendly states

The GCC isn’t particularly friendly to Iran even before the last couple of weeks

I don't think the Iranians banked on GCC retaliation.

Then they are idiots

It takes some going to be an Islamic country in the Middle East at war with Israel and to be unanimously less popular than Israel across the Middle East.

Its only in Europe that 'useful idiots' want to back the Iranian regime.

https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/2030598834221416717

The UAE has struck a desalination plant in Iran -Israeli Media

Would be the first confirmed UAE strike on Iran, and follows a pattern of escalating strikes against critical water infrastructure in the Gulf region

I thought you hawks were doing this to unshackle the Iranian people, not for them to die of thirst.

I think that annoucement is quite extraordinary in that a gulf state on it's own decision and with its military attacks Iranian infrastructure

This is an escalation directly as a result of Iran firing drones and missiles at and over friendly states

The GCC isn’t particularly friendly to Iran even before the last couple of weeks

I don't think the Iranians banked on GCC retaliation.

Well what the fuck did they expect in return for 1,500 drones and missiles aimed at the UAE, plus a thousand more aimed at a dozen more countries in the region?

Did they expect them all to say “muslims good and Jews bad, let’s all bomb Israel”?

They thought the GCC would go running to the US and tell them to stop? I wouldn't underestimate a sense of anti Arab racism among the Mullahs who probably think they're dealing with a bunch of fake countries that they could dominate if the US was forced out of the middle east.

If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.

Except that is complete and utter bullshit.

Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia.
Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.

Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.
Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.

Dozens killed as Israeli special forces raid Lebanese village in search of 40-year-old remains - BBC

Indeed

IDF grave robbing grave digging mission in to sacred area to try to allegedly find 40 year old remains.

Family of the dead person have publicly said they don't want anything to do with it.

How anyone can defend that sick murdering ass hole any more is beyond belief

He's on A par with Pol Pot now, worse than Hitler or Stalin

On a par with Pol Pot?

Worse than Hitler or Stalin?

You are insane.

Not surprisng from someone who posted on here he wanted Tel Aviv bombed out of existence

Netanyahu, Hamas, Ayatollah Khamenei, Hezbollah are all evil and equally have the blood of innocents on their hands

And of course comparision with Hitler is just hysterical nonsense

When @Brixian59 and @Roger come on here and repeat my second line then we will be making progress

As my wife said yesterday, a plague on all their houses

I would very much like to disagree with this, but I am struggling.

Look folks, reality can sometimes be hard to accept.

We all want freedom for Iran. The regime was a horrible, nasty pack of religious zealots for whom terrorism & murder was always the first option. Their revolution started by killing 400 people in a theater with arson & chained exit doors. They sent thousand of kids to their deaths with toy keys around their necks promising entry to heaven if they just walk in to Iraqi minefields.

I’ve tracked IRGC terrorism across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria & Yemen and even fought them in the PG, They almost killed me in 1988. The Islamic regime needed/still needs to be destroyed … that said:

People are getting upset with why I assess this war will likely fail to topple the regime.

Because it is a fantasy based in Trump’s head using lethal tools we prepared for 47 years for the right moment. That moment likely has passed.

Trump has no idea what he’s doing. Because he has contempt for the people who know what they’re doing & the history of what came before him.

If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires then Iran is the funeral home of empires. It dresses you up and lays you into the coffin neatly. Then closes the lid.

Trump cannot understand why Iran hasn’t surrendered … “Lookit all them bombs,” he shouts “They should all love Trump!”

That’s it. That’s the Iran-War strategy. He does not care about the people of Iran. It a score settling grudge match egged on by Netanyahu’s 40 years of promises that war will change the regime if we just drop enough bombs & assassinate its leaders.

So If you want to live in a fantasy world where we are suddenly being greeted as liberators by the 93 million Iranians … feel free.

You are now set up for earth shattering disappointment.

You have to account for the fact that Trump could have attacked in support of the protesters in January. He didn’t & he let them be killed. He was completely indifferent. The 30k dead were a one-day talking point.

Right now, none of these attacks will liberate Iran without a populist uprising or invading ground forces. Worse case is a sectarian Civil war. If that happens the only outcome is that it will kill a lot of people, splinter the country & take down the global economy. Trump will sleep soundly & demand he be made Ayatollah.

This is literally his mental illness masked as foreign policy

This war may give some Iranians hope but it’s a false one. Gird for a horrible chain of dramatic events but rest assured Trump doesn’t care about the people of Iran.

He only want its oil. He said so.

I’m sorry folks, but my job is to deliver reality based assessments, not promise you sunshine in a swirling hurricane of flying bullets, bombs, excrement & razor wire.
https://x.com/MalcolmNance/status/2030572269898998102

He's not even Iranian. just a semi literate American. Unless you live in a country you don't know the people or even have a sense of them.It feels like that with this man. He could be right but when you start with dramatic openings like that you seldom are. Iran is one of the few places I haven't worked in in that region so my only knowledge is from Iranians abroad and they're not homogenous. I know ones I like and ones I don't. By contrast I know lots of Israelis nearly all English ex pats. I would be interested to know how they would fare if faced with the treatment their government meet out to their enemies? The answer I suspect is they would be back to their motherland before you could say Shabbat shalom

The murderous thuggery of the Iranian regime has been detailed for many decades. The regime gets off on violence and their narrow, vicious, interpretation of Islam.

There’s a reason they need to use such violence to keep control - you don’t turn every mosque in to a secret police station because the people love you.

Nearly all Iranians abroad are refugees from that or descendants of refugees from that. A diaspora of millions.

As the chap says, Trump is just making a murderous mess.

At university we had good fun with the Iranian Society being run by exiles - and regime supporters who were sponsored to do degrees in London getting violently angry that the anti-regime types weren’t suppressed by the university.

It rather reminded me of stories of the East bloc exiles in London and the various interactions with their regime supporters. There was that story from the 70s about a minor Polish government “trade envoy” guy who hung around a Polish exile club. Still missing, they say.

The single biggest problem in the MENA region is Iran.

Everything else is relatively easy once Iran is contained.

UAE sources suggesting that the next step in their own escalation could be freezing of Iranian bank accounts - which would have a similar effect to the EU’s freezing of Russian funds.

I don’t think the problems in the MENA region stop at Iran, however. Syria is delicate, and Israeli forces are deep into Syria. The Palestine question remains unanswered, although plenty in Israel think the answer is ethnic cleansing. Kurdistan still wants an existence. The UAE is still funding a brutal civil war in Sudan. Yemen! Saudi Arabia remains a totalitarian regime that’s happy to kill and chop up journalists, and promotes radical Islamism around the world.

I suppose if Saudi Arabia can go from the country of Osama bin Laden & Al-Qaeda that was behind 9/11 (unless one is of the Mossad conspiracy theory peruasion) to valued ally and $billion briber of Trump's son in law, anything is possible. Iran just needs to get a corrupt autocracy in asap.

Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .

And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.

Seems reasonable.

Why should we care if there is a civil war in Iran?

A failed state and civil war would be a huge improvement on the IRGC.

Hopefully liberal Iranians can win the civil war, but it needs to be in Iranian hands.

We could bomb Israel to rubble, killing 1000s of women and children, and hope that the liberal Israelis come to power in the aftermath.
Are you on board with that?

No.

Israel is a democratic ally that is neither attacking us nor any of our allies.

Not a totalitarian, theocratic dictatorshil that is repeatedly attacking allies and calls us Little Satan.

So if it's a democracy are Israeli citizens more or less complicit in the actions of their Government than the citizens of a totalitarian dictatorship?

More.

Which is moot since the Government's actions are completely justified and legitimate.

Which is why the Opposition supports it too.

Im going to make a Woolie call

Any Labour 'no bases/leave oor Keir alone' bounce' wont survive beyond about £1.60/litre
Cost of living trumps Trump

What would replacing Keir do beyond tarring the next person with the same brush.

It would be better for SKS to weather the pain and when prices starting falling you bring in someone else and take advantage of the bounce.

My view is that the next Labour leader would be very wise to not dump much of the fundamental policy platform of the government because it hasn't been given enough time to bed in yet.

If the next leader wants to be successful they'll come in just as things are starting to improve. IMHO that is why nobody has yet moved against him.