Have the United States and Israel declared a covert war on Iran?

Yeah, I thought it was common knowledge by now. If Iran was doing things like this to us, we'd certainly consider it a direct attack equivalent to warfare.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

Another "mysterious" explosion in Iran, this time at a "steel factory" in Yazd

Dutch Lesbian

False flag op story

So the Mossad seems to have supported a Pakistani extremist group performing attacks in Iran, and posing as the CIA while they did so.

edited 14th Jan '12 4:59:03 PM by RadicalTaoist

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

The fuck?

Alright, backing armed groups against Iran doesn't surprise me, but impersonating the CIA while doing it?

Oh fuck them, man. What the hell? If they'd gotten made and the US had been blamed for it... o_o

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Covert???

They are all acts of war!!!! Sabotage, murder, spionage (that drone), bombing, even cyber attacks!!

No wonder the Iranians want to (they should absolutely not) execute that American they have taken prisoner.

edited 14th Jan '12 5:07:50 PM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

Yeah, I understand the need for non-proliferation when it comes to nuclear weapons but justifying assassination and cyber-attacks and just plain terrorist bombings in Iran, then turn around and say "Iran's leadership is crazy and untrustworthy!" That just strikes me as... I'll say it as "one-sided". If you want to have some credibility when dealing with Iran, the first step is not be the one being first-strike hostile.

While we talk about Iran doing this and that, while we're (well mostly just Israelis) bombing and killing civilians is not going to lead to anything good. If we flat ignore anything done against Iran and then react extremely negatively when they take a reactionary posture to it, of course we're going to head straight into war.

You punch a guy in the face and then you threaten to punch him again if he lifts his arms up to defend himself.

edited 14th Jan '12 5:52:18 PM by breadloaf

Let's see and seizing British sailors (military ones at that), sending a drone willingly into Iraqi airspace (which promptly got intercepted by the US Air Force), sending who knows how many militants, weapons, rockets and more into both Iraq and Afghanistan aren't acts of war?

War with Iran has been inevitable for quite some time and the Iranians themselves are bringing this situation to pass. There wouldn't be Israeli and/or American covert ops if Iran was legitimately innocent on the whole nuclear deal. (Especially Israeli.)

@Tom: Considering what the US and Israel have been doing to them, no.

"Roll for whores."

Indeed.

After all, it's not like we ever installed a dictator in Iran and exploited them for resources and political backing against the Soviets or anything, right?

edited 14th Jan '12 7:09:30 PM by Flyboy

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Really? I'd have figured it was the CIA pretending to be Mossad so they could aspire to competancy.

You do realize that the Iranians have been doing exactly this for the last decade-plus in Iraq and Palestine, among other places?

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Both sides have been seesawing on scale of stupidity for a long time now.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

Whoah now, the CIA has to set realistic goals.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

I'd guess Mossad was worried Jundallah wouldn't really do business with Israel.

Now, the US, on the other hand, everyone can respect taking our taxpayer money. After all, we have so much extra.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Well... I beleive that there is a line between funding terrorist groups which both the US and the Iranian have done quite frequently, and going in and having people assasinated and infrastructure directly sabotaged on their home countries instead of influencing the outcome of proxy wars.

But yea, the Iranians have done plenty to be considered agressors. My main point was that this "acts of war" where by no means "covert", since the authorship of the bombings in Iran is the worst kept secret in international gossip, after the Israelis having Nukes, but that is another issue on itself.

edited 14th Jan '12 11:15:08 PM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

@Tom: By that logic, we deserved 9/11 because logically, we must have done something to deserve it.

Besides, Israel's not one to talk when it comes to pretending to not have nukes while "secretly" having a shit-ton of them/.

edited 14th Jan '12 11:43:58 PM by Midgetsnowman

I dislike the term 'covert war' because it means Iran has a chance of hurting or retaliating against Israel or the USA.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I'm struggling not to find the convoluted nature of this hilarious.

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

The order was issued from the GDI high command. The rest is obfuscation.

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

By the sounds of it, The Intelligence Business is convoluted, just to make sure an activity cannot be (easily) traced back to you — there's a lot of I Know You Know I Know and general Gambitting on all sides.

edited 15th Jan '12 3:08:19 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On

You can legitimately argue that. Problem is you cannot legitimately argue beyond that that we should have done a soft response a la Interpol or no response at all.

No, you can't legitimately argue that. The targets of 9/11 (except the Pentagon, though even that is partially arguable,) were civilians who had little to nothing to do with the reasons that anyone might have for attacking the US.

As a young lad, impressed by No Logo and such books about financial imperialism, I used to think that the people who worked at the WTC were partially complicit in the crimes of the corrupt institutions (corporate and government) of the US and the West in general and their crimes against humanity in the Third World.

Then I grew up.

While it's true that there's a lot that needs doing about the effect that huge corporations have on people around the globe and the way the corporations engage in lobbying and buy politicians, it's not fair to accuse everyone who works in that institution, and even if it was, it would still be a fairly difficult undertaking to explain how they're equal to terrorists or other criminals deserving of having a plane thrown at them; and that's not even mentioning the people on the planes.

Another thing: before people like the younger me start flinging accusations at the US for causing groups like al-Qaida to hate them, we should look at the justification these groups give for their violence.

Some of you know that there was a conflict between East Timor (Timor-Leste) and Indonesia. Indonesia wanted to annex Timor-Leste and were publicly planning an ethnic cleansing there. Initially, the US was going to favour Indonesia in this, completely abandoning the people of Timor-Leste and arming Indonesia. Then, when Indonesia had taken Timor-Leste and things were going South, someone realised what was going on and the US turned around on the issue. Eventually, through the 90s and into the early 2000s, Timor-Leste became free of Indonesian oppression, largely due to the work of the US at the UN and elsewhere. At least a hundred thousand people had died.

Now, this turning around by the US was seem by Islamists as an attack on their religion. Why? Because Indonesia is the largest predominantly Muslim country in the world, while Timor-Leste is mostly Christian. The liberation of Timor-Leste was at one point listed by al-Qaida as their top reason for attacks against the US. So that's all it takes: protect a non-Muslim population from Muslim oppression anywhere, and you're in line for having your planes flown into your towers.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Actually yes you can Major Tom. I would disagree with it, but it is totally valid to say a terrorist act might be handled as a criminal manner rather than military one.

EDIT: Problem with that Best Of, who funded the Taliban, the Indonesian dictatorship, and other linked terrorist groups in the first place? Their name begins with a U and ends with an A. The only way the al-Qaeda was even capable of initiating an attack on United States soil was as because of American adventurism in the first place. Furthermore that isn't the reason why the rank and file of such groups sign up in the first place. It's because their poor and hungry, and those groups offer them something more (even if it's a gigantic lie), it's just a further excuse to convince them to lay down their lives other than food and board.

No one during 9/11 should have died and the attacks were criminal in nature, but if you sincerely believe American political and covert intervention in the region didn't led to the circumstances that empowered the groups to attack the United States....your naive.

edited 15th Jan '12 6:47:17 PM by TheManInBlack

^ One that kills 3000 people and hits a military target at the same time? By all standards that's an act of war, not criminal activity.

They aren't a nation though or government though. They have extensive ties to both true, but they are neither.

That's never stopped organizations from declaring war or engaging in it before. War is not just two nations resolving a dispute via the ultimate diplomacy.