Okay, every topic that has even remotely to do with the middle east keeps getting more general news put into it which removes focus from the original topic.
As such, I'm creating this thread as a general middle east and north africa topic. That means anything to do with the Arab Spring, Israel or Palestine should be kept to those threads and anything to do with more generic news (for example, new Saudi regulations on the number of foreign workers or the Lebanese elections next year, etc.) should be posted here.
I hope the mods will find this a clear enough statement of intent to open the thread.
Mod edit: The Israel and Palestine thread
has been locked since October 2023. Discussion about Palestine and/or Israel remains off-topic for this thread. This also bans discussion of any military conflict, terrorism or extrajudicial actions involving one of them and a third country (e.g. Israel's air strikes in Yemen).
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 28th 2024 at 12:26:59 PM
Two tankers struck in suspected attacks in Gulf of Oman: sources
A video has been released of an Iranian vessel covertly removing what appears to be a second unexploded mine from the tanker. I doubt that they would've done it had the country not known about the attack beforehand. Still, absolutely not a worthy reason for all-out war.
Life is unfair...Not sure this is the right thread for this or not:
Egypt's former president Mursi dies: state television
Former Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi has died in court, state television reported on Monday.
Some new information about the recent shipping attack has been released. [1]
The new timelines seem to show much more aggressive behavior by IRGC ships. The hi-res images of the damage also seem to suggest that two different kinds of weapons were used, and we now know that the remains of a mine were left on the ship and match a mine of Iranian make. The US is also now claiming Iran had a hand in last week’s MQ-9 shootdown as well.
Edited by archonspeaks on Jun 17th 2019 at 6:14:31 AM
They should have sent a poet.Germany says there is 'strong evidence' Iran behind tanker attacks
I’ll point out that Iran being behind these attacks doesn’t automatically mean war.
I don’t think there’s the political will for all-out war at this point, especially when you consider that it’s most likely the IRGC carried out these attacks and the Iranian government proper doesn’t seem to have all that much control over them.
They should have sent a poet.Iran has shot down a US aircraft, an MQ-4C surveillance drone, that was flying in international airspace. [1]
This is a pretty significant escalation, Tritons are technologically advanced and few in number, and they operate at very high altitudes which means Iran could easily threaten lower-flying combat aircraft with whatever system they used to shoot it down.
This situation is just getting stranger and stranger.
They should have sent a poet.It's gonna be complicated to judge. Of course, the all thing could be a false flag, and nobody would be surprised if Trump's gang sunk that low. But Iran, despite recent negociations to reintegrate the mainstream international community, is still a theocratic authoritarian regime with just as much interventionism in store as classic troublemakers like France or the UK.
As for why they would provoke the US, maybe they understood that for all the boasting and bullying, the current American administration is quite a bit spineless. Taking the careless maniac stance did wonders for Putin the last decade.
On a slightly more serious note, when I first saw that headline, I brushed it off as a legacy Predator in UAE service going down over Yemen or something. Shooting down an MQ-4 over international airspace would've taken a long-range SAM and sounds like a pretty loud warning shot against the involvement of US air power.
The IRGC has already admitted it.
Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jun 20th 2019 at 5:54:21 AM
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.On a completely tangential note, anyone seen A Private War? Here's the Rotten Tomatoes page.
It's about this American BBC war correspondent, Marie Colvin
who covered Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers (losing an eye in the process), Lybia's Ghaddhafi, Iraq's mass graves, and, ultimately, gave the lie to the claims by Assad that he was just bombing terrorists in Homs in 2012, through a live interview on CNN. Hours later, she was bombed dead along with everyone else.
Her tragedy (and it's a really classical Hamartia-based tragedy) seems like a drop in the ocean compared to the shit her subjects are going through, and her privilege makes her practically a modern day Gentleman Adventurer.
I think the scene that annoyed me most in the film is her interview of Ghaddhafi. He was acting like a fool, but she brimmed with condescension and was writing up her divinations of international policy as fact in a rather clumsy attempt to provoke a pride rebuttal.
By the way, does India count as Middle East? Does the subcontinent as a whole? Or does the Middle East end in Pakistan?
Edited by Oruka on Jun 20th 2019 at 5:58:13 AM

Considering how the rest of the article goes I'd say the latter.
EDIT: Pagetopper.
Edited by rmctagg09 on Jun 3rd 2019 at 2:55:08 PM
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.