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Fair point, though a pity you limited your comments to that one line from the whole article. Legolas Send a noteboard - 10/07/2019 11:15:29 PM

View original postWhether or not in his heart of hearts Trump plans to eventually attack Iran, I think it is reasonable to assume that he will not do so before the 2020 election. I think the Iranians calculate by being aggressive they can expose his tough talk as a bluff. Give him his own version of Obama's "red line" and get a more suitable president elected.

Hm. It's not in their interest to openly take such actions in such a way that their responsibility is beyond doubt, though.
View original postEDIT: I was too specific about the final aim of getting a more Iran friendly administration to power. I think in these kind of schemes the target is usually more strategic such as projecting power while your adversary is in a weakened position, thus exposing his weakness and rallying your own population.

The problem being that Iran did have to emphatically reject all responsibility in public, so as not to damage its relationships with Europe, Japan, China and other countries other than the US. Whatever the actual truth, it's kind of hard to project power or rally your population behind something you're denying you actually did.

But I guess it's a bit like the way Iran keeps piously denying that they would ever develop or use something as horrible and un-Islamic as nuclear weapons, insisting that they want those nuclear facilities only for civilian purposes and because it's humiliating to be blocked from such progress by foreigners. In some ways it's better for them to be in this kind of position, close enough to being able to develop nuclear weapons that foreign governments have to take them seriously, but without actually having them, which allows them to keep claiming the moral high ground (successfully so for some audiences, not so much for others).

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How Fake News Could Lead to Real War - 09/07/2019 06:13:06 PM 937 Views
Ok, so I stopped reading after this sentance.... - 09/07/2019 06:47:26 PM 329 Views
I can see your point on that one. - 09/07/2019 07:41:39 PM 311 Views
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Sure. - 10/07/2019 07:37:25 AM 333 Views
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To be clear, I wasn't expecting you to provide a serious answer, anyway. - 10/07/2019 10:39:53 PM 344 Views
Really? Why? Because he pretty much showed how silly your points were? - 11/07/2019 06:22:28 AM 327 Views
No, because I've had far too many entirely pointless exchanges with him. - 11/07/2019 08:02:59 AM 314 Views
Okay - 12/07/2019 05:47:36 AM 423 Views
Re: Okay - 13/07/2019 01:01:34 AM 402 Views
Come on man...don't judge me. - 12/07/2019 06:46:18 PM 313 Views
Here's a thought - 12/07/2019 07:35:06 PM 287 Views
Which brings us all the way back around to.... - 12/07/2019 09:18:30 PM 317 Views
The author seems forgetful of past events - 10/07/2019 11:21:33 AM 336 Views
Fair point, though a pity you limited your comments to that one line from the whole article. - 10/07/2019 11:15:29 PM 335 Views
Re: The author seems forgetful of past events - 11/07/2019 12:23:36 AM 402 Views

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