• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Iraq Unravels

PPCLI Guy said:
I completely disagree with this assessment.  Iran is not trying to kill Sunnis in this particular case, and to suggest so is to misinterpret the context, and revert to mean.

You'll have to forgive my pessimism;  it's not like Shia and Sunni are known for hosting family picnics together.  If it was secondary result, intended or otherwise, I don't believe many tears would be shed...
 
From Ben Shapiro on Twitter:  Obama's strategy on Iran was basic appeasement of a terrorist regime. Trump's strategy on Iran is basic deterrence of a terrorist regime.

I think Ben Shapiro gets that about right.  It looks like Trump has been getting a lot of things about right.



 
QV said:
From Ben Shapiro on Twitter:  Obama's strategy on Iran was basic appeasement of a terrorist regime. Trump's strategy on Iran is basic deterrence of a terrorist regime.

That's sort of what Rudy is tweeting,
The Ayatollahs’ 40 year #REGIMEOFTERROR is, and has been throughout, the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world.

The Obama-Biden administration practiced appeasement.
https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1214857073634291712

Trump tweets predicting Obama would start a war with Iran to get re-elected are coming back to haunt him
https://www.businessinsider.com/old-trump-tweets-emerge-claim-obama-wanted-war-iran-2020-1



 
POTUS45's remarks this morning ...
THE PRESIDENT: As long as I am President of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

Good morning. I'm pleased to inform you: The American people should be extremely grateful and happy no Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime. We suffered no casualties, all of our soldiers are safe, and only minimal damage was sustained at our military bases.

Our great American forces are prepared for anything. Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world.

No American or Iraqi lives were lost because of the precautions taken, the dispersal of forces, and an early warning system that worked very well. I salute the incredible skill and courage of America’s men and women in uniform.

For far too long -- all the way back to 1979, to be exact -- nations have tolerated Iran’s destructive and destabilizing behavior in the Middle East and beyond. Those days are over. Iran has been the leading sponsor of terrorism, and their pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens the civilized world. We will never let that happen.

Last week, we took decisive action to stop a ruthless terrorist from threatening American lives. At my direction, the United States military eliminated the world’s top terrorist, Qasem Soleimani. As the head of the Quds Force, Soleimani was personally responsible for some of the absolutely worst atrocities.

He trained terrorist armies, including Hezbollah, launching terrorist strikes against civilian targets. He fueled bloody civil wars all across the region. He viciously wounded and murdered thousands of U.S. troops, including the planting of roadside bombs that maim and dismember their victims.

Soleimani directed the recent attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq that badly wounded four service members and killed one American, and he orchestrated the violent assault on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. In recent days, he was planning new attacks on American targets, but we stopped him.

Soleimani’s hands were drenched in both American and Iranian blood. He should have been terminated long ago. By removing Soleimani, we have sent a powerful message to terrorists: If you value your own life, you will not threaten the lives of our people.

As we continue to evaluate options in response to Iranian aggression, the United States will immediately impose additional punishing economic sanctions on the Iranian regime. These powerful sanctions will remain until Iran changes its behavior.

In recent months alone, Iran has seized ships in international waters, fired an unprovoked strike on Saudi Arabia, and shot down two U.S. drones.

Iran’s hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013, and they were given $150 billion, not to mention $1.8 billion in cash. Instead of saying "thank you" to the United States, they chanted "death to America." In fact, they chanted "death to America" the day the agreement was signed.

Then, Iran went on a terror spree, funded by the money from the deal, and created hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration. The regime also greatly tightened the reins on their own country, even recently killing 1,500 people at the many protests that are taking place all throughout Iran.

The very defective JCPOA expires shortly anyway, and gives Iran a clear and quick path to nuclear breakout. Iran must abandon its nuclear ambitions and end its support for terrorism. The time has come for the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China to recognize this reality.

They must now break away from the remnants of the Iran deal -– or JCPOA –- and we must all work together toward making a deal with Iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place. We must also make a deal that allows Iran to thrive and prosper, and take advantage of its enormous untapped potential. Iran can be a great country.

Peace and stability cannot prevail in the Middle East as long as Iran continues to foment violence, unrest, hatred, and war. The civilized world must send a clear and unified message to the Iranian regime: Your campaign of terror, murder, mayhem will not be tolerated any longer. It will not be allowed to go forward.

Today, I am going to ask NATO to become much more involved in the Middle East process. Over the last three years, under my leadership, our economy is stronger than ever before and America has achieved energy independence. These historic [DEL: accompliments :DEL] [accomplishments] changed our strategic priorities. These are accomplishments that nobody thought were possible. And options in the Middle East became available. We are now the number-one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. We are independent, and we do not need Middle East oil.

The American military has been completely rebuilt under my administration, at a cost of $2.5 trillion. U.S. Armed Forces are stronger than ever before. Our missiles are big, powerful, accurate, lethal, and fast. Under construction are many hypersonic missiles.

The fact that we have this great military and equipment, however, does not mean we have to use it. We do not want to use it. American strength, both military and economic, is the best deterrent.

Three months ago, after destroying 100 percent of ISIS and its territorial caliphate, we killed the savage leader of ISIS, al-Baghdadi, who was responsible for so much death, including the mass beheadings of Christians, Muslims, and all who stood in his way. He was a monster. Al-Baghdadi was trying again to rebuild the ISIS caliphate, and failed.

Tens of thousands of ISIS fighters have been killed or captured during my administration. ISIS is a natural enemy of Iran. The destruction of ISIS is good for Iran, and we should work together on this and other shared priorities.

Finally, to the people and leaders of Iran: We want you to have a future and a great future -- one that you deserve, one of prosperity at home, and harmony with the nations of the world. The United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.

I want to thank you, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

END 11:37 A.M. EST
 
And now, the IRN state info-machine's take on the attacks in IRQ * ...
Some 80 US army personnel have been killed and nearly 200 more wounded in Iran's Wednesday missile attacks carried out in reprisal for the assassination of Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Qods Force Commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.

"Early estimates indicate heavy US casualties in Iran's missile attack," an informed IRGC Intelligence Department told FNA Wednesday morning.

"According to the reports sent by our sources in the region to this moment, at least 80 US arm personnel have been killed and around 200 others wounded," he said, adding that the wounded have been evacuated from Ein Al-Assad on choppers.

He further underlined the strategic importance of Ein Al-Assad airbase to the US, and mentioned that the military center provided backup for US army drones.

"Some 20 sensitive points of this base were struck by 15 missiles, resulting in the destruction of a considerable number of drones and helicopters," the source added, explaining that some of the targets have been destroyed in a single strike resulted from the high-explosive power of the warheads and serial explosions.

He reiterated that the US army was on high alert, but failed to show proper reaction.

The IRGC source further cautioned that "a sum of 104 sensitive US positions in the region have been identified to immediately come under raid as soon as the Americans make the first mistake".

The IRGC Aerospace Force started heavy ballistic missile attacks on US Ein Al-Assad airbase in Southwestern Iraq near the border with Syria and a US operated airbase in Erbil in retaliation for the assassination of IRGC Qods Force Commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.

Ein Al-Assad is an airbase with a 4km runway at 188m altitude from sea levels, which is the main and the largest US airbase in Iraq. Early reports said the radar systems and missile defense shields in Ein Al-Assad have failed to operate and intercept the Iranian missiles. Unofficial reports said the US army's central radar systems at Ein Al-Assad had been jammed by electronic warfare.

The second IRGC reprisal attack targeted a US military base near Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan Region in the second leg of "Martyr Soleimani" reprisal operation.

All flights have been cancelled at Erbil airport.

Iraq said the attacks have not taken any toll from its army men stationed at these two bases. The US army had blocked entrance into Ein Al-Assad to everyone, including the Iraqi army.

This is the first direct attack on the US army ever since world war two.

IRGC officials said none of the missiles had been intercepted.

Following the attack, the IRGC issued a statement immediately after the attacks, declaring that it has fired tens of ground-to-ground missiles at "the airbase occupied by the terrorist and aggressive army of the United States known as Ein Al-Assad" in reprisal for the martyrdom of IRGC Qods Force Commaner Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani ...
* - links to archive.org version of article, not directly to IRN media site - full text also available in attached PDF
 

Attachments

  • en.farsnews.com-FarsNews Agency - US Army Sustains Heavy Casualties in Iran Missile Attacks.pdf
    27.3 KB · Views: 26
milnews.ca said:
POTUS45's remarks this morning...

Are trending on Twitter...

#TrumpSpeech
https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrumpSpeech?src=hash
 
mariomike said:
Are trending on Twitter...

#TrumpSpeech
https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrumpSpeech?src=hash

Love or hate the guy, he never misses a chance to lay blame on the Obama administration.
 
Kind of how our present leader just ran his election campaign against Stephen Harper and not Mr. Scheer?
 
gryphonv said:
Love or hate the guy, he never misses a chance to lay blame on the Obama administration.
... or take a bit of credit in the midst of big happenings.  He may live to regret this one, though ...
... we do not need Middle East oil ...
... given they still get quite a chunk from the Persian Gulf area (source of graphic).
 

Attachments

  • gr-oilprod-300.gif
    gr-oilprod-300.gif
    8.7 KB · Views: 93
[quote author=tomahawk6]

Since the CF personnel in Iraq were moved to Kuwait does their hazardous duty pay stop ?
[/quote]

If I'm not mistaken they're all getting the same hazard pay.
 
Eye In The Sky said:
Kuwait was lower HA/RA rates than Iraq.

Thanks. I was certian they were the same level recently. Out of curiosity would you happen to have access to a source for the different locations and different hardship/risk allowances?
 
gryphonv said:
, he never misses a chance to lay blame on the Obama administration.

That goes at least as far back as when he was pushing Birtherism.
https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNQgS5ukglnXwFWeNlgbmT-hkQ8MHw%3A1578527067705&source=hp&ei=W2kWXou3KKOO9PwPluSw4Ac&q=trump+birtherism&oq=trump+birtherism&gs_l=psy-ab.3..35i39.2608.8956..9506...1.0..0.637.2540.3j11j0j1j0j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i131i67j0i67j0i131j0j0i131i20i263j0i3j0i20i263.GcK7FnAIeSM&ved=0ahUKEwjL0IvJl_XmAhUjB50JHRYyDHwQ4dUDCAs&uact=5#spf=1578527076696
 
This from RUS state media ...
Iran has completed its revenge for the killing of General Qassem Soleimani and won’t take any new military steps if there is no US aggression, Iranian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Majid Takht-Ravanchi has said.

"Our action was proportionate to the assassination of Qassem Soleimani. Our action was completed. So if the Americans do not act militarily against Iran, as far as Iran is concerned we are not going to act in return," Majid Takht-Ravanchi said answering a TASS question on Tehran’s reaction to US President Donald Trump’s statement.

The diplomat noted that Tehran acted in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter fulfilling its right to self-defense. "But if they decide to act militarily Iran will have no other option than to respond." ...
:pop:
 
milnews.ca said:
This from RUS state media ...:pop:

Clever. Fire a modest number of the weapons they know to generally be least effective, claim a sizable kill count on domestic state run media but don't actually hurt anyone, throw out some bluster, and declare themselves to be victorious. Maybe this will simmer down. We can only hope.
 
From Haaretz, the man who replaces Soleimani:

Iran Has Already Replaced Soleimani, Here Is Everything We Know About Esmail Ghaani

The Associated Press
Jan 07, 2020 10:45 AM

A new Iranian general has stepped out of the shadows to lead the country's expeditionary Quds Force, becoming responsible for Tehran's proxies across the Mideast as the Islamic Republic threatens the U.S. with “harsh revenge” for killing its previous head, Qassem Soleimani.

The Quds Force is part of the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary organization that answers only to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guard oversees Iran's ballistic missile program, has its naval forces shadow the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf and includes an all-volunteer Basij force.

Like his predecessor, a young Esmail Ghaani faced the carnage of Iran's eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s and later joined the newly founded Quds, or Jerusalem, Force.

While much still remains unknown about Ghaani, 62, Western sanctions suggest he's long been in a position of power in the organization. And likely one of his first duties will be to oversee whatever revenge Iran intends to seek for the U.S. airstrike early Friday that killed his longtime friend Soleimani.

“We are children of war,” Ghaani once said of his relationship with Soleimani, according to Iran's state-run IRNA news agency. “We are comrades on the battlefield and we have become friends in battle.”

The Guard has seen its influence grow ever-stronger both militarily and politically in recent decades. Iran's conventional military was decimated by the execution of its old officer class during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and later by sanctions.

A key driver of that influence comes from the elite Quds Force, which works across the region with allied groups to offer an asymmetrical threat to counter the advanced weaponry wielded by the U.S. and its regional allies. Those partners include Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthi rebels.

In announcing Ghaani as Soleimani's replacement, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the new leader “one of the most prominent commanders” in service to Iran.

The Quds Force “will be unchanged from the time of his predecessor," Khamenei said, according to IRNA.

Soleimani long has been the face of the Quds Force. His fame surged after American officials began blaming him for deadly roadside bombs targeting U.S. troops in Iraq. Images of him, long a feature of hard-line Instagram accounts and mobile phone lockscreens, now plaster billboards calling for Iran to avenge his death.

But while Soleimani's exploits in Iraq and Syria launched a thousand analyses, Ghaani has remained much more in the shadows of the organization. He has only occasionally come up in the Western or even Iranian media. But his personal story broadly mirrors that of Soleimani.

Born on August 8, 1957 in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, Ghaani grew up during the last decade of monarchy. He joined the Guard a year after the 1979 revolution. Like Soleimani, he first deployed to put down the Kurdish uprising in Iran that followed the shah's downfall.

Iraq then invaded Iran, launching an eight-year war that would see 1 million people killed. Many of the dead were lightly armed members of the Guard, some of whom were young boys killed in human-wave assaults on Iraqi positions.

Volunteers “were seeing that all of them are being killed, but when we ordered them to go, would not hesitate,” Ghaani later recounted. “The commander is looking to his soldiers as his children, and in the soldier’s point of view, it seems that he received an order from God and he must to do that.”

He survived the war to join the Quds Force shortly after its creation. He worked with Soleimani, as well as led counterintelligence efforts at the Guard. Western analysts believe while Soleimani focused on nations to Iran's west, Ghaani's remit was those to the east like Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, Iranian state media has not elaborated on his time in the Guard.

In 2012, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Ghaani, describing him as having authority over “financial disbursements” to proxies affiliated with the Quds Force. The sanctions particularly tied Ghaani to an intercepted shipment of weapons seized at a port in 2010 in Nigeria's most-populous city, Lagos.

Authorities broke into 13 shipping containers labeled as carrying “packages of glass wool and pallets of stone.” They instead found 107 mm Katyusha rockets, rifle rounds and other weapons. The Katyusha remains a favored weapon of Iranian proxy forces, including Iraqi militias and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

An Iranian and his Nigerian partner later received five-year prison sentences over the shipment, which appeared bound for Gambia, then under the rule of dictator Yahya Jammeh. Israeli officials had claimed the rockets would be shipped to militants in the Gaza Strip, while Nigerian authorities alleged that local politicians could use the arms in upcoming elections.

Also in 2012, Ghaani drew criticism from the U.S. State Department after reportedly saying that “if the Islamic Republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale.” That comment came just after gunmen backing Syrian President Bashar Assad killed over 100 people in Houla in the country's Homs province.

“Over the weekend we had the deputy head of the Quds Force saying publicly that they were proud of the role that they had played in training and assisting the Syrian forces — and look what this has wrought," then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at the time.

In January 2015, Ghaani indirectly said that Iran sends missiles and weapons to Palestinians to fight Israel.

“The U.S. and Israel are too small to consider themselves in line with Iran's military power," Ghaani said at the time. "This power has now appeared alongside the oppressed people of Palestine and Gaza in the form of missiles and weapons.”

Now, Ghaani is firmly in control of the Quds Force. While Iran's leaders say they have a plan to avenge Soleimani's death, no plan has been announced as the country prepares for funerals for the general starting Sunday.

Whatever that plan for revenge is, Ghaani likely will be involved.

“That Qaani survived at such high ranks in the (Guard), and remained Soleimani’s deputy for so long, says a lot about the trust both Khamenei and Soleimani had in him,” said Afshon Ostovar, the author of a book on the Guard. “I suspect he’ll have little difficulty filling Soleimani’s shoes when it comes to operations and strategy.”

Link
 
Jarnhamar said:
Thanks. I was certian they were the same level recently. Out of curiosity would you happen to have access to a source for the different locations and different hardship/risk allowances?

Sent you a PM with a link to a DWAN doc, but it's from 2015...if anyone has the latest #s from DHRC/DCBA that might be more useful.
 
milnews.ca said:
... or take a bit of credit in the midst of big happenings.  He may live to regret this one, though ...... given they still get quite a chunk from the Persian Gulf area (source of graphic).

Well and who is to blame for that? I bet if ME oil and shipping rates skyrocketed, they wished that there was a magical pipeline from the West.
 
Colin P said:
... I bet if ME oil and shipping rates skyrocketed, they wished that there was a magical pipeline from the West.
True enough  :nod:
 
Back
Top