Subject: Re: Is Mark Rutte tomorrow?
Why is it that our government insinuated that Israel forced our hand to attack? I feel if Obama's government said that, we'd shout "Burisma" or "Ebola" or whatever the hell the new meme would be over and over again.

Because there was probably some truth to that. What everyone forgets is the PROFOUND effect that 10/7/23 had on Israeli society. Picture if 9/11 had killed 45,000 Americans instead of ~3,000. That's the scale we're talking here. After 10/7, the Israelis not only took the gloves off, they wrapped their hands in tape, put glue on them and dipped them in shards of broken glass Kickboxer-style. They weren't going to play around anymore; witness the pager bombs in Lebanon and the erasure of Hezbollah's leadership and the Gaza invasion. They're done humoring the current situation.

Can anyone blame them? Imagine that al Qaeda had killed 45,000 Americans. The calls for Bush43 to just up and nuke Afghanistan would have been very loud.

What no one knows is what spurred Trump on to order the attack now. They've insinuated that the Iranians were bragging about how much nuke material they had but that was known in 2025. Their having ballistic missiles with 2-stage capability was also known about a year ago. So either the Iranians said something we didn't know (like maybe the uranium is higher than 60%) or they were bragging they had a missile that could hit the US mainland. The Israelis may have said, "We've decided to kill the Ayatollah no matter what you say" and Trump may have decided that if the West was going that far collectively we might was well go all-in. Or somebody decided that if we hit them now the population might rise up.

I don't know - no one does, really, despite all the attempts at wishing assumptions to become facts that happens on this board.

And if we're finally getting rid from this bad actor, isn't it a fair question to say----why did we kill the old Ayatollah gang---only to have it be replaced by the new Ayatollah gang? I am amazed we didn't have a government ready. OR at least a faction of Iranians to take over temporarily.

A couple of things are emerging in Iran that are pretty interesting on that score. 1, the religious nuts aren't in charge anymore because they're all dead or hiding. There's a big split right now between the political leaders (President Masoud Pezeshkian) and the IRGC. The IRGC is calling the shots right now. "Calling the shots" is probably a misnomer, because Iran effectively has no command and control any longer. But since the IRGC owns the missiles and the speedboats and drones, they're the ones prolonging the war. You might find this interesting:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/art...
Iran International reported that Iran's President Pezeshkian criticized the IRGC's approach of increasing tensions in the region and attacking neighbouring countries.

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian is reportedly clashing with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief Ahmad Vahidi over the economic and social impact of the war with the United States and Israel, Iran International reported on Saturday, citing Iranian sources.

According to the London-based Iranian opposition outlet, Pezeshkian criticized the IRGC's approach of increasing tensions in the region and attacking neighbouring countries, warning of the long-term effects that these movements could cause on the Iranian economy.

The report also mentioned that Pezeshkian has been demanding that executive decisions regarding the war be made by the Iranian government rather than the IRGC, a demand Vahidi did not accept.

Notice how the mullahs are completely absent from that.

Okay, now 2: The Israelis are doing the regime decapitation job - they're the ones hunting down Iran's leadership and blowing them up. But now it's becoming clear who the US and Israel aren't killing in these attacks: the leadership of the Artesh, which is Iran's regular army.

Seems like the idea is to whack the religious scholars (done) and then go get the terrorist fanatics in the IRGC (in progress) and weaken them enough so that the "moderates" like Pezeshkian can team up with the Army and take over.

Then we say "open the strait' then 'we dont care about the strait'. that plus - no new government yet-----I'm sorry I still question why the 13 of our guys died, and I honestly passionately say "don't enlist".

Trump is frustrated for a couple of reasons, mainly that NATO is picking this Golden Opportunity to get rid of one of the worst of the worst bad regimes - when they're at the weakest they're going to get - to "stand up to Trump". It's such a colossally stupid strategic blunder I can barely put words to it. I suspect the real truth is that the Europeans have let their Navies die on the vine for so long that even if they wanted to help, they couldn't. That was self-evident when the Houthis were shooting missiles at everyone's shipping in the Red Sea (supplied by Iran, by the way) and the Euros could barely muster a response.

So Trump is angry because back in his first term he told those morons they were weak, had taken their eyes off the ball and were paying their mortal enemy (Russia) for all their energy. Remember how the euros and the howling baboons on this board laughed at him? They're not laughing now; the Europeans are learning that they can't secure their own energy without US help.