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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad : The Man Who Juggles Lit Dynamite
The Ender
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Meet the craziest son of a bitch on the planet (Well, you've probably already met him, but whatever).
"Oh hey now, he's not THE craziest," I can hear you retorting, "What about Kim Jong-Il or Ayman al-Zawahiri? Heck, Gadaffi is still technically alive."
Nope. Those guys aren't even in the same league. I mean sure, they're nuts, but at least they have some sense of where their boundaries are, and for the most part they know to stay tucked away inside their luxury bunkers, safe & snug behind the borders of their horrifying little domains.
Ahmadinejad really, truly, and honestly must believe his own bullshit. He thinks he owns the whole world, in an almost literal sense. He makes regular trips to New York City, where he (so far) has been able to walk around more or less unmolested by either American police or American intelligence (even after having committed the extraordinarily bloody & almost totally censored crackdown on the Iranian 'revolutionaries' (mostly a bunch of college kids who wanted to be represented by the man who won the 2009 election). He orders missile cruisers out to 'patrol' the coast of North America, essentially calling NATO's bluff on their willingness to actually do anything about him, and, well...
he just ordered a few of his thugs to try and blow-up an embassy or two in the United States with the intent of assassinating some Saudi diplomats.
I can't emphasize enough what a mind-blowing insane idea this is. We're all used to saber-rattling nonsense out of North Korea and occasionally from China, but he sent actual guys with actual resources to plant actual explosives in Washington D.C. and try to kill the ambassador to the country that the Washington intellectual bubble sees as one of it's most beloved allies.
Had the plot succeeded, it's almost indisputable that the music would finally have stopped for him. As it is... it's hard to say. Lot's of talk in Washington about 'Act of War' and all that, but we've heard that rhetoric before.
So. What kind of zany antics do you think the future holds for Mr. Ahmadinejad? Has he (in the mind of Washington) crossed the line, finally, in your opinion?
With Love and Courage
The Ender on
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First of all, Iran getting cruise missiled would have a fuckton of international fallout. Second of all, Obama (thankfully) is smarter than that.
If Mccain was president, right now we would be dealing with directly Iranian backed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and attempted hit and runs on American civilian targets by the Iranians, and large sections of Iran would be on fire, with those who suffer most being those who most oppose Ahmadinejad.
So if anyone needs another reason to vote Obama in 2012, Iran is up there.
Edit: and gas would likely be $10 a gallon because of disruptions to supply
Now, I don't know about you, but regardless of whatever position of wealth or power I might ever manage to attain, I wouldn't want to ever fuck with the Saudis. I don't know how they're responding to this turn of events, but I consider it a poor move right there. (Sure, the whole plotting and explosion thing is awful, but in the statesmanship, long-term consequences of national relations and all that, pretty bad decision.)
Jong-Il's antics are not the same; he does not, say, send DPRK forces into Seoul - the targets he's hit so far (the ship he sank & islands he shelled) are ever-so-marginally disputable (at least, as far as the politics are concerned), whereas flat-out blowing-up buildings in a capital is totally indisputable.
a) I think you give Obama too much credit
b) I will never endorse a typical mass-aerial-bombing campaign of Tehran, but for fuck's sake, the retarded pet of the Ayatolla is just going to make a war happen. He's just off the hook.
I never understood why he wasn't arrested a long, long time ago on one of his many visits to the U.N. building or the T.V. studios in New York City.
Unlikely. Iran supplies a very small portion of the crude imported by the United States.
Dude wears a nice suit. You'd be surprised what you can get away with if you can look good on live TV in a suit.
Oil is fungible - those who used to buy from Iran will have to buy from different sources and drive up the world price. Plus the vast amount of oil that goes through the Persian gulf will be disrupted by any conflict causing price shocks.
A few guerrillas with reasonably advanced missile launchers in the Strait of Hormuz could cause an oil panic pretty quickly.
The global energy situation is remarkably fragile, which is the reason no US president has kicked Iran over like a sand castle to win points with the nationalistic crowd. Iran has a gun pressed against the world's economy, similar to how North Korea has guns to the heads of thousands of South Koreans (and rocket assisted guns to the heads of millions)
Well if its any consolation, I would bet money that the rest of the world would actually get involved in this one if Iran had succeeded and the US decided to go in (and we could have quietly abandoned Afghanistan while doing so). Ahmadinejad is essentially playing with the strategic assets of the entire world here.
A war with Iran would be quite different than the other however many we have at the moment, in that people would actually feel it. It would have serious economic consequences.
Ed: I should've looked first
The whole thing is laughable on its face. Iran recruited a failed used car salesman to hire a Mexican drug cartel to kill a Saudi diplomat? For what? What's the purpose? What does Iran gain? Nothing.
Even U.S. officials behind a veil of anonymity admit they don't have the information.
Oh look at that.The entire time the operation was being investigated the FBI was guiding the accused. No explosives were ever placed and no one was ever in any danger. The FBI, create a terror plot just to foil it? They would never do that.
They are speculating that Khamenei probably knew about the D.C. Plot - but that Ahmadinejad did not.
And speculations are pretty much the best we'll ever get to know about this. The guy is still very dislikeable by his own merits.
I'm not even seeing any reliable sources specifically pinning this on Khamenei himself. The New York Times article on the matter brings up the possibility that the plot was orchestrated by rogue elements in the Iranian leadership to stave off any attempt at reconciliation between the US and Iran.
If we're using international reach as a criteria in the International Crazy Leader Olympics, hasn't Glorious Leader Kim Jong-Il sent agents into South Korea to kidnap film directors and actors?
Also, the OP rather overestimates how much power the President of Iran has in the grand scheme of the Iranian government. If Iran really is behind this plot, it would make a lot of sense that Khameni would be in the loop and Ahmadinejad would not have been. Especially since there have been reports of serious tensions between Ahmadinejad and the religious leadership of Iran.
Yeah, pretty much. I'm willing to give the President credit for having some power over domestic policy and being the public face of Iran's foreign policy, but at best he's a mood ring for the ruling ulema.
If you have to ask, you can't afford it. :winky:
I don't really give a fuck. I also don't believe it. I think it's nothing more than another bullshit, manufactured excuse to keep us at war in the Middle East.
Fuck the Middle East.
America needs JOBS. America needs to motherfucking invade AMERICA and start building infrastructure, schools, and all the other trappings of nation-building to "sway hearts and minds."
Are you kidding?
The US is the 3rd largest producer of oil in the world.
Right, they traced this back to Quds Force, blaming Ahmadinejad for it is like blaming John Boehner for Operation Fast and Furious. Totally different branch of government.
Not to say Ahmadinejad isn't a crazy bastard, but give the devil his due.
In the same way that a bank with a bunch of toxic assets is worth billions.
The US effectively produces -12.3 million barrels of oil per day
But we still produce lots of oil. We just use all of it... and then some more we buy from other countries.
He's done plenty of fucked up shit. North Korea is like the schoolyard bully we're too afraid to beat up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_Japanese_citizens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_House_Raid
https://gofund.me/fa5990a5
North Korea isn't a threat to anyone's military. Their air defenses are inadequate for modern helicopters let alone jets, their planes are decades old and god knows if they still work. They do have a lot of artillery that, while out of range of Seoul (with the exception of rocket artillery), is within range of millions of South Koreans and could cause a lot of casualties.
It's a hostage situation, and the NK is no more an existential threat to South Korea's military than a hostage taker is to a SWAT team
Pretty much this.
And we already have a Middle East thread folks, where yes, we have been talking about this:
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/137497/the-middle-east-thread-now-featuring-a-primer-in-the-op/p1
I learned about this a few years ago. I think it's actually really cool, right up until I remember the "why" part of it. But even then, I think it is cool to see a country that doesn't immediately lump transgenderism and homosexuality into the same category.
EDIT: I did not word that well. My point is that while their stance on homosexuality is deplorable, it is nice to see such a hardline country be actually quite open to transgendered people, even if it is for the wrong reasons.