2019 Could Be The Year That A War With Iran Changes Everything, And 2 Key Deadlines Loom Within The Next 2 Weeks

At this point a peaceful solution appears to be out of the question, and so all of us should start preparing for the most terrifying war that the Middle East has seen since the days of World War II


By Michael Snyder | End Of The American Dream Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Negotiations with Iran are over before they could even take place.

After President Trump and Iranian leadership exchanged more insults on Tuesday, the Iranians declared that the “channel of diplomacy” is now closed “forever”. Of course anything is possible in the future, but for now it appears that any possibility of a diplomatic solution is completely dead, and the clock is ticking because two exceedingly important deadlines are coming up within the next two weeks. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have both made it incredibly clear that they do not want Iran to possess nuclear weapons, and Iran’s nuclear program is about to pass a critical threshold. Diplomatic negotiations were the only alternative to military action, and now it seems that military action is the only option left on the table. That means that we could literally be counting down the days before missiles start flying back and forth, and it will be a war that is far more terrible than we are being told by the mainstream media.

The Trump administration seems to believe that the new economic sanctions that they just hit Iran with will alter the situation, but the truth is that they aren’t going to really add much of anything to the economic sanctions that were previously imposed.

In response to these new sanctions, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani accused President Trump of suffering from “mental retardation”…

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blasted the sanctions against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as “outrageous and idiotic,” noting the 80-year-old Shiite cleric has no plans to ever travel to the USA. In remarks broadcast on Iranian state television, Rouhani said the White House suffers from “mental retardation.”

Needless to say, President Trump was not amused by this. He subsequently went on Twitter and threatened that any sort of attack “on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force”…

….Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!

That is quite a vague red line that President Trump has now established, and it means that it isn’t going to take very much at all to start a war between the United States and Iran.

When the press later asked Trump about a potential exit strategy if war with Iran does erupt, Trump responded by saying “I don’t need exit strategies”…

Trump returned to the subject of Iran during an event in the Oval Office on Tuesday, reiterating his commitment that his administration would not allow Tehran to obtain nuclear weapons. Asked whether he had an exit strategy should a conflict arise with Iran, the president responded, “I don’t need exit strategies.”

So what does that mean exactly?

Is he saying that an exit strategy wouldn’t be necessary because Iran would be bombed off the map?

When President Trump called off the airstrikes against Iran at the last minute and talked about the potential for negotiations, many were hopeful that a peaceful solution could be achieved. But if you are seeking to negotiate with someone, it is probably not a good idea to slap the foreign minister from the other country with personal economic sanctions. For the Iranians, this was apparently the final straw…

“You say you really want to hold talks with us but at the same time you’re saying that you want to boycott and sanction our foreign minister, so you’re lying,” Rouhani said.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said on Twitter that the latest sanctions will result in “closing (the) channel of diplomacy forever,” according to Iranian state-run television Press TV.

Not that negotiations with the Iranians would have yielded anything anyway. But we must find some way to avoid World War III, because a war with Iran would unleash global chaos that the United States is simply not prepared to handle.

Unfortunately, President Trump is currently surrounded by war hawks, and he appears to be completely convinced that he does not need congressional approvalbefore going to war with Iran…

During a portion of an interview with Hill.TV released on Monday, President Trump said he doesn’t need approval from Congress before launching strikes against Iran.

Trump said, “I like the idea of keeping Congress abreast, but I wouldn’t have to do that.”

Actually, the U.S. Constitution is very clear on the matter.

Just because the Constitution has been ignored by previous presidents does not mean that it is not binding.

And there is a move in Congress right now that could potentially stop a war with Iran. Surprisingly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says that he may actually allow a vote on a “bipartisan amendment” that would “block funding for military action against Iran”…

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday said he’s willing to vote on a controversial amendment that would require Congress to approve any military action against Iran, but warned colleagues it could signal disunity in Washington to a foreign adversary.

McConnell said he’s open to voting on a bipartisan amendment sponsored by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) that would block funding for military action against Iran without prior congressional approval.

Of course Trump could just veto anything that gets pushed through Congress, and there would not be enough votes to override his veto.

However, the Constitution still says that President Trump must get congressional approval before going to war, and nothing is going to change that. If Trump chooses to disregard the Constitution and go to war anyway, it will be one of the worst decisions of his presidency so far.

And as I mentioned earlier, the clock is ticking. As Haaretz has noted, two exceedingly important deadlines are coming up within the next two weeks…

Iran announced in mid-June that by the 27th of the month it will exceed the uranium stockpile limit set by Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers, pushing tensions with the U.S. into uncharted and potentially dangerous territory.

The June 27 deadline comes ahead of another, July 7, the deadline for Europe to come up with better terms for Iran to stay in the accord. If that second deadline passes without any action, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the Islamic Republic likely will resume higher uranium enrichment, a move that would breach the terms of a nuclear pact with world powers.

A war with Iran could potentially start as soon as next month, and right now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the Middle East as he seeks to build a “global coalition” against Iran. The following comes from a transcript of remarks that Pompeo made to the press on Sunday just before he left on his trip…

I’m heading out today. Our first stops will be in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two great allies in the challenge that Iran presents, and we’ll be talking with them about how to make sure that we are all strategically aligned and how we can build out a global coalition, a coalition not only throughout the Gulf states but in Asia and in Europe that understands this challenge and that is prepared to push back against the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.

When the U.S. starts to put together a “global coalition”, I think we all know what that means.

War is coming, and it could have apocalyptic consequences.

I have never been more concerned about a war with Iran than I am right now. The Iranians have restarted their nuclear program, and the U.S. and Israel have both made it abundantly clear that they will take military action before the Iranians get too much farther.

At this point a peaceful solution appears to be out of the question, and so all of us should start preparing for the most terrifying war that the Middle East has seen since the days of World War II.

Trump says a war with Iran won't last long. perhaps he's forgotten about Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen.

Or maybe he has a different plan. I don't know. But I think a war with Iran is going to last a lot longer than he thinks.

Onward and upward,
airforce

A New Incident In The Persian Gulf Has Once Again Brought Us To The Brink Of War With Iran

July 10, 2019 by Michael Snyder


On Wednesday, five Iranian gunboats attempted to seize a British oil tanker as it was traveling through the Persian Gulf. As you will see below, this was apparently done in retaliation for an incident which happened in Gibraltar less than a week earlier. British Royal Marines captured a tanker that was reportedly taking Iranian oil to Syria, and the Iranian government warned the British that there would be “consequences” for that action. Apparently the Iranians felt that since the British grabbed an oil tanker that they should return the favor, and they may have gotten away with it if a British warship had not quickly intervened. No shots were fired, and the five Iranian gunboats quickly left the scene after the British warship arrived. But this move by the Iranians will be seen by the western powers as a direct threat to freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf, and many of President Trump’s advisers will undoubtedly be begging him to send a “message” to Iran by taking direct military action.

Last month, President Trump called off U.S. airstrikes against Iran with only minutes to spare, and if those airstrikes had gone ahead we might be at war with Iran right now.

That is literally how close we are to a major war erupting in the Middle East, and that is why what happened on Wednesday is so alarming…

Five Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gunboats tried to seize a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf Wednesday but backed off after a British warship approached, a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News.

The British warship was said to have been less than 5 miles behind the tanker but soon intercepted the Iranian boats and threatened to open fire. A manned U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was above as well, the official said, adding that Iranian forces left without opening fire.

Could the Iranians actually be this stupid?

After all, what in the world did they hope to accomplish?

Apparently, the Iranians were intending to retaliate for an incident that took place less than a week ago…

The comments from Hassan Rouhani come after British Royal Marines joined authorities in Gibraltar in capturing the tanker amid suspicions that it was trying to provide crude oil to Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime – an ally of the Islamic Republic.

“You are an initiator of insecurity and you will understand its repercussions,” Rouhani was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying Wednesday during a Cabinet meeting, adding that the seizure of the ship was “mean and wrong.”

A day earlier, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s armed forces chief of staff, told the Tasim news agency that Tehran will give an “appropriate answer” to Britain following their actions.

If the Iranians had been successful in grabbing the British tanker on Wednesday, what then?

The Iranians have got to know that taking this sort of aggressive action is only going to make war even more likely.

There are many in the west that are just itching for a war with Iran, and now Iran may have just given them the justification that they need to start launching airstrikes.

But maybe the Iranians are crazy enough to want a war too. Without a doubt, Iran is run by a bunch of apocalyptic nutjobs, and none of them appear to be thinking straight. For example, just consider the following statement from Iranian cleric Mohammad Ali Movahedi-Kermani…

Iranian cleric Mohammad Ali Movahedi-Kermani told a sermon in Tehran that the Islamic republic is ready for war with the US.

He said: “Think of an attack only if you want to change the color of the Persian Gulf waters from azure to red.”

And Iranian military official Hossein Nejat made headlines all over the world this week when he said this…

Commander Nejat said: “American bases are within the range of our missiles.

“Our missiles will destroy their aircraft carriers if they make a mistake.

“Americans are very well aware of the consequences of a military confrontation with Iran.”

Unfortunately, Commander Nejat is actually quite correct. The Iranians have a large stockpile of extremely lethal Sunburn anti-ship missiles which they purchased from the Russians and Chinese over the years.

If the order is given, U.S. warships will be going to the bottom of the Persian Gulf, and once that happens all of the major news networks will be breathlessly pounding the war drums.

So we better hope that the Iranians don’t get too tempted by the sitting ducks that we currently have in the region. If they decide to launch their missiles, World War 3 will become inevitable.

And even a limited military confrontation that closes the Strait of Hormuz for an extended period of time would be catastrophic. According to one study, the price of oil could go as high as $325 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz was closed for an extended period of time.

What do you think that would do to the global economy?

For a while there, it looked like tensions were starting to cool off just a little bit, but now we are right on the precipice of war once again.

And we definitely do not want a war with Iran. Such a war would set the stage for scenarios that most of us don’t even like to think about. Most people seem to believe that such a war would be limited to the Middle East, but the truth is that the Iranians would unleash terror attacks inside the United States unlike anything we have ever seen before.

A full-blown war with Iran would be a fight to the death, and the Iranians would use everything in their arsenal to try to defeat us. They would not abide by the rules of war, they wouldn’t hold anything back, and their goal would be to kill as many of us as possible.

We do not want that kind of war, and let us hope that it can still be prevented somehow.

The Iranians were trying to get even for the Iranian tanker the Brits seized at Gibraltar for trying to break the embargo.

Trump says it won't last long as he would NOT involve us in Nation re-building after the war ended like previous administrations did to line the pockets of their supporters and themselves.

Send 6 of our carriers to the Indian Ocean to support air attacks by our land based assets like B-52s and B-1s and F\B-117 stealth bombers. Combine this with cruise missile attacks from our Subs and Cruisers. One week of heavy bombing of already pre-selected targets, then take a week off, then two weeks of cleaning up air strikes. The Iran should be just about finished and should be suing to surrender.

War Drums: Europe Readies A Naval Task Force As Iran Threatens To “Secure” The Strait Of Hormuz

July 23, 2019 by Michael Snyder


It is funny – for decades we have never had any problems with commercial ships passing through the Persian Gulf, but all of a sudden it has become a major flashpoint. As you will see below, the Iranians are now warning that they plan to “secure” the Strait of Hormuz, and meanwhile a plan for a European-led naval task force to confront the Iranians is rapidly coming together. The seizure of a British tanker a few days ago really rattled British officials, and they are determined to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Of course the more the Persian Gulf region becomes saturated with military assets, the more likely it is that a “mistake” will happen, and it sure won’t take much of a spark to start World War 3 at this point.

Today, close to 20 percent of all the oil produced in the entire world passes through the Strait of Hormuz, and that makes it an exceedingly important waterway. U.S. and European officials continue to stress the importance of freedom of navigation through the area, and they appear to be losing patience with the Iranians.

But Iran does not intend to back down one bit. On Tuesday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said that his country “will use its best efforts” to secure the Strait of Hormuz. The following comes from the Jerusalem Post…

“Iran will use its best efforts to secure the region, particularly the Strait of Hormuz, and will not allow any disturbance in shipping in this sensitive area,” Araqchi told French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, IRNA reported.

So what does that mean exactly?

Do the Iranians plan to keep grabbing oil tankers whenever it suits them?

The seizure of the Stena Impero pushed us dangerously close to war, and the British government is still hoping that negotiations will result in the release of that tanker.

However, the British also plan to flex their military muscles in order to keep such an incident from happening again, and they are calling for other European nations to join them…

France, Italy and Denmark gave initial support for a British plan for a European-led naval mission to ensure safe shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, proposed after Iran’s seizure of a British-flagged tanker, three senior EU diplomats said on Tuesday.

The cautious backing at a meeting of EU envoys in Brussels contrasts sharply with the lukewarm response shown by European allies to a similar American call first voiced at NATO in late June, when countries feared they could make U.S.-Iranian tensions worse.

Could this be the very beginning of a “coalition of the willing”?

According to Reuters, this task force would likely include “aircraft too”, and that is definitely raising some eyebrows…

British foreign ministry and defense officials have also discussed a possible mission, which would likely involve not just ships but aircraft too, directly with their Italian, Spanish, French and German counterparts.

A senior German diplomat in Berlin said Foreign Minister Heiko Maas was in close contact with his British and French counterparts, Hunt and Jean-Yves Le Drian, to “contribute to the security” of the Gulf including on maritime security.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is making headlines as well. In an interview with CBS News, CENTCOM Commander General Kenneth McKenzie claimed that U.S. forces may have actually shot down at least two Iranian drones last week…

The U.S. believes it may have brought down two Iranian drones last week, rather than just the one that has been reported, CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told CBS News’ David Martin in an interview Tuesday aboard the USS Boxer, the ship that took action against the drones. Asked by Martin whether it was “only one drone,” McKenzie revealed that he believed the Boxer had engaged two drones “successfully” and perhaps even more.

“As always it was a complex tactical picture, we believe two drones. We believe two drones were successfully — there may have been more that we are not aware of — those are the two that we engaged successfully,” said McKenzie.

We should be very thankful that there is no more shooting for the moment, but that could change at any time.

And even if things stabilize in the short-term, the truth is that it is going to be exceedingly difficult to stop the countdown to war at this point. The U.S. and Israel have both made it exceedingly clear that they will never allow the Iranians to develop their nuclear program past a certain level, and the Iranians have been racing to move their program forward ever since the U.S. left Obama’s nuclear agreement.

Unless there is some sort of crazy miracle and another nuclear agreement happens, it appears that war is on the horizon.

Also, I wanted to mention that we just witnessed a very alarming “incident” off the coast of South Korea on Tuesday…

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement claiming they had fired more than 300 warning shots at a Russian A-50 command and control military aircraft early Tuesday morning after it had twice violated the country’s airspace, the first such incident between the countries.

Moscow furiously denied Seoul’s account of the encounter, claiming that South Korean military jets had dangerously intercepted two of its bombers during a planned flight over neutral waters.

That is a huge number of “warning shots”, and it is yet another example of how tense things are all over the world at this point.

Without a doubt, we are living during a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and once World War 3 begins we will not be able to stop it.

So let us pray for peace, because the alternative is too horrible to even think about right now.

Germany will be the main country watch as Chancellor Merkel grows more ill everyday. Also England with its brand new Prime Minister should be watched.

Its a shame our once world famous press has gone to shit playing Political games and not reporting real news anymore. Hello BBC, The Times and the Jerusalem Post!

Iran has unveiled three new "precision guided missiles" and promises "the mother of all wars" if the U.S. attacks.

The last time someone made a threat like that, it didn't turn out well for him.



Onward and upward,
airforce