paultimate14 comments on Former Biden advisor says: It's possible that the USA would have done the same wars of agression under Biden.

[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (5 children)

US-Iranian Relations under Biden were complicated and nuanced.

Biden was VPnundee the Obama administration who famously came close to finalizing the "nuclear deal" with Iran, under which they would cooperate with UN inspectors and be allowed to enrich unraniun for energy, sanctions woukd have been eased, relations would have been normalized. That is NOT to say everything would have been sunshine and rainbows in the Middle East. Khomeini was still an oppressive dictator, US inperalism would still continue, oil would be even cheaper and continuing to destroy the planet, and the region would still have plenty of tensions from religious, ethnic, and political divides. But it would have been one of the biggest steps towards peace and stability since since the Ottoman empire collapsed.

Trump tore it up in his first term and illegally assassinated an Iranian general in early 2020. Which was quickly forgotten about in the news cycle because of Australia wildfires and then Covid.

Biden tries to restore that deal, but it waa made much more difficult because Iran (and most of the world) learned they could not trust the US long-term.

Biden was a war criminal who continued a lot of war crimes in the middle east from his predecessors, but to suggest he would have provoked or forced an issue with Iran similar to what Trump is doing is just asinine "both sides"-ing. Biden also LISTENED to his military experts who would have told him what a dumb idea this was.

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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml [S] 9 points 6 months ago (4 children)

And that would really have been worse in a lot of ways. If the war happened under Biden, then it would've been executed more competently. The US would've lined up the vassals, and manufactured support for the war. They would've created an incident to make it look like Iran was the aggressor. We'd have another proxy war similar to Ukraine where a lot of western public would be cheering for it.

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[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago (3 children)

Biden had 4 years to make that happen if he wanted, yet at every chance he turned towards economic and political pressure instead of military pressure with Iran. I really do not understand why you think that would have somehow changed in a hypothetical second term.

Trump tried to start a war with Iran in his first term, failed and then forced it in his second term and is failing miserably in every way possible.

It is possible that Biden may have personally wanted to go to war with Iran. I don't know him personally. But every move he made aa President and as VP signaled he did not want to. Regardless of his personal motivations, he probably understood what Trump did not: the US has never had the ability to force the Straight of Hormuz open, Iran has the ability to close it, and the closure would have disastrous economic consequences for the US and its allies.

Its funny you mention Ukraine out of nowhere because the one country which HAS benefitted from all this is Russia. Sure, they supported Iran, but suddenly there are tensions within NATO and the world is more desperate for natural gas.

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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml [S] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

He literally explains in the video that the timeline didn't line up. Biden was too busy with his proxy war in Ukraine and doing a genocide in Gaza to worry about directly attacking Iran at the time. The plan to fight Iran and having Israel provoke the war has been in the works for over a decade now. This was all just a matter of time, and Trump simply happened to be the one to preside over it.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdf

Russia obviously has benefited from the incompetent way Trump tried to prosecute the war, but it's obvious that the goal was to destabilize China's oil imports and to destroy Iran the way the US destroyed Syria under Biden to cut Chinese land routes to West Asia and Africa.

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[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

So what has changed? Do you think Biden woukd have stopped "his proxy war" in Ukraine in order to go and fuck things up on Iran?

China has been doing fantastically well, continuing to influence Africa and Europe despite what you think the US's intentions in Syria may have been, and China also seems to be benefitting pretty well from what is going on in Iran too. Russia does not have the economy to compete with the US or China. China has been benefiting from the NATO division too, the undermining of the US dollar, and the high oil prices have driven the world to invest even more strongly in solar panels and electrical infrastructure, which China is by far the leading supplier of.

The simple fact that makes Iran different from Ukraine or Syria is that ear with Iran is bad for the US and its allies. Biden understood that.

The US has books on going to war with literally every country, because its an imperial power with employees whose literal job it is to make sure they are prepared in every scenario. They purposefully use code names and try to obscure the plans that are against countries they are currently allied with. That absolutely does not mean it is realistic to predict that anyone who would have been elected would go to war with every single country. That document was written in 2016: why didn't Trump go to war in his first term? Why didn't Biden do anything in his term? Suggesting Biden would have changed without material changes to the global economy, the middle east, or within Iran, is a silly oversimplification just trying to hate on Biden for no reason. Which is even more silly considering there are very real reasons to hate on Biden. I find it odd you haven't even mentioned Yemen, which is what I was referring to when I called him a war criminal.

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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml [S] 8 points 6 months ago

What changed is that Iran has started getting actively integrated economically with China and Russia. A lot of this is direct fallout from the war in Ukraine which led to an alternative economic system being established that bypasses western trade. The US and Israel realized that this might be their last opportunity to destroy Iran, and they went for it.

Also, it's very obvious what American intentions in Syria were given that they literally put an ISIS terrorist in charge of it. The fact that China isn't run by imbeciles has fuck all to do with the intentions of the Burger Reich.

It's pretty clear that Russia has an economy that can, not only compete with the US, but outproduce all of NATO militarily as western media openly reports now.

The simple fact is that Iran, Ukraine, and Syria all have the same underlying rationale behind them.

The fact that the US is doing precisely what the policy papers it puts out say the US will do clearly shows these aren't just abstract books as you're trying to frame this. These are actual goals of the empire, and the pedophile elites ruling over you are implementing these goals while you do your mental gymnastics here.

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