Let's face it Iran is indiscriminatly hitting Israeli civilians targets including schools using cluster bombs.....

[mids2019]

Iran is firing missiles into heavily populated Israeli towns and have abandoned the pretence of targeting anything military.....this is just pure terrorism and does make you think what would happen if Iran did manage to develop a nuclear weapon.

Just hoping more of the missile launch sites can be taken out and this terrorist regime falls.

If only it were that simple. If only everyone agreed to do what they said they would. If only.

Just go with your views in your posts not what you think mine are.

I did ask you 4 hours ago what you would like to see happen in the Strait, Eastern.

Trump says there has been regime change.

A change of personnel doesnt equal regime change, however he likes to dress it up.

We both know that, but Trump is the smartest man on the planet, according to him.

I would if you weren't so reluctant to share them.

If I am wrong in assuming you are against military involvement then please correct me.

It’s your posts which put me off answering tbf especially the one below.

By referring to the one 'below' - do you mean my post Eastern?

I don’t support it but I’m not really getting this reasoning re proscription of the IRGC.

I find it easy to look at the Belgium statement below and agree with it, more than that I’m grateful to be in a country that aligns itself with that rather than what it is opposing.

Having looked up and posted the reason the IRGC exists you couldn’t ask Orwell to write something worse 1984 style. It’s self perpetuating and deadlocked and anyone who tries to overturn it gets tortured and killed. That’s as bad as it gets pretty much.

Ahh. Sounds like "regime fear". Standard in authoritarian states.

You might be in the USA so are understandably worried about putting anything in writing that goes against the regime. In this case Trump. Or it could be fear of when your social media is checked if travelling there.

And no I am not fishing. It's an observation is all.

Ok that’s probably done it 😬 no I’m in the UK I answered your question below.

Some people would say the same arguments could be used against Israel but the majority view seems to be that Israel has in fact already had nuclear weapons for years. The US definitely has had them for years. I don't find it that helpful to look back into the past to say which countries shouldn't have been allowed to develop nuclear weapons (most of them) as we can't change the past.

What we know is that Iran don't have them yet and I am in agreement with all the many people - world leaders and otherwise - who have said they must never be allowed to develop them. Not at least while the current regime is in place.

You and I agree that it would be better if NO countries had them.

Trump says they are leaving the nuclear materials in situ so there is no change there.

It seems likely that Iran will be more determined to build a nuclear weapon than previously.

From the BBC

Ghoncheh Habibiazad
Senior reporter, BBC Persian

It's still very difficult to contact people inside Iran amid the internet outage, but some have managed to connect using satellite internet such as Starlink and other methods, though it comes at a high cost.

Using or possessing Starlink can lead to up to two years in prison.
I have been asking them what they think about Donald Trump’s threat to take Iran “back to the Stone Ages”.

One woman in her 20s in Tehran says: “In my opinion, this claim is completely unrealistic and impossible. Given its current cultural, demographic, and economic structures, especially considering its historical experience, Iran has a strong capacity for reconstruction.”

Meanwhile, a woman in her 40s in Tehran says: “I hope he won’t do it. I’m worried that he might want to strike all the oil and energy industries and infrastructure and completely destroy them. Rebuilding all of that takes a very long time.”

Of course and Trump, if he is around then, will say "nothing to do with me" if he can remember who he is.

He is very quickly wrecking the global economy and the lives of the Iranian people, who he said 4 weeks ago, he was going to "Save" now he is preparing to bomb them back to the Stone Age, where he says "they belong"

Evil Evil man, along with Netanyahu, both should be in the Hague, nothing more than a pair of terrorists.

Trump says they are leaving the nuclear materials in situ

In light of this. Does anyone have any idea or opinions on what the past 3 or so weeks was about? Regime change - nope, nuclear capability - doesn't look like it.
I am absolutely disgusted. How many innocent people have been killed, displaced, lives disrupted, global chaos caused for what? I feel like we're toys to be played with and nothing more to these egomaniacs.

Do you have a source for that please?

Trump’s ultimate goals in the Iran war? He doesn’t seem to care

https://www.thetimes.com/article/4df9d895-e2ef-4861-9918-4c392fae18ab?shareToken=6f9a7d70314b9b649af2098080d79c42

Commentators and a few News outlets are increasingly calling out Trump for what he is...
Deranged.

Even if some do not believe this, they'd be hard pressed to come up with a plausible alternative on his behavior.

If ever there was a reason to cancel the Kings visit, then this must be it, sucking up to Trump gets the UK no-where, he just forgets what has happened and just focuses on the now, if even that.

Reuters interview with Trump
April 1st

Thank you. Good to read more context around the US leaving the nuclear materials in situ which is explained this way: the future strategy against the nuclear programme would involve satellite monitoring and "if we see them make a move, we will hit them with missiles very hard again".

While the article is overall written in critical terms about what the war has achieved, the author does acknowledge some gains from the war, from Trump's perspective.

There have been some further raids on Iran’s nuclear sites (although the potential for reconstitution remains pretty much as it was after the attacks of June last year, according to the author)

The conventional navy has been destroyed and Iran’s missile capacity has been heavily set back and will suffer more damage in the “two or three weeks” of bombing Trump promises are yet to come.

The Middle East has been made safer for Israel according to the author, who concludes that Trump sees the war overall as a win:

And in his terms, he may well be right. Iran is undoubtedly weaker. America has not suffered greatly. He has performed a task no American president has shunned — making the Middle East safer for Israel. Moreover, he has never much been concerned about the consequences of his policies for the rest of the world.

From that article, I think this might be a clue :

"The amount of firepower being sent to the Emirates is significantly higher than that of its Gulf neighbors and almost as much as Israel, which has faced more than 1,000 missiles and drones in the last two weeks from Iran. Strikes on neighboring Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain all remain in the hundreds."

Running down the ammo. It appears to have been the Iranian tactic from day 1. Use the short range missiles to target the most heavily defended places, so the missile interceptors are used up. The US is running very low. Sucking interceptors in from world wide. It does not even matter what Iran targets. Damage is not the intention. The intention is to use up all the US made interceptors . The interceptors can't be replaced.

Once they are used up, Iran pretty much has free reign if they still have missiles.

And of course, the US have put troops in hotels it appears. Safer than on base apparently. Not sure if that is UAE though.

Macron. From Sky news feed:

I agree with him.

"Macron: 'Unrealistic' idea to force open Strait of Hormuz would 'take forever'

Emmanuel Macron has dismissed the idea of opening the Strait of Hormuz by force as an unrealistic and never-ending operation.

Donald Trump has told allies to "go to the strait and just take" the fuel they need.
"Some people defend the idea of freeing the Strait of Hormuz by force via a military operation, a position sometimes expressed by the United States, although it has varied," the French president said.

"This was never the option we have supported because it is unrealistic.
"It would take forever, and would expose all those who go through the strait to risks from the guardians of the revolution, but also ballistic missiles.""

He’ll still need a so what we’ll do is…