US-Iran peace agreement discussion, part 4

[RedTagAlan]

Thread 4 for those following and commenting on the above subject.

Meanwhile, in Dubai. From the WSJ:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made it clear as he announced “Economic D-Day” that the U.S. would no longer turn a blind eye when countries support Iranian economic activity. A spin around Dubai shows it is all happening in plain sight.
“Iranian business activity has deep, mutually lucrative roots in the commercial capital of the United Arab Emirates and continues to thrive despite the American warnings.
Iranian banks dotted around Dubai remained open this week. They include a multistory branch of Bank Melli Iran along the creek in the city’s old town.
Bessent specifically called for all branches of Bank Melli to be closed. Yet after the announcement, a dozen tellers continued to serve the Farsi-speaking customers who trickled in to do business in the bright space decorated with Persian-themed mural work and tiling.
Bank Melli began operating in the U.A.E. in 1969, before statehood, and has two branches in Dubai, whose ruler inaugurated its first branch. Iranian bank employees in the old town location said they haven’t received a notice to close and that barring one they will continue to operate. ”
“operate.
“We put our trust in God on what happens next,” an Iranian bank employee said.
Dubai-based Iranians said they are already planning alternatives for getting money to and from Iran if the banks get shut down. One is the centuries-old hawala system that allows users to transfer money from one point to another entirely on trust. Funds are deposited with a dealer in one location and paid out by a dealer in Iran, with the two dealers settling accounts later.
But so far that hasn’t been necessary. In fact, Iranians around the city said conditions have improved since the early spring, when the U.A.E. launched a broad crackdown on Iranians in the country, closing a hospital and social club, temporarily banning Iranian passport holders from entering or even transiting through the country, and revoking some Iranians’ visas, including for some long-term residents who were traveling abroad at the time.”
“The widespread visa cancellations, which were never formally announced, don’t appear to be continuing and some visas have been restored, Iranians said. While the Iranian Hospital and the Iranian Club remain closed, the shutdowns haven’t spread.
Iranian airlines are running regular direct flights shuttling passengers between Iran and the U.A.E. The latter’s major carriers—Emirates, Etihad and FlyDubai—aren’t offering direct flights to Iran, though some flights do use Iranian airspace.
In Iranian diners and cafes in Dubai’s old city, Iranians chatted with Emirati customers in Arabic. One restaurant’s facade was covered in 7-foot portraits of the U.A.E.’s rulers and dozens of Emirati flags. ”
“Iranians in Dubai are concerned about the deteriorating economic picture in Gulf countries like the U.A.E. as the war drags on. They fear they will lose their jobs and be forced to return to Iran. Some have left pre-emptively for third countries.
The continuing Iranian business activity is at odds with the public positions of the U.A.E. and the U.S. The Emirates’ Foreign Ministry said last week that it was halting trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions with Iran. ”
“The move came after weeks of pressure from the U.S. to act on those ties and got ahead of Bessent’s campaign, when he specifically criticized countries that welcome Iranian flights.
“It is no longer acceptable to operate in the gray spaces of this conflict,” Bessent said. “These measures broaden secondary sanctions risk for anyone foolish enough to continue conducting business with this regime.”
The Treasury and the U.A.E. Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment about the Iranian business activity. A White House official said the Trump administration continues to work with partners in the region to squeeze Iran’s economy.
Decoupling the economies of Iran and the U.A.E. is no easy task. The two cultures separated by the narrow Persian Gulf have ties dating back centuries. ”
“Many Emiratis have Persian roots. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians across social classes have made the U.A.E. home, enjoying access to global capital and freedoms banned by the Islamic Republic and in return bringing in billions of dollars in Iranian cash.
Those ties have persisted even though Iran launched more than 2,800 drones and missiles at the U.A.E. during the war, far more than it aimed at any other country, including Israel, as it tried to raise the global economic cost of the war to blunt the attack.
“The Gulf Arab state economies are so closely integrated and intertwined with the Iranian economy, you can’t just simply sever economic trade and activity overnight,” said Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow at international-affairs think tank Chatham House in London. “The U.A.E., and Dubai in particular, have always managed to continue to do trade, even when the maximum pressure is on. Cutting off that trade will be cutting off their nose, basically.”
About $28 billion in trade flowed between the U.A.E. and Iran in 2024, according to the most recent data from the World Trade Organization. ”
“The U.A.E. is home to the second-largest number of companies and people sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury over ties to Iran behind China, said Matthew Levitt, who in the 2000s served as deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Treasury.
An October study by the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network tracked that Dubai-based companies moved $6.4 billion in potential Iranian shadow banking funds in 2024, 71% of the global total.
Former U.S. enforcement officials said Dubai’s take is likely much higher and that the U.S. should be forcing the U.A.E. to crack down on illicit Iranian business activity.
The U.S. has broad and important geopolitical interests in the U.A.E., however. The country is the main signatory of the Abraham Accords, the pact shepherded by President Trump establishing diplomatic ties with Israel, which the Emirates counts as a key security partner.”
“The country is also a source of funds for investment in sectors like artificial intelligence and gives the U.S. military important basing rights.
In the U.A.E., the idea of cutting ties with Iran runs up against political calculations as well as financial considerations.
“There will be some in the U.A.E. who say, ‘Whatever the price of calm, that is what we need to do,’ ” said Levitt, now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank. “Better to do that by allowing them to access banking and supply chains through our country than not,” he said of the Emirates’ thinking on Iran.
Dubai, which lacks the oil wealth of the country’s leaders in Abu Dhabi, depends on the financial inflows that include the billions in Iranian shadow dollars.
“Dubai in particular is a hub for a lot of the sanctions evasion,” Levitt said. “It is a huge part of their economy, to be sure. But there is a difference between relying on it and just making a lot of money on it.””

.
Excerpt From
“A Walk Around Dubai Shows No Signs of Trump’s ‘D-Day’ for Iran”
Omar Abdel-Baqui
The Wall Street Journal
https://apple.news/AZe5uLrlWRBOBIcT_cmDfiQ
This material may be protected by copyright.

Not yet Twigs. Just pointing out that it has been featured in the AP and is not in Alice land only.

Mean. It's totally unnecessary to be asking this here, so I question your motive in doing so. A genuine poster would ask this on the actual thread being referred to.
And yes, this is a comment on your intention.

What answer do you expect?

A long interview with a Middle East analyst in which he does not say that Israel has attacked Turkey or is going to attack Turkey.

To be fair Twigs did ask that question on the thread. I can’t be bothered to answer it there because it has been covered here. I maintain my original stance. Might not have happened yet, but it could.

Israel attacked a Turkish intended asset in Syria. If you decided to rent a field with the intention of building a house on it and a neighbour blew it up to stop you, would you class that as an attack?

I don't classify this as Israel attacking Turkey, no.

That hasn't happened and won't happen. To suggest otherwise is pure fantasy as far as I'm concerned.

There's a lot of noise about it from all kinds of sources. Just sabre rattling at the moment but with Israel's reputation, who knows. History is riddled with hegemonists who took a step too far.

There are some really interesting posts on this thread and I enjoy reading and learning from them.

But there is also a degree of fantasy about some things which are ridiculously unlikely to happen.

The first is Israel using a nuke on Iran. I mean how would they do it!? They would have to call up the U.S, China and Russia in advance. Otherwise, who knows what those three nuclear powers would make of a mushroom cloud in Iran or what they would do about it! And that is aside from the radioactive fallout which will drift all around the region for years to come. Israel’s nukes are believed to be plutonium-based fission weapons, which are about as dirty as they come. And do you think the two superpowers and nuclear-armed Russia would just say on you go with no consequences?!

The other is Israel attacking Turkey, a NATO country with a modern army. There is the world of difference between attacking an empty airfield in Syria, which the Turks might have intended to use, and attacking Turkey proper. The U.S were worried enough about the attack on an empty airfield to publicly reprimand Israel and arrange Trilateral talks between Israel, Turkey and Syria.

It is reasonable to dislike Netanyahu intensely and to despise his alliance of convenience with a bunch of racists. However, he isn’t mad and Israel has plenty of checks and balances to stop him randomly using a nuke or starting a war that may well be genuinely existential for Israel (as opposed to fighting Hamas and Hezbollah where Israel is not even remotely threatened despite claims otherwise).

Do people really see Israel dropping a nuke or firing missiles at Ankara or Istanbul?!

Without US protection, do you think Israel has any chance of survival in it's current form. Do you think it would comply with the wishes of what now seems to be the entire world to give the Palestinians what they rightfully deserve or do you think they will still try to dominate the entire region. If the mad psychopaths who are in control have their way, the nukes will definitely start flying. At this moment in time, Israel is the most dangerous country in the world run by people who should be in padded cells. I am not saying it is all Israelis by a long way but their leaders are not simply religious fanatics, I could understand that. They are using religion to just be absolute monstrous bastards despite the fact most of them are actually, like Theodore Herzl, atheists. I have no idea how this will end but I know it won't end well if the US refuses to protect Israel. To answer your question, I could easily see Israel dropping a nuke on Istanbul as I can see, if it has the technological ability, dropping nukes on all its allies if they don't support them under the guise of the Samson Protocol.

@Squeezingwildoranges ,

Well, for starters, the U.S aren’t suddenly going to abandon Israel. What might happen is that the U.S will warn Israel on E1, settler violence and to withdraw from Gaza and the Lebanon. I suspect that if the cost of not doing so was loss of military support and sanctions, Israel would comply.

The U.S/Israel is also not a one way alliance. The U.S gets a reliable base in the Middle East and there is considerable two way trade in high tech between the countries.

More to the point, Israel probably could survive on its own. It is not as dependent on the U.S as some think. It has a GDP of over 700 billion and a very high tech battle-hardened military. It also has far fewer enemies than it used to.

As for the Samson protocol, it is literally MAD. It is only to be used if the country is about to be overrun. It is not permission to randomly fire nukes and ensure Israel’s own destruction. People often forget how physically small Israel is; one or two nukes would probably make it uninhabitable for decades.

And there is no evidence that the Israeli leadership are psychopaths bar some on the religious right. Being expansionist, amoral and not likeable does not make you a psychopath. Everything Netanyahu does is calculated and logical.

Both firing nukes and attacking Turkey are potentially national suicide. They would certainly lose substantial quantities of Israeli lives. If there is one thing we know about Israel, they don’t do that. Look how many they swap for how few in hostage swaps.

Israel is assumed to have had nuclear weapons since the late 60s and they have had the provocation to use one if they were so inclined.

They haven’t because they aren’t mad and know it wouldn’t end well for their country or people. Iran are more risky because of the religion fanaticism of the hardliners and because they demonstrate that they don’t care about the wellbeing of their people or the wellbeing of their proxies. All they care about is the regime.

Israel attacking Turkey is another fantasy that won’t happen. Not while Turkey is a member of NATO and not unless Turkey directly attacks Israel first.

Al Jazeera latest on the Strait of Hormuz

The US military said that no ships have entered or exited any Iranian port without US permission since the renewal of the naval blockade, and that it has assisted nearly 1,500 commercial vessels carrying close to 750 million barrels of crude oil.

Strait of Hormuz shipping traffic remained low, with preliminary data showing only five commodity vessels transiting the waterway on Thursday – down from 17 the day before and below the 10-day average of 15.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US naval blockade of Iranian ports would further weaken Iran’s economy.

Crude oil benchmarks trended downwards on Friday, heading towards consecutive weekly losses despite a brief rebound in the previous session.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/8/28/iran-war-live-tehran-prepares-conditions-to-open-strait-of-hormuz

• Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei has said that Tehran is drafting a list of conditions to open the Strait of Hormuz in response to mediator requests, adding that the US must first take practical steps to fulfil these demands before the waterway reopens.

• Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani held meetings in Tehran to discuss key issues, including the future of the Strait of Hormuz, amid international hopes that dialogue between the US and Iran on ending the war will resume.

• A US government source told Al Jazeera that Iran-Oman agreements do not concern the US, reiterating that the Strait of Hormuz is open, mines are cleared, no talks are scheduled and the naval blockade remains.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/8/28/iran-war-live-tehran-prepares-conditions-to-open-strait-of-hormuz

Psychopath - Noun - A person who engages repeatedly in criminal and antisocial behavior without remorse or empathy for those victimized.

If the shoe fits!!

From the Independent:

“It was doomed before it even started. Operation Epic Fury, Donald Trump’s foray into Iran, which began six months ago, went against the advice of the US military and security services; no allies were consulted, save the Israelis, who recruited America into what was their private war with Iran; and it lacked any plan, realistic targets or exit strategy.
As has now been widely acknowledged, what Trump once childishly called his little “excursion” has turned into the most stupid war America has ever involved itself in, exceeding Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq both in its misconnection and its baleful consequences. It was, above all, the work of one man: President Donald J Trump. As usual, he thought he knew best.
It was clearly the wrong war for America to intervene in, not just because it was so senseless, but because there were others where US power and prestige could have been more fruitfully deployed.”
“staying out of Israel’s war on Iran was the obviously wise thing to do from the outset. Half a year on, that is now beyond doubt.
In terms of timing, the war on Iran was decided upon when the factors that might have led to success were not in place. There was insufficient international preparation (assuming that was ever going to be contemplated); and, more crucially, the mood of the Iranian people was misread, perhaps for lack of intelligence, perhaps because the Americans didn’t care.
Whatever forces of resistance, freedom and liberation were still present after their brutal suppression by the Revolutionary Guards previously, they were not strong nor numerous enough to bring about that most elusive of American foreign policy dreams, “regime change”.
One of the greatest betrayals in US history came when President Trump told the people of Iran that “help is coming” when it was not. Fortunately, the Iranians were shrewd enough not to trust Mr Trump.”
“As for the casus belli in Iran, that was sometimes clear, but too often not, and constantly shifting. Regime change came and went, much to Mr Trump’s evident surprise; this was not another Venezuela.
No matter how many mullahs and generals the Americans and Israelis executed, more popped up to replace them, less well known to the spies but generally more militant and less amenable to a “deal”. They tainted the president with viciously satirical “Lego” videos, deliberately ridiculing a man who has the thinnest skin on the planet to Lear-like impotent rage.
In any case, the Islamic Republic has survived. There was no “unconditional surrender” as Mr Trump demanded, nor did Iran volunteer its oil reserves to be placed under US control, nor its Supreme Leader to be picked from a menu by Mr Trump.
The Americans also wanted to end the nuclear threat, which was, to some extent, under control before the war and was about to be settled under a deal brokered by the Omanis in January when Benjamin Netanyahu sensed the whiff of peace, picked up the phone and persuaded Mr Trump to join him in a once-and-for-all victory move against a shared historic foe.
“Iran is still in possession of its “nuclear dust”, as Mr Trump terms its supply of enriched uranium; most of its nuclear scientists are still alive; and in Russia and North Korea, Iran has some useful allies who know all about nukes and evading US sanctions.
The principal US war aim now is to free the Strait of Hormuz and rescue the world from the energy crisis. It is too painful to point out that the Strait was free to all nations a little over six months ago. No one knows that more keenly than America’s shaken allies in the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. As Mr Trump would say: “They’re not happy.” ”
“If only John Lennon was around to compose a ballad for this American debacle, as he did towards the end of Vietnam – something that reflects on the futility of the exercise, the lives lost, the money wasted, even the munitions exhausted, and all because one man knows how to get into a mess but not how to extract himself from it.
In a few more months, it will be Christmas. The signs are that, even by then, the war won’t be over. How much longer, Mr Trump?”

@Twiglets1, Iran are more risky because of the religion fanaticism!

Absolutely the Ayatollahs are religious fanatics!

A people who justify brutalising and dispossessing the indigenous population because they have a mandate from god 3000 years ago. Religious fanatics!

US politicians who unconditionally support a foreign country because they believe that if they can gather all the Jews in the holy land it will bring forth the rapture and they will be taken to heaven. Religious fanatics!

Literally everything about this is religious fanaticism!!!!

Why so many exclamation marks?

Israel governments don’t behave as irrationally as the IRGC do - not even the current one with too many right wing extremists in it.

That is definitely a matter of opinion.

Yup. I would say bombing a nation and killing all the heads of government was a bit of an irrational act.

I would say starting a war with a nation that has been preparing for said war for decades is irrational.

I would say renaming the Sec of Defense to the Sec of war is irrational, especially when said sec of Defense/War has even managed to draw negative articles in the Catholic press about his "Christian rhetoric".

"He hosts monthly Christian worship services for employees. His department's promotional videos have displayed Bible verses alongside military footage. In speeches and interviews, he often argues the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and troops should embrace God, potentially risking the military's secular mission and hard-won pluralism.

Now the defense secretary's Christian rhetoric has taken on new meaning after the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran, an Islamic theocracy.

"The mullahs are desperate and scrambling," he said at a recent Pentagon press briefing, referring to Iran's Shiite Muslim clerics. He later recited Psalm 144, a passage of Scripture that Jews and Christians share: "Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle."

Hegseth has a history of defending the Crusades, the brutal medieval wars that pitted Christians against Muslims. In his 2020 book American Crusade, he wrote that those who enjoy Western civilization should "thank a crusader." Two of his tattoos draw from crusader imagery: the Jerusalem Cross and the phrase "Deus Vult," or "God wills it," which Hegseth has called "the rallying cry of Christian knights as they marched to Jerusalem.""

Source for quote

Pete Hegseth's Christian rhetoric draws renewed scrutiny after the US goes to war with Iran | National Catholic Reporter (ncronline.org)

Oh. @Newbutoldfather . Guess who else believes in Satan and Demons, apart from the Islamic Clerics ? Yup. Pretty much all of the US Trump appointed WH admin. Including the Sec of War.

Every one on them, so far as I am aware, is a proclaimed Christian. Is there even a single atheist elected member of the Republican Party to be found ?

It's when they call the Iranians religious fanatics that I have to laugh. Without a doubt the Ayatollahs are religious fanatics but talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

GOD BLESS AMERICA.

I cringe at that.

Even worse is the US declaration of independence, with these words

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights......

What sort of Genie is this "Creator"?

We could go down this path ad infinitum but we should stick to the topic I suppose. I'll end with this quote though.

Blaise Pascal (17th-century philosopher and mathematician):"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

Sticking to the Topic, the CNN Iran war news feed is pretty slow. Probably because Trump appears to have decided not to talk to the Iranians.

It's as if he just wants the whole thing to vanish into the ether. I bet he wishes he could find a Genie in a bottle.