With the escalation in tensions between the US and Iran, following the death of US citizens in Iran, followed by Americas retaliation, in killing a number of Iranian military, what will happen next ?

As with most conflicts in the middle east, this has the potential to escalate very quickly and to drag the UK in as well, particularly as we will very soon be negotiating with the US on a trade deal and Trump will very likely insist that we pick a side as a pre cursor to that.

Will this all blow away quickly or is this the start of something much more significant ?

Happy New Year !

Hopefully stay out of it so we can give the Iranians some moral support.

HNY

What give the Iranians moral support - are you serious?

I am not for one minute saying we should get involved but Soleimani got what was coming his way - an out an out terrorist who would stop at nothing. The world is a better place without him.

I appreciate Donald needs some diversion and this will fit well with his mid America flag wavers.

Storm in a teacup - the Iranians can't afford to react, could be it was the Ayatollah's idea?

Donald Trump has an election to win, sadly going to war will have a positive influence on his campaign, Trump knows this and is looking to start a war.

Agree with the first - not sure he really wants to go to war - Trump is bully not a fighter.

It wont be his blood that is spilt, just that of "his" people.
The declaration that this is "an act of war" doesn't sound great and in the final analysis, this will all boil down to the price and supply of oil

Trump isn't going to be up for a 'boots on the ground' style war in Iran, which would be much harder and more complex than Afghanistan and Iraq in which the US got bogged down for years.

He will want this kind of one-off strike conflict. The Iranians will react the same way, probably via proxy terrorist groups. This will be good politics for Trump because it takes the terms of debate on to something that he will fancy his chances against the Democrats - who would be tougher on Islamic terrorism.

The US intelligence services could always throw in a bit of fabrication, a bit of wishful thinking, and some outright lies that would allow them to go running to the United Nations Security Council.
Worked well enough last time.

I wonder how many people who support this kind of US imperialism will be down the recruiting office today? Very few I'd wager - it works much better to let the children of poor families die in a desert somewhere; small price to pay for the boost it will give an election campaign.

Nothing to do with the 53million barrels of oil that Iran have just found under their feet then?

Correlation does not = causation; so I'm certain that the US interventions in various middle and near eastern states are nothing at all to do with oil; [url=https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/06/america-escalates-its-democratic-oil-war-in-the-near-east/that would be outrageous.[/url

Yeah, nothing in the Middle East is ever remotely connected to oil



The real concern is that, I dont remember troops being sent en masse, halfway round the world, to not get involved in conflict and just as we (the UK) have been dragged in before, we will most likely get dragged into this one.
Killing the Iranian military leader is one hell of a gamble and as you suggest, it's all about the "black gold".

I don't think this has anything to do with oil - this is a deflection exercise - but he is so dumb like George Bush he is only capable of dealing with one concept at a time.

I believe Trump will give Iran what they want by his action, which is the expulsion of foreign troops (except Russia) from many countries in the region. He did it with the Kurds who are now supported by Russia with them taking over the former US army facilities.

America have killed far more innocent people than any terrorist group have. So who are the real terrorists?

Watched an amazing documentary recently “hunting isis” and they bombed an innocent family killing 18 family members and the remaining family member had to beg them for body bags to bury them all.

America f*** yeah. Can’t wait for the day Russia and China put them in their place

He said: "Today let's recognise the horror that the families of those that died in the airliner travelling from Tehran to the Ukraine are suffering from now.

"Let's be clear there can be no excuses here. This is an appalling act and part of a whole pattern of appalling acts all across the region.

"There's no excuse for shooting down an airliner, there's no excuse for a targeted assassination by one state against another.

"All this does is set off a spiral of violence and danger which will lead us to yet more wars in the future."



go Jeremy, no we mean it, GO, traitor.

I don’t recall such an outcry when the Americans shot down Iran Air flight 655, murdering 290 innocent souls.
And the Americans denied they were the murderers for a full two months before irrefutable evidence outed them as liars.

Perhaps we should just call it quits then, yes?



It's interesting so many are blaming the US for creating an atmosphere of war. What they forget is that in the late 80s during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran was attacking shipping in the Hormuz Straits and had mined the area, almost sinking a US frigate, which led to Operation Praying Mantis and the US decimating Iranian forces in the area. There was a rather more an atmosphere of war in those days - there actually WAS a war, a major war.

You should read the background and details of IR655. While it was a monumental fck-up, it was hardly a snap judgement, trigger-happy moment.

Watching the left has reinforced my opinion of them in the last few days. Whataboutery on an epic level.
Plane goes down: "never an accident, definitely the US."
Questions around suspicious photos: "could be anything and probably planted by the US."
Already geo-located video emerges of the missile strike: "fake, definitely fake, a US fake."
Iran admits shooting it down: "errrm well the US did the same thing 32 years ago so it's still all their fault."

And of course Jeremy Corbyn - friend of Iran as we all know - was still calling it a crash this afternoon.

18? Dreadful, yes. But an accident, in a war zone. Let's remember ISIS killed, tortured and maimed many tens of thousands of innocent civilians, possibly more. And in some utterly horrific ways. For fun, mainly. This isn't whataboutery, this is putting things into perspective.

Perhaps you should find some unfiltered accounts of what ISIS were doing during their heyday. Maybe start with the Yazidis and the explore other accounts of their massacres, what their females endured. And the rest. If every person associated with ISIS was wiped from the face of this planet I wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. The world is a better place without them.

Collateral civilian deaths in war are terrible but inevitable. Try the D-Day landings if you want some shocking numbers.

Let us also not forget that it was the Americans who provided weapons to Iraq which they later used in the war against the USA and U.K. etc.

Wow - Mao starved 50m of his own people and between Lenin and Stalin they killed another 50m - these are people with whom you have some sympathy!! The numbers of the hard left dwarf anything ever done in the name of the hard right.

Tbf, there is more to China than Mao and Russia than the worst of the Soviet era. Just as there is more to the modern US than genocide of native peoples and slavery. Which is, of course, all setting the bar very low. China and Russia are certainly not saviours from US hegemony and unless things changed dramatically, I wouldn’t remotely want them to be. I don’t think superpower nations are good for the world.

I think Trump is the final nail in the coffin of whatever was left of the myth of American exceptionalism.

You didn’t know of IR655 previously, but at least you had the decency to row back from your preposterous 1-1 suggestion.

The Americans were also selling weapons to Iran during this time as well.

Congress blocked Reagan from funding the Contras in Nicauragua, so the Americans used arms sales to Iran (off the books) as a money laundering exercise to continue to fund the Contras (off the books) without Congress being able to audit the funds.

Flashman would have been up on the hill this morning, playing little boy soldiers.