Iranically Iran, Middle East’s Karen…
- Thread starter Ron in Regina
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This may seem like it’s in the wrong thread initially…but I actually think it belongs here once it’s watched through.
Yes, initially talking about Rafah & Iranian sponsored Hamas, but only initially. It then addresses Iranian sponsored Hezbollah, and then Iran itself and the Middle East as a whole.
Actually, those roads lead to the CCP. The CCP is actively supporting Iran (and their terrorist network) with both funding and weapons. In fact China has, or had an agreement with the Houthis, a quid pro quo I guess you could call it, that they would lay off Chinese flagged shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since they were getting goodies from China via Iran. Ironically when they did attack a Chinese flagged ship it was the US Navy that came to its rescue.
Both Netanyahu and Sinwar Need to Win, So the Gaza War Will Carry On
Most Israelis and Gazans understand that they have lost too much for there to be any notion of 'victory' in this war. But as long as their fates are controlled by two men who insist on being the victor, at any cost, this war is going to continue
Anshel Pfeffer
May 5, 2024
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Palestinians inspecting the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Rafah on Sunday.Credit: Hatem Khaled/Reuters
The breathless reports in Arab media on Saturday that Hamas had agreed to the Egyptian cease-fire and hostage release proposal were premature. While talks are still ongoing in Cairo, as of Sunday evening it is looking increasingly unlikely that Hamas' chief in Gaza and the man who calls the shots on any deal, Yahya Sinwar, is prepared to agree to any compromise that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can accept.
Both men are determined to emerge with a perception of victory in their grasp – but there doesn't appear to be any framework in which the two can have that.
By any meaningful or objective sense of the word, neither side can be said to have "won" the war between Israel and Hamas. On October 7, Israel suffered the most grievous blow in its history when Hamas' surprise attack killed nearly 1,200 people and depopulated entire communities around Gaza's borders. In the subsequent seven months, Hamas has lost around 10 times that number of fighters, another 20,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed, and the main cities and townships in Gaza have been largely destroyed.
- Netanyahu hoped Hamas would reject Israel's offer. When it didn't, he turned to sabotage
- America has finally found effective leverage on Israel – and Netanyahu
- 'I asked Sinwar, is it worth 10,000 Gazans dying? He said, even 100,000 is worth it'
But autocratic populists like Netanyahu and murdering fundamentalists like Sinwar don't care about facts, and only ever need to convince just a chunk of the population – the "real" people – of their victory. Everyone else will be branded as defeatists and traitors for not believing in victory.
For Sinwar's purposes, a "victory" is easier to achieve. All he needs to do is stay alive and allow Netanyahu to keep making all the mistakes. He still has about half of his fighters still alive, and since Netanyahu refuses to accept any alternative force taking over in Gaza, they are already back in control of major parts of the Strip. He didn't contemplate Israel's devastating retaliation, but he's not going to relinquish power over Gaza even if it's entirely in ruins.
What Sinwar wants, says one senior Hamas watcher in the Israeli intelligence community, is to be able "to make a victory lap outside his bunker." That's all. To spend enough time in the sunlight, without fear that Israel will target him with a missile, so he can be shown on Al Jazeera walking in Gaza with a cheering crowd.
If he can achieve that, he believes his men will be able to continue enforcing their rule over Gaza. But for that he needs guarantees that Israel will not target him – not just during the truce period for the hostage release, but after that as well. And that guarantee is what will make it much more difficult for Netanyahu to claim his own victory.
Netanyahu's predicament is more complex. He needs a victory that not only he can claim, but his far-right political partners can as well. And they have already made it abundantly clear that for them, a victory has to be another major ground operation – this time in Rafah. Any guarantees to Hamas will mean that the Rafah operation is off the table for the foreseeable future.
Most Israelis have already realized that Netanyahu's talk of "total victory" is a pipe dream. A survey carried out last week by the Midgam polling company found that 62 percent of the population didn't believe such a victory was possible. Even among those who identified as right-wingers, 50 percent said it wasn't and only 42 percent thought it was.
Netanyahu doesn't need them, though. He reads the polls as well and knows that most of the nation has lost any confidence in his delivering a victory. However, his majority in the Knesset is currently based on the minority of Israelis (27 percent, according to the polls) who still believe in his hollow slogans. They are the base of his dwindling support and the voters he fears losing to the far right in a future election.
To keep his partners on board and prevent them from preempting an election, in which Likud will be decimated and he will be turfed out of office, he needs to keep the "total victory" myth alive – and that is only possible by avoiding a deal with Hamas.
Israelis and Gazans aren't stupid. Most of them have conceded that they have lost too much for there to be any notion of "victory" in this war. But as long as their fates are controlled by two men who insist on being the victor, at any cost, this war is going to continue.
HAARETZ
In the decades following the 1979 revolution in Iran, faux Islamic leaders in Tehran have purported to speak for the Muslim world. Iran’s population stands at about 88 million, and 2023 polling by the Netherlands-based Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran suggests that only 15 per cent of Iranians embrace Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s ideology.
Khamenei lords over a small and shrinking base of support, yet he purports to speak for the entire Muslim world, 1.9-billion strong. Indonesia’s clerical council, Nahdlatul Ulama, is estimated to have 108 million members based on data collected by Indonesian Survey Circle, more than 21 times the size of Khamenei’s followers. They do not claim to represent the entire Islamic faith, and their leader has even visited Israel. The Iranian regime cannot be permitted to position itself as the world’s Islamic authority.
Having committed crimes against humanity in the name of Islam and having delivered nothing but oppression to the Persian people, the Iranian regime has spent four decades exporting its hatred of Jews and Israel by funding a variety of proxies and programs. The investment has borne magnificent fruit: violence, riots, talk of caliphate revivals and martyrdom in the hearts of western capitals.
Khamenei even saw fit to congratulate western students directly on their tireless activism. This is the same man who sanctions the hanging of teenage girls for minor perceived transgressions against his corrupt interpretation of Islam.
Iran has revolutionized geopolitics to export its hate. Like an octopus, the regime in Tehran extends its tentacles to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Yemen, Venezuela, Gaza, Europe and the West. In the Middle East, these tentacles are armed militias like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. In the West, the tentacles present themselves as think tanks, advocacy centres and human rights organizations striving to undermine democracy and the West.
This is a real security threat, and it must be stopped. The Islamic seminaries in the Middle East, and especially the ancient Najaf Seminary (Hawza) of Iraq, have decided to take action by assigning a global group of credentialed Muslim clerics to help peaceful Muslims reclaim the soul of Islam. This group will work with local communities to restore the integrity of Islam and achieve a more truthful and peaceful world.
The Global Imams Council (GIC), of which I am vice-president, has been an integral part of this effort and is working with the Islamic seminaries to fulfill this mission.
The GIC was originally forged in the ideological and theological fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Brave Sunni, Shia and Sufi religious leaders banded together to preach against ISIS and its distortions of Islam. Because of our activism, our faces were printed on the covers of ISIS publications, calling for our deaths. Some of our members and their families were murdered for standing against extremism, but we have persevered. Unlike the Islamists, the Iranian lobby and other organizations who only care about Muslims when it advances political goals, the GIC is committed to the religion of Islam and its peaceful coexistence alongside other faiths.
True adherents to Islam must reclaim the narrative from the antisemites, extremists and Marxists. Otherwise, we risk surrendering our religion, our future and any prospect of peace to those whose currency is hatred. Doing nothing while antisemites control a false narrative of who we are as Muslims and Arabs is unconscionable.
apple.news
Khamenei lords over a small and shrinking base of support, yet he purports to speak for the entire Muslim world, 1.9-billion strong. Indonesia’s clerical council, Nahdlatul Ulama, is estimated to have 108 million members based on data collected by Indonesian Survey Circle, more than 21 times the size of Khamenei’s followers. They do not claim to represent the entire Islamic faith, and their leader has even visited Israel. The Iranian regime cannot be permitted to position itself as the world’s Islamic authority.
Having committed crimes against humanity in the name of Islam and having delivered nothing but oppression to the Persian people, the Iranian regime has spent four decades exporting its hatred of Jews and Israel by funding a variety of proxies and programs. The investment has borne magnificent fruit: violence, riots, talk of caliphate revivals and martyrdom in the hearts of western capitals.
Khamenei even saw fit to congratulate western students directly on their tireless activism. This is the same man who sanctions the hanging of teenage girls for minor perceived transgressions against his corrupt interpretation of Islam.
Iran has revolutionized geopolitics to export its hate. Like an octopus, the regime in Tehran extends its tentacles to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Yemen, Venezuela, Gaza, Europe and the West. In the Middle East, these tentacles are armed militias like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. In the West, the tentacles present themselves as think tanks, advocacy centres and human rights organizations striving to undermine democracy and the West.
This is a real security threat, and it must be stopped. The Islamic seminaries in the Middle East, and especially the ancient Najaf Seminary (Hawza) of Iraq, have decided to take action by assigning a global group of credentialed Muslim clerics to help peaceful Muslims reclaim the soul of Islam. This group will work with local communities to restore the integrity of Islam and achieve a more truthful and peaceful world.
The Global Imams Council (GIC), of which I am vice-president, has been an integral part of this effort and is working with the Islamic seminaries to fulfill this mission.
The GIC was originally forged in the ideological and theological fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Brave Sunni, Shia and Sufi religious leaders banded together to preach against ISIS and its distortions of Islam. Because of our activism, our faces were printed on the covers of ISIS publications, calling for our deaths. Some of our members and their families were murdered for standing against extremism, but we have persevered. Unlike the Islamists, the Iranian lobby and other organizations who only care about Muslims when it advances political goals, the GIC is committed to the religion of Islam and its peaceful coexistence alongside other faiths.
True adherents to Islam must reclaim the narrative from the antisemites, extremists and Marxists. Otherwise, we risk surrendering our religion, our future and any prospect of peace to those whose currency is hatred. Doing nothing while antisemites control a false narrative of who we are as Muslims and Arabs is unconscionable.
Imam Mohammad Tawhidi: Muslims can't allow Islamist antisemites to hijack the faith — National Post
Islamism is a dystopian ideology that weaponizes our religion in the service of evil. Its adherents must be stopped
A helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran crashed in the northwestern part of the country, the interior minister said Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation to a mountainous area shrouded in heavy fog.
(Jewish Space Fog I’ve heard rumours of)
Rescue teams haven’t been able to locate the aircraft, the minister said, without providing any information on the president’s condition. Also aboard the helicopter was the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, state TV said.
If the 63-year-old president is dead or incapacitated, the crash would deprive Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of a longtime ally and potential successor as Tehran angles for regional dominance through armed militias that are fighting the U.S. and Israel.
apple.news
(Jewish Space Fog I’ve heard rumours of)Rescue teams haven’t been able to locate the aircraft, the minister said, without providing any information on the president’s condition. Also aboard the helicopter was the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, state TV said.
If the 63-year-old president is dead or incapacitated, the crash would deprive Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of a longtime ally and potential successor as Tehran angles for regional dominance through armed militias that are fighting the U.S. and Israel.
Iranian President, Foreign Minister Killed in Helicopter Crash — The Wall Street Journal
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announces successors as condolences stream in and some inside Iran celebrate
You would think, with that many VIPs on board this helicopter, they would have an escort of some type? Probably a couple of gunships?
I mean really, they were just hurling hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, what seems like only a couple of weeks ago….so you think they would have some kind of security….???….& if so, did they crash also, or have hard landings or difficult landings or whatever also??
I mean really, they were just hurling hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, what seems like only a couple of weeks ago….so you think they would have some kind of security….???….& if so, did they crash also, or have hard landings or difficult landings or whatever also??
Still no mention of an escort. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hardliner long seen as a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in a helicopter crash in mountainous terrain near the Azerbaijan border, officials and state media said on Monday.
The charred wreckage of the helicopter which crashed on Sunday carrying Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was found early on Monday after an overnight search in blizzard conditions.
"President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash," a senior Iranian official told Reuters, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
(Fireworks going off in Iran last night)
Raisi's death was later confirmed in a statement on social media by Vice President Mohsen Mansouri and on state television.
State TV reported that images from the site showed the aircraft slammed into a mountain peak, although there was no official word on the cause of the crash.
apple.news
The charred wreckage of the helicopter which crashed on Sunday carrying Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was found early on Monday after an overnight search in blizzard conditions.
"President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash," a senior Iranian official told Reuters, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
(Fireworks going off in Iran last night)
Raisi's death was later confirmed in a statement on social media by Vice President Mohsen Mansouri and on state television.
State TV reported that images from the site showed the aircraft slammed into a mountain peak, although there was no official word on the cause of the crash.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, hardline ally of Khamenei, killed in helicopter crash — Reuters
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hardliner seen as a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed when his helicopter crashed in poor weather in mountains near the Azerbaijan border, officials and state media said on Monday.
He died with music (in a spectacular way).....its a Russian saying.Still no mention of an escort. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hardliner long seen as a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in a helicopter crash in mountainous terrain near the Azerbaijan border, officials and state media said on Monday.
The charred wreckage of the helicopter which crashed on Sunday carrying Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was found early on Monday after an overnight search in blizzard conditions.
"President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash," a senior Iranian official told Reuters, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
(Fireworks going off in Iran last night)
Raisi's death was later confirmed in a statement on social media by Vice President Mohsen Mansouri and on state television.
View attachment 22182
State TV reported that images from the site showed the aircraft slammed into a mountain peak, although there was no official word on the cause of the crash.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, hardline ally of Khamenei, killed in helicopter crash — Reuters
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hardliner seen as a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed when his helicopter crashed in poor weather in mountains near the Azerbaijan border, officials and state media said on Monday.
Where is the Iranian President?
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi seems to missing from a helicopter crash in the North of Iran. This is odd for a few reasons.#1. A head of state shouldn’t be...
www.youtube.com
I'd think if the Israelis had anything to do with it (and even if they didn't), the Iranians would be screaming blue murder.
I find it weird that the helicopter was flying by itself, unescorted, without back up, with that many “dignitaries” on board, in the current political environment between Iran & Israel.
x.com
x.com
Iran officially in five days of mourning - but President Raisi's opponents celebrate his death with fireworks
Iran's supreme leader has called for five days of mourning following the death of the president and foreign minister in a helicopter crash on Sunday. But opponents and victims of the morality police are celebrating.
Apparently, the price of a Presidential helicopter ride in Iran is Karma.
The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear an appeal from victims' families who are trying to enforce a $107-million judgment against Iran over its downing of a passenger jet.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was shot down by Iranian officials shortly after takeoff from Tehran in 2020.
Most of the passengers were bound for Canada, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.
In 2021, family members obtained a default court judgment against Iran for $107 million plus interest and costs.
The families then took steps to enforce the ruling against properties and bank accounts of Iran in Canada.
An Ontario judge dismissed the motion, finding that the Iranian property was protected by diplomatic immunity under Canadian law, a decision that was upheld on appeal.
apple.news
Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was shot down by Iranian officials shortly after takeoff from Tehran in 2020.
Most of the passengers were bound for Canada, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.
In 2021, family members obtained a default court judgment against Iran for $107 million plus interest and costs.
The families then took steps to enforce the ruling against properties and bank accounts of Iran in Canada.
An Ontario judge dismissed the motion, finding that the Iranian property was protected by diplomatic immunity under Canadian law, a decision that was upheld on appeal.
Supreme Court won't hear bid by families of victims to enforce ruling against Iran — The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear an appeal from victims' families who are trying to enforce a $107-million judgment against Iran over its downing of a passenger jet.