US and Iran Relations (News and Discussion)

[PeterMP]

7 hours ago, twa said:

 

I think you are wrong, the oil wealth there enabled it along with it's arab allies.

The Carter doctrine assured it

 

Please.  The Carter doctrine was communicated in Jan. 1980 under political pressure from the right during an election year and had no legislative backing.  In Nov. 1980, Carter has lost the election and in Jan. Reagan was President.

 

Without Reagan (and his right wing allies) there would have been no Carter doctrine, but even so, Reagan had no problem quickly reversing course on more long standing Carter policies (fuel efficiency and energy conservation matters and the tie between human rights and foreign policy). 

 

Reagan could have easily and quickly changed course on the Carter doctrine and a doctrine that wasn't really enforce for a year assured nothing.

 

While Iran does not have the oil resources Saudi Arabia does, it is a poorer country than it should be based on the oil resources it does have.  They are a poor country because we've spent ~40 years working to make sure they are a poor country.  We could have done the same thing with respect to Saudi Arabia.

 

(And we could have been less extreme with Saudi Arabia and still negatively impacted their wealth and therefore their ability to spread their violent extremist version of their Islam.  We could have made it more difficult for them to access US man power, technology, and expertise in terms of their national security, military, and oil extraction processes.  We could have made it more difficult to access US markets without the out right embargoes and sanctions that we've put on Iran.  We could have worked harder to limit our own consumption and demand and therefore decreased the profits of Saudi Arabia.)

 

Let there be no doubt the west funded the ideology that now gives us so much trouble over so much of the world.  And (largely) we did it to "beat" a country that couldn't feed its own people despite the fact that they should have had the agricultural resources (e.g. land) to be a net food exporter (because they have and had embraced a failed economic and political model).

Edited July 21, 2019 by PeterMP

[twa]

8 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

Please.  The Carter doctrine was communicated in Jan. 1980 under political pressure from the right during an election year and had no legislative backing.  In Nov. 1980, Carter has lost the election and in Jan. Reagan was President.

 

 

please

The Carter doctrine announcement was a public response to the soviet invasion of Afghanistan and nothing more than a restatement affirming policy going back thru Nixon,Eisenhower and Truman.

SA has been in a clearly better position since the Shah was overthrown because they had better allies and less turmoil.....and a lot of oil

[tshile]

So... I’m enjoying reading about how the relationship started... but... we’ve been supporting the Saudi genocide in Yemen for a long time. In fact I laughed when members of the house decided this year to actually say something negative about it. 

 

It seems to me the whole discussion over who started it seems silly when juxtaposed to the fact that seemingly our entire government has supported it over the decades

 

obama supported the Arab spring? How much money and arms and intelligence did his administration send to SA to help with their genocide in Yemen? Cause that was absolutely going on during his administration. 

[Larry]

52 minutes ago, tshile said:

obama supported the Arab spring?

 

Yes. He did. Over Republican objections. 

 

(Although granted, they seemed to have trouble deciding whether to attack him for not doing enough, or for doing anything at all.)

[PeterMP]

3 hours ago, twa said:

 

please

The Carter doctrine announcement was a public response to the soviet invasion of Afghanistan and nothing more than a restatement affirming policy going back thru Nixon,Eisenhower and Truman.

SA has been in a clearly better position since the Shah was overthrown because they had better allies and less turmoil.....and a lot of oil

 

1.  It was after the invasion of Afghanistan, but it was also heavily designed to protect him from claims on the right of begin soft on communism in an election year.

 

2.  Yes, and as Larry even stated even further back to FDR.  But by 1980 things had changed.

 

First, with the oil embargo the Saudis had violated their portion of the historic agreement and the arab countries were not seen on friendly terms.

 

Second, by then it was clear that the Saudis were using their money to spread an anti-western ideology.

 

And instead of continuing Carter policies that would have limited Saudi profits and ability to spread their ideology, Reagan went the other way and doubled down (and even really tripled down taking the support to an unpreviously seen level) on the support of Saudi Arabia.

[Busch1724]

Also, didn't Carter around that time start to encourage alternative energies? He did have solar panels installed at the White House correct? Was he intentionally moving the country to see the day to move from oil dependence? I was born in 1976, so obviously too young to remember.

[twa]

24 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

1.  It was after the invasion of Afghanistan, but it was also heavily designed to protect him from claims on the right of begin soft on communism in an election year.

 

2.  Yes, and as Larry even stated even further back to FDR.  But by 1980 things had changed.

 

First, with the oil embargo the Saudis had violated their portion of the historic agreement and the arab countries were not seen on friendly terms.

 

Second, by then it was clear that the Saudis were using their money to spread an anti-western ideology.

 

And instead of continuing Carter policies that would have limited Saudi profits and ability to spread their ideology, Reagan went the other way and doubled down (and even really tripled down taking the support to an unpreviously seen level) on the support of Saudi Arabia.

 

The Saudis spread it as a counter to Iran's exporting revolution and to cement their leadership position , the rise of political Islam was largely filling the vacuum left by the pan arab collapse

Iran lost almost all allies during the Iraq/Iran war and lost decades of development

 

Pipe dreams of alt energy here would not cut Saudi profits or power, hell they enabled it if anything,

 

the evolution of the ME media and control exerted over it played a large part in cementing Saudi stability and economic success

[Larry]

1 hour ago, Busch1724 said:

Also, didn't Carter around that time start to encourage alternative energies? He did have solar panels installed at the White House correct? Was he intentionally moving the country to see the day to move from oil dependence? I was born in 1976, so obviously too young to remember.

 

Yep. 

 

He also negotiated the only Arab-Israeli peace deal. A deal which is still in place today. 

 

Granted, he did it by throwing huge amounts of aid to Egypt. (Egypt is the second biggest recipient of US aid, behind Israel). But heck, if we could pay off the rest of the Mideast, I'd jump at that deal. It also means that the Egyptian military is trained by the US instead of by Russia, and the US has good relations, and influence with them. 

[PeterMP]

3 hours ago, twa said:

 

The Saudis spread it as a counter to Iran's exporting revolution and to cement their leadership position , the rise of political Islam was largely filling the vacuum left by the pan arab collapse

Iran lost almost all allies during the Iraq/Iran war and lost decades of development

 

Pipe dreams of alt energy here would not cut Saudi profits or power, hell they enabled it if anything,

 

the evolution of the ME media and control exerted over it played a large part in cementing Saudi stability and economic success

 

No.

 

The Saudis started spreading their version of Islam after the Yom Kipur war in 1973.  Well before the Iranian revolution in 1979.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro-Islam

 

By 1980, it is a pretty advanced process.

 

The Iranians lost allies pretty much directly after the Iranian revolution.  Khomeini pretty much immediately calls for fall of the House of Saud.  And that scares every other monarchy/dictatorship in the region.

 

The Saudis help fund the Iraq side of the Iraq-Iran war to help destabilize Iran.

 

Again, not really (just) alt energy, but general access to US man power, technology, intelligence in terms of their military, national security, and oil.

 

But also the ease of access of their oil to US markets.

 

(Coupled with changes in Carter era regulations related to energy production and conservation.)

[twa]

2 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

No.

 

The Saudis started spreading their version of Islam after the Yom Kipur war in 1973.  Well before the Iranian revolution in 1979.

 

 

Khomeini and co started before the revolution as well obviously.....being in exile made that inevitable.

1973 was a bad yr for pan arabism wasn't it. 

 

[mistertim]

16 hours ago, twa said:

 

Khomeini and co started before the revolution as well obviously.....being in exile made that inevitable.

1973 was a bad yr for pan arabism wasn't it. 

 

 

#ThanksObama

[twa]

25 minutes ago, mistertim said:

 

#ThanksObama

 

for not being quite as hardheaded as Carter.

 

 

[FanboyOf91]

There are layers to this type of humiliation.

[visionary]

 

[visionary]

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

[visionary]

 

[visionary]

 

[visionary]

 

[visionary]

 

[visionary]

Hmmm

 

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Renegade7]

That cant be true, is he serious?  Can we put it in cash in a plane on pallets?

[visionary]