What else was going on years back. Ok, just as today lots of tough guy sabre rattling .. 2009
Excellent as usual .. excerpt .. ""Obama WH already got more from one buffet lunch with Iran than Bush WH did in 8 years of saber-rattling." For that reason, it's hard to disagree with this: "In Washington, President Barack Obama said the talks marked 'a constructive beginning' and showed the promise of renewed engagement with Iran . . . ." Charles Krauthammer picked a bad day to haul out the tired neocon "appeasement" platitude and apply it to Obama, claiming -- as always -- that negotiations and diplomacy can accomplish nothing, while railing like a madman against Obama's "naivite," "fecklessness," and "wasting time with feel-good posturing."
Related to all of this, actual Middle East expert Juan Cole has written an excellent article for Salon pointing out the "top 10 facts" which many Americans (and, definitely, most American journalists) do not know about Iran. Many of these suppressed facts -- and that's what they are -- are the ones I've been trying to highlight, including during my MSNBC discussion the other day. Just contemplate how different -- and how vastly improved -- our discussions would be if these basic facts were acknowledged by journalists reporting on Iran and by pundits opining on the subject."
I just happened to catch, Charles Krauthammer, on a US tv show here a few hours?? ago now I guess, and was thinking what is he talking about! Didn't know him at all.
Juan Cole's 10 point article mentioned is worth displaying .. almost said again, as i think it may have been up before.
The top ten things you didn't know about Iran
The assumptions most Americans hold about Iran and its policies are wrong [...] Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the U.S.
Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the U.S. or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders. [...] Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.
Reality: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to U.S. signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the U.K. intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart. October, 2009 -- https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=42162294
To today:
At least 14 Iranian nuclear scientists killed by Israel since Friday, sources say By Reuters 15 June 2025, 5:10 pm
At least 14 Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in Israeli attacks since Friday, including in car bombs, two sources in the Gulf say.
The names of nine of the scientists were published by the IDF yesterday, and it said many of them were successors to Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the “father of the Iranian nuclear project,” who was allegedly assassinated by Israel in 2020.
Global watchdog finds Iran failing to meet nuclear obligations 3 days ago [...] It follows a report from the IAEA last week which criticised Iran's "general lack of co-operation" and said it had enough uranium enriched to 60% purity, near weapons grade, to potentially make nine nuclear bombs.
Iran insists its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful and that it would never seek to develop or acquire nuclear weapons.
Under a landmark 2015 deal with six world powers, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities and allow continuous and robust monitoring by the IAEA's inspectors in return for relief from crippling economic sanctions.
Iran also committed to help the IAEA resolve outstanding questions about the declarations under its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Safeguards Agreement.
However, US President Donald Trump abandoned the agreement during his first term in 2018, saying it did too little to stop a pathway to a bomb, and reinstated US sanctions.
Since 2019, Iran has increasingly breached restrictions of the existing nuclear deal in retaliation, particularly those relating to production of enriched uranium. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3v6w2qr12o
Sigh
Iran: If we wanted a nuclear weapon, we’d have built it long ago
Brexit was a huge mistake, still personally i agree with Boris Johnson's sentiments here:
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