JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: CLARIFYING FACTS ABOUT IRAN'S DESTROYING AN AMERICAN SPY DRONE - TRUMP'S POORLY-CONSIDERED "RETALIATORY" MISSILE-STRIKE ORDER - WHY IRAN WOULD BE A FORMIDABLE ENEMY - BUT WE HAVE FORTY YEARS OF RELENTLESS AMERICAN ILL-WILL TOWARDS IRAN - ALL NEEDLESS, UNWARRANTED, AND VERY DANGEROUS

John Chuckman


EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS



‘U.S. was 'cocked and loaded' to strike Iran: Trump confirms giving stand-down order

‘"Iran insisted the drone violated Iranian airspace; Washington said it had been flying over international waters."’



There simply is no question here, the United States is not telling the truth.

Take a look at a map. There are no international waters in this area of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait is divided by a line down the waterway between Iran and Oman.

The drone was flying very high, at around 20 kilometers.

It was night time as the Iranian missile shoot-down video shows.

This drone is not at all what people normally think of when they see the word "drone." This thing is the size of an airliner, with a wingspan slighter greater than that of a Boeing 747. The American military has a limited number of them because they are very costly.

And, of course, we all know how many thousands of times the United States has used various drones for killing in recent years. That’s not this drone’s job, but it has to factor into any target’s psychology.

The drone had, against international law, its identifying transponders turned off.

Those are things that make electronic signals. When you turn them off, civil aviation radars cannot track you. And, indeed, the drone apparently is not reflected in civil aviation radar records.

Doing that, turning them off, is very much considered a hostile act. Of course, it is just plain intimidating too. And stupid. American spy planes targeting Russia from the Baltic Sea have followed the same practice of switching off transponders, and Russia, which still intercepts them with fighters, has more than once registered a complaint.

In addition to those basic facts, we have a large American Armada in the region, deliberately placed there to intimidate Iran and keep it on edge. There are also nuclear-capable bombers stationed at airfields in the region.

Taking all that into account, Iran acted rationally and completely within its rights. Israel wouldn't have hesitated a second in circumstances even less threatening.

The truly menacing and stupid act here was Trump’s approving of a “retaliatory” missile strike in the first place. Undoubtedly, it was the influence of those ghastly folks, killers every one, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Gina Haspel.

All sensible people advise against hostilities with Iran. Even the Pentagon’s senior brass are reported to be against starting hostilities with Iran.

Iran is a formidable opponent, a huge country with a population close to that of Germany and a land mass about three times the size of France. It has many resources, including people quite clever in math and science, and it had a long and painful learning experience in a terrifying war that lasted for most of the 1980s, one inflicted on it by Saddam’s Iraq with American covert encouragement.

As far back as that, the United States was hoping to overthrow Iran. Here we are, nearly forty years later, and the United States is still trying. Now, that is serious hostility, genuinely obsessive, a grudge like something from the Ozarks

Of course, the very American military assets Trump uses to threaten Iran are themselves targets of opportunity. The Iranians earlier demonstrated, less than a year ago, by striking a terrorist target in Syria not far from some American forces without affecting the Americans, that they have close to pinpoint accuracy with their missiles.

It was a dramatic demonstration of Iran’s capabilities, and Washington did get the message, afterward calling the launch “reckless,” even though it was the kind of thing America does routinely nowadays.

Iran is said to have lined a fair part of its coast with anti-ship missiles, perhaps capable of sinking an aircraft carrier (each with a crew of 5000). Russia indeed has missiles capable of doing that. So does China.

There are a number of American bases in the region, all reachable by Iran’s missiles.

Note also, Israel has many highly vulnerable sites – the nuclear weapons facility at Dimona, the city of Tel Aviv - within reach of Iran's missiles. Even if the missiles aren't nuclear, Iran has built the capacity to literally rain missiles on an enemy.

Iran has made it very clear, time and again, that it does not want war and that it will not start one. It has a record, too, of never having started hostilities in its modern era. But it has made it equally clear that, if attacked, it will defend itself, as it is entitled to do under international law.

There isn’t a much stupider thing the United States could do than start a war here. And Trump showed, again, how unstable and unreliable he is in even beginning to do so.

Someone influenced him to stop, and to that person, we need all be grateful.

It has been suggested that it may have been Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, a news commentator Trump follows on television and whom he has befriended. Carlson is known to have advised him a number of times against attacking Iran. He is an intelligent and articulate type on a network not generally known for such qualities.

All this for no good reason. Trump arbitrarily ripped-up an international nuclear treaty with Iran, an act every major ally in Europe was, and remains, against. Every expert and informed statesman knew Iran had complied with the treaty scrupulously. There was definitive proof. Trump’s was an initial and extremely hostile act.

And then Trump proceeded to a whole series of other even more hostile acts, including illegal and economically-crippling sanctions followed by intimidating large military movements. Immense, unwarranted hostility was put on public display. All of it avoidable. All of it to no good purpose. All of it extremely dangerous.



AFTERNOTE:



I should add that on the matter of the “retaliatory” missile strike, ordered and recalled, there are a few journalists and analysts saying that it never happened, that the story is just psychological warfare from the United States. Whether the story of the missile strike proves genuine or not, the story of the drone’s downing and the long record of American hostility towards Iran remain unchanged.