Apparently it was held on by six magnets and one of them broke off and stayed attached. That one single magnet took "a couple" imperialists and a crowbar to remove.
Based on this math it should only take around 15 million or so amerikan Troops to invade Iran.
The imperialists did not provide any evidence to support how they came by the knowledge of exactly how many magnets were attached to this bomb which they have had no opportunity to physically examine.
e:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-attacks-navy/u-s-navy-says-mine-fragments-magnet-point-to-iran-in-gulf-tanker-attack-idUSKCN1TK1DX“The limpet mine that was used in the attack is distinguishable and also strikingly bearing a resemblance to Iranian mines that have already been publicly displayed in Iranian military parades,” Sean Kido, commanding officer of an explosive ordnance dive and salvage task group in the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), told reporters.
Small fragments said to have been removed from the Kokuka Courageous were on display alongside a magnet purportedly left by the Revolutionary Guard squad allegedly captured on video.
The Japanese company that owns the Kokuka Courageous had said its ship was damaged by two “flying objects”, but NAVCENT dismissed this account.
“The damage at the blast hole is consistent with a limpet mine attack, it is not consistent with an external flying object striking the ship,” Kido said, adding that nail holes visible in the hull indicated how the mine was attached to the ship’s hull.
Bellingcat goes mainstream. "It looks just like the picture on Wikipedia so it was made by Iran." The mine now also was held on by nails. Not sure what happened to the magnets? Magnet nails? Magnails? This seems like an extremely professionally done investigation and we can all trust the results.
Edited by MarxUltor ()
I'm impressed by the ability of the military techno-porn press to declare this supposed magnet bears a "striking resemblance" to Iranian limpet mines photographed at Tehran arms fairs several years ago with no context so I have no idea what I'm looking at, which by the way doesn't look anything at all like those limpet mines other than both being made of metal. I'm going to need Bellingcat to weigh in on this one. But they can say "bears a resemblance" because the U.S. military says that it does, so the story is "sourced" and loaded for the audience. Just throw some embellishment in there like "striking" to press the point home and if it turns out to be wrong, then no biggie, because when we said "striking" what we really meant was "really makes you think."
These things also weigh around 100 pounds and were placed high above the waterline, apparently, which is not how you're supposed to use these things (also apparently). Kokuka Courageous set sail from Ruwais, UAE. Front Altair from Al Jubail in Saudi Arabia.
"One hundred fifty, sir."
Then Trump reheats Martin Sheen's speech about proportionality, and liberals on Twitter express awe that a man so crazy and fascist can also be so moral. I guess I shouldn't be surprised they believe this contrived shit but this is absurd even by the standards of the Trump WH.
Edited by trakfactri ()
According to well-informed sources, Iran rejected a proposal by US intelligence – made via a third party – that Trump be allowed to bomb one, two or three clear objectives, to be chosen by Iran, so that both countries could appear to come out as winners and Trump could save face. Iran categorically rejected the offer and sent its reply: even an attack against an empty sandy beach in Iran would trigger a missile launch against US objectives in the Gulf.
its elijah magnier who's used some sketchy sources in the past, but it makes sense
kinch posted:https://ejmagnier.com/2019/06/21/iran-and-trump-on-the-edge-of-the-abyss/its elijah magnier who's used some sketchy sources in the past, but it makes sense
Magnier's account is perfectly believable from the Iranian perspective and the strength of their strategic position. It also aligns with the position Trump is in, his theatrical tendencies, and the simplicity of the american white supremacist media and population who would hoot and fist pump that we're kicking muslim ass and not really worry about the details.
It definitely seems like the kind of idea that a whole lot of white american generals would come up with to try and get out of the mess Bolton and the false flagger(s) put them in, because imperialist macho talk aside at least some of them have to understand the realities of Iran's overwhelming military superiority in the region.
On top of that, if you look back at Trump's two aggressions against Syria, you can kinda see correlation there too. First against an empty airbase which was operational within a day, second time against 2 empty bunkers and a school building, empty because it was the middle of the night and guaranteed to make impressive wreckage. There were lots of reports the second time that the Russians were consulted in advance, and no govt's account of what happened really meshes well otherwise with what was observable.
Petrol posted:which part do you think makes sense, the bit where he says iran is trying to provoke the US into all out war by blowing up all the tankers, or the bit where it says their aim is to prevent a second trump term. because, lol
I meant specifically the part that aerdil quoted, that the US tried to negotiate targets with Iran and were rebuffed.
Iran: "No."
U.$.A: "I'll be ur fren."
Iran: "No."
U.$.A: "Ur mean."
kinch posted:Petrol posted:which part do you think makes sense, the bit where he says iran is trying to provoke the US into all out war by blowing up all the tankers, or the bit where it says their aim is to prevent a second trump term. because, lol
I meant specifically the part that aerdil quoted, that the US tried to negotiate targets with Iran and were rebuffed.
i believe that too but the reuters article would have been a better source because that blog was otherwise wall to wall bullshit. anyway i am always glad of an excuse to post the dr evil video so thank you
swampman posted:the USA lack of credibility has reached comic extremes, maybe even to the point of being a dadaist expression. so they put 35 people on a little plane and flew a $200 million camera next to it over iranian airspace to actually get real footage of people blowing up over the ocean. and really get it right this time. so somewhere in the USA regime people are furious that 35 amerikan soldiers are still alive. and you know what, they have my sympathy.
dimashq posted:Trumps (supposedly) against kinetic warfare but he's completely depending on collapsing the Iranians through siege warfare by means of sanctions which is a strategy that hasn’t worked whatsoever during his administration.
The sanctioned entity just sucks it up and does business with the rest of the world that doesn't care what Trump says. U.S. has blocked all of Iran's energy exports but a Chinese supertanker can sail into the Persabian Gulf with its transponders off or signal wrong destinations and then dock in Bandar Abbas.
Tankers carrying Iranian oil and gas are notorious for masking their journeys by turning off satellite locator beacons, a technique known as going dark, and transferring fuel between ships to hide the origin of the cargo.
In a June 6 note, Kpler detailed the journey of LPG tanker Sea Dolphin, which sailed into the Persian Gulf between Iran and Qatar with empty tanks on May 17, and then turned off its beacon. On May 26, the vessel turned the locator back on, indicating its tanks were now full, and headed toward the Maldives, where it again went dark.
Another ship, the Pacific Yantai, loaded its tanks near where the Sea Dolphin had stopped, and then set sail towards China, according to Kpler. Bloomberg ship-tracking data confirmed the movements of the two vessels and showed the Pacific Yantai appearing to drop off a partial cargo at Ningbo, in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, on June 14.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3015172/china-turns-iran-fuel-its-lpg-habit-ignoring-sanctions
dimashq posted:Not sure why Elijah magniers article is controversial here,
It starts by casting Iran as the provocateur, including blaming it for the most recent tanker attacks that I am surprised anyone thinks were plausibly Iran's doing. His position is that Trump is being reluctantly pushed towards war by Iran because they want him to lose the 2020 election. If you're ignoring all that and the takeaway is that the US is trying to avoid an actual conflagration and achieve their goals by any other means available, then, fine I guess. It's just hard for me to praise the wisdom of an article that buries that point beneath layers of cloying imperialist nonsense
1) the Pentagon/State Department/anyone involved in the empire game blaming all their bumbling recent failures (Syria, Yemen, even Venezuela, why the hell not) on dastardly Iranian meddling
2) Trump and Friends being stupid enough to take them at their word instead of seeing those career-saving excuses for what they are
shapes posted:i wonder how much of these escalations are a direct result of...
1) the Pentagon/State Department/anyone involved in the empire game blaming all their bumbling recent failures (Syria, Yemen, even Venezuela, why the hell not) on dastardly Iranian meddling
2) Trump and Friends being stupid enough to take them at their word instead of seeing those career-saving excuses for what they are
trakfactri posted:shapes posted:i wonder how much of these escalations are a direct result of...
1) the Pentagon/State Department/anyone involved in the empire game blaming all their bumbling recent failures (Syria, Yemen, even Venezuela, why the hell not) on dastardly Iranian meddling
2) Trump and Friends being stupid enough to take them at their word instead of seeing those career-saving excuses for what they are
you monster, how dare you post that at the parent of a toddler without some kind of warning
Petrol posted:dimashq posted:Not sure why Elijah magniers article is controversial here,
It starts by casting Iran as the provocateur, including blaming it for the most recent tanker attacks that I am surprised anyone thinks were plausibly Iran's doing. His position is that Trump is being reluctantly pushed towards war by Iran because they want him to lose the 2020 election. If you're ignoring all that and the takeaway is that the US is trying to avoid an actual conflagration and achieve their goals by any other means available, then, fine I guess. It's just hard for me to praise the wisdom of an article that buries that point beneath layers of cloying imperialist nonsense
I’d also add that MoA agreeing with him doesn’t really add much because while that person has turned up some interesting stuff at times, they also believe stuff like: Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek and Ben Norton are CIA agents because they now oppose U.S. aggression in Syria, and the utter hostility and slander they face from most of the rest of the liberal press is all part of an orchestrated shadow-play by a single group, a situation about which all three of them are supposedly fully aware. Which is a position that seems to be part of a game among a tiny group of online pseudo-Reds to slowly denounce everyone around them, and eventually each other, for increasingly vague and ludicrous reasons, until the winner ascends alone to a Far Plane with 11 perfect dimensions of pure ideology.
It’s funny because they’re unwittingly demonstrating how the whole point of ideology as a tool is that it makes a lot of those sorts of conspiracy theories redundant. Like, no one needs to pay those clowns to scream at teens on Twitter about how their mufos prove they’re NSA-construct[ed] robots or to approvingly quote Qanon fascists in the same venue, a Web site in which the clowns live as their home, and if they think, say, that Norton torpedoed his budding mainstream career to double-secretly defang opposition in the U.S. to the rape of Syria, it’s probably easier, if still goofy, to argue that he privately thinks that opposition has good intentions but should be reined in than it is to argue that he’s a literal CIA employee, hired to directly oppose the CIA line, and that khamsek is his handler.
It’s one thing to be deadken and think everything the CIA does is a bumbling error and they’ve never engaged in a criminal conspiracy, it’s another to think that everything requires a memo detailing exactly what everyone will say and do and when. And I’ve asked around at Langley and it turns out we don’t even know any of those folks.
Edited by cars ()
trakfactri posted:I came across this "progressive" ex-Pentagon guy saying on a pod that the U.S. government couldn't do a false flag because the U.S. couldn't keep it a secret, there would be leaks, etc.
Like I've been saying, I don't think it was the yanks that dun it necessarily in this case, but that is such an awful argument that has been parroted too many times by empire apologists. As you say, information tends to out eventually, by which time the news cycle has moved on (yellowcake is another good example from Iraq War Redux). But more fundamentally it's a cartoonish picture of kkkonspiracy, as though the entire government needs to know and approve a plan, as though all the specifics of any plan are known and understood by all participants, as though everything is always designed and approved in great detail from the highest levels of government down, as though outside contractors don't exist, as though allied forces don't exist, as though the left hand usually knows what the right hand is doing...