"Should Trump declare war, it would entail massive slaughter. Australia should try to stop it."

Oh yeah. Just imagine a Morrison government saying boo to America or China. But, does Australia actually have a 'position' on Iran? Or, is this just the author, a chronic suffer of the Trump derangement syndrome, who thinks that everyone should do just the opposite to what Trump does?

The less we have to do with this theocracy the better!

Moreover, our ongoing and asinine reliance on M.E/Russian. oil could be the death of us or our economic ruination.

Time for a serious rethink on nuclear energy and an ability, using that cleanest safest and cheapest energy to convert ever available seawater into various useful hydrocarbons using tried and true trialled high tech.

And with that done ASAP! ll the world we are a cash and carry trading with all comers, nation and an Island of sanity in a world gone mad.

And must be our real position as long as there are madmen in charge of sovereign nations!
Alan B.

I think Trump is looking to hammer Iran into the ground. It just needs Iran to keep going with its plan to develop nuclear capability. Keep in mind that Trump might be seen as a bit of a ratbag but he is also a staunch American patriot who wants the US to be numero uno. He is the war leader at home and might just be looking for a bit of action to top off his presidency.

Dear Alan B,

Are we not a theocracy with allegiance to the crown being mandatory for our politicians? The same crown who is the head of the Anglican Church.

No, we are not a theocracy. Nobody votes for their Leaders in a theocracy just fights and dies as demanded by the mad Mullahs. We were drawn into a conflict in Irag, on the back of highly flawed intell. We certainly don't want to get in yet another not of our making or in our interest just to enhance Trump's electability for a second term!?

And we must now crack on with developing our own nuclear power and the production resuscitation and drought proofing that MSR thorium and MSR thorium alone would confer.
Alan B.

Dear SteeleRedux,

No! They rally around the British monarch because he/she is what all heads of state are: the war leader! Sounds primitive, but true. Shows you that some basic human instincts have not altered even after the 5,000 years that civilisation began to develop.

Would someone please explain to Peter Bowden that as Trump has not been in power in the US for 70 years, he can't be responsible for most of the on going tension with Iran.

I know it probably takes some grasp on math to realise this, not a strong suit with ethicists & lawyers, but he should try to understand this, if he wants to pontificate on these matters.

What is this fascination that academics in the western world have with totalitarians? What Peter Bowden wrote is a complete distortion of reality.

The west's "interference" in Iran started long before that property stealing socialist Mohammad Mossedegh came to power. In 1942, the Iranians tried to ally themselves with National Socialist Germany, so the Brits, Yanks, and Ivans, all invaded and occupied the place to stop it from happening. I'll bet you didn't mind tha,t Peter? If they had not and Iran had supplied Germany with all the petro and oil they needed, Germany might have won the war.

After the war, the Sovs did not want to leave Iran, so the yanks said "we have this thing called an "atomic bomb". Get out of Iran or we will drop it on you!" If it waist's for the yanks, Peter, Iran would have been the 17th republic of the USSR.

International Socialist Mossadegh was another commie who would have ruined the Iranian economy by "nationalizing" (stealing) the oil fields and refineries owned by British and the yanks. Just look at Venezuela today and you get the idea. Although Peter probably sticks up for Maduro, too. So the yanks had him knocked off, and it's a pity they don't do the same thing to Maduro. The Shah wanted to turn Iran onto a European style country, but the commies, the mullah's, and Peter Bowden didn't want that to happen. So the mullahs and the "socialists" won, the the mullahs machine gunned all the socialists, and now every Iranian wants to go to Europe.

Now we have a bunch of religious relics from the 6th century in Iran who want a nuclear bomb, so that they can give it to terrorists to nuke us, and nuke Israel, and Peter Bowden thinks it is just awful for the yanks to try and stop them. It's a good thing Peter wasn't around in 1941, or he would be blaming the Pacific War on the USA, and telling everybody what a nice, misunderstood bunch of guys Tojo and his generals were.

Why would the US go to war with Iran when its sanctions are working so well?

No good will come of this situation at all...

Before anything militarily, petrol prices will go through the roof and stay there. Stage one.

I don't want that situation in my life, like all others like me, therefore this war will be immediately unpopular and unsupported at home in the West.

We citizens of the West are totally devoid of enthusiasm for oil wars.

Dan.

Hey LEGO

They're just trying to start a war with Iran not much different to the way they forced Japan into war.

Any Aussies here or had family that had to face the Japs in WW2?
Well get ready for your kids and family to die for some foreign bs all over again...

I don't care how you twist the past, believe whatever you want about the it.

- Albert Pikes 3 World Wars -
Get with the damn program, he accurately predicted WWI and WWII.

I'm not interested in all you chumps being manipulated into WWIII because you're too stupid to investigate or figure out what's really going on.

I'm not interested in a 3rd World War, the death of national sovereignty or a World Government.

And you useful idiot's are going to help choose it for us.
And to me, that more or less makes YOU the enemy.

Think about it.

And what bloody difference does it make whether we buy Sunni or Shia oil?
It only matters to Israel, and which nations it's allied with and Israels foreign policy.

I'd be happy to fuel up with cheaper discounted Iranian oil.
And I'd be happy for them to sell it, to reduce the cost of fuel for all of us.

You all do realise we're all paying for this bs already don't you?

Oil sanctions to reduce the sale of oil means artificial manipulation and increased oil prices.

Dear Shadow Minister,

The US might declare war on Iran if Iran makes a move to build weapons of mass destruction. They did it to Iraq just on the suspicion that Iraq had WMD.

To A.C.

I don't know under what circumstances you obtained your peculiar anti US world view, but it would be interesting to find out why.

The USA put an oil embargo on Imperial Japan when Japan invaded China and Manchuria. There are only three ways to deal with expansionist totalitarian states.

1. Do nothing and let them get away with their aggression and get stronger.
2. Use peaceful means such as putting an embargo on them.
3. Declare war on them.

I would have thought that any person with any intelligence would consider option 2 the best one. But I suppose if you utterly despise the USA then you can always find a way to make any action they take look sinister with a lot of pushing and shoving of the truth.

Now, try and concentrate here. The USA is a democracy. Democracies do not go to war with other democracies because war is very unpopular with electorates. Totalitarians go to war with democracies and with other totalitarians, because totalitarian leaders are psychopaths and they don't care about what their populations want. But these psychopaths know that they can make themselves popular by exhibiting extreme nationalism and extending their borders to capture vital resources, which they can claim is for their populations collective good.

The USA is the leader of the free world and it is the world's policeman. I don't know why they bother with this thankless task but I am sure glad that somebody is doing it. I identify with the USA because they are just like us, our democracies are similar and are cultural values are almost identical. The Americans don't want war any more than Australians want a war. But if there is one thing we learned in the last world war, it is never again to allow totalitarian warmongers to get so powerful that they can directly threaten our continued existence.

Now, repeat after me until you get it. USA, democracy, wealthy, progressive, inventive, industrious, influential, many friends. Iran, totalitarian, poor, backward, decadent, invented nothing, despised, and only terrorists for friends.

USA good. Iran bad.

" I don't know why they bother with this thankless task but I am sure glad that somebody is doing it"

It's called 'money'

"I identify with the USA because they are just like us"....and so say few of us....they speak a semblance of the English language distorting it along the way.

Persia invented nothing....only a yokel could come up with that one.
The thing about flatulence is that it arrives with a loud noise but in reality has no substance....and gives rise to dirty underwear

No, Obama declared pathetic, pointless, perpetual wars. Trump would just blow up their oil and let them stew.

To Special Delivery.

Some of the things the yanks have invented in the last 200 years, which are essential to the modern world, and to the modern world's prosperity and health care are...

The electric light bulb, the internet, emails, telephones, supermarkets, neon lights, Morse code and the telegraph, virtual reality, aeroplanes, washing machines, nuclear reactors, silicon computer chips, personnel computers, sunscreen, nylon, electric motors, liquid crystal displays, transistors, elevator lifts and escalators, penicillin, genetic engineering, assembly lines, contraceptives, solar cells, bakelite, mobile phones, ATM's, electric irons, tampons, microwave ovens, Viagra, satellite communications, pacemakers, jeans, frozen food, Kevlar, air bags, IV fertilization, vending machines, fiberglass, laundromats, integrated circuits, refrigeration, air conditioning, LED's, video games, CAT scans, toilet paper, animation, defibrillators, and most importantly of all, canned beer.

Please post, for the benefit of this "yokel", anything that the Iranians have ever invented in the last 200 years that has any benefit to the human race? How about anything the Iranians sell to the world beyond Persian carpets and of course oil, which they never had much use for or benefitted financially from until the western world invented the internal combustion engine and plastics? The USA invented the oil wells and the drill bits that that the Iranians now use to drill and pump oil from the oil fields and refineries that they stole from the USA and Britain.

You don't have a clue, do you? All you can do is mouth the slogans of the fashionable regressive left who's sordid ranks you aspire to be a part of.

Question. Where is the best place to hide your money in your house, to prevent it being stolen by a trendy lefty housebreaker?

Answer. A book.

Like I said....only a yokel ...you forgot the A bomb...
there's arse and there's class....

Yair, SP.

Nuclear weapons, thermonuclear weapons, and "the mother of all bombs."

Then there was the incomparable P-38, Corsairs, Hellcats, Catalinas, Flying Fortresses, Liberators, Thunderbolts, B-25's, and the B-29 super fortress.

In modern times the venerable Phantom, Sabres, B-36's, B-52's, plus the B1 and the B2 stealth bomber. Then there is the outstanding F-15 which has shot down 100 enemy fighters for no loss. The magnificent A-10, the F-14, F-16, F-35, and the Raptor. Every time a Russian built fighter goes up against an American fighter, the poor pilot of the Russian plane thinks he is up against a flying saucer. The only way that the socialists can keep abreast of western military advances is to make direct copies of western weapons. The yanks say that they will always be 20 years in front of the Russians and the Chinese because "we have to invent it, design it, and build it, before the Russians and the Chinese can steal it."

Every time Russian tank crewmen think about the American M1A2 tank, the Apache helicopter, or the Hellfire missile, they hit the vodka.

The only weapon system that the entire Muslim world has invented in the last 500 years is the suicide bomber.

Oh, and I forgot. When that murdering old bastard Khomeini got cancer, where do you think the Iranians sent his biopsy samples? You guessed it, the Mayo Clinic in the good old USA.

I know all these things because I read books on history, and unlike your good self, I was resistant to socialist social theory with its resultant historical airbrushing.

I guess us Yokels, Bogans, Rednecks and white trash are the real smart ones because we live in a practical world where we use our brains to solve practical problems. While you graduates had your objective reasoning abilities destroyed by your cloistered academic professors, who did nothing other than teaching you to parrot leftist disinformation. And like a 13 year old smoking cigarettes because he thinks it makes him look adult, you lap up their fashionable leftist propaganda because you think it makes you look smart.

Nothing like selective history of questionable achievements....so who is the Barbarian in Evangelical garb on the planet?

Another well considered and deeply thought out reply by Special Delivery.

No wonder you lefties want to shut down freedom of speech. You are losing the debate so it is all that you can think of. If we were in a meeting hall, right now, in front of an impartial intelligent audience, do you think that they would be impressed with your sneery one liner replies?

Oh, and by the way. My mother was in Brisbane in 1941 when the first US troops came to Australia. Her father had told her that when the japs came, he was going to shoot my mother and her sister dead because everybody knew what the Japs did with captive women. She said that when the US troops arrived, "It was like the second coming of Christ". That was how much Australians were grateful to the USA for saving our arses. THAT is why I never swallowed the anti US propaganda that you apparently swallowed, hook, line, and sinker.

The USA has a lot of friends, which is more than I can say for your pals in Iran

Hey LEGO,

"I don't know under what circumstances you obtained your peculiar anti US world view, but it would be interesting to find out why."

FYI my world view is probably more Anti-bs than it is Anti-US, specifically.
You're gonna have to try to learn to think OUTSIDE the box.

"Now, repeat after me until you get it. USA, democracy, wealthy, progressive, inventive, industrious, influential, many friends. Iran, totalitarian, poor, backward, decadent, invented nothing, despised, and only terrorists for friends.

USA good. Iran bad."

Sounds like a brainwashed jellyfish type of response to me
Though that's probably a contradictory;
- Jellyfish probably don't have brains -

Seriously, stop eating up the crud the mainstream media spoon feed you and call news.

Try Independent News Sources Instead
- Break the conditioning and become informed -

Here's where I got my news today.

UAE Tanker "Disappears," UAE Silent But US Blames Iran & Israel Now Suing EU For NOT Violating JCPOA
http://youtu.be/WvJ5SG1Eu7s

Stupid fools don't realise I'm actually trying to help you wise up to things
- Why I bother is anyone's guess...

I'd be willing to be that most news reporters commenting on this haven't even read the JCPOA
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2165399-full-text-of-the-iran-nuclear-deal

Hey AC.

"Thinking outside the box".

I grew up at a time when the Right had long been in control of power in most of the western world, including Australia. They were the censors. They were the ones press ganging luckless, voteless conscripts to fight in Vietnam, a war most people with intelligence today realise was a huge mistake. They had control of the media. They were the ones controlling the school syllabus. I still remember being directed by my teachers to read articles in approved school reading material preaching race hatred towards Chinese, and praising Israel.

It was Vietnam that got me politically aware and got me interested in reading books on controversial topics by historians, soldiers, journalists, and academics. You can tell who is telling the truth because facts cross check and co relate, especially when their views coincide with people who directly witnessed events under examination. Vietnam caused me to lose all faith in the Right, and I thought that as a group they were all a bunch of idiots. However, I never fell for the anti Americanism of my Left wing peers, as I remembered what my mother told me about how the USA had saved Australia from Japanese invasion, genocide, and mass rape.

But it was the reflexive anti white rhetoric of the Left that got me re thinking the aims and opinions of the Left. One thing was crystal clear. The Left parrots on about equality when they are the biggest social snobs around. They despise their own race and culture as some sort of identifying badge for their brahmin caste of psuedo-aristocratic graduate elites.

Now it is the Left who holds most of the power. They are the new censors. They are the new oppressors demanding conformity to their morality. They want to police every person's speech. And they will prosecute you if you "offend" their largely imported electorate. They control the media including Google, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. And they control the school syllabus. Their reflexive anti Americanism is just a part of their western hating agenda, and you fell for it.

Poor Lego bouncing from left to right on the basis of what his mother said.
As was said 'It is what it is' and it's that way for a reason, not for what the others did, but for what you didn't do.
By all means pontificate on what the left and the right are doing these days 'cos it'll keep you engaged in the delusion that the airing of your thoughts is going to assail you to the social reverence you obviously seek and so stave off the fear of being consigned to mediocrity.

fight the good fight....even if it is shadow boxing

Do you have a reading disability, SD?

I became a lefty because the righties at the time wanted to conscript me and other young men of my generation, (who did not have the right to vote) to fight in a war that most of us did not believe in. Almost an entire generation of young people in the USA, Australia, and New Zealand were in open revolt against the right wing political establishment of the time. When ANZUS withdrew from Vietnam many young people became politically active and we thought we could change the world for the better. The next target, chosen for us by leftist leaders, was apartheid in South Africa.

Similar to my research into the causes of the Vietnam war, I began reading up on South Africa and the Boers, who were being portrayed as the devil incarnate. But the more I read about the Boers, the more I admired them. And then I realized that the so called "anti racist" Left was very racist towards white people. That was when I developed an objective political point of view that mistrusts the fanatics on the right and the left.

At the moment, it is the left that is full of barking mad morons. They hate white people and they hate the very culture they choose to live in. They want to replace white culture with some sort of no name brand of culture which they believe will Save The World But I think will just destroy the one and only really successful culture that has created the prosperous modern world.

The only good that has come of all this, is that ordinary productive people are finally waking up to the threat of social suicide being imposed upon them by the left. One aspect of that imposition is reflexive anti Americanism. The USA is the leader of the free world and as such is hated by these neo totalitarians. If you hate the USA, and wish America would fall, SD, then you better start worrying about what is coming next. Try China, the first homosexual superpower since Sparta.

Hey LEGO,

"I grew up at a time when the Right had long been in control of power in most of the western world, including Australia."

I never really took a lot of interest in politics prior to 2010.
It's true that prior to this I didn't even know what was meant by the left and the right.
Forgive me if my opinions haven't taken into account the historical political climate you grew up in.
- But I started taking notice of the political climate with the rise of the left.

It's kind of funny actually.
I'm not sure if you're saying you still identify with the left, but you do support Israel;
Whilst I identify more with the right, but no longer support Trump or his Israel first policies.
Truth is, ultimately I think we'd agree on more issues than we'd disagree.

One thing you should know about me is I don't care so much about gang mentality.
I try to tackle each and every issue on its own merits.

I don't have a 'for' or 'against' any side in particular those who took part in or opposed Vietnam.
I think both sides probably thought they were doing the right thing.
But the Gulf of Tonkin incident that started it was a false flag.
- And a lot of vets got left behind because the US wouldn't pay the North Vietnamese the restitution they promised.
Johnny Wetstart (McCain) had plenty to do with this mess.

Let me show you that the msm is outright lying to you.
(when oh when will you all get it)

Your News: Newscorp Headline 18th July
'Iran seizes foreign oil tanker in Persian Gulf, crew accused of smuggling oil: State media'
http://www.news.com.au/world/iran-seizes-foreign-oil-tanker-in-persian-gulf-crew-accused-of-smuggling-oil-state-media/news-story/cb41b905940e4391600a214f30885cd9

Your News: ABC Broadcasting Corporation 3 hrs ago
Iran's Revolutionary Guard seizes foreign oil tanker, state TV reports
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-19/iran-seizes-oil-tanker-in-persian-gulf/11323564

Now is it not fair to say that these reports allude to the tanker being taken by force?

But other EARLIER reports on the 17th July tell a different story, they say the tanker requested assistance.

‘Missing’ Oil Tanker Was Towed to Iran for Repairs
Iran says tanker requested assistance for technical problems
http://news.antiwar.com/2019/07/16/missing-oil-tanker-was-towed-to-iran-for-repairs/

Iran Says Missing Tanker Had Problems and Was Towed for Repairs
'While details are unclear, if the Riah was seized, it would seem an unusual target for Iran.'
http://news.yahoo.com/u-probing-fate-u-e-111627763.html

You see how the headlines are designed to paint a different narrative?
Look at the Newscorp story; Notice how no-one is attributed to writing the story?
Notice how they bolster their bs, with the 'How the Iran Crisis directly threatens Australia' video?

Then they bolster that by saying Iran shot down the drone in International airspace, which is factually incorrect.
Then they say Iran had all this stockpile of uranium which they could've used to make a bomb.
More bs.

You can't make a nuke with 5% enriched uranium.
Iran only has low enriched uranium and it's increase is a provision of the JCPOA after the US cancelled the deal

[Cont]
And they say that Iran breached the deal which is more and more bs,
It was the US that cancelled the deal and reimposed sanctions;

The US cancelled the deal and reimposed sanctions;
(the whole thing Iran originally made the deal for)
- Whilst still trying to keep Iran from breaching it's end of the (now broken) deal on enrichment;
US is trying to have its cake and eat it too, by selling you msm bs.

- The deal, was null and void because of the US reimposition of sanctions.

You're being manipulated by Israel and its supporters within the media.

To AC

To begin with, MSN is owned by Microsoft, not Murdoch. Murdoch is Fox.

And since I look at the MSN news site every day, I am fully aware that MSN is a left wing news organization which releases fake news. They even asked me to take part in a poll "to make MSN better". My response to their poll was to demand unbiased reportage and stop with their (every single day) Trump Derangement Syndrome stories.

Now, you seem to see something sinister in the fact that two left wing news organizations, MSN and ABC, implied that the Iranians took an oil tanker by force. While two other news organizations, Yahoo and some "anti war" organization, (who would also have to be left wing) said that the Iranians claimed to have towed the ship into an Iranian port for repairs.

If anything, in my humble opinion, the first two left wing news organisations were more accurate in that they implied that the ship was probably taken by force. While the second pair implied it may not have been taken by force, if you accept the Iranian's version. Which I don't.

Next, you seem to be implying that the US government controls the news releases of the ABC and MSN? That won't fly. And that the news releases of these two left wing news organizations proves that they support US policy? Like, your kidding? And this proves that the USA wants a war with Iran? Wow, that is convoluted logic.

Furthermore, you seem to be implying that the Ayatollah's in Iran are trustworthy nice guys who only want world peace? And that all of those underground nuclear facilities full of centrifuges and surrounded by SAM missiles and anti aircraft guns are just for making peaceful uranium products?

Bit of a stretch there.

And it is the USA, the leader of the free world, who is the bad guy warmonger here? Because Trump broke the Obama sponsored deal that guaranteed that the ever so trustworthy Ayatollahs would not make nuclear weapons?

Only if you believe in Santa Claus.

Obama and Hillary started wars that lead to the ulcers of Libya and Syria. Trump seems to prefer to quietly strangle them by removing their oil weapon and killing their economies.

Also if the US has to fight, he lets the military do it to win. Keeping meddling politicos out of the picture.

Hey Lego,

"To begin with, MSN is owned by Microsoft, not Murdoch. Murdoch is Fox."

You misunderstood me;
'msm' is shorthand for 'mainstream media';
Also sometimes referred to as the 'corporate media';
- As opposed to 'independent media' -

- In any case I wasn't referring to Microsoft MSN.

Well, it appears I may have gotten this one wrong;
(I prefer to be the first to point out my own errors before others do)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/irans-revolutionary-guard-announce-seizure-of-oil-tanker-smuggling-fuel-in-the-strait-of-hormuz/2019/07/18/c0f6d72e-a949-11e9-86dd-d7f0e60391e9_story.htm

"The tanker, based in the United Arab Emirates, and its 12-member crew were detained after they were found to be smuggling Iranian fuel, according to a statement by the Revolutionary Guard. The statement appeared to contradict an earlier claim by Iran’s Foreign Ministry that Iranian authorities had rescued the ship after it broke down."

That said, the mainstream media still tried to narrate the issue as if Iran was blocking oil shipments from the gulf.
The issue is obviously more complicated as Iran says it was stopping oil smuggling from their country;
And not necessarily blocking oil shipments from it's neighbours.

"And it is the USA, the leader of the free world, who is the bad guy warmonger here? Because Trump broke the Obama sponsored deal that guaranteed that the ever so trustworthy Ayatollahs would not make nuclear weapons?"

I honestly couldn't care less if Iran does or doesn't have nukes.
Iran hasn't attacked another country in 200 years.
India and Pakistan have nukes, and they're more or less at war.

What I oppose is the US and Israel dictating to everyone else how they should live and collective punishment against entire nations of people for future global geopolitical agendas.

I support any nation have a nuclear deterrent against US aggression.

BTW, what do you actually have in the name of 'Iranian aggression or destabilising activities'?

- Other than anonymous / classified Israeli intelligence -

- 'heresay' from a country with an open policy to destabilise it's neighbours?

Hey AC.

You think that I have been brainwashed by the mainstream media into believing that Israel is the good guy and Iran is the bad guy. You posted four links that you claimed "proved" that I was being lied to. They proven nothing at all. Two left wing news organisations implied that the tanker was probably taken by force, and the other two simply replayed the official Iranian line that they towed it into port when it broke down.

Your statement that you don't care if Iran has nuclear weapons equates with saying that you do not care if Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan has nuclear weapons. As for claiming that Iran has not attacked anybody for 200 years, that would be a real surprise to the Israelis who have been bombing and shelling Iranian rocket launch points and mortar positions in Lebanon and Syria for thirty years. Former Iranian President Ahmadinejad declared that Israel "must be wiped off the face of the Earth" and his Revolutionary Guard ratbags have been attempting to do just that for decades.

The reason why the Muslims want to totally destroy Israel is because Israel is the homeland of the Jewish religion that was conquered by Islam. And just like with Hitler, they think that where Islam has conquered it is Islamic land forever. I lived through a time when the Left actually supported Israel because it was seen as a successful socialist country who's Kibbutz's equated to communes. It became very fashionable for western lefties to go to Israel and work on kibbutzes.

But the lefties turned on Israel for three reasons. First, it was always expected that Israel would be destroyed by the much more numerous and better armed Arabs, and lefties love underdogs. But Israel kept winning it's wars with (shock, horror) US help. There is nothing a socialist hates more than a winner, and that's the second reason. Thirdly, Jews were expected to be the most anti racist people on the planet because of the holocaust. But the Israelis have proven to be just as racist as everybody else