Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I think a more long range worst case scenario is the rulers in Iran finding a way to use the death of this figure to gin up nationalism and hatred for the US among a population that is not anti-US or anti-Western.
I'm all for killing the degenerate hard liners who rule Iran. Nobody anywhere wants them in power. The world hates them; most of their own people hate them. But the calculation Bush and Obama made was that to engage in aggression against the country in any manner could give the rulers an issue around which to rally the people. The rulers are currently pretty desperate, as we've really strangled their economy. They were praying for a reaction like Trump's. Lets hope the population sees through the propaganda of the rulers and rejects efforts to stoke up nationalism.
And let's hope Iran doesn't react in a manner that results in Trump inviting Wolfowitz and Perle to the White House to provide advice.
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Here's my long-term worst case scenario: Somewhere along the way, the autocrats in Turkey, Iran, and Arabia decide to carve up the Middle East among themselves and to hell with it. Iran gets Iraq, Kuwait, and Azerbaijan, and a green light to do what they will in Central Asia, the Sauds get Yemen, Oman, the gulf states, and Jordan, and get a free hand in Sudan, Eritrea, and Djibouti, and Turkey gets Syria, Lebanon, Armenia and Georgia, and a free hand in the Caucuses' and the Black Sea basin in general, as well as Cyprus, and then Turkey and the Saud's split Egypt (Turkey gets Alexandria and Cairo but the Saud's have the Suez and lower Egypt).
Each of those countries would be roughly as populous or more populous and at least as wealthy as Russia to the North and otherwise all would be bordered by significantly weaker countries in the Balkans, Africa, and Central Asia.
Sykes and Picot aren't the only ones with crayons.
