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The UK doesn't have some imperialist policy of land grabs like Russia, or diplomacy through violence. In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's ba
by flumpcakes 4mo ago
The UK doesn't have some imperialist policy of land grabs like Russia, or diplomacy through violence. In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability or incoming missiles. So no, it is in fact the defense sector.
What countries have a defense sector, if the UK doesn't?
- CrzyLngPwd 4mo agoIran. It didn't attack anyone until it was attacked. It has been defending itself.
- cryo32 4mo agoThey have been trying to kill people in the UK for years. And have been funding proxies everywhere, some of whom have attacked the UK. We're not really even involved and I find it hard to agree with this point. However it should have been dealt with earlier rather than latent bombing.
- CrzyLngPwd 4mo agoYou could easily be describing the UK, Israel, and the USA, lol. Anyway, I live in the UK, and I don't swallow the same propaganda as you.
- cryo32 4mo agoWhich bit is the propaganda? Do you know any actual Iranians? I do!
- jeltz 4mo agoI do and I agree with him. Iran is just one of many on a long list of supporters of terrorism which includes the US, the UK and Israel, plus many more countries like Turkey and Russia.
- cryo32 4mo agoI made exactly no comments about other countries or a comparison. That is a different argument.
- _djo_ 4mo agoIran attacked countries that played absolutely no role in the US and Israel’s attack on it, including some (like Oman) that have been fairly closely allied to the regime. That goes far beyond what’s permissible in international law in response to an attack. In my view the US and Israeli attacks on Iran were illegal, reprehensible, and deeply stupid. But that doesn’t mean Iran is allowed to do whatever it wants afterward, especially to countries not directly involved in hostilities. In this case Iran has also broken international law.
- CrzyLngPwd 4mo agoThat's very naive. Iran attacked US forces and bases all across the Gulf, which played pivotal roles in the USA/Israel attacks. Radars, airfields, HIMARS installations, airports used for refuelling US tankers, and anywhere that hosted the aggressors in any way were and are fair game. You can't say Iran attacked innocent and peaceful Kuwait whilst ignoring the US forces firing HIMARS into Iran from Kuwait. Iran has every right to attack those US forces wherever they are parked.
- _djo_ 4mo agoIf Iran had limited its strikes to US facilities in the Gulf I might have agreed with you. But it didn’t, it hit civilian targets too, all which had nothing to do with the American and Israeli campaign. I see you snuck in ‘airports used for refuelling US tankers’ there, but Iran hit passenger terminals and other civilian-only parts of airports. That’s not permitted under international law. Moreover, none of the Gulf countries allowed US forces to strike Iran from their territory, such as HIMARS firings, until after they were first attacked by Iran. Being sceptical of US and Israeli motives is one thing, but that shouldn’t cause you to give Iran a free pass to break international law with impunity.
- CrzyLngPwd 4mo agoIran quite naturally hit anything of significant use to the US, or that might hurt the US war effort, and some of those civilian objects were housing US forces who fled their bases in those countries. One man's civilian object is another man's barracks. Also, mistakes happen, as demonstrated by the US targeting of a school. Those Gulf states also got involved by shooting down Iranian drones, planes and missiles. Heck, the UAE even directly attacked Iran during the active phase of the US/Israel coalition attack, so they cannot pretend they were innocent. I'm surprised that Iran didn't render the region uninhabitable by destroying desalination plants.
- RobotToaster 4mo agoDefending those launching illegal strikes is still offensive, in both meanings of the term.
- _djo_ 4mo agoThe UK was defending its allies who had not launched illegal strikes, but were themselves attacked by Iran in contravention of international law.
- coldtea 4mo ago>The UK doesn't have some imperialist policy of land grabs It has centuries of exactly that at a global scale, and continued post-war neo-colonial land grabbing and pressuring, plus eager participation in all the imperialist games of its larger brother. I mean, just mentioning "Tony Blair" is enough...
- foldr 4mo agoWhat land did Tony Blair grab? You can disagree with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq without making the exaggerated claim that this was part of some kind of long-term imperialist occupation. The UK currently has fewer military personnel in Iraq than it has in, say, Germany. And Britain doesn’t control the Iraqi government.
- coldtea 4mo ago>What land did Tony Blair grab? You can disagree with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq without making the exaggerated claim that this was part of some kind of long-term imperialist occupation. Yeah, just a few decades years, to secure oil deals and/or keep control of the region. No biggie. That this can be said with a straight face about invasions to two countries that created civil war, suffering, hundreds of thousands of deaths, displacement, etc, is telling of the ever-present colonialist mindset.
- foldr 4mo agoMy post wasn’t defending the Iraq war. It was just pointing out that the war was not a land grab. Iraq is not now a part of the UK or US (in contrast to the situation with Russia and Crimea, for example).
- roenxi 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_installations_in_Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military... For anyone else interested, negotiations that could lead to the US leaving Iraq and fully returning control to the Iraqi people are also going swimmingly, according to reports.
- juanani 4mo ago[dead]
- themgt 4mo ago> In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability ... Reminds of the old joke, "What propaganda? We don't have propaganda."
- anonymousDan 4mo agoI can't tell if your first sentence is a joke or not...
- TheOtherHobbes 4mo agoIraq and Afghanistan might disagree with your first point. Last time I looked Iran and the UK are quite some distance from each other, and Iran has inexplicably neither been launching missiles at the UK, nor threatening to, and is apparently not even capable of it. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crm120x4lzxo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crm120x4lzxo So the justification for these "defensive" bombing runs on Iranian mountain sites from Fairford remains mysterious. The UK's arms industry is - like most things associated with the establishment - an exercise in turning privilege into cash, so it's not a surprise to see Senior Figures doing the media rounds in establishment narrative factories like The Telegraph and The Daily Mail. Readers with the money and connections to make a difference already know how the game is played. Readers who don't should perhaps be allowed to keep their happy fantasy that the UK isn't one of the most corrupt countries in the world, as a mercy.
- cryo32 4mo agoIran has been funding terrorist networks who are active in the UK and has taken direct action against UK citizens before on numerous occasions. They are also allied with Russia who are doing the same. They aren't some innocent party here. Geopolitics is complicated and not some black and white good guy bad guy mechanics.
- dgroshev 4mo agoTo add some pretty hard data to this: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/fiona-and-irans-role-in-the-scottish-independence-debate/ https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/fiona-and-irans-role-in-the-...
- graemep 4mo agoIran attacked the British base in Cyprus with drones so has directly attacked British territory. Iran has also been sponsoring terrorism in the UK. Iran has also attacked an American base on British territory. > one of the most corrupt countries in the world A ridiculous exaggeration given what a lot of other countries are like.
- 4mo ago
- roenxi 4mo ago> In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability or incoming missiles. Claiming that the UK doesn't support diplomacy through violence then transitioning into this gem has to be one of the wildest juxtapositions I've seen this year. Do you classify the US strikes on Iran as uniformly offensive or defensive in nature? Or do you think there is a mix? How would you classify a US bombing run on anti-air defences in the opening phase of the conflict?
- flumpcakes 4mo agoThe UK has only allowed the US to use their air bases to strike Iranian offensive capability and intercept missiles launched towards middle eastern cities. Iran bombed an airport in Kuwait yesterday, for example. It's pretty obvious how the the UK's actions vs. Iran's, or even the US's, are different.
- megous 4mo agoYeah, "striking offensive capability" of a country is aggression and the country that strikes, and it's helpers are all aggressors and in the wrong as far as intl. law goes. You need to work on understanding how causality works. What happened yesterday has no bearing on what happened 2 months ago. If UK/US wanted to be in the in the clear they could have asked UNSC to authorize use of force against Iran.
- _djo_ 4mo agoNope. The UK only responded after its own territory had been struck, as had that of allies in the region who were not part of the US and Israel’s actions. Its role has been entirely defensive, and legal under international law as part of the right to self-defence.
- megous 4mo agoUK started moving its military assets to middle east way before the war, was militarily acting in defense of aggressors and their allies from day one (and also in previous conflicts), and allowed to use its bases for bombing campaigns from the second day of the war, before their base was attacked. (announcement came before the attack, after Starmer got publicly called out by Trump) UK got involved in bombing Iran even when attack on its base on Cyprus came from Lebanon and would have made more sense to attack the source of the attack if the goal was actual self-defense. That is if we accept the decision was in response to the attack itself, and not to pressure and public humiliation from Trump. Also Turkey also got under missile attack from Iran, and managed to use diplomacy/other means to de-escalate. So not joining the war was a possibility. Instead of self-defence or helping stop the war, UK helped aggressors in making their attacks easier and deepened/prolonged the war that way, at great cost to the world. At a time when de-escalation was still possible, UK chose to contribute to the war on the side of the aggressors. Who knows why. Maybe they believed it would be a quick war or whatever and Iran would collapse quickly just like the countries UK decided to aggress against in the past like Iraq.
- pbiggar 4mo agoDefensive missions? Was the UK under attack?
- subscribed 4mo agoI guess schoolgirls were naughty and saying bad words about the UK, hence arming the American planes with bombs to use on civilians and civilian infrastructure.
- flumpcakes 4mo agoThe UK has allies in the region. Kuwait was bombed just yesterday. And a UK airbase was targeted. Are you arguing that the entire world should never provide aid to other countries? Surely you're just calling for imperialist powers to gobble up the planet piece by piece.
- throawayonthe 4mo agowar is peace etc etc
- Npovview 4mo ago"Department of War" was renamed as "Department of Defense" because Edward Bernays (the greatest propagandist who ever lived) said so.
- enoint 4mo agoMaybe not directly. In 1947, it became the Department of the Army, and in 1949 the Department of Defense. Bernays was working on Engineering of Consent at the time, and applied psychoanalysis was very subtle compared to simple Orwellian name changes. For example, Bernays wanted to get women to smoke cigarettes.
- tardedmeme 4mo ago> In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability If Iran struck all of the UK's missile factories and military bases, would it be considered a defensive or offensive action?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- flumpcakes 4mo agoContext matters. Did the UK start a war with Iran? Or did the UK decide to hit surrounding countries (France, Norway, Netherlands, etc.) to destabilise the region and target an Iranian airbase in Spain? I would assume there's a bunch of countries around Iran that appreciate UK's help in intercepting missiles. I would assume there's a bunch of countries around Iran that don't appreciate the US starting a war of choice.
- keybored 4mo agoThey still own Falkland Islands.
- flumpcakes 4mo agoWho "owned" it before? There were no people on that land before it was settled.
- keybored 4mo agoI don’t know terribly much about it. Wikipedia says that the British Government decided to colonize it in 1840. Why did British people decide to move from the Northern Hemisphere to this island? Because the climate looked similar? And yes, here is a dispute between a historically imperialist versus a settler state. It’s weird.
- einpoklum 4mo ago> The UK doesn't have some imperialist policy of land grabs Not directly, mostly; and not through land grabs. The age of land grabs is pretty much over - but imperialism lives on in different form - including massive military interventions and covert operations for manipulating or replacing regimes, more that properly conquering and settling lands. Today's UK is not an independent empire of this kind. It used to be; but now it is relegated to being a junior partner in its alliance with the US empire, mostly, and with the EU, to a lesser extent. This is reflected in its top 10 arms recipients, e.g. for 2024 [1]: Saudi Arabia, £14bn United States of America, £8.3bn France, £5.2bn Qatar, £3.5bn Italy, £2.8bn Oman, £2.5bn Turkey, £2.3bn India, £2.3bn Norway, £2.2bn United Arab Emirates, £1.7bn and there are also arms Israel for about £0.572bn; and the arming of Ukraine, a cooperation with both the US and European powers, as part of NATO's struggle against Russia. The UK also sends troops as part of US imperial interventions, e.g. in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. There are also UK-dominated or UK-only interventions abroad, but mostly if we go a few decades back [2]. [1] : https://www.thenational.scot/news/24272310.uk-arms-exports---countries-buying/ https://www.thenational.scot/news/24272310.uk-arms-exports--... [2] : https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-uks-83-military-interventions-around-the-world-since-1945/ https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-uks-83-military-intervent...
- holoduke 4mo agoYou are quite the hypocrite to call the UK not a imperialistic country. They are probably the greatest of them all. They have far more blood on their hands in foreign interventions than Russia and China combined. In fact they are still occupied with abuse and destruction throughout the world. You are naive and victim of propoganda for not seeing this.