🧵 One of the most misleading narratives is the claim that the US or Israel threaten “war” with Iran…not only is it the other way around, but it’s all a scam because Iran can’t afford a real “war”…you really think a regime like that would risk the results of such conflict
Consider for a second a member of the Iranian theocratic abusive regime, would be risk losing all that power in a conflict, he knows the average people despise him, he knows he crushed protests before
The Iran regime CANNOT afford war and does everything possible to avoid it, either through threats and boasting and bluffing or working with China, Turkey and Russia or by moving proxy pawns around Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen to put the “conflict” somewhere else
Iran is a chess player, the regime is the king, it is feeble and weak but it has arrayed ♟ pawns all over to put the frontline far from home and create three thousand miles of potential underbelly it can strike at far from home, from the Gulf of Oman to Quneitra
That is why it is always nonsense when someone says that recent US statements mean their could be “war” this is just fear mongering talking point nonsense.
Ask these people who speak of “war”…HOW would a war take place. How would the Iran regime many of them adore and want to protect by creating a war narrative, how would it risk war? Are they kidding?
Iran’s regime doesn’t fight wars at home. It was traumatized by the war with Iraq in the 1980s that almost strangled the “revolution” in its cradle. Since then it decided to do a forward policy of proxy wars in the near abroad, strategic depth
So when anyone says that if there isn’t a deal there may be “war” they are being either naive, deceptive or purposely lying. The regime can never risk war with the US or Israel. It can accept certain amounts of low level conflict and sabotage and proxy conflict but not war
That is why Iran boasts a lot about war but what it invests in is PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY attacks using drones and rockets and piracy at sea and harassing ships with speedboats and empowering militias and recruiting Afghan kids for the IRGC in Albukamal
Iran will indeed fight conflicts to the last Iraqi PMU, the last poor Syrian, the last poor Shi’ite Hezbollah member, the last Houthi, but how many IRGC members lay down their lives? Not many.
Iran had its “great patriotic war” in the 1980s and saw enough martyrs, those old greying men who run the regime know the horror of war and don’t want more
The regime elites have their aesthetic, the ostensibly austere regime, those types like Ahmadinejad or Soleimani who supposedly had monk-like existence with no possessions like they are Franciscan friars…but massive war is not for them
Iran is a calculating regime. Zarif and friends spreads the “deal or war” lie to western publics they try studied snd focus-grouped this concept via opeds to see if fear of more “Middle East conflict” would scare people in the West.
Westerners want peace…Iran fears war…so HOW can there ever be war????? Israel also doesn’t want war and Israel is so far from Iran it can’t ever have a real “war” with Iran. THINK about it. It can’t happen. Just proxies and some strikes or incidents but not total war
So since we all know this, let’s stop the misleading story. Absence of a deal might mean some tensions and nuclear blackmail and if Iran crosses a nuclear red line and tries to detonate a device at home there will be attempts to prevent that.
That’s like if someone tried to stop the guys at Los Alamos from the test in 1945…..but that’s not war, that’s trying to stop a stupid act by a regime that is far too smart to ever really detonate a nuclear weapon anyway…think about it
Everyone knows that when Iran is at the threshold it will get a call from it’s new friends in China and it’s old friend in Moscow and also it’s partner in Ankara who will say “ok you scared the West but don’t do the next step”….
And they is why there can never be war. Iran can risk it. It’s friends will advise it. And that’s how things work. Learn and study the Iranian regime method. Read the Iranian media. Stop listening to western commentators who invented the “war” bogeyman.

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More from @sfrantzman

26 Oct
Can one person explain to me what it means when "US State Department says Sudan's normalization efforts with Israel will have to be reevaluated following the coup"....what does it mean? What is being re-evaluated? How can the US decide for Sudan about Israel. I don't get it.
The only thing I understand was involved in the "deal" with Israel normalization was the US removed Sudan from state sponsor of terror list; voanews.com/a/africa_sudan…
The fact Sudan had a coup has nothing to do with sponsoring terror...that list shouldn't be a "we don't like you list"...but a list based on countries that actually sponsor terror. Since Sudan doesn't sponsor terror, what's the US going to re-evaluate.
Read 12 tweets
26 Oct
Thread: It's worth looking at how media in Arabic use the term "المستوطنين" or "settlers" regarding Israelis and Jews; it's not just used about people in the West Bank, it's used also to describe any religious Jew, used to describe a bus hitting people, and also about West Bank. ImageImageImageImage
I think the evidence shows that this word is used often as a dehumanizing term of incitement and this has parallels also in English sometimes in how the term is used.
I've seen media reports where children were killed in terror attacks in Jerusalem and they were not even from Israel and they were called "settlers"...a child can't "settle" anything. But the term is used to dehumanize.
Read 11 tweets
26 Oct
What is known is that these types of drones have appeared in Iraq at PMU events; #DroneWars;
For instance @FarzinNadimi and @Mikeknightsiraq wrote "The admission of Sahab/Samad fixed-wing drones is also interesting considering their closeness to the KAS-04 (Samad-type) systems used in at least five drone attacks on U.S. facilities since April 2021."
"Another prominent parade participant was the Sahab loitering munition (or suicide drone, Figure 3), which is clearly a sister of the Yemeni Houthis’ Samad-1 and -2 drones." washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysi…
Read 4 tweets
26 Oct
Why is it that the US feels the need to appease Turkey on human rights but not other authoritarian regimes? Only with Ankara does it fear to mention human rights. And this nonsense about “non-intervention”…Ankara literally sent security forces to attack peaceful protesters in DC
The US isn’t afraid to critique human rights in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, China, India, Russia, or any country in the world, only with Turkey does it put out special statements about not critiquing human rights inside Turkey via some “convention”….not with other states
There is not one other country in the world the US is as subservient to as Ankara’s regime, Washington is not afraid to critique abuses or issues anywhere else. It’s bizarre. It’s like western democracies empowered an extremist fascist Ankara and are now afraid of it
Read 7 tweets
25 Oct
She covers her face, but it is the face of extreme privilege, joining ISIS which genocided minorities and then returning to a privileged life in Germany while the ISIS victims live in camps and she get anonymity whereas ISIS slaves got no such protection and got no support
Why can’t the European ISIS members like “Jennifer” have to pay reparations and work to rebuild the homes of minorities that ISIS persecuted. In my view these folk are no different than the other extremists Germany produced in 1930s
germany had converts who joined ISIS and we have to wonder what made the same country not learn from the Holocaust and not educate these people not to join genocidal ISIS
Read 4 tweets
25 Oct
A few months ago I mocked reports about Ankara-Iraq drone deal as PR for Ankara drone industry repackaged by media. I was accused of critiquing the reports…well where are the drone deals?

🤔 just wondering because I stand by my theory it was PR nonsense passed off as reports
I think a lot of pro-Ankara reports are basically PR spread by Ankara’s regime via friendly outlets that they make it look like a factual report when it’s like messaging
That is why we get so many false reports about the US and Turkey F-16 issues or study groups on F-35s; it’s always just a trial balloon
Read 8 tweets

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