Mexico has an average IQ of 88. Would we worry about Mexico getting angry? They are four points more capable on average than Iran.<\/p>\n
Iran has had a nuclear program since 1957 and they still don’t have nukes.<\/a><\/p>\n I’m not worried about Iran’s retaliation for our assassination of Qassim Soleimani. <\/p>\n Iran has not launched an offensive war since the 17th Century. <\/p>\n Dexter Filkins writes in the New Yorker in 2012<\/a>: <\/p>\n * Ryan Crocker, the American Ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, got a similar feeling. During the Iraq War, Crocker sometimes dealt with Suleimani indirectly, through Iraqi leaders who shuttled in and out of Tehran. Once, he asked one of the Iraqis if Suleimani was especially religious. The answer was \u201cNot really,\u201d Crocker told me. \u201cHe attends mosque periodically. Religion doesn\u2019t drive him. Nationalism drives him, and the love of the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n * American and Argentine officials believe that the Iranian regime helped Hezbollah orchestrate the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, which killed twenty-nine people, and the attack on the Jewish center in the same city two years later, which killed eighty-five.<\/p>\n * The good will didn\u2019t last. In January, 2002, Crocker, who was by then the deputy chief of the American Embassy in Kabul, was awakened one night by aides, who told him that President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union Address, had named Iran as part of an \u201cAxis of Evil.\u201d Like many senior diplomats, Crocker was caught off guard. He saw the negotiator the next day at the U.N. compound in Kabul, and he was furious. \u201cYou completely damaged me,\u201d Crocker recalled him saying. \u201cSuleimani is in a tearing rage. He feels compromised.\u201d The negotiator told Crocker that, at great political risk, Suleimani had been contemplating a complete re\u00ebvaluation of the United States, saying, \u201cMaybe it\u2019s time to rethink our relationship with the Americans.\u201d The Axis of Evil speech brought the meetings to an end. Reformers inside the government, who had advocated a rapprochement with the United States, were put on the defensive. Recalling that time, Crocker shook his head. \u201cWe were just that close,\u201d he said. \u201cOne word in one speech changed history.\u201d<\/p>\n * After the invasion began, in March, 2003, Iranian officials were frantic to let the Americans know that they wanted peace. Many of them watched the regimes topple in Afghanistan and Iraq and were convinced that they were next. \u201cThey were scared shitless,\u201d Maguire, the former C.I.A. officer in Baghdad, told me. \u201cThey were sending runners across the border to our \u00e9lite elements saying, \u2018Look, we don\u2019t want any trouble with you.\u2019 We had an enormous upper hand.\u201d That same year, American officials determined that Iran had reconfigured its plans to develop a nuclear weapon to proceed more slowly and covertly, lest it invite a Western attack.<\/p>\n * As the American occupation faltered, Suleimani began an aggressive campaign of sabotage. Many Americans and Iraqis I interviewed thought that the change of strategy was the result of opportunism: the Iranians became aggressive when the fear of an American invasion began to recede.<\/p>\n * According to American and Iraqi former officials, Suleimani exerts leverage over Iraqi politics by paying officials, by subsidizing newspapers and television stations, and, when necessary, by intimidation. Few are immune to his enticements. \u201cI have yet to see one Shia political party not taking money from Qassem Suleimani,\u201d the former senior Iraqi official told me. \u201cHe\u2019s the most powerful man in Iraq, without question.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mexico has an average IQ of 88. Would we worry about Mexico getting angry? They are four points more capable on average than Iran. Iran has had a nuclear program since 1957 and they still don’t have nukes. I’m not … Continue reading