Thanks to Trump, the Forty-Year Appeasement of Iran Is Over

. . . Trump's assassination of Soleimani is taking us out of this diplomatic quagmire. He is signaling that the years of appeasement of Iran are over. Hiding behind terrorist proxy groups has worked for Iran since the ayatollahs took over in the 1970s. This strike against the head of the Revolutionary Guards may cause the cowardly leaders of Iran to reconsider their modus operandi on the world stage, or it may lead to a lashing out. Whichever path they take, our resolve to stop participating in the cycle of terror attacks and subsequent appeasement of a rogue state is now affirmed. . . .

http://www.terrellaftermath.com/

American Thinker   "The assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani is an unusual, possibly aberrant, event.  The killing of this individual leader of a sovereign state may lead to all-out war between Iran and the U.S. — or, on the other hand, the assassination may bring an end to the cycle of Iranian violence countered by U.S. and world diplomatic flatulence and appeasement.

"Assassinating the leaders of terrorist organizations — i.e., non-state actors, such as Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — did not lead to a greater war footing against the USA because, as terrorist organization leaders, not heads of state, they are automatically considered rogue, even by sovereign state leaders sympathetic to their goals.  Al-Qaeda and ISIS, despite any claims to territorial governance, are non-state actors.  Thus, despite ISIS's former control of land areas, ISIS was despised for its aggressions but was not considered a serious threat to the power of leaders of other Muslim-dominant states within the region.  The Middle Eastern Muslim states that may, to a certain degree, be sympathetic to ISIS's dreams of a re-established caliphate such as existed for hundreds of years nevertheless did not intend to defer to the leader of ISIS as that caliph.  Despite Islam's socio-political backwardness in today's world, the glories of Islam's earlier history loom large in the consciousness of most Islamics.  ISIS did not appear to Islamics as the proper heir of that presumed glorious history.

"Iran's listing as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department puts it into a special category.  Iran is a behind-the-scenes puppeteer of Hamas operating in Gaza, Hezb'allah operating in Lebanon, and the Houthis operating in Yemen as well as a variety of groups in Iraq.  Not only did Iran held 52 Americans hostage for over a year after the ayatollahs overthrew the Shah in the  1970s, but the Iranians were crucial in the bombing of the U.S. military barracks in Lebanon (1983), the bombing of the Khobar Towers and American troops in Saudi Arabia (1996), the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), the bombing of the USS Cole (2000), and the attack on the World Trade Center (2001).  With this nefarious history, acting through proxies to undermine the security of the West and the U.S. in particular, Iran's designation as a terrorist state — living in the gray area between sovereign legitimacy and terrorist aggression — is warranted and necessary." . . .

. . . We can see, then, that appeasement of the Iranian fanatics did not begin with the sell-out Iran deal completed by President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry.  Rather Obama's deal with Iran was full blown appeasement and bribery of Iran the likes of which have taken place since the administration of Pres. Jimmy Carter."

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