Iranian Army are terrorists

[Blitzen]

Iran has 70 million people. 2/3rds of the population are under 30 years old (21% are under 14).

The older ones need to get a telly then so there something else to do in the evening.

[M0nkeyb0Y]

Iannucci is a legend, once of the blokes behind Brasseye and The Day Today

Indeed - The Armando Iannucci shows were sublime too - I highly recommend youtube for it as they seem to have all the best sketches on there - “conspiracy” and “imagination” are two of my personal favourites

[Stewart]

According to this CNN Article the US government are thinking about declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard terrorists.

Yet another way of simply starting a war without formal declaration of war. Yet another way of ****-canning the Geneva Convention for large scale military actions. Yet another way of destabilizing the Middle East. Yet another way of creating more terrorists out of thin air. Yet another way of shutting up the own population about mass-murder in the name of profit ('if we're killing terrorists it's all right, right? Go back to bed.')

Words just fail me. The US is going to hell in a handbasket - and is determined to take the world with it. Sooner or later they'll fork with a group that has the means to seriously hurt the US (Remember that many US citizens are immigrants of one era or another. That's a lot of sympathizers right in your midst. Start getting paranoid.)

When you think of the success they had in getting Americans killed and recruiting for al qaeda in Iraq, the mind boggles at the thought of raising the ire of Iran, the world's second worst exporter and sponsor of terrorism after the USA.

If the invasion of Iraq was a poorly considered act of lunacy, what happens when the Revolutionary Guard gets angry? That man is an idiot.

This post was sponsored by gorgeous George Galloway.

[StoX]

I guess it depends on how the Iranian army operate, and then on the opinion of whether that is terrorist behavior??

[Brucelles]

This post was sponsored by gorgeous George Galloway.

I get your point, but I don't actually get your point.

Sure, George and I both believed that killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq was a bad thing, both of us also have Iraqi friends (though mine aren't mass-murderers) and we both think that the whole invasion was executed on the basis of cooked-up evidence for purposes other than those stated.

I am not sure how George feels about Iran, but I lived there and I loved the place. The Iranians are great people. Their leadership is lunatic (see Iraq) and prone to some judicial killing for mad reasons, but nowhere near Saddam's score.

The big issue with Iran is that the lunatics in charge are possibly planning on developing nukes. To me that is worrying, but understandable. They have seen what happens to countries, with oil, that the USA doesn't like. They probably feel the need for a deterrent, which isn't surprising. However, most of the UK's consular service believe that negotiation and a reduction of the sanctions on Iran would be the best way to defuse that threat. The majority of American governmental talking heads think the best way to defuse that threat is to bomb it. They have a 'War President' remember?

What I would really not like to see is another half-arsed American intervention in a country which they cannot understand. The last one has killed unknowable numbers of civilians, what would the next one bring? Do you want to find out?

[Brucelles]

I guess it depends on how the Iranian army operate, and then on the opinion of whether that is terrorist behavior??

It's a good point actually. The Rep. Guard don't act outside Iran, except by distributing weapons to enemies of the USA, and they act inside with the full approval of the government. So they are not terrorists.

However, the occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran many moons ago was stepping onto another country and could conceivably be construed as terrorism. Just about.

Of course, if that were the only standard the USA would be even more guilty, since the USA has been acting on Iranian territory for years, including kidnapping and murder. Obviously the USA funds more acts of terror than the Republican Guard does also. I guess that the only thing that would stop the USA naming the Republican Guard as terrorists would be the enormously cynical act of hypocrisy it would take to do this. It would be akin to torturing prisoners by waterboarding and then criticising Libya for doing something much less painful to their prisoners.

[nichomach]

Actually, equipping and training foreign terrorists probably DOES make you a terrorist (similar to being a principal in the second degree, as in aiding, abetting, counselling and procuring in English law); although the International Court of Justice doesn't do binding precedent in the way that our courts do, previous cases do have persuasive authority, so it's worth looking at prior instances where equipping and training terrorist groups has arisen in the past. One of the best examples is Nicaragua v. United States of America , oddly enough, where the US was found to be guilty of breaching the prohibition on the use of force and violating the sovereignty of Nicaragua indirectly by equipping and training the Contras. Not, I guess, that the US would be very happy to have that precedent adduced in support of their position vis a vis the RG....

[Brucelles]

^

Interestingly the US still refuses to define terrorism precisely. They have defined Domestic Terrorism in some detail in the Patriot Act but still have only two statutary definitions for the general act.

Title 22 of the U.S. Code defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence" against "noncombatant targets by subnational groups" usually with the goal to influence an audience. So it cannot apply to governments. So the Revolutionary Guard are not terrorists.

The U.S. Department of Defense uses a definition that highlights another element of the Western concept of terrorism. Terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." In other words, terrorism is violence designed to advance some cause by getting a government to change its policies or political behavior. In this definition the actor does not need to be a government, but it is so broad that that Operation Shock and Awe definitely fell within the definition. Hell, so did the Spanish Inquisition.