Tuesday, December 08, 2020

Will he go with Trump's policy or Obama's?

Iranian nuclear scientist "Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was shot dead in a convoy outside Tehran on 27 November."  Deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards Brig-Gen Ali Fadavi said that a machine gun mounted on a Nissan pick-up "was equipped with an intelligent satellite system" and "was using artificial intelligence" so that it was able to focus "only on martyr Fakhrizadeh's face in a way that his wife, despite being only 25cm (10 inches) away was, not shot". Before that, Al Qaeda's second-in-command "Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle in the streets of Tehran on Aug 7". Iran has denied that any Al Qaeda members are living in the country. In June a previously unknown group calling itself Homeland Cheetahs, which claimed to be "composed of dissidents within Iran's military and security forces", said "it had attacked the major Iranian nuclear site at Natanz". In the months before this attack, "Numerous fires have broken out in nuclear facilities, oil refineries, power plants, major factories and businesses across the country." In July, at least seven boats caught fire at a shipyard in the port of Bushehr. "Sixty million Iranians, 75% of the population, are living, are living below the international poverty line," wrote Struan Stevenson. The currency, the rial has lost 49% of its value this year due to the sanctions imposed by the US. "President-elect Joe Biden made it clear during his campaign that his administration would favor a return to the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, reversing a cornerstone of President Donald Trump's foreign policy in the Middle-East." "US President-elect Joe Biden will insist Iran agrees to new demands if it wants the US to return to a nuclear deal and lift sanctions," the New York Times reported. "Iran would also have to address its 'malign' regional activities through proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen in the talks that would have to include its Arab neighbors like Saudi Arabia." That would surely be too much. Persian versus Arabs, Shia versus Sunni, total annihilation of Israel versus secret talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Naturally, Iran said it "will not accept preconditions from a new Biden administration over its nuclear program and the US must return to a 2015 deal before talks can take place". It will resume enriching uranium and stop all inspections by the IAEA after two months if the US fails to do so. Meanwhile, Iran is having to credit Israel with a satellite-controlled, AI-operated machine gun pinpointing Fakhrizadeh using facial recognition technology, to hide its own weaknesses. Whether people agree or not, President Trump knew what he wanted. Does Biden?

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