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Sunday, January 12, 2020

More From Iran

It seems that the protests in Iran against the government have not stopped.  There were renewed demonstrations for a second day against the government's shooting down of the Ukrainian airliner during the time when it had fired missiles to attack American bases in Iraq.  The protesters are demanding that the people who are responsible for the disaster be prosecuted.  That presents a major problem for the regime.  Does it ignore the protesters and protect the military?  Does it single out a few low level soldiers and execute them for shooting down the plane?  Does it go after the officers who either ordered the attack or who permitted the local soldiers to decide when to launch the anti-aircraft missiles?  These are tough problems.  Each has pluses and minuses. 

And now there's a second problem facing the regime that compounds the first.  According to a report by CNN, American troops in Iraq got about 2.5 hours warning that their base was going to be targeted by the Iranians.  As a result, many troops were bussed off the base and most of the others were moved into bomb shelters.  It's one big reason that there were no casualties.  Supposedly, the CNN reporter got this information from interviewing the troops on the ground.

There's no other network that is reporting this news just yet.  Still, if the story is true (and that is always a big if with CNN), it would be a terrifying story for the Iranian government.  You can be sure that Iran didn't give the USA a behind the scenes heads up before it fired the missiles.  That's a story that would have leaked out for certain, were it true.  That means that either the USA has the ability to read Iran's communications in real time and to break whatever code is used, or that there is a spy in the highest levels of the Iranian government who fed the information to the CIA (or to another intelligence agency that alerted the USA.)  That has to be a chilling problem for the Iranian leadership to face.

By the way, I keep waiting for the Democrats to come forward to give President Trump credit for the huge protests in Iran against the regime.  When the news broke that the Iranians had shot down a Ukrainian airplane inside Iran shortly after it took off from Tehran airport, many Democrats rushed to blame the President for this attack.  It didn't matter that it was an attack by the Iranians inside their own country on a plane from Ukraine with no American involvement at all.  To the Democrats, Trump was the cause.  So now that the protesters have risen up in response to that attack on the Ukrainian plane, shouldn't the Dems say that Trump is the cause?  After all, if he's responsible for the attack and the attack caused the protest movement, didn't Trump cause the protest movement? 

Of course, I don't expect to hear anything from the Democrats.  They operate under two rules:

1.  If something bad happens anywhere, President Trump is to blame.
2.  If something good happens anywhere, President Trump gets no credit.


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