Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

> In 2016, days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee server. Those emails included comments from DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz that suggested the committee was favoring Hillary Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary. Wasserman Schultz resigned in the aftermath of the leak. Officials later said they thought the cyberattack was linked to Russia.

> After the hack, Trump publicly encouraged Russia to hack Clinton’s private server and release her emails. He later said he was joking.

I had forgotten that. That seems oddly symmetric to that.

The Trump campaign says that Iran wants Harris because it knows that he, Trump, "will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House". Nice way to turn it into a talking point, I guess. Does anyone recall how accurate it is? Did Trump really crimp Iran's style during his presidency?

Breaking the treaty was widely seen as causing Iran’s nuclear program to speed up. That said, the people saying that were in the foreign policy and defense communities so while they’re well-informed you would want to ask exactly how much they are biased: for example, someone in the State department is predisposed to think of treaties, etc. as effective because otherwise why would they be working a demanding job which pays so little? It’s like asking Haskell programmers whether functional programming is good.

I remember reading an analyst who said, it was terrible for US reputation because other countries around the world, whether allies or arch-enemies, can rightly say (I paraphrase) "Why should we trust any agreement we have with you, USA, when in your next election you can elect a ducking lunatic who'll cancel this agreement?"...

It makes me think of Great Britain, who another thinker said used to be the adult in the room of global politics, whose advice other countries sought; but within a decade became a laughing stock that was ignored.

Yeah, I don’t want to overstate it but I think we’ll increasingly see it as a mistake. Strengthening China’s ties to Iran seems unlikely to be beneficial and while I’m sure some people hoped it’d topple the government I think the economic disruption probably just hurt a bunch of helpless people in ways which are still unfolding.

> Did Trump really crimp Iran's style during his presidency?

He ended the nuclear deal and, between that and a high-profile assassination, started the regional conflict which has since expanded into the current war between various Iranian proxies and the West largely through Israel, but also, using Israel as a pretext, by way of Ansar Allah (often referred to as "the Houthis") in Yemen more directly through attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea.

Between action with Iran and stated preference for approach in Ukraine, whether through bad instincts or bad unstated interests, Trump's "engage v. confront" ideas have been exactly the opposite of correct.

> Did Trump really crimp Iran's style during his presidency?

I was surprised when he assassinated an Iranian general (and 9 nearby people) in Jan 2020.

Not a Trump fan, but I think it’s fair to say that Iran felt much less free to be jerks during 2017-2021 than recently.

Very early in 2017, Trump sent a bunch of missiles into Syria (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Shayrat_missile_strike) after they behaved badly. It seemed to have a chilling effect on the whole region for most of his presidency. Much less insanity happened for the following four years than normal.

The article you linked suggests the opposite.

"According to an analyst writing for HuffPost, the 2017 Deir ez-Zor missile strike by Iran suggests that the country has shifted its three decades-long policy of testing, but not using missiles, as a reaction to Donald Trump's escalation in the Middle East, including "needless increase" in America's military involvement in the Syrian proxy war.[121]"

Yes, Iran was so kindly to rain ballistic missiles on US troops:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Martyr_Soleimani

Certainly showed them who was boss.

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