Washington’s top official for Iran accused China on Friday of financing terrorism by continuing to buy Iranian crude oil and urged Beijing to take the “long view” by siding with the Iranian people rather than the government in Tehran.
Speaking the day after the Trump administration sanctioned several Chinese entities over their purchases of Iranian petroleum and crude oil, US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said that Washington and Beijing shared the same interests in a more peaceful Middle East.
“[But] for as long as they're funding Iran's terrorism through oil purchases, the Middle East is going to be unstable,” Hook said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.
Thursday’s action by the US departments of State and Treasury was the latest salvo in a string of punitive moves against Chinese companies over their alleged purchase of crude oil and petroleum from Iran.
The sanctions, which targeted several mainland Chinese and Hong Kong-based companies as well as the chairman of one of the entities – a Chinese national – block any US-based assets of the sanctioned parties and prevent any US citizens from engaging in transactions with them.
The targeted entities, which also included a Dubai-based company, had “collectively transferred the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars” to Iran’s National Iranian Oil Company throughout 2019, according to the Treasury.
“We hope that we don't have to keep sanctioning China,” said Hook. “But we will continue to sanction any sanctionable activity.”
Meanwhile other leftist mentally deranged moonbats are suggesting Iran should bomb all of the Trump buildings. They don't seem to care that thousands of innocent people are in these buildings.
You appear rather undisturbed by the numbers of innocent Iranians who Trump is claiming he has ordered the US armed forces to target in Iran, Black Orchid.
Now now, Trump never said anything about targeting innocent Iranians. He simply threatened to target 52 undisclosed Iranian sites -- "some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture."
As NBC reports, "The president tweeted that the number of targets matched the number of hostages held by Iran in 1979, when 52 American diplomats and citizens were held for 444 days."
So you see, there's nothing to get bothered about! If Iran behaves itself for a change -- and doesn't take any pot shots at Americans or American interests -- nothing will happen to their quaint little Islamic republic.
And even if they do mess with the U.S., nothing will happen as long as nobody stands inside or near the 52 targets ... ummm, whatever they might be. (Hint: I'd advise anybody with a job at an oil refinery to call in sick for the next month or consider a new line of work.)
As the Iranian leadership just discovered, Obama isn't the president anymore. So, no more hand-delivered pallets of American dollars. There's a new sheriff in town, and this one doesn't B.S.
I'd suggest that Iran's leaders "mullah" it over!
Interesting isn't it how the US strikes first and then threatens Iran when Iran threatens retaliation. And so, 4E how are you going to justify the deaths of innocent Iranians who had no hand in any attack(s) on the US? Like the Mullahs who justify the deaths of innocent Americans, hey, you'll make excuses that they were "collateral damage", right?
And how many "innocent Iranians" died when the U.S. whacked Qassem Soleimani? Or do you consider him "collateral damage"?
See, you're still reading from an outdated playbook. Trump isn't into starting full-scale wars. He's into squeezing rogue nations with the full strength of American economic power ... and selectively targeting key enemy leaders instead of carpet bombing entire cities.
Which makes more sense than any previous U.S. policy toward Iran. We don't send thousands of our own young men and women into harm's way, we don't cause much (if any) collateral damage -- which only encourages young Iranians to embrace the West and turn on their own oppressive government -- and best of all, it shakes Iranian leaders to the core.
Does anybody think that the Ayatollah Assahollah Khamenei would have lost a nanosecond of sleep if 1,000 average Iranians had died in a U.S. bombing? Nah, he'd have clapped his hands at the prospect of uniting his country against the evil Americans.
But he stood and cried like a little girl after Soleimani got his special delivery from a Reaper drone. It was kind of like watching Emperor Palpatine boohoo over the death of Darth Maul.
Today the US conducted defensive precision air strikes targeting their weapons storage facilities to significantly degrade their ability to conduct future attacks against Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) coalition forces."
Sometimes, you just have to sit and wonder what gets in the heads of some people to think any particular thing is a good idea.
Iran has been doing ridiculous things for decades. It seems to be where a lot of people get stupid ideas from if Iran did it first.
It is like a lot of empty threats that people give out. Sure, they seem like a big deal when they are said but there really is no way for them to get what they want. It is all a scare tactic.
It’s hard to tell which is more brazen.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has reportedly issued an arrest warrant for President Donald Trump for his role in the January killing of Quassem Soleimani, Tehran’s terrorist general who was responsible for any number of attacks on U.S. and allied forces in Iraq as well as on Israelis through Iran’s client groups in Lebanon.
As bad as that is, though, the American news outlet The Daily Beast was even worse: Using a Twitter post to actually take Iran’s side in the matter.
As news spread Monday that Tehran prosecutor Ali Alqasimehr told the Islamic Republic News Agency that Trump and others were facing “murder and terrorism charges” related to Soleimani’s death in a Jan. 5 missile strike, the blatantly anti-Trump outlet The Daily Beast was cheering the mullahs on.
“You can’t blame them for trying,” The Daily Beast noted in a Twitter post.
If this might look like a case of ludicrously provocative Twitter language aimed at generating clicks, it’s worth nothing that those are the actual first words of The Daily Beast’s story capsule – a brief summation that links to larger story by, naturally enough, Qatari-owned Al Jazeera.
According to The Associated Press, Iran isn’t stopping with its own efforts. It has also requested a “red notice” from the international law enforcement organization Interpol, which theoretically at least could put the president in danger of arrest while in another country.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard has staged a mock attack on a fake aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz, in a drill which saw two US bases briefly put on missile alert.
The Great Prophet 14 exercise saw Guard commandos abseil down onto the vessel from a helicopter, and anti-aircraft guns open fire on a target drone near the port city of Bandar Abbas.
Iranian state television footage also showed a variety of missiles being fired from fast boats, trucks, mobile launchers and a helicopter, some targeting the fake carrier.
A commander said the Revolutionary Guard, a force answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also planned to fire "long-range ballistic missiles" during the drill, which will continue throughout Wednesday.
