The US only have 16 of those in their fleet
Apparently they costs around $600m each.
WAR! What is it good for?
- Thread starter Treble
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The US only have 16 of those in their fleet
Apparently they costs around $600m each.
yeah there used to be one constantly on duty in europe during the cold war.
the planes are "cheap" it's the radar / electronics whch cost
I knew that's what had been targeted but hadn't seen pictures of it.
Stops them refuelling jets in the air that only have ability of a short fly time.
Edit: that and the KC-135 tankers, I assumed that was the tanker.
they used to be referred to as AWACs ,but i'm ****ed if i can remember what it stood for ,but basically they had high range radar systems to pick up incoming aircraft (so drones as well in this day and age )
Airborne early warning and control - Wikipedia
TLDR alert.....
“Next time someone says that Iran is dangerous and they need to be stopped…here’s some history to share.
————————
1901: A British businessman secures exclusive rights to Iran’s oil. Iran gets almost nothing from its own resource.
1908: Oil is struck. Anglo-Iranian Oil Company is formed. It later becomes BP. The British Royal Navy converts from coal to oil, making Iranian petroleum a strategic military asset for the British Empire.
For the next 50 years, Iran’s oil is extracted by a foreign corporation. Iran receives a fraction of the profits. Saudi Arabia negotiates a 50-50 profit split with ARAMCO. Iran asks for the same terms. Britain refuses.
————————-
1951: Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalizes Iran’s oil through a unanimous vote in parliament. Completely legal. Completely constitutional. His argument was simple: this is our oil.
Britain responds with an international blockade. No negotiation. No compromise. They want their oil back.
1953: The CIA (Operation Ajax) and MI6 (Operation Boot) overthrow Mossadegh. They bribe politicians, clerics, journalists, and military officers. They fund fake protests. They run disinformation campaigns through newspapers they secretly own. MI6 operatives kidnap and murder Iran’s chief of police and dump his body in public as a warning.
They reinstall the Shah — a monarch who serves Western oil interests. The CIA officially acknowledged its role in 2013.
—————————-
After the coup, BP retains a 40% stake. American oil companies including Exxon and Mobil get significant shares. Iran’s democratic government is gone. Its oil is back under foreign control.
1953-1979: The Shah rules for 26 years as a Western-backed authoritarian. His secret police, SAVAK, is trained by the CIA and Mossad. SAVAK tortures and kills political dissidents systematically. Iran becomes one of the largest purchasers of American weapons. The Shah lives in extraordinary luxury while much of the population remains poor.
During this entire period, Israel and Iran are close allies. SAVAK and Mossad share intelligence. Israel sells weapons to Iran. Nobody in the West calls Iran a “terrorist state” because the dictator is their dictator.
1979: The Iranian people overthrow the Shah in a popular revolution. This is where your list begins — as if the revolution appeared out of nowhere, motivated by nothing but religious fanaticism.
———————————-
Now let’s talk about the US embassy that was attacked.
The US news likes to paint the 1979 hostage crisis as an unprovoked attack on America. The revolutionaries seized the embassy because the last time there was a democratic movement in Iran, the CIA ran the coup to crush it from that same embassy. They weren’t being paranoid. They were being historically accurate.
Britannica’s own assessment: “It is generally agreed today that the 1953 coup sowed the seeds for the Islamic Revolution of 1979.”
That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the encyclopedia.
——————————-
Now let’s ask a couple more questions.
Why are there U.S. military bases in Iraq? Because the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on claims of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be false. Over a million Iraqi civilians died. No American official was ever prosecuted.
Why is there conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Because Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years.
Why are Houthi rebels attacking ships? Because a U.S.-backed Saudi coalition bombed Yemen for years, creating what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Over 150,000 dead. Famine. Cholera outbreaks.
Why does Iran pursue nuclear capability?
Possibly because Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal estimated at 80-400 warheads, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, faces zero international inspections, and has never been sanctioned for it.
Iran signed the NPT. Iran agreed to inspections. Iran signed the nuclear deal in 2015. The U.S. pulled out of that deal in 2018.
Every single item on your list is framed as Iranian aggression against “the West.” But none of them exist without the West’s 70-year campaign of overthrowing Iran’s democracy, installing a dictator, extracting its oil, arming its neighbors, invading the countries on its borders, and maintaining military bases throughout the region.
Now trace who benefits.
The 1953 coup was about oil. BP and American oil companies got the oil.
The Shah’s 26-year reign was about strategic positioning. The U.S. and Israel got a compliant ally on the Soviet border and in the Middle East.
The post-1979 framing of Iran as a “terrorist state” serves a specific function: it justifies permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East, billions in annual arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, and unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s regional dominance.
Every “Iranian attack” on your list occurred in a country where the U.S. had no legal right to be in the first place — Iraq, Syria, Jordan. American troops are stationed across the Middle East not because those countries asked for protection from Iran, but because the U.S. positioned itself there to control the region’s resources and protect its strategic architecture.
—————————
When someone punches you for 70 years — overthrows your government, installs a dictator, trains his secret police to torture your people, extracts your oil, invades the countries on your borders, surrounds you with military bases, and sanctions your economy into the ground — and then you punch back, the question isn’t “why are you violent?”
The question is: who threw the first punch? And who’s been profiting from the fight ever since?
That’s not a defense of the Iranian regime. The theocracy that replaced the Shah has its own record of brutality against its own people, especially women. But that regime exists because the CIA destroyed Iran’s democracy in 1953. The West created the conditions for the very thing it now claims to oppose.
——————————
The history continues.
HAMAS (October 7, 2023)
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” said Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, to the Wall Street Journal in 2009.
Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who served as Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told the New York Times that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the PLO. “The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques
Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
And it didn’t stop in the 1980s. According to the New York Times, Israeli intelligence agents traveled into Gaza with a Qatari official carrying suitcases filled with cash to disperse money.
In 2015, Bezalel Smotrich, currently the finance minister in Netanyahu’s government, summed up the strategy: “The Palestinian Authority is a burden. Hamas is an asset.”
Netanyahu told journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. Having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu penned a letter to Qatar in 2018 asking the Qatari leadership to continue funding Hamas.
——————————-
HEZBOLLAH (1983 Beirut bombings, kidnappings):
Hezbollah was formed in 1982 — the same year Israel invaded Lebanon. It didn’t exist before the invasion. Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO headquarters there. The invasion killed approximately 20,000 people, mostly civilians. Hezbollah was born as a direct resistance movement to that invasion.
The 1983 Marine barracks bombing on the commenter’s list killed 241 Americans. But why were U.S. Marines in Lebanon? Because the U.S. had intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, positioning itself as a participant in the conflict rather than a neutral peacekeeper. The Marines were shelling Druze and Shia positions from naval vessels before the bombing.
——————————
IRAN’S PROXY NETWORK (Houthis, Kataib Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria):
Every proxy on that list operates in a country where the U.S. or its allies intervened first.
Iraq — the U.S. invaded in 2003 on false WMD claims. Iranian-backed militias formed to resist the occupation.
Syria — the CIA ran Operation Timber Sycamore, spending billions arming Syrian rebels, many of whom were jihadists. Iran backed Assad. Both sides were proxies in someone else’s war.
Yemen — the Houthis fight against a Saudi-led coalition that the U.S. armed and supported. The Saudi bombing campaign created what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
———————-
The United States propaganda machine goes hard. The enemy is not a republican or a democrat.
For all of history people knew their governments were evil. Don’t forget that it’s true today. The enemy is not the one vilified by billionaire owned media dynasties”
~~~Andrew Sterling Ansley
“Next time someone says that Iran is dangerous and they need to be stopped…here’s some history to share.
————————
1901: A British businessman secures exclusive rights to Iran’s oil. Iran gets almost nothing from its own resource.
1908: Oil is struck. Anglo-Iranian Oil Company is formed. It later becomes BP. The British Royal Navy converts from coal to oil, making Iranian petroleum a strategic military asset for the British Empire.
For the next 50 years, Iran’s oil is extracted by a foreign corporation. Iran receives a fraction of the profits. Saudi Arabia negotiates a 50-50 profit split with ARAMCO. Iran asks for the same terms. Britain refuses.
————————-
1951: Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalizes Iran’s oil through a unanimous vote in parliament. Completely legal. Completely constitutional. His argument was simple: this is our oil.
Britain responds with an international blockade. No negotiation. No compromise. They want their oil back.
1953: The CIA (Operation Ajax) and MI6 (Operation Boot) overthrow Mossadegh. They bribe politicians, clerics, journalists, and military officers. They fund fake protests. They run disinformation campaigns through newspapers they secretly own. MI6 operatives kidnap and murder Iran’s chief of police and dump his body in public as a warning.
They reinstall the Shah — a monarch who serves Western oil interests. The CIA officially acknowledged its role in 2013.
—————————-
After the coup, BP retains a 40% stake. American oil companies including Exxon and Mobil get significant shares. Iran’s democratic government is gone. Its oil is back under foreign control.
1953-1979: The Shah rules for 26 years as a Western-backed authoritarian. His secret police, SAVAK, is trained by the CIA and Mossad. SAVAK tortures and kills political dissidents systematically. Iran becomes one of the largest purchasers of American weapons. The Shah lives in extraordinary luxury while much of the population remains poor.
During this entire period, Israel and Iran are close allies. SAVAK and Mossad share intelligence. Israel sells weapons to Iran. Nobody in the West calls Iran a “terrorist state” because the dictator is their dictator.
1979: The Iranian people overthrow the Shah in a popular revolution. This is where your list begins — as if the revolution appeared out of nowhere, motivated by nothing but religious fanaticism.
———————————-
Now let’s talk about the US embassy that was attacked.
The US news likes to paint the 1979 hostage crisis as an unprovoked attack on America. The revolutionaries seized the embassy because the last time there was a democratic movement in Iran, the CIA ran the coup to crush it from that same embassy. They weren’t being paranoid. They were being historically accurate.
Britannica’s own assessment: “It is generally agreed today that the 1953 coup sowed the seeds for the Islamic Revolution of 1979.”
That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the encyclopedia.
——————————-
Now let’s ask a couple more questions.
Why are there U.S. military bases in Iraq? Because the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on claims of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be false. Over a million Iraqi civilians died. No American official was ever prosecuted.
Why is there conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Because Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years.
Why are Houthi rebels attacking ships? Because a U.S.-backed Saudi coalition bombed Yemen for years, creating what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Over 150,000 dead. Famine. Cholera outbreaks.
Why does Iran pursue nuclear capability?
Possibly because Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal estimated at 80-400 warheads, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, faces zero international inspections, and has never been sanctioned for it.
Iran signed the NPT. Iran agreed to inspections. Iran signed the nuclear deal in 2015. The U.S. pulled out of that deal in 2018.
Every single item on your list is framed as Iranian aggression against “the West.” But none of them exist without the West’s 70-year campaign of overthrowing Iran’s democracy, installing a dictator, extracting its oil, arming its neighbors, invading the countries on its borders, and maintaining military bases throughout the region.
Now trace who benefits.
The 1953 coup was about oil. BP and American oil companies got the oil.
The Shah’s 26-year reign was about strategic positioning. The U.S. and Israel got a compliant ally on the Soviet border and in the Middle East.
The post-1979 framing of Iran as a “terrorist state” serves a specific function: it justifies permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East, billions in annual arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, and unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s regional dominance.
Every “Iranian attack” on your list occurred in a country where the U.S. had no legal right to be in the first place — Iraq, Syria, Jordan. American troops are stationed across the Middle East not because those countries asked for protection from Iran, but because the U.S. positioned itself there to control the region’s resources and protect its strategic architecture.
—————————
When someone punches you for 70 years — overthrows your government, installs a dictator, trains his secret police to torture your people, extracts your oil, invades the countries on your borders, surrounds you with military bases, and sanctions your economy into the ground — and then you punch back, the question isn’t “why are you violent?”
The question is: who threw the first punch? And who’s been profiting from the fight ever since?
That’s not a defense of the Iranian regime. The theocracy that replaced the Shah has its own record of brutality against its own people, especially women. But that regime exists because the CIA destroyed Iran’s democracy in 1953. The West created the conditions for the very thing it now claims to oppose.
——————————
The history continues.
HAMAS (October 7, 2023)
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” said Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, to the Wall Street Journal in 2009.
Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who served as Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told the New York Times that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the PLO. “The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques
Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
And it didn’t stop in the 1980s. According to the New York Times, Israeli intelligence agents traveled into Gaza with a Qatari official carrying suitcases filled with cash to disperse money.
In 2015, Bezalel Smotrich, currently the finance minister in Netanyahu’s government, summed up the strategy: “The Palestinian Authority is a burden. Hamas is an asset.”
Netanyahu told journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. Having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu penned a letter to Qatar in 2018 asking the Qatari leadership to continue funding Hamas.
——————————-
HEZBOLLAH (1983 Beirut bombings, kidnappings):
Hezbollah was formed in 1982 — the same year Israel invaded Lebanon. It didn’t exist before the invasion. Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO headquarters there. The invasion killed approximately 20,000 people, mostly civilians. Hezbollah was born as a direct resistance movement to that invasion.
The 1983 Marine barracks bombing on the commenter’s list killed 241 Americans. But why were U.S. Marines in Lebanon? Because the U.S. had intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, positioning itself as a participant in the conflict rather than a neutral peacekeeper. The Marines were shelling Druze and Shia positions from naval vessels before the bombing.
——————————
IRAN’S PROXY NETWORK (Houthis, Kataib Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria):
Every proxy on that list operates in a country where the U.S. or its allies intervened first.
Iraq — the U.S. invaded in 2003 on false WMD claims. Iranian-backed militias formed to resist the occupation.
Syria — the CIA ran Operation Timber Sycamore, spending billions arming Syrian rebels, many of whom were jihadists. Iran backed Assad. Both sides were proxies in someone else’s war.
Yemen — the Houthis fight against a Saudi-led coalition that the U.S. armed and supported. The Saudi bombing campaign created what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
———————-
The United States propaganda machine goes hard. The enemy is not a republican or a democrat.
For all of history people knew their governments were evil. Don’t forget that it’s true today. The enemy is not the one vilified by billionaire owned media dynasties”
~~~Andrew Sterling Ansley
I’m waiting to read this next time someone says that Iran is dangerous and they need to be stopped
Iran is dangerous and they need to be stopped
I think the article makes some valid points but others I’m inclined to disagree with. I’ll be making no further statement at this time.
CBA reading all that but as expected it fails to ask some pretty obvious questions such as:
If Hezbollah was founded in "response" to Israel occupying South Lebanon, why didn't it cease to exist after Israel fully withdrew in 2000?
In fact, why did it spend the next two decades massively ramping up its weapons and very openly expanding its charter to include the destruction of all of Israel, not just sovereignty over Lebanon?
If Hezbollah was founded in "response" to Israel occupying South Lebanon, why didn't it cease to exist after Israel fully withdrew in 2000?
In fact, why did it spend the next two decades massively ramping up its weapons and very openly expanding its charter to include the destruction of all of Israel, not just sovereignty over Lebanon?
Another outburst from Trump what will it take for Europe too just cut ties with the US while he's president?
The bloke's on the edge, all's not gone to plan, not even in his ****ed up head, he's bitten off far more than he can chew and now is using Europe to try and save face to his equally deluded followers. We'll never cut ties as it comes down to finances, they import from us far more than they export to us and thats the only ace he holds.
Another staged botched up assassination attempt coming his way to help get his rating back up, the yanks love that kind of thing.
Exactly, I just think we need to start standing up to the motor mouth. Trump saying now if we want aviation fuel, the UK need to go and just take it, be prepared to fight.
I said in a post a few days ago he's trying to **** up us and some of the EU nations, none of this impacts the Americans once they pull out.
If Iran has any sense it will be prepped and ready to blow Kharg island to bits if the Americans should try and land on it. Someone needs to stand up to this **** and tell him straight.
Trump certainly has a beef with us, but for how long are we going to keep allowing him to get away with this stuff, send over an SAS team and put a bullet in his head. Where the **** is Comm when we need him.
Leaders need to start responding and call him what he is, start laughing at him and making jokes at his outbursts.