Escalation

Iran has fired more than a dozen rockets at two Iraqi military bases hosting US troops, the Pentagon confirmed.

The rockets fired at the Ain al-Asad base in Anbar province and a base in Erbil early on Wednesday came amid escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran following the US killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq last week.

[...]

No casualties have been officially confirmed so far.

In a speech in Tehran after the attack, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: "The corrupt presence of the US in the region should come to an end", calling the missile attack a "slap in the face" of the US.

Trump said "all is good" on Twitter hours after the attacks. He said would make a statement on Wednesday morning.

[...]

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi received a verbal message from Iran informing him its retaliation to the US killing of Soleimani was either imminent or under way, his spokesman said in a statement.

Tehran told Abdul Mahdi it would only target locations where US forces were present but did not specify the locations, his spokesman said.

[...]

Iran-backed Iraqi militia commander Qais al-Khazali said that Iran had made its initial response for the US killing its top general, and it was now time for Iraq to do so as well.

Iraq's response will not be lesser than that of Iran's tweeted Khazaili, who leads the Asaib Ahl al-Haq group which the US has designated a terrorist organisation.

[...]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhahu warned that his country would strike back hard against anyone who attacked it, as he reiterated his support for the US killing of Soleimani.

"Whoever tries to attack us will be dealt the strongest blow," Netanyahu said in Jerusalem.

  alJazeera

Nobody is threatening to attack Israel.*

Jesus Christ.  I mean, Jesus Christ!

A passenger plane bound for the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, has crashed a few minutes after taking off from Tehran’s main international airport, killing 176 people.

Iran’s Red Crescent said there was no chance of finding survivors, and Pir Hossein Kulivand, an Iranian emergency official, later told state TV all those onboard were killed in the crash.

Victims of the crash included 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Germans and three Britons, according to Ukraine’s foreign minister, Vadym Prystaiko. Most of the passengers were en route to Kyiv, transiting through there to other destinations.

[...]

Iranian officials said the plane’s engine had caught fire, causing the pilot to lose control. A statement initially posted on the website of the Ukrainian embassy in Iran ruled out an act of terror and said the crash had been caused by an engine malfunction. However, this was later redacted, with the embassy stating that all information would be provided by an official commission.

[...]

The news has fuelled speculation that there was something suspicious about the downing of the plane, with one theory doing the rounds on social media that Iran could have mistaken the plane for an incoming US military aircraft.

[...]

The 737-800 belongs to the same family as, but is different to, the 737 Max 8 aircraft, which has been grounded since two fatal crashes occurred within six months in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018. The 737-800 operates with a different software system to the one implicated in the Max 8 crashes.

  Guardian

At this juncture in our relations with Iran, I don't mind throwing out another possibility: Boeing installs the software system. Boeing is a US government contractor. There were two recent suspicious cyber attacks on US government agency computer systems (or one attack and one malfunction if you're inclined to be the US government). Trump, who has advocated for bringing back torture - "a hell of a lot worse" than before - and for killing the families of terrorists, is constantly crowing that if we get attacked, we (meaning he) will "punch back" harder. Trump is now in a feud with both Iran and Ukraine. You see where I'm going.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who cut short a visit to Oman following the crash, ordered an investigation and a sweeping check of “all civilian aircraft” in the country.

“Our task is to establish the cause of the crash of the Boeing and provide all necessary help to the families of the victims,” Dmytro Razumkov, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, said in a statement on Facebook.

You want to know how crazy your president is? After tweeting that "we" had identified 52 Iranian targets, including cultural sites, in honor of the 52 American hostages decades ago, and then doubling down on that threat, adding that some attacks might be "perhaps in a disproportionate manner," he had this to say when confronted by reporters yesterday with the fact that either of those things would be a war crime:

"You know what, if that's what the law is, I like to obey the law. But think of it: They kill our people, they blow up our people and then we have to be very gentle with their cultural institutions. But I'm OK with it. It's OK [with] me," he said.

"I will say this: if Iran does anything that they shouldn't be doing, they're going to be suffering the consequences and very strongly," he added.

  alJazeera

"If that's what the law is." First of all, we know for a fact he doesn't "like to obey the law." He breaks it at every possible opportunity, and has been doing so all his adult life. And secondly, did no one in the "we" who identified those 52 sites know that attacking cultural sites is against the law? Or was that the "we" in his head that so often appear in his rants?

According to Ilias Bantekas, professor of law at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Doha, the tweet in which Trump threatens to act "disproportionately" is in itself a violation of Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter which states that all members of the UN shall "refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state".

[...]

Kevin Jon Heller agreed, saying that while there would be "nothing inherently wrong for Trump to say - in his own unique way - that the US would defend itself against an armed attack," the fact that he threatened disproportionate force "is in violation of Article 2(4)" of the UN charter.

But Charles Blanchard, a partner at Arnold Porter law firm and a former general counsel in the US Army, disagreed.

The tweet "contains enough wiggle room which makes it hard to figure out what President Trump means."

  alJazeera

Fucking bullshit. Trump backers will defend him no matter how many laws he breaks.

Some experts point out that Trump himself said his tweets serve as notification to Congress of military actions he would take should Iran target US citizens or assets. "Since Trump himself states that his tweet is good enough to be considered a formal declaration to Congress, his tweet can be considered a formal declaration of intent," said Sarah Kay, a UK-based human rights lawyer and expert on counterterrorism.

Bantekas added that [...] "state practice had traditionally been expressed through official acts and statements, not private acts of state actors. A tweet is a private action, but when used by a president to effectively threaten armed force, it transformed into a state act."

War hawks and liars every one.

WTF?  It IS a war crime. It's prohibited by international law. Unless the war you're waging is within your own country, you don't get to decide what is or is not a war crime by yourself - and even then, expect some international blowback if you bomb your own cultural sites.

Know your history.

Well, there you go.  Exactly what he was going for by killing General Soleimani.

*Sorry.  Now they are.  As a further possibility if the US responds again with another attack.