From MoA:

NYT: “On Friday night, the Pentagon confirmed the presence of a second surveillance aircraft, a Navy P-8A Poseidon, which officials said took photographs of the drone being shot down. But a senior Trump administration official said there was concern inside the United States government about whether the drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, or even the P-8A manned aircraft flown by a military aircrew, actually did violate Iranian airspace at some point. The official said the doubt was one of the reasons Mr. Trump called off the strike…”

“The delay by United States Central Command in publicly releasing GPS coordinates of the drone when it was shot down — hours after Iran did — and errors in the labeling of the drone’s flight path when the imagery was released, contributed to that doubt, officials said.”

From the comments:

The devastating impact of American sanctions is everywhere in Tehran: The stores are often empty; the restaurants, mostly deserted. On the adjacent Hafez Avenue, a deafening silence pervades the shopping complex specializing in selling mobile phones…

Iran has seen and knows what sanctions can do over time and recognizes that it has to fight against them early and by all possible means…

The U.S. has shown that it is, as the Russians say, ‘non-agreement-capable’…

Trump: “There was a plane with 38 people yesterday, did you see that? I think that’s a big story. They had it in their sights and they didn’t shoot it down. I think they were very wise not to do that. And we appreciate that they didn’t do that. I think that was a very wise decision…”

The JCPOA was an agreement with a party of one – Obama. That is not how the U.S. government functions on such a huge policy deal…

The U.S. summit in Israel w/Russia this week, that was announced nearly a month ago, has everything to do with the Palestinian plan the Trump administration is lobbying on…

The P-8 and naval drones often patrol together in pairs. I assume to enhance synthetic aperture radar…

Don’t forget that Trump ordered the murder of people in Syria for entertainment whenever you make the error of thinking Trump is anything other than a sociopathic conman…

I really don’t get why Iran would need to pressure the US at the risk of a war. Sure, the economy takes a hit as measured by discredited GDP, but Iran creates its own money and has low foreign debt. The elites might suffer but Iran is well positioned to take care of its population even with sanctions…

Khamenei–

. . .Therefore, negotiation is essentially wrong. Negotiating with a decent person [from the other side] is wrong, let along these people who are not decent. Negotiating with people who break their promises, who go back on their commitments and who are not committed to anything – they are not committed to morality, to legality, to international conventions and to anything – is ridiculous.

Therefore, the definite option for the Iranian nation is resistance in the face of the US. In this confrontation and resistance, he will be forced to retreat. And when speaking of resistance, resistance does not mean a military confrontation. When some people bring up the issue of war in the press, in cyberspace and the like, this is nonsensical. No war is going to be waged. By Allah’s favor, no war will be waged. We are not after a war, nor is it to their advantage to pursue a war. They know that it is not to their advantage.” http://english.khamenei.ir/…/There-will-be-no…

Just a reminder that the JCPOA “agreement” that Iran thought it had was always on tenterhooks because under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), the president must issue a certification to Congress every 90 days that is tied to Iran’s performance under the JCPOA. Voila, Trump didn’t certify (after doing so several times) and the international “agreement” was a dead duck…

From 2017: “The Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed, during his recent meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow, that the main ally of Russian in Syria and the entire Middle East will remain Iran, rejecting the Zionist leader’s threats against the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah, Zionist media outlets quoted the Russian newspaper Pravda…” 

Trump himself said a war with Iran is unpopular when he told his Orlando rally Thursday that great nations don’t fight “endless wars,” and he was removing troops and putting “America first.”” https://mondoweiss.net/2019/06/trumps-climbdown-defeat/

The most valuable lesson that the Iranians drew from the Iraq/Iran War was that relying on foreign military equipment is pointless unless you have the ability to maintain that equipment in-house.

Iraq didn’t learn that lesson, so they were unprepared for the Western embargo that followed the Kuwait War – Sadaam’s army simply turned to rust on him to the point where 2003 wasn’t even a fight.

Iran won’t let that happen: their forces are equipped first and foremost with stuff they build themselves, while for the hi-tech stuff that they buy they insist on being able to make the spare parts themselves.

It makes their military sanction-proof in a way that Sadaam Hussein’s forces weren’t…

Having an impotent enemy like Iran serves the same purpose as North Korea. The Empire needs enemies to justify their presence in the region.

VietnamVet in the comments:

The global economy is on a knife edge with trillions of dollars of derivatives. Quantitative easing is restarting in Europe. The USA is in a trade war with China, has sanctioned dozens of countries including Russia, Syria and Venezuela, and blockaded Iran. The United Kingdom and the EU are splitting apart.

Persian Gulf Oil facilities and USA’s Middle Eastern bases are within range of thousands of Iranian missiles. Gasoline prices have risen in Eastern USA with one refinery fire in Philadelphia. If Saudi Arabia and UAE oil storage and shipping facilities go up in flames, the global economy will crash. The USA has stockpiled none of the tanks, weapons or munitions needed to invade. America does not have a proxy force like the Kurds in Syria, to seize the bombed-out Iranian cities. With no allies, 1 or 2 million American soldiers will be needed for the occupation. Yet, the Pentagon says 71% of young Americans are ineligible to serve. The children of the credentialled 10% who do have healthcare, education, clean records and good nutrition would be drafted.

If a shooting war breaks out, it will escalate. But for these reasons, a conventional war won’t be fought but will go nuclear.

PavewayIV in the comments:

First of all, I have only the smallest belief that it was one of our shiny new P-8As. I was wrong about a crew of 20 – three minutes of internet searching shows an 8- or 9-person crew. There are no passenger seats, just a couple of reclining seats at the back of the flight deck for the pilots to snooze. Iran knows this – no idea why they would publish a statement about 35 on board if they knew it was a P-8A. They know perfectly well how many people are (or should) be on one. Even the old P-3 couldn’t carry 35 people. There’s simply no room.

The P-8A is just a 737-800ERxx – *They* can also be controlled by satellite, but you’re not suppose to know that. GCC airlines are gong broke. How hard would it be to slap some navy flat grey paint and some fake antennas on a 737? There may not have been anyone on board that (or whatever was offered up). Removes all that moral ambiguity from Trump about killing U.S. military for the greater good of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Falls in Iranian waters. The B-52s would all ready be over Tehran to retaliate for the ‘dead sailors’ before Iran could recover enough wreckage to raise any suspicions.

The US DoD’s supposed drone-watching P-8A IR surveilance video (at least yesterday) showed the target’s (the Triton’s) bearing of 277° if I’m reading the display right. Which is probably fake – who knows. But that bearing would have put the P-8A further EAST of the drone and even further into Iranian airspace, looking WEST (at 270°). I’m not sure why the DoD would even release that. Sloppy? I don’t know.

I’m already suspicious of the Navy’s involvement. If this was a botched baiting/false flag, then Israel would want the treasonous top Navy commanders/CIA spooks handling it – they know how to keep secrets and silence whistleblowers. That’s no slam on the U.S. Navy in general. No line officers or sailors would have any idea what’s going on. This would be Pentagon/Fifth Fleet chair polishers and their cronies.

The message is clear at this point: Israel and the GCC need dead U.S. military to get their war started. CENTCOM blew it (or the Iranians figured it out). Both Israel and the Saudis remained silent for a day or so, then started beating the war drums again. There will be aluminum coffins coming back to the states to start the war with Iran, and cowardly US military commanders will let it happen.

From the comments:

In 2013 Ali Khamenei said: “Certainly, we are pessimistic about the Americans. We do not trust them. We consider the government of the United States of America as an unreliable, arrogant, illogical, and trespassing government, which is badly possessed and dominated by the international Zionist network.

From Pepe Escobar:

Exports, which before illegal US sanctions and de facto blockade would normally reach 2.5 million barrels a day, now may be down to only 400,000…

The whole northern border of the Persian Gulf, on Iranian territory, is lined up with anti-ship missiles – as I confirmed with IRGC-related sources…

The extent of a possible derivatives crisis is an uber-taboo theme for the Washington consensus institutions. According to one of my American banking sources, the most accurate figure – $1.2 quadrillion – comes from a Swiss banker, off the record. He should know; the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) – the central bank of central banks – is in Basle…

Huge amounts are interest rate derivatives. Most are notional but if oil goes to a thousand dollars a barrel, then this will affect interest rates if 45% of the world’s GDP is oil. This is what is called in business a contingent liability…

Goldman Sachs has projected a feasible, possible $1,000 a barrel a few weeks after the Strait of Hormuz being shut down. This figure, times 100 million barrels of oil produced per day, leads us to 45% of the $80 trillion global GDP. It’s self-evident the world economy would collapse based on just that alone…

Hezbollah’s secretary-general Hasan Nasrallah has been stressing in his speeches, “war on Iran will not remain within that country’s borders, rather it will mean that the entire [Middle East] region will be set ablaze. All of the American forces and interests in the region will be wiped out, and with them the conspirators, first among them Israel and the Saudi ruling family.”

Leaked Audio Shows Saudi-MKO Collusion over Tanker Attacks

The MKO which has assassinated over 17,000 Iranians receives support from the US and its allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia.

The MKO which is said to be a cult which turns humans into obedient robots, turned against Iran after the 1979 Revolution and has carried out several terrorist attacks killing senior officials in Iran; yet the West which says cultism is wrong and claims to be against terrorism, supports this terrorist group officially.