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So this idea that UAE is paying massive bribes to escape Iranian attacks is flatly not true, or at least not verified in anything you have shown here.
The argument here is that Iran can still produce a nuclear weapon because the unfinished nuclear material is sitting buried underneath the rubble American bombs entombed it in.
This is a silly precis. If the Iranians dig up those tunnels, we can bomb them again. They are at our mercy. "He might have broken my arm, but he didn't really hurt me at all because bones heal."
Traffic is still passing Bab al-Mandab, although at reduced levels because of the threats. We will see what the US does.
"random strikes"
The Iraqi government is disarming Iranian-backed militias in its territory in concert with Saudi and American forces. What is "random" about that? Do I need to explain why this implies that Iran's influence is shrinking, not growing?
Your position is that Iran's ability to wage war doesn't depend on its economy?
What are we even doing here?
The article says that we don’t know whether the 10-20bil were frozen assets: “Reuters could not establish whether the funds earmarked for the transfers belong to the UAE or originate in long-blocked Iranian accounts in the UAE banking system”. Actually, there’s no confirmation afaik that the UAE ever froze Iranian assets during the war. There are some articles claiming they were exploring this, but they never actually announced or confirmed that they had done this. You would expect that there would be some journalistic confirmation floating around if UAE actually froze 10-20bil in Iranian assets. This is probably why Reuters mentions “long-blocked Iranian accounts”, because the funds could be coming from accounts blocked years ago (assets were frozen in 2010, 2018, 2019), whereas recent blocks would not be called long-blocked (not by Reuters).
Reuters is a serious organization; the UAE is an absolute monarchy trying not to have their industry destroyed or lose their American partner. If there are four sources telling Reuters about this, I would trust them. I wouldn’t trust what UAE says, because they have every reason to lie about this.
It’s more verified than it is unverified, if you trust Reuters more than an absolute monarch in a precarious geopolitical situation.
I’m not the expert on their missile cities so I’m deferring to the Intel guys on this. How would we know? It would require a pretty serious understanding of how their tunnels work. I would assume that they could tunnel underground to the tunnel, to take the uranium, which would be out of our sight. But of course it’s definitely more complicated than that.
Because the disarmament push is the follow-up of a 2024 decision, it has a September 30th deadline and there are a number of articles speculating that the Iraqi government will not succeed in disarming the major Iran-backed groups. It’s possible that we get a situation where America leaves Iraq entirely and the Iran-backed groups stay.
How are you going to rely on Reuters to prove your argument if they themselves don’t have the proof? You said UAE paid a $10 Billion dollar bribe and now have to admit even Reuters doesn’t know that for sure.
The likeliest explanation is the one I supplied: this two-month-old story was part of the negotiations over the MOU, which means Iran never got that money back because the deal fell through. That would also explain why there’s no follow-up reporting anything close to what you alleged: it never happened.
Please look into “Deep Sensing” technology, also called “Ground Penetrating Radar”. For example:
https://clu-in.org/characterization/technologies/default2.focus/sec/Geophysical_Methods/cat/Ground_Penetrating_Radar/
I think one difference that surfaces in these discussions over and over again is our different priors about military technology. My sense is that the public thinks of satellites like giant cameras in space, and so they ascribe to satellites all the limitations that cameras have. I believe this understanding is 30-50 years out of date.
I think a lot of people are interpreting the American military’s posture as empty bluster because they don’t realize how good the tech is. Thousands of satellites in space, a few dozen sites that need monitoring. Iran is not invisible to us.
The MOU was drafted on the 14th and signed on the 17th, but the Reuters article was published on the 12th and the $3bil was already transferred prior to the publication of the article. Reuters’ proof is four sources familiar with the matter, and it would be pretty weird for them to make up this story wholecloth. Also, since my last comment, another UAE ship was struck near the Omani coast, bringing the the count to four ships from the UAE struck this week.
Yes, the fact that the MOU was adapted on the 14th means that this was happening in the period of negotiations leading up to the MOU.
Furthermore, Iranian drones targeting UAE ships is evidence against UAE paying a massive bribe.
“Four sources familiar with the matter” is like a bad parody of a source, because it could mean anything. But if we want to take it seriously: the story still doesn’t prove anything close to what you are suggesting.
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