Iran lawmakers raise missile spending amid 'Death to America' chant

Chanting "Death to America," Iran's parliament voted unanimously today to increase spending on its ballistic missile program and the foreign operations of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, part of a sanctions bill mirroring a new U.S. Law targeting the country.

While offering hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding, the lawmakers' bill offered a tactic as old as the slogan shouted since the 1979 Islamic Revolution - using America's own tactics against it.

The vote salves public anger in Iran over US President Donald Trump's constant threats to renegotiate or abandon the nuclear deal struck by world powers under his predecessor.

While lawmakers stressed the bill wouldn't violate that agreement, it ensures those both home and abroad know Iran will continue confronting America either in the Persian Gulf or legislatively, analysts say.

"They want to show that the pressure that the US is exerting on Iran, they can respond with similar measures," said Adnan Tabatabai, an Iran analyst based in Germany who is the CEO of the Centre for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient. "It's not that important that those measures may not hurt the US in the same way. ... They want to show they are not just standing still and watching this happening."
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The mask is off: US President Donald Trump is seeking war with Iran

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Something extraordinary has happened in Washington. President Donald Trump has made it clear, in no uncertain terms and with no effort to disguise his duplicity, that he will claim that Tehran is cheating on the nuclear deal by October — the facts be damned.

In short, the fix is in. Trump will refuse to accept that Iran is in compliance with the international pact and thereby set the stage for a military confrontation. His advisers have even been kind enough to explain how they will go about this. Rarely has a sinister plan to destroy an arms control agreement and pave the way for war been so openly telegraphed.

The unmasking of Trump’s plans to sabotage the nuclear deal began a few weeks ago when he reluctantly had to certify that Iran indeed was in compliance with its end of the deal. Both the US intelligence as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency had confirmed Tehran’s fair play. But Trump threw a tantrum in the Oval Office and berated his national security team for not having found a way to claim Iran was cheating.

According to Foreign Policy, the adults in the room — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and National Security Adviser H R McMaster — eventually calmed Trump down, but only on the condition that they double down on finding a way for the president to blow up the deal by October.
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