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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   35710 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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HAPPENING NOW: ISRAEL LAUNCHES MASSIVE ATTACK AGAINST IRANESE NUCLEAR FACILITIES—AIR RAID SIRENS HEARD ALL ACROSS ISRAEL—MASSIVE AIR ACTIVITY OVER IRAQ-SYRIA BORDER—MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS CONFIRMED IN TEHRAN INCLUDING COLLAPSED BUILDING—IRANIAN FIGHTER JETS SEEN TAKING OFF FROM AIRSTRIPS NEAR TEHRAN—BALLISTIC MISSILE LAUNCHES REPORTED IN IRAN—REPORTS OF EXPLOSIONS AT US BASES IN IRAQ—MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS HEARD NEAR IRAN’S NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY—VIDEO FOOTAGE SHOWING NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY BURNING—UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT THE CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE IRANIAN MILITARY HAS BEEN KILLED IN A TARGETED STRIKE

—Inb4 source

—Inb4 “low effort post ban” Additional facts and my thoughts will be added as the situation develops

Our greatest ally is now putting American lives in danger by publishing that America was complicit in the attack

Trump's truth social posts suggest otherwise.

Wouldn't be surprised if it's the other way around. Trump encourages Netanyahu to go for the attack. The hawks in Israel have been aching to go at it for the last decade. Not only would the US have to complicit, it would need to have given an explicit go ahead.

I'm surprised that the Islamic Republic of Iran has stood for as long as it has. The urban areas don't want the conservatism. Khamenei is at death's door. Succession is unclear. Economy has been doing worse YOY and elite human capital leaves the country on first opportunity.

I know the Persians are a civilized people, so they may not resort to brute force violence. But, 30 years of stability under a continuously deteriorating economy is unheard of.

This is the same question I have: how many sustained humiliations can a government endure and still maintain a sufficient level of popular support? Like you can only blame the perfidy of the Great Satan for so long before the buck eventually stops with you. I’m seeing that Fox News apparently reported that the Israelis managed to dupe the entire leadership of Iran’s air force into a fake meeting before taking them all out. If this sort of thing happened to the American military, I have no idea how the government could continue to stand.

Is the fear of what regime collapse would mean for the country so pervasive that the Persian people will continue to tolerate the status quo? Perhaps I’m just a naïve American, wildly overestimating how much power the people of Iran have to effect a regime change even if they wanted to. Are the traumatic memories of life under the Shah, fifty years ago, really still so fresh that the Iranian people will continue to roll the dice on the Ayatollahs?

Fox News apparently reported that the Israelis managed to dupe the entire leadership of Iran’s air force into a fake meeting before taking them all out

And is this actually true, or is it made up or heavily exaggerated? Fox News is not known for its even-handedness and scrupulous journalistic integrity regarding Israel and Iran.

The start of a major conflict is a breeding ground for misinformation.

The minimum viable level of public support for an autocratic regime willing to take the gloves all the way off is above 0%, but it's probably below 20%, and Iran has enough bribes to go around/genuine believers to keep that minimum percentage for long enough that the current leadership class will die of old age before it rots. Remember ~nobody relevant believed in Communism in the USSR in the eighties either, but a few leaders had to drink themselves to death(and these are fanatical Islamic clerics, so they'll live longer than severe alcoholics) before someone was willing to back down on the project.

Remember ~nobody relevant believed in Communism in the USSR in the eighties either

Interestingly, I've read recently that this common perception was actually the opposite of the truth -- the rabble and many of the mid and low level bureaucrats (i.e. people who were not fully insulated from the real world) no longer believed, but the relevant people in the upper echelons of power still mostly believed, and some quite fervently. Gorby himself did not plan to abandon Communism, he just wanted to release enough pressure to right the ship.

I’d long heard that Kruschev was the last true believer; there might obviously be true believers in important positions after that, but not necessarily in the top spots.

I had also heard that and believed it, but recently I heard a different story. I wish I could remember the source. I want to say it was Substack essay from about 1-2 years ago. I'll see if I can find it.

What makes you think the alternative people reach for is going to be surrender?

What country has responded to urban aerial bombings with surrender? Maybe Japan but that was, you know, and also their armies had been thoroughly trounced at that point. In nearly every case I'm aware of it has stiffened the resolve of the populace and strengthened hardliners.

As long as Israel and their western support bloc shows absolutely no love or friendship for the Persian people, they're not going to throw the Ayatollah out and replace him with western moderates, they'll replace him with a hopefully more competent Ayatollah.

What country has responded to urban aerial bombings with surrender?

The Serbs during the Yugoslav wars come to mind.

As long as Israel and their western support bloc shows absolutely no love or friendship for the Persian people, they're not going to throw the Ayatollah out and replace him with western moderates, they'll replace him with a hopefully more competent Ayatollah.

Possibly, yes, although it’s far from clear to me that a more competent Ayatollah is on offer. Furthermore, I don’t interpret the U.S.’s or Israel’s enmity toward Iran as an expression of enmity toward “the Persian people”; it’s pretty obviously the Islamist revolutionary government that is the issue here. Neither Israel nor the United States have resorted to significant bombing of civilian urban infrastructure within Iran, so far as I am aware. All of the Israeli strikes I’m familiar with have been extremely targeted at Iranian regime leadership, which is in marked contrast to the more indiscriminate bombing campaigns against the Gazans by Israel, or of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States.

As long as Israel and their western support bloc shows absolutely no love or friendship for the Persian people, they're not going to throw the Ayatollah out and replace him with western moderates, they'll replace him with a hopefully more competent Ayatollah.

They follow Islam. They're not going to throw the Ayatollah out unless he's too liberal for them, which isn't going to happen. Islamic people like Islamic government, the stricter the better.

It’s routine for the somewhat secular elites in those countries fight low-level civil wars against islamists, or at least for the batshit islamists to terrorize the "moderate" islamists. The house of islam has always been the house of war.

It's the batshit Islamists who have the populace behind them, even if the elites are more moderate.

In Iran? The elites over there are genuinely much more religious than the populace.

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How do you square this with the existence of moderate, Western-aligned or neutral Muslim states like Jordan, the U.A.E., Bosnia, and Indonesia?

Jordan and the UAE are monarchies (like the Saudis), so they don't necessarily align to the preferences of the people. I expect Bosnia and Indonesia just haven't reached bottom yet.

Bosnia is just a bunch of Croats and Serbs who converted to avoid taxes. Demographics matter too. Iranians are quite distinct from Arabs as well. Highest IQ people in ME bar the Askenazi ofc.

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I have no idea how the government could continue to stand

The current Israeli government continues to stand despite having apparently missed the invasion force massed on its borders.

If this sort of thing happened to the American military, I have no idea how the government could continue to stand.

Reminds me of claims American Public would never stand for American soldiers being filmed as drones drop grenades on them. I don't believe that for a second, I think you people have about as much capacity as anyone else to forget previous standards. Organically, and when being whipped.

We have managed to lose three wars in living memory and none of the politicians involved suffered electoral consequences.

Do you remember the 2006 and 2008 elections? Republicans lost 14 senate seats and 52 house seats, plus the presidency. While there were certainly other issues bogging down the Republicans, their steadfastness in a losing war was the big issue.

Yes, and when Obama was elected he kept Dubya's SecDef along with most of his top generals, and after Obama we had two straight Dem nominees who voted for the Iraq war in the Senate. We did not see politicians who supported the war suffer consequences en masse.

Are the traumatic memories of life under the Shah, fifty years ago, really still so fresh that the Iranian people will continue to roll the dice on the Ayatollahs?

No, but Islam is that powerful.

I know the Persians are a civilized people, so they may not resort to brute force violence.

LOL. You know, the storming of the US embassy and the ensuing hostage crisis is in fact within living memory.

I mean, is that an example of “brute force violence”? If those American hostages had been captured by, say, ISIS, we would have seen high-definition videos of them being decapitated, set on fire, etc. Instead, the Iranians released all of the hostages unharmed. The only casualties from the entire incident were caused by the American military’s own incompetence in Operation Eagle Claw. (Obviously if Kenneth Kraus had been killed instead of injured and subsequently released, the story would be different, if only slightly.)

This appears to be a private Israeli news organization, not the Israeli government. It's pure speculation anyway.

It’s reported that the IDF is claiming they are coordinating its actions with America

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-expects-operation-against-iran-to-last-for-several-days/

putting American lives in danger by publishing

You are making that sound like a bad thing. If it is truthful reporting (and your verb "to publish" seems to indicate that you were not contesting that), then it is a good thing, not a bad thing.

I will grant you that there are some things which are net negative when published. For example, knowing what the nuclear launch codes are will not contribute to the readers having a more accurate map of the territory. Likewise, knowing which fetishes some celebrity is into will normally not update the world view of the readers to be worth the damage to the privacy.

Your sentence is really analogous to "When the teacher reported the dad who was fucking his kid to the police, she destroyed a happy family."

Our greatest ally

You sardonic phrasing makes it look like Israel and its inhabitants are pursuing a singular purpose. Please consider the possibility that not every Jew everywhere is following the master plan of the Elders of Zion all day long. If Bibi had published a press release where he praised the Americans for their support, that would indeed be a faux pas. But the utility function of reporters is different from the utility function of governments, both in Israel and elsewhere, for very good reasons.

It does not appear to be truthful reporting. American officials took the unusual step of announcing on several occasions that America is not on board with the attack. The IDF is telling reporters that they are coordinating with America. Unless the journalist is lying about what the IDF stated to them: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-expects-operation-against-iran-to-last-for-several-days/

Please consider the possibility that not every Jew everywhere is following the master plan of the Elders of Zion all day long

The “you’ve said something about Israel? — how dare you criticize every Jew in the world, I can’t believe you just quoted the elders of Zion!” that you see by the Israel crowd hasn’t been persuasive to normal people for many years, and has been used for decades. At this point it just signals your support for Israel. It is more dignified to just post the 🇮🇱 emoji.

At this point it just signals your support for Israel.

I should clarify that I support Israels right to exist (just like I support Belgium's right to exist), but am very much not a supporter of the current Israeli government. Apart from Iran, Netanyahu was the biggest ally Hamas had before Oct-7. His strategy of "let us support the religious nutjobs who definitely want to murder all Jews so that the Palestinian cause will be divided" backfired spectacularly. I am totally bewildered by the fact that the Israeli people are still suffering him to lead them.

Now, Hamas did try very hard to convince the world that they need to be wiped from the face of the Earth, and they certainly convinced me of that. If a few thousand Gazan civilians died in the process of wiping Hamas out, that would be sad, but I would not be very upset by it, as a German I understand that sometimes you will be accidentally killed in a bomb blast simply because your parent's generation voted for murderous nutjobs. My problem with the IDF is that from what I can see, that they are just dicking around, going in and out of Gaza, rescuing a hostage here, shooting one there, dropping a bomb on a refugee camp whenever the most senior not-yet-assassinated Hamas leader is there, or starving another thousand out of which exactly zero will be Hamas fighters. Unlike many, I do not think that the IDF is trying to genocide the Gazans out of existence, they know all too well how effective genocides work and this ain't it. But fuck if I know what they think their theory of victory is. "We just have to kill a few more Hamas fighters before their resistance will finally collapse!"? GWB's invasion of Afghanistan seems positively sane by comparison -- at least he had some plan to win the Afghan's hearts and minds through something other than morale bombing. Needlessly to say, if the point of the IDF operations in Gaza is to make the IDF feel less bad about their colossal failure on Oct-7, I am a lot less willing to cut them slack wrt civilian casualties.

Tbf to Israel they do seem to be arming and feeding and propping up some kind of Quisling tribal coalition that might evolve into a new Gaza government. But if that's the plan it's a ways away.

At this point it just signals your support for Israel. It is more dignified to just post the 🇮🇱 emoji.

Dude, you and your fellow Jew-posters turn everything into a story about Da Joos, ask anyone who questions you as to their Jewish affiliations, and are quick to post the most thinly-sourced claims about Jewish direction as proven fact while sneeringly dismissing anything contrary to that narrative no matter how well reasoned or documented.

Look in a mirror. You are the very reverse image of the pro-Israel partisan who deflects every criticism of Israel with bad faith accusations of anti-semitism. (An accusation that, frankly, seems less often bad faith than merely overly broad nowadays.)

Someone whose posts are full of thinly-veiled 1488 content is not in a position to snarkily comment on other people's lack of dignity and imply they are just 🇮🇱 wavers.

It does not appear to be truthful reporting. American officials took the unusual step of announcing on several occasions that America is not on board with the attack. The IDF is telling reporters that they are coordinating with America.

I think the only coherent reading of both claims is something like "Israel told the US ('coordinating with') they were going to do it, and US forces didn't take part in or recommended against ('not on board with') the actual action".

you’ve said something about Israel? — how dare you criticize every Jew in the world

No, your post had the opposite problem: you were criticizing a random Jew and acting as if that said something about Israel.

Channel 12 and two separate journalists reporting what the IDF told them makes it more probable that the IDF told them something than that these three journalists are lying

Anyone who doesn’t think this was clearly telegraphed is kidding themselves. The US pulling troops’ and diplomats’ families out of the region in recent days is about as clear a signal as you can give. The only developments in the conflict in recent years that appear to have been surprising were October 7th (which the IRGC seemingly didn’t even know about, at least not comprehensively), the Israeli surprise attack on Hezbollah (which was semi-expected, albeit not the exact format) and the Soleimani assassination. To some extent you can include Assad’s collapse, although all factions were surprised by that except for Turkey, which organized it.

Anyone who doesn’t think this was clearly telegraphed is kidding themselves.

So clearly telegraphed that Iran failed to notice anything and kept their VIPs in high-rises instead of bunkers?

Israel killed them in the bunkers.

Paywalled, but I believe you. Guess my 3 minutes of flipping through headlines this morning did not give me a complete picture of the events.

So clearly telegraphed that Iran failed to notice anything and kept their VIPs in high-rises instead of bunkers?

So clearly telegraphed it was on X and wire services (which is as close to an actual telegraph as you're going to get today, considering the etymology). If Iran wasn't paying attention, that's on them.

You only hear about the VIPs who got killed, too. There were warnings about Soleimani going to Baghdad but he still did it, a lot of senior clerics and IRGC are true believers in a kind of divine providence, a consequence of the elaborate ideological structure and testing Khomeini devised for the clergy and IRGC and wider IRP (which, though it was later dissolved, was the progenitor of countless subsequent organizations and currents) to prevent a successful counterrevolution by the large, secularized Iranian middle class and left. It’s quite possible they actually believe that what happens is God’s will and they’ll be protected if He wills it or something. In addition, it’s quite unconfident of a state to send everyone to the bunker every time Israel seems likely to attack, plus it affects government efficiency a great deal if the leaders are shuttling to and from bunkers.

Israel also doesn’t typically target Iran’s actual leaders in the clergy.

Are you willing to post a deep dive on how Iran actually works?

Revolutionary Iran by Axworthy only covers to 2012 but is probably the best introduction (meant only loosely, it’s relatively comprehensive unless you’re fascinated by a particular area of the Iranian state) to modern post-revolutionary Iranian history and the ideology of the revolutionaries before and in government. It shows quite meticulously how Khomeini strategically and patiently exploited just about every single cultural, class, political and ethnic division in Iranian politics to grant himself a level of absolute power rare even in the most autocratic traditional Islamic societies and then set about building an elaborate political operation and pipeline that sidelined even many of his own allied clerics (including many hardline Islamists) to ensure that the state he created would be extremely difficult to dismantle from within, even though he knew it would always be unpopular with Iran’s large, secular, urban PMC and wider middle class.

China is the largest trading partner to most countries in the middle east. They managed to do this and have large numbers of Chinese people working in the middle east by not wasting trillions enraging the middle east by bombing them. Israel supported jihadists in Syria, Europe got culturally enriched and the same terror groups attacked Europe.

The best thing the US could do to strengthen its position in the middle east would be to pull out all troops.

And Iran is not at war with China, so China can do this.

If Iran wants Israel to stop, they can negotiate peace.

No one is foolish enough these days to negotiate peace with the west. Every country knows it is just a pretext for the west to wait until it has a better position to destroy you.

Meh. Iran choose to have economy comparable in size to Denmark themselves. If they had done the sensible thing - chase growth they would be on par or even surpass Turkey by now. The west has no need to destroy them, their stupidity is enough.

Iran and Russia have pretensions to negotiate with the West as if they were equals, but they don’t have the cards. Even as a lifelong western stan, I’m still amazed at how easily the highly reputed armies of anti-western powers crumble. The quick and absolute dismantling of Saddam’s "top 5" army was one thing, against a superpower-backed coalition. But this is just a few western planes and drones taking out a big chunk of a regional power’s air defense, missile launches, leadership and nuclear sites in one go. It's another complete wipeout for a woke, decadent army versus the 'high asabiyah' hard men.

It's the price you pay for having an army of oprichniks. They are simply unsuited to fighting a peer force, and your regular army has no desire to fight for the regime that doesn't respect it.

Iran could dismantle the IRGC and let the army manage itself without overbearing ideological oversight, but this kind of perestroika would threaten the rule of the ayatollahs.

Only if you maintain your insubordinate and anti-American behaviors. Japan, for instance, has prospered quite well after negotiating for peace with America.

Someone named "Hadad" telling an American whose ancestors came here in the late 1600s to stop being insubordinate in order to prosper. It's like a perfect encapsulation of what is wrong with US politics. Fuentes massively vindicated by all this.

Amadan already handled this, but to clarify, 'you' is meant toward nations, not you as a person. And my name is definitely not actually Hadad.

Is your real name remzem? How do you know "Hadad" actually represents his ethnicity? Maybe it does, maybe not, but it's a thin pretext to start declaiming the purity of your bloodline. Stop making things personal.

Only if you maintain your insubordinate and anti-American behaviors

He made it personal first?

Maybe you should stop making it personal. Have a vendetta since I think your forum's rules are garbage and are strangling this place into irrelevancy. Never liked you on the old forum either before you made mod since all the regulars quit.

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Iran has no reason to hate China. The US and Israel has been warmongering in the region for decades and created completely unnecessary conflicts. The US could very will have had amicable relations with Iran. Instead they had warmongering and aggressive policies that have made the relation hard to fix.

Iran negotiated a deal with the US that the US then broke. The US invaded Iraq twice and Afghanistan. The US has a long history of bombing the middle east, assassinating people and destroying countries. The Iranians have every reason to be skeptical.

The US could very will have had amicable relations with Iran. Instead they had warmongering and aggressive policies that have made the relation hard to fix.

Iran's hatred of the US is because we backed the Shah, and because of Iran's ongoing support for a global Islamic revolution (sometimes people forget that religious fanatics really do believe in their religion). Israel is an aggravating factor, but Iran, a Persian Shia nation, cares about Palestinian Arabs and Israel's other Sunni Arab neighbors getting fucked only inasmuch as it is leverage against the Great Satan, the West.

If the US dropped all support for Israel today, Iran would still hate us and would still be funding Islamic terrorism around the world. They don't just want us to stop "warmongering," they want us completely out of the Middle East so they can turn it into an Islamic state (under Iranian control). China, if they were left as sole hegemon in the region, would have to start contending with that, instead of being able to act indifferent towards Islam like they are right now.

To be fair at this point every US president for 25 years has openly had calls for regime change in Iran. It's not like they're holding some grudge from their grandfather, every living Iranian knows part of the American government wouldn't mind if they were dead.

Well, to also be fair, every Ayatollah since the Shah was overthrown has called for death to America, and we know that the Iranian government, by and large, is on board with this. The grudge certainly runs both ways, but Obama did make some half-assed attempts at normalization and look what that got us.

I kind of feel about Iran the same way I feel about Israel and Palestine - there is a lot of wrongdoing and doublespeak on both sides, but there is one side that really could have peace if they wanted it, but they clearly do not actually want it.

To be even more fair, there's been like two ayatollahs.

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Iran's ongoing support for a global Islamic revolution

On the flip side they fought against the Jihadists in Syria and helped Syria defend itself. We should be thankful for that. When Iraq was invaded they helped Iraqis fight for their independence. They have not sponsored the type of muslims that attack European Christmas markets. Those types of jihadists are backed by Israel.

Who even cares what Iran thinks of the west? They are in their part of the world and are willing to trade with the other parts of the world. The US and Israel has smashed other countries and supported jihadism. The US and Israel are against stable and reasonable states and wants to turn the middle east into a giant Afghanistan.

Not to mention the whole coup/Shah thing on behalf of oil interests.

On behalf of oil interests? Oh, you mean the part where Western nations invested in Iran to develop its oil infrastructure under a rev sharing deal that was considered mutually beneficial at the time only to then be seized by future socialists?

The who/what/why doesn't really matter at this point though.

The point is the USA backed a regime change, and the end result 70 years later is Iran is no longer controlled by that regime, and HATES the counties involved in establishing that regime.

So what do we think will happen if we try it again?

The US and Israel no longer want to do nation building and building friendly regimes. They are going for destruction. The new model is turning countries into Libya or Syria. Wrecked countries controlled by various competing militias. A disaster for the country, an eradication of the local Christians and a refugee crisis or Europe.

Yes - that. We can argue about the ethics of a country defending its citizens' property rights by couping foreign governments till the cows come home, but if we are considering the practical wisdom of doing so then "The 1953 Iranian coup had long-term negative consequences for the West which vastly outweigh the potential impact of an oil company being nationalised" is simply true and needs to be taken into account. In the world of international politics, a mistake is worse than a crime.

The West developed many nations in the way it did Iran. At some point you need to make it clear that stealing the West's investment in your nation has consequences.

The counterfactual world where we just let Iran get away with it and then emboldened socialists the world over to run on a platform of stealing Western investment is worse.

Iran is also not at war with the US, so the US could do that too, if it wanted.

In an iterated game, the result of choosing your policy based willingness to put your troops in danger is the increase number of actors who are willing to put your troops in danger.

The US participated in a massive campaign to lull Iran into thinking an attack was not going to happen immediately

I think that the campaign can't have been that massive, given that the US telegraphed the likelihood of something like this happening by starting to withdraw non-essential personnel from its Middle East embassies a few days ago.

Yeah, and it was pretty obvious given that you couldn't buy pizza near the pentagon

Rubio has denied American involvement. Not that we'd admit it even if we were involved.

https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1933328486669697508

Though it makes sense for Israel to claim otherwise. If Iran strikes US bases it will help them pull us into their war. On the off chance the neocons haven't already greenlit it.

I'll admit to not being overly familiar with the history of SoS press releases in response to Israeli actions..but this seems like a shift in tone from the Biden regime doesn't it? Rubio offers no praise of Israel, no solemn intonation of our close alliance, no love for our "closest middle eastern ally." It's not even entirely clear that Israel is among the "regional partners" they are in close contact with.

I'll admit to playing Fantasy Trump right now, but this is just about where I'd like the USA to be when something like this happened.

I think the US is trying to play good cop/bad cop here. Trump's pretty much gone out and said "Negotiate with us or deal with their wrath."

I think Trump is getting dog-walked by Netanyahu, reacting to events and trying to seem in control, while actually being in a reactive mode and failing to achieve any kind of leadership over his putative allies or the people he has a "great" relationship with.

Whether Trump knew about it in advance or not, I don't think he wanted Israel to do this.

His whole selling point on the foreign policy front was that world leaders would tremble at the mere thought of crossing Mad Man Trump.

If that's now shown as fantasy and Putin, Xi, Netanyahu etc. are ignoring him and doing whatever they want anyway, where does that leave things?

It's now just accepted conventional wisdom that Israel wants to drag the United States into a likely globally-destabilizing conflict on the basis of their insane, racial-supremacist Abrahamic cult-myths. We're totally done with bullshit platitudes about this being about oil or Spreading Democracy. Everybody knows now. We're done with the precepts. At this point there's nothing left to say, all of the predictions and analysis of the so-called Anti-Semitic Right is proven correct. It's just a matter of whose side you're on at this point.

#NoWarWithPersia.

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"What I believe" is not "Just accepted conventional wisdom."

Who is "we"?

You can argue these points. You cannot just assert them in an effort to claim rhetorical territory.

You get plenty of slack for your Joo-posting, but the rules against consensus building and rallying for a cause still apply.

This is a bad mod flag: SS in this case was pointing out the assumed consensus in the post he was replying to, which stated as conventional wisdom that Israel is trying to drag the USA into a war.

"Israel is trying to pull us into a war" is fine.

It's now just accepted conventional wisdom that Israel wants to drag the United States into a likely globally-destabilizing conflict on the basis of their insane, racial-supremacist Abrahamic cult-myths.

is not "conventional wisdom," it's an ideological argument. Which he wrapped with "We're totally done with bullshit platitudes about this being about oil or Spreading Democracy. Everybody knows now. We're done with the precepts. At this point there's nothing left to say, all of the predictions and analysis of the so-called Anti-Semitic Right is proven correct. It's just a matter of whose side you're on at this point."

That's the kind of "we" consensus-building and rallying we have always modded.

NoWarWithPersia

Kill all the Ayatollahs and remove this regime and then I agree with you.

Yeah the last time we did regime changes in Iran it had such great outcomes!!!

Yeah the last time we did regime changes in Iran it had such great outcomes!!!

The US never did regime change in Iran; the US supported the regime, and it lost.

1953 coup?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

...because regime change wars clearly worked out so great for us in the past...

That is the thing. You don't do regime change. You do regime removal and let the people sort it themselves.

The US and NATO helped engineer the removal of Muammar Gaddafi… how’s Libya doing today?

We haven't had Lockerbies in a while.

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Libya stabilized quite a few years ago (with 2 governments) although this week Haftar intervened in Sudan. Now, it's not great (HDI etc. lower than under Gaddafi) but

Which IMO leads to anarchy, semi-organised militia, and national / international terrorism. ISIS was 'the people sorting it out themselves'. So was the Taliban and so is al-Queda.

It's now just accepted conventional wisdom... Everybody knows now.

Define 'conventional wisdom' and 'everybody'.

The desire for another Iraq war fiasco is extremely low. More war mongering in the middle east, more refugees to Europe, surging oil prices and another forever war was not what Trump campaigned on for a reason. All these wars have been disasters and there is no reason to think the next war won't be as bad as Libya, Iraq, Syria or Yemen.

It is unpopular now and it will be as unpopular as Iraq war 2.0 was once this fiasco has ended.

I don't see the connection?

The point I would make - and perhaps I wasn't transparent enough about it? - is that I see no evidence whatsoever that it is 'conventional wisdom' that 'Israel wants to drag the United States into a likely globally-destabilizing conflict on the basis of their insane, racial-supremacist Abrahamic cult-myths'.

I think that SS and his crowd are, to put it bluntly, anti-semites who would oppose anything involving Israel on principle. They just hate Jews. The fact that increasing numbers of Americans are critical of Israeli actions does not indicate that those Americans accept the anti-semitic position. It's entirely possible, even likely, for one to believe that America should not risk getting further involved in conflicts in the Middle East, and that therefore America should either back off from involvement with, or should actively seek to restrain, Israeli aggression, without believing the SS argument about Jews.

Hence my question. I think SS is eliding the difference between declining support for Israel and increasing support for anti-semitism, so to speak. The 'Anti-Semitic Right' school of thought on Israel is both lunatic on its own terms and not accepted by the wider public. I see no strong reason to believe that public criticism of Israeli actions, and specifically criticism of the Iran strikes, indicates growing sympathy for anti-semitism as such.

The fact of the matter is Israels interest is a destablized middle east with weak neighbors. This has caused the to get in conflict with everyone around them and flooded Europe with migrants. It is a problematic country founded on an insane religious doctrine that is heretical to christianity and that is nothing but a headache to us. There is no reason to support them what so ever.

Well, let's take that point by point.

Israels interest is a destablized middle east with weak neighbors.

I think this is probably half-true? Israel is very conscious of being a small country surrounded by larger neighbours, most of whom would probably like to destroy Israel if they can. I think that is decreasingly the case now, but Israel's formative decades occurred in the face of much more active hostility, and that mentality has penetrated deeply, and even now, I think most of Israel's neighbours, if given a magic button to destroy Israel, would press that button. As such it makes sense that the Israelis want to keep their neighbours divided.

I'm not sure they want their neighbours destabilised, as such. Failed states in the neighbourhood represent security threats to Israel, and easy recruiting grounds for organisations like Hezbollah. Israel's interests are not found in their neighbours collapsing, even if they are found in their neighbours being disunited.

This has caused the to get in conflict with everyone around them and flooded Europe with migrants.

This accuses Israel of a kind of unilateral aggression, which I think is unfair given the above history. Israel has sometimes acted aggressively towards its neighbours and I'll admit that without shame, but I think you're missing a lot of the story if you don't contextualise that in terms of deep local hostility to Israel.

I'm also not sure why you bring up refugees fleeing to Europe - what's the relevance? It also seems worth noting that that the big 2015 migrant crisis in Europe did not have anything proximate to do with Israel. That was primarily due to the Syrian Civil War, which was not particularly caused by Israel. The United States itself seems significantly more involved than Israel.

It is a problematic country founded on an insane religious doctrine that is heretical to christianity

It can't be heretical, because heresy is internal. Judaism is not a form of Christianity, so Judaism cannot be a Christian heresy.

That said, I am not sure by what standard one can claim that Judaism is 'insane' but Christianity or for that matter Islam are not. It seems to me that either 1) Judaism is insane, but Christianity and Islam are not, in which case I'd like to hear the explanation as to why, or 2) Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all insane, in which case it doesn't make much sense to single Israel out.

You can take the position that Christian countries should never ally with or render any aid to non-Christian countries, which would certainly be something to unpack at further length, if you're interested?

There is no reason to support them what so ever.

Well, I imagine that if I asked an American politician they might be able to think of plenty of reasons to do with America's strategic interests in the region?

That said, as I'm an Australian, my view on the whole Israel/Palestine conflict is that it's none of our business and I think we should probably focus on issues in our own region.

Always funny how the jews are simultaneously way too pragmatic and "insane", apparently.

More comments

It's just a matter of whose side you're on at this point.

Meh, we're certainly not on the side of Iranians.

Which ought to be a sign that maybe this faux consensus "all our analysis is proven correct" is oversimplification.

It's a very sad state of affairs we're not on the side of Iranians.

A perfect representation of what it means to be "Woke right". Daydreaming about an abusive relationship with a regime that isn't shy about how much it despises you just for the sake of killing the Jews.

No Aryan ever called me a Goy

“Death to America” is a pretty good horseshoe

Israel would have almost exactly the same national security interests and likely strategic patterns of behavior even if it had no element of racial-supremacist Abrahamic cult-myths, though. Its strategic behavior is much more driven by its status as a small country that is populated by an ethnic group with a recent history of being genocided and that has a powerful superpower friend than it is by Jewish ethno-supremacist sentiments or Abrahamic cult myths.

A similar train of thought, by the way, is also why I don't think Israel or the US have anything much to worry about if Iran develops nuclear weapons. Iran might be a theocratic state with a lot of political influence from true believers in Islam, but I think that the chance that, if it developed nuclear weapons, its leaders would launch a nuclear strike that would get themselves annihilated... is close to zero. Hence the idea that Israel must prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons no matter what strikes me as pretty silly if evaluated from a cold objective perspective (of course in practice, it's not surprising that emotions run high if another country rhetorically calls for your country's destruction and is trying to build nukes). Realistically speaking, if Iran develops nukes relations between the two countries will probably just follow the India-Pakistan model.

Realistically speaking, if Iran develops nukes relations between the two countries will probably just follow the India-Pakistan model.

I would argue one key difference is that geographically, Israel is small enough for a limited amouny of nuclear weapons to take out a significant chunk of the country.

The issue is a bit less “Will Iran strike Israel with nukes” and more “Will Iran feel more degrees of freedom to attack Israel since an Israel’s response will need to be measured.”

Israel would have almost exactly the same national security interests and likely strategic patterns of behavior even if it had no element of racial-supremacist Abrahamic cult-myths, though.

Israel would never had existed if they didn't have that though.

Realistically speaking, if Iran develops nukes relations between the two countries will probably just follow the India-Pakistan model.

The model that came horrifically close to nuclear war earlier this year, and would still seem to be on a long-term trajectory towards it?

I don't see any reason to think that the India-Pakistan war earlier this year came anywhere close to a nuclear war.

The dynamics are also different. India and Pakistan border each other and can fight a conventional war that escalates, they also have an ongoing border dispute.

Israel Iran would be more analogous to the actual US v Russia Cold War (although even they did/do actually border each other). They can exchange nukes but they can’t mount a ground invasion of each other.

The elites of all four countries in both the India/Pakistan and Israel/Iran conflicts are relatively corrupt and don’t want to die, which distinguishes them from e.g. Sunni Islamist terrorists. And the fact that Israel / Iran don’t have an active border dispute that could escalate is probably also bullish on the no nuclear war side.

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