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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   22875 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

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.

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