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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   35307 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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Why doesn't Ted Cruz know the population of Iran? And what is with him generally? Or the whole upper echelons of the US govt?

I reference a recent Tucker Carlson interview with Cruz, where it turns out he didn't know said population (and has since responded with an AI meme image of Tucker asking Luke the population of the Death Star).

Turns out that the population of Iran is 92 million, I thought it was around 80. 80 would be a fairly reasonable answer. Even Yemen is surprisingly populous, around 41 million. Fun game to try - estimate the population of various countries in these areas.

I thought Ted Cruz was supposed to be super-smart, wouldn't it be natural to read up on Iran? He is on the Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism. It's also relevant to US strategic choices and his particular love of Israel. Knowing about the subpopulations and relative size of the Azeris, Kurds and similar would be relevant to regime change, which is his professed goal:

Senator Ted Cruz has explicitly stated that he wants regime change in Iran. He said on Fox News, “I think it is very much in the interest of America to see regime change,” and that there is “no redeeming the ayatollah” regime. Cruz has called for collapsing the Iranian regime, comparing it to the Cold War-era strategy used against the Soviet Union, and has criticized the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, pushing for stronger actions against Iran.

To his credit he does know that Iran is Persian and predominantly Shia. And maybe being on a bunch of other subcommittees means he has to divide up his time and energy in all these different areas. But it's not like Tucker is asking really sophisticated questions about the position and integration of Azeri elites in the Tehran power structure. That really should be dealt with by an expert diplomat. But senators are supposed to be making strategic decisions, one has to have some base of knowledge to decide upon different courses of action.

Cruz also thinks that the Bible requires Christians to support the nation of Israel, which is somewhat non-mainstream in theology: "Where does my support for Israel come from, number 1 we're biblically commanded to support Israel". Tucker tries to ask 'do you mean the government of Israel' and Cruz says the nation of Israel, as if to say it's common-sense that the nation of Israel as referred to in the Bible is the same as the state of Israel today. It seems like he's purposely conflating the dual meanings of nation as ethnic group and nation as state, which is a stupid part of English.

Also Cruz said to Tucker "I came into Congress 13 years ago with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States”. How would this help in the context of a hostile interview, does he think that's a helpful thing to say? I can only imagine that Cruz thinks this is a winning issue, he wants to play hard rather than go down the wishy-washy 'Judeo-Christian' values route. Is declaring your devotion to a foreign country really that popular in America?

Trump also posted this somewhat ominous diatribe from Mike Huckabee (pastor and ambassador to Israel) praising Trump's divine prominence, his position similar to 'Truman in 1945' and how he has to listen to god and the angels only... https://x.com/Mondoweiss/status/1934999328583713096/photo/1

This episode reminds me of how George W Bush apparently didn't know of the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam until after deciding to invade, he brought up Gog and Magog when trying to persuade Chirac to join the war. Maybe that's false, some have disputed it. Or how Trump apparently won't read any long extracts of text and demands pictures. Maybe that's also false, lots of stories have been made about Trump policy. It's known that Biden didn't know whether people were alive or dead or what was happening much of the time. Large swathes of the Democrats can't tell the difference between men and women.

Here's another one I just found from another US congressman: https://x.com/VoteRandyFine/status/1839686465820766542

There is a reason the first time I shook @netanyahu‘s hand, I did not wash it until I could touch the heads of my children.

That's just weird!

There are serious structural problems with how America selects its politicians if this is the calibre of talent that's drawn into positions of great power. At the risk of sounding like an edgy atheist fighting a war everyone's tired of and moved on from years ago, surely theology should have no place in grand strategy. It's normal to have colourful characters in politics, some corruption, some old people who don't know what's going on, a certain level of lobbying. But this seems to be on a qualitatively different level, with serious results.

I would have liked him to know the population of Iran, and the approximate ethnic make-up of the population. I would have liked Tucker to follow up with a query to see if he knew the population of Israel.

I would have liked him to condemned Mossad intelligence operations carried out domesticly in the US. Call for increased efforts by FBI counter-intelligence. Especially in an interview just before Juneteenth, they day we celebrate the execution of the Rosenbergs, notorious Soviet spies.

Cruz also thinks that the Bible requires Christians to support the nation of Israel, which is somewhat non-mainstream in theology: "Where does my support for Israel come from, number 1 we're biblically commanded to support Israel". Tucker tries to ask 'do you mean the government of Israel' and Cruz says the nation of Israel, as if to say it's common-sense that the nation of Israel as referred to in the Bible is the same as the state of Israel today. It seems like he's purposely conflating the dual meanings of nation as ethnic group and nation as state, which is a stupid part of English.

I'm reminded of a video I saw some time ago, where Neema Parvini reacted to a video someone linked him to, of sermonizing by an American preacher of the "dual covenant" variety. The preacher laid out the basic "dual covenant" argument, including the assertion that any other position constitutes a claim that God does not keep all his promises, and is thus rank heresy. He then went on to say things like claiming that in Matthew 25:40, when Jesus said "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me," that by "the least of these brothers and sisters of mine" he clearly meant the Jews, and thus Christians will be judged primarily on how they've treated the Jews. He then further elaborated that this isn't just about not persecuting them or being anti-Semitic, but is about what you've done for the Jews — how much you've given to them, what work you've done to their benefit — and that, come the Day of Judgement, Christians' eternal fates will be decided first and foremost by how much they did to serve the Jews.

(Much like Parvini, I was rather dumbfounded by the entire thing.)

Particularly bizarre given that Jews don't believe that Jesus was the messiah. Why would any Christian be so passionately devoted to people who dispute one of their most fundamental beliefs?

I don't know if there's a term for this, but it's something I've noticed. Suppose you have the head of an agency called the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agency, and the whole point of your agency is to regulate Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. What many people would expect is that the head of the agency would naturally be an expert on Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Instead, what we see in the real world is that the head of said agency is not an expert on any single one of the things that he's supposed to help regulate, let alone all three. I think this becomes more pronounced the further you move up the political chain, all the way to the President. No senator can be expected to be an expert on economics, nuclear power, firearms, and The Middle East, but they are all expected to weigh in, and potentially vote regarding all of these issues. The President gets this worst of all, as he's supposed to execute on every single issue Congress votes on. This seems to be built into the system from the start.

Perhaps it's just another sign of how completely warped the federal government has become compared to what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Expecting someone to be able to ballpark the population of Iran isn't actually looking for deep expertise though, it's expecting a strong generalist's knowledge of trivia. Sitting United States Senators should be better than a typical bar trivia team at knowing things like world capitals and national populations. If they're not at that level, I'd consider them too stupid or incurious to hold the office. Senators should be polymaths with strong interests in things like CIA World Factbook information.

This seems to be built into the system from the start

A necessity of elected political leadership is that they are elected, which is going to tend to select for electability rather than expertise. With appointees one expects a measure of expertise (and you even get it occasionally), but people like senators or the president are necessarily going to be amateurs and generalists. They have staffers and career civil servants to provide them with expert advice.

Perhaps it's just another sign of how completely warped the federal government has become compared to what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

The first cabinet was full of talented amateurs. The first Senate was basically a collection of lawyers and planters/rich farmers.

There was a question asked during the 2021 New York City mayoral race: what is the median sale price for a home in Brooklyn?

A few candidates gave answers of varying comical inaccuracy. One candidate was Shaun Donovan who has many years of housing policy experience.

As Wikipedia summarizes Donovan:

served as the 15th United States secretary of housing and urban development from 2009 to 2014, and Director of the US Office of Management and Budget from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, he was the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development from 2004 to 2009

Many years of directly relevant experience including years working this at the highest level on this topic for New York City. His estimate for the median Brooklyn home sale price in 2021 was $100,000. Wrong order of magnitude. The cheapest listed unit on real estate websites for Brooklyn at that time was $100k for a parking spot. The very cheapest actual homes were many hundreds of thousands of dollars with the median sale price over $900k.

So yeah, somehow the head of multiple relevant agencies for years at the Federal and local level knows fuck all about the basics of his specialty.

I heard the audio from these interviews and interestingly Andrew Yang quickly reasoned that the median would not be significantly offset by the few super expensive homes in Brooklyn and guessed $900k which is within a few percent of the correct answer. Yang has of course never been appointed to be the head of any agency. Nerds may be right, but always be losing.

This is sort of different with senators though. They're elected to represent their state and pass legislation, and to some extent just to be a popular charismatic person who wins election. They can hire staffers to be subject matter experts on whatever the current issue is, it's really not their job to know technical details.

Cruz also thinks that the Bible requires Christians to support the nation of Israel, which is somewhat non-mainstream in theology: "Where does my support for Israel come from, number 1 we're biblically commanded to support Israel". Tucker tries to ask 'do you mean the government of Israel' and Cruz says the nation of Israel, as if to say it's common-sense that the nation of Israel as referred to in the Bible is the same as the state of Israel today. It seems like he's purposely conflating the dual meanings of nation as ethnic group and nation as state, which is a stupid part of English.

Also Cruz said to Tucker "I came into Congress 13 years ago with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States”. How would this help in the context of a hostile interview, does he think that's a helpful thing to say? I can only imagine that Cruz thinks this is a winning issue, he wants to play hard rather than go down the wishy-washy 'Judeo-Christian' values route. Is declaring your devotion to a foreign country really that popular in America?

I have so many layers of problems with this logic. Even starting by accepting that "the bible tells me so" is a good way to set up foreign policy, let's take a second and think through a few implications:

a) What kind of arrogant or ignorant person thinks that the verse can be interpreted simply and literally?

Ted Cruz says that in Genesis (well, he didn't know that, but that's where it is) God commands us to bless and aid Israel. But much of the Old Testament consists of God punishing Israel, often with foreign invasion and raiding. God is constantly using foreigners as a tool to punish Israel, especially when Israel is lead by a corrupt, selfish, venal, dishonest, cruel man who refuses to give up power at the appointed time. God seems to cause Israel to lose as often he causes them to win, to be honest as a genre-savvy gentile if I were living in Old-Testament-Superstition-Land, I'd probably stay out of it. God, to my knowledge, never punished anyone for ignoring Israel. God's blessing to Israel is as often the blessing of discipline as it is the blessing of good things, and I sure wouldn't want to get between the Father and the child he intends on spanking. Getting involved with how exactly God is seeking to bless Israel seems like a real Oracle of Delphi situation!

In fact, the one clear example where God blesses an outside nation for its aid of Israel would be...Cyrus the Great of Persia. So perhaps we can intuit that the Persians are a nation specially chosen of God to chastise and discipline Israel? It seems odd that Ted Cruz is so certain he knows God's will. But let's accept for the moment that we are obligated to help Israel:

b) Which Israel?

Is Israel its government? Is Israel the global diaspora of Jews? Is Israel the population within the borders of Israel, regardless of religion, provided they descend from Abraham? This might seem like trivia, but I'm pretty sure the verse that Ted Cruz is citing is Genesis 12:3 which reads in the ESV:

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Which of course brings up the question: Who the fuck is you? Frequently this is interpreted, and put up on billboards by Israel lobbyists, as "blessing Israel." (Where's your Sola Scriptura, Ted?) But God makes no mention of a state or government. The more natural interpretation of the phrase (leaving aside the new covenant that "you" is the Church, which is pretty obviously correct and righteous to me) would be all the descendants of Abraham are to be blessed. I would certainly offer no privilege to Abraham's descendants who have persisted in one type of religious error over another.

But let's accept that the state of Israel, as represented by its government, is what is to be blessed, let's consider:

c) Is it blessing someone to help them commit a sin?

Some years ago I was the best man in a very relgious Evangelical wedding. Before the ceremony, the pastor gathered up all the groomsmen, and we prayed and we put our hands on the groom, and the pastor told us that our obligation was not finished when he said I Do or when the tables were cleared up, that we had taken on an ongoing sacred obligation, to bless our friend, to bless his union, to come to his aid to keep his marriage together and to keep him on the straight and narrow. I said Amen.

Today, he called me, and told me that his wife is cheating on him, that he knows where she is the guy she is there with, that he's coming to my house because he needs a gun today so he can go kill them both.

Does my sacred vow to help him and bless him obligate me to give him the gun? Am I violating my oath if I ask him any questions other than "what caliber?" Ted Cruz would seem to say yes, you are obligated to bless him and that means helping him do whatever it is he wants to do. Ted would probably say "Do you need a ride?"

I would say that's an insane interpretation or friendship, and an even more insane interpretation of blessing. I would say that my obligation in this scenario is to restrain my friend, by physical force if necessary, to prevent him from committing a horrible life-ruining and soul-damning sin. I would say that my obligation extends so far as to warn his wife, to call our mutual friends and his pastor to help me talk him down, or even if no other means were available to call the police, to prevent him from committing murder. Friendship means protecting your friends, and that includes protecting them from committing mortal sins.

In my life, when I've had a friend who was in a really bad place, I've gone to his house with a bunch of friends and told him hey let me take your guns to store them for a few months, to keep you from doing anything you might not live to regret. That is what I think friendship is.

But ok, let's say I do give him the gun, that still doesn't answer...

d) Is it blessing someone to help them make a mistake?

Let's alter the hypothetical above: accepting ad arguendo that I am obligated to give my friend a gun to kill the man that cuckolded him and his cheating wife, what if my friend's wife cheated on him with JD Vance, and my friend has no realistic chance of taking my 1911 and getting past the Secret Service (ok that may be easier than previously thought...) and killing Vance. Am I still obligated to give him the gun?

This is where knowing the population of Iran is a useful piece of information. At least within an order of magnitude! It allows you to faithfully discharge your obligation to Bless Israel with, for example, wise counsel! If what Israel needs is advice, it doesn't help them to give them weapons to help them get themselves into trouble.

I just don't see how evangelical politicians can act like the bible command leads directly and easily to using bunker busters on Iran.

I'm kind of wondering if Ted Cruz knows all of that, and is simply using "meh bible" as an excuse to do what he wants for other reasons... (ie, i'm wondering if Ted Cruz has been compromised by Israeli spies)

compromised by Israeli spies

Not being compromised, seems like it might be a shorter list.

TBH for whatever reason evangelicals tend to have nearly blind support for Israel, and that’s long been the GOP base of support. I believe this is why Israel is seen as the one country to support here. It’s more pander than anything, and not too bad so long as it doesn’t have to many negative effects on security.

Israeli spies

They're not even spies. It's just AIPAC.

They're the same picture.

You raise excellent points.

I would add that in two millennia of Christianity, the amount of blessing that the Christians bestow on Israel (e.g. the Jewish diaspora) seems pretty limited, on the level of "unlike pagans, we will suffer you to live on our lands as second class citizens (until we turn extra faithful and kick you out or murder you as a warm-up exercise for a crusade)".

I think one thing which might have changed this attitude is Christian Zionism:

Christian Zionism is a political and religious ideology that, in a Christian context, espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was in accordance with biblical prophecies transmitted through the Old Testament: that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant—the eschatological "Gathering of Israel"—is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

I am by no means an expert on Christian prophecy -- my knowledge of that link was mostly due to horror movies and alt-history novels -- neither of which are known to be super reliable, but it seems that a significant fraction of the evangelicals believe that the second coming (optionally followed by the end of the world, seals breaking and all?) will happen Really Soon Now, and that the Jews being in control of the holy lands is a prerequisite to that for some reason.

More pragmatically, Christians have long cared about the holy lands, which was generally what the Crusades were fought about. From a modern Christian point of view, Israel controlling Bethlehem and Jerusalem is tolerable -- Christian pilgrims are allowed and generally not hassled too much. If the ayatollah regime took over Israel, that would likely change for the worse.

blessing that the Christians bestow on Israel (e.g. the Jewish diaspora) seems pretty limited

They're prayed for on Good Friday that they might repent their sins and find salvation through Jesus. What better blessing is there?

O merciful God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor wouldest the death of any sinner, but rather that he be converted and live; Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

What liturgical book is that from?

1549 Book of Common Prayer

Though the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is much the same

O Merciful God, who has made all men, and hate ſt nothing that thou ha ſt made, nor de ſire ſt the death of a ſinner, but rather that he ſhould be converted and live: Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks, and take from them all ignorance, hardne ſs of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and ſo fetch them home, bleſſed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be ſaved among the remnant of the true I ſraelites, and be made one fold under one ſhepherd, Je ſus Chri ſt our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

Interesting question that one. The tradcath version before any liturgical changes would be:

Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts;[a] so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. ['Amen' is not responded, nor is said 'Let us pray', or 'Let us kneel', or 'Arise', but immediately is said:] Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.[9]

With partial liturgical changes it is:

Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray. Let us kneel. [pause for silent prayer] Arise. Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I believe it's to do with dispensationalism and particularly with Cyrus Scofield?

For the unfamiliar, dispensationalism is a theological belief - some, probably including me, would say it's a heresy - that says that God divides the history of the world up into several phases. These phases are called 'dispensations', and the conditions, both material and moral, of the world depend on the dispensation in question. Thus what is required of people in the age of grace may be different to that in the age of law, and then also different to that in the age of the church, and so on. Great events in the world may mark shifts between dispensations.

As far as that goes it may seem harmless. It's unbiblical, but if you want to invent a scheme to guide you through your understanding of history, why not?

The thing is, Scofield felt that the nation of Israel played a role throughout the various dispensations, that particular promises to it endured, and most tellingly, he identified 'Israel' in the biblical sense with a visible nation even down to the modern day (which for him was the late 19th century). This predates the establishment of the state of Israel, but Scofield was a Zionist, albeit due to his understanding of Christian prophecy.

This is in itself a somewhat unbiblical move. Notably in Romans 9, the apostle Paul distinguishes between those that are Israelite 'according to the flesh', and those included and justified on the basis of faith. He asserts that 'not all Israelites truly belong to Israel, and not all of Abraham's children are his true descendants', but rather membership of the true Israel is to be reckoned on the basis of faith. In this you may see parallels to Matthew 3:9 and John 8:39, where both John the Baptist and Jesus appear to place one's deeds and one's character above one's descent according to the flesh. So whatever it is New Testament authors are doing with Israel as a concept, it's not simply identifiable with a hereditarian group or an ethnicity, much less a political structure.

I understand Cruz to be roughly in the Scofield-ian camp, but this camp would not be recognisable to most historical Christians, including many around the world today. Cruz has a weird obsession with Israel that doesn't play well with everyone - famously he was booed off-stage by actual Middle Eastern Christians back in 2014.

For what it's worth my understanding, from a Christian perspective, is that the state of Israel is, theologically speaking, completely irrelevant. It is of no greater or lesser value than any other nation on Earth. There is no special reason to support it and no special reason to oppose it. The biblical category of Israel - and the covenant with Israel - is continuous with and contained within the new covenant of Christ, particularly insofar as Christ himself becomes a kind of microcosm or representation of Israel itself. The promises made to the Jewish people according to the flesh remain valid so far as they go, but where they were always intended to go was towards the redemption of the world in Christ. As such, insofar as contemporary Jews hold to those promises, that is good, but the promises are incomplete without their fulfilment. And any further that direction lies a more complicated discussion about what evangelism means in the admittedly unusual context of evangelising to Jews, but we don't need to get into that now.

This is an excellent summary. I'd add that while dispensationalism is common among American evangelicals, it's losing ground.

Dispensationalists often frustrate me, but I wouldn't call them heretics unless they move beyond dispensationalism into dual covenant theology. Dual covenant theology holds that while gentiles are saved only through faith in Christ, Jews can be saved by keeping the Mosaic Law. Since this is approximately the least evangelical take it is possible to have, and since dispensationalism is an evangelical phenomenon to begin with, this is mercifully rare.

The one thing I have never grasped about Christian Zionism is implication that God is waiting for humanity to gather all 7 dragon balls before Jesus can be summoned. I'm pretty sure the Second Coming is going to happen when God plans it to, and that human efforts to bring it about are at best ridiculous and at worst extremely presumptuous. Jesus clearly says that nobody knows the hour or the day, so what's the point? I'm genuinely curious, do Christian Zionists have some theological justification or rationalization for this?

I grew up around many Christian Zionists. I think they would agree that "the Second Coming is going to happen when God plans it to" but would add that (1) God puts his plans into motion largely through the actions of people and (2) the Bible sets forth the outline of what that plan looks like. Because people have free will, it's therefore important for them to choose to follow God's plan as laid out in the Bible.

To them, your critique would sound a little like if someone said: "What's so bad about murder? Everything happens according to God's plan, therefore if someone commits murder that must be God's plan."

"What's so bad about murder? Everything happens according to God's plan, therefore if someone commits murder that must be God's plan."

Don't Christians say this all the time? When good or bad things happen, it's "all part of God's plan". Either God exerts agency in this world or he does not.

Christians generally believe humans have free will that enables them to act contrary to God's will. Those bad actions are still "part of God's plan" in the sense that he anticipates them and "plans around them" so to speak, but those sinful actions are "contrary to God's plan" in the sense that he does not want them to happen.

It is the ISIS ideology of building a caliphate and invoking the return of Jesus. The idea of commanding god and ordering Jesus back to Earth is an antithesis to what pretty much 99% of Christians throughout history have believed. It is a big part of the rift between Al Qaeda and ISIS in which Al Qaeda considered ISIS to be completely out of control.

I think the whole idea is frankly pagan. I don’t think it’s very Christian to say that God has to do anything we decide he should, and the idea smacks of magical thinking.

Iran is actually pretty friendly to apostolic Christianity, so long as it doesn’t proselytize. Hezbollah controlled Jerusalem would probably maintain Christian religious sites unde the current arrangement.

Excellent post. I do have to say though, if my friend rocked up at my house, with my gun in his hand and said 'Dude, I just shot my wife and that prick she cheated on me with, the cops are coming, hide me!' and when I looked hesitant he said 'hey man if I end up in prison I might accidentally talk about the cache you have buried in the backyard', I would feel obligated to help him out, destroy the gun and give him an alibi. Not for his sake, for my own.

But then I would also hate my former friend and never trust him again and do my best to cut him out of my life asap.

People are contrarian signaling over “why should he know the population”

Because it shows that he has a general idea of the makeup of the country. Compare a country like Iraq (45M) or Afghanistan (41M) with Iran (90M).

It’s twice their size.

Iran is also a space-faring nation. They started launching satellites in 2009, they have advanced hypersonic missiles.

It’s just a very, very different country than our previous Middle East adventures, and Tucker quizzing him on this was to elucidate the fact that Ted’s primary driving motivation to get the US involved is (as Ted himself admitted in another section of the interview) a doomsday prophecy based on a hilariously absurd (and Israel-serving) misreading of the Bible.

Ted Cruz is a voting member of the Senate Committee responsible for US policy in the greater Middle East. So knowing the approximate population of America's main adversary in the region is basic job-related knowledge. "I'm not good with figures but I know it's a lot bigger than Iraq" would be an acceptable answer if Ted Cruz is, indeed, not good with figures.

I’m not sure where the misreading of the Bible is here, because I’m not sure what the prophecy he’s going on actually says. It’s plausible he’s actually right about those verses.

But I think hyper fixating on “omg” he doesn’t know the population doesn’t mean much for very obvious reasons.

First of all, he’s not remotely involved in planning the war. The people who are absolutely have the relevant information and probably intelligence assets on the ground telling them where the targeting drones should go first. It’s like being shocked that the CEO at apple doesn’t know exactly how much RAM the new iPhone has — he’s not the one designing the phone, he’s the one who demanded the phone be designed at built. As with most high powered elites, he has people to handle the details and he has been told that the military can probably pull this off. That’s all he needs to know.

Second, the exact population is irrelevant compared to things like geography, technological levels, military strength and enlistment numbers, and so on. China has a billion people, but how many of them are in the military? How many are rapidly aging members of the generation before the one-child policy? How many are women? Deciding Cruz doesn’t have any idea about Iran because he didn’t know off by heart tge exact population of Iran is really silly.

Second, the exact population is irrelevant compared to things like geography, technological levels, military strength and enlistment numbers, and so on.

The implication is that if he doesn't even ballpark know how many people live in Iran, there's no way he knows any of that other stuff. And if he did, he could have said something like "well they are enlisting X people per year, and American enlists 2X, so probably roughly half of the American population" and at that point if Tucker said "um ackchually it's not 160 million it's 90 million" people would just think Tucker was being pedantic and wouldn't care. But Cruz didn't try to switch to a statistic that he did know, he just got defensive and butthurt which makes everyone assume (IMO probably correctly) that he really knows next to nothing about Iran.

I’m not sure where the misreading of the Bible is here, because I’m not sure what the prophecy he’s going on actually says. It’s plausible he’s actually right about those verses.

The prophecies he’s referring to are mostly Christ’s foretelling of the destruction of the second temple- which, as you may recall, happened in 70 AD. Ted Cruz’s misreading is the claim that these are end times prophecies as opposed to a divine punishment for the deicide of Jesus.

I would be interested in @Felagund’s take on millennialism. Last I checked, the stridently Reformed are generally fully on-board with the more reserved interpretations of apocalyptic prophesy, because it’s Augustinian.

I don't have an opinion on end times things at the moment (but thanks for the mention!). Among many of the contemporary reformed, I think amillenialism (we're living in the millenium right now) is the most common view, and is probably what you refer to as the most reserved interpretation, though there do exist postmillenials (especially among the Doug Wilson-adjacent) and premillenials. Dispensationalism is usually seen as beyond the pale, though.

Historically, many in e.g. the 17th century read Romans 11 as talking about a future conversion of ethnic Israel to Christianity, though that's less popular of a reading now.

I would argue that the exact population does not matter that much, often. If Afghanistan had twice the population (and area), the US would still have conquered them, and if they had only half their population and area, the Taliban would still have taken over again once the US moved out.

Obviously, the order of magnitude matters, as in "Is the population count similar to Belgium, Germany or China?"

Then there is the area to consider. I would have guessed that Iran was about the same size as Afghanistan, and I would have been off -- they are 2.5 times as large. This does not bode well for any invader who wants to engage in nation-building.

I would add that Iran is also supplying Russia with drones. Now Russia is obviously not the prime military adversary that it was some decades ago, but the fact that they find Iranian drones useful against Western equipment -- and the fact Iran produces enough to sell them to Russia -- clearly indicates (just as the space program does), that this is not a country full of goat-herders.

There is an example of an easy mode regime change target. A theocratic polity with only 2M people in less than 400 square kilometers, whose weapons industry is very much on a DIY level. That example is the Gaza strip. If Trump wants to prove that he is better at nation building that GWB was, this is where he might want to start.

if [Afghanistan] had only half their population

Afghanistan's population more than doubled during American occupation, from 20 to 42-5 million. The Gaza strip similarly went from 1 to 2.1 million, at the same time.

He's a politician and this is a game all journalists and politicians have played forever ("what's a leppo?") at the least he should have some canned answer when he doesn't know the specifics.

Trump would have never in a million years fallen into that trap, he'd just enthusiastically move it on or make shit up doggedly on the spot "it's a lot of people Tucker, great people, some of the best people, but we have to make a deal, we can't allow nukes Tucker, they're very dangerous..."

‘They’re gonna build big, beautiful nukes Tucker, the best. We can’t let that happen.’

It was pretty embarrassing that most of the arguments against Iran having a nuke revolve around them being not just crazy like the North Koreans, but crazy religious zealots that don't fear death so MAD wouldn't apply. Meanwhile our politicians are encouraging Trump to listen to God and ignore anything else and claiming their support for Israel is based on religion saying it will benefit us not on any real world analysis.

Because we had 8 years of Obama and then went straight to Trump I think a lot of people forgot why the neolib + neocon version of the Republican party died off, with some RINOs wanting to return to "saner old days". Seeing it suddenly revived this last week really just shows what a broken and inferior ideology it was.

Off-topic to the whole Iran issue, but: everybody's giving Ted Cruz shit over that interview, but I actually ended up liking him after it. He didn't have a good answers to several objections I found important, but it was refreshing to see a politician have a normal conversation trying to step someone through their reasoning on an important issue, answering relevant (to me) objections in real-time, etc., as opposed to sticking to talking points and pre-prepared statements as is typical on short-form TV interviews.

With all the talk of the impact of podcast-bros on the results of the election, I wonder if this won't be something that future politicians will have to git gud at.

For example, him talking about other nations spying on the US was completely correct and very honest; everyone spies on everyone, including allies, especially allies. It’s just a truth of the world, there’s nothing good or bad about it.

People getting their panties in a twist about it seems either performative or worse, incredibly naive.

But then he turned around and did exactly that when Tucker said that leaders of governments kill people, as if the idea of the President of the United States having someone killed was unthinkable and that Trump could never, ever have done such a thing.

Knowing the specific population of Iran is far, far less relevant than knowing it’s a Shia theocracy implacably opposed to Israël and pushing Shiite interests in the Middle East. Getting Iran’s population right is kinda trivia.

And Ted Cruz believing the mandate to support Israël is much more popular than you give him credit for. The specific formulation may not be, but ‘God will punish the enemies of Israel’ is both widely believed among the base and a reasonable interpretation of recent events.

Israël

TIL that Israel does Metal umlauts.

It’s technically a diaresis.

Knowing the specific population of Iran is far, far less relevant than knowing it’s a Shia theocracy implacably opposed to Israël and pushing Shiite interests in the Middle East.

Why not both? Is that really so much to ask?

Knowing the specific population of Iran is far, far less relevant...

Yeah, the specific population. I wouldn't care if he was off by 10 million in either direction, but knowing the ballpark is pretty important. I didn't know it's population either (like at all), and finding out we're talking about a country the size of a fifth of the entire EU spooked me out quite a bit.

Like seemingly a lot of people, my initial guess was 80 mil.

The thought process was something like this, though less articulate. (Coming up with that number took me less time than it will take you to read this, and much less than it's going to take me to write it.)

"I know it's big. Like I'm positive it's over 50 mil. On the other hand, if it was US tier, much less China/India tier, I'm pretty sure I would know that. I wouldn't be completely shocked to learn it was over 100, if it wasn't by too much, but if you made me choose I'd bet against it. But probably closer to 100 than 50... 80 seems in the right ballpark? Maybe 85? More likely 85 than 75, but probably around there somewhere."

I don't quite count that as a win, but I guess I could have done a lot worse.

I would’ve guessed 80 million, but let’s be real- it doesn’t matter that much. Ted Cruz knows Iran is big enough to be relevant. That’s what he needs to know.

I would have guessed it's another Iraq, but it's two of them.

Like I said in the other comment, I actually ended up liking Cruz after listening to it, so don't want to give him too much shit over pedantic stuff like specific population statistics, but I would like to hear some kind of a plan on how to handle the toppling of 2xIraq, if this is indeed what they're going to do.

I would have guessed it's another Iraq, but it's two of them.

Iraq's population has nearly doubled since 2000, like Afghanistan and Gaza. So Iran is actually 4 2003 Iraqs.

another way of looking at it is that it's roughly the size of Iraq and Afghanistan, combined, and even larger than that in land area. There's a reason that during the iraq war the US still shied away from invading Iran.

and though Iraq now has a population of ~45m when we invaded in 2003 their population was only 27m, Afghanistan's was 20. So if it's relative to the points of our regime change attempts in those countries Iran has more like 4x the population. The potential refugee wave would be larger than Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

Ted Cruz is an unpopular midwit and kind of a liability. But he is loyal to the party line and there is far worse out there. I would love to see him primaried, but I would also rather see a strong up and coming republican primary someone else.

Why doesn't Ted Cruz know the population of Iran?

Others have taken the meat of your post to respond to already, so I'm going to reply with a tangent: who cares?

What utility does knowing Iran's population matter? What relevance is the specific number of Iranians to any American interests? They're a far group whose only relevance is how much they might endanger our investments in the Middle East with their constant terrorism funding and sabber-rattling. There could be ten million, twenty, one hundred, it'd change no calculus.

The population of a minor nation across the sea is trivia. It's not important knowledge, and not knowing it shouldn't be taken as significant. It's like not knowing what Burkina Faso is the capital of.

They're a far group whose only relevance is how much they might endanger our investments in the Middle East with their constant terrorism funding and sabber-rattling. There could be ten million, twenty, one hundred, it'd change no calculus.

Iran's population is Iran. Iran, like the US, will act on its own interests. 10 million person Iran has a much different capacity to act than 100 million person Iran does. The extent that Iran can fund terror or saber rattle or endanger US investments is proportional to their population.

Things like industrial capacity, military budget, GDP, are all largely contingent on population.

There may be a correlation, but it's not absolute. Mexico doesn't have a single tank or air defense system in its entire armed forces. Even if Mexico wanted to build a domestic military industry, they may not have the state capacity to do it.

Meanwhile Ukraine is far smaller in population but capable of fighting a modern total war on land sea and air.

Mexico may or may not have the state capacity to build domestic milindust, but it’s a world leader in heavy industry in general- thé challenge would be mostly getting it converted over to military spec as opposed to civilian stuff. They clearly can make things, drones probably aren’t any harder than trucks.

That would be a relevant point if we knew nothing about Iran. But we do know things about Iran so I don't see the need for games of analogy.

Things like industrial capacity, military budget, GDP, are all largely contingent on population.

This all may be true, to an extent (it's obviously not as simple as adding people means more state capacity).

But again: so? I'm confident America is superior regardless.

Given how much damage the middle eastern refugee waves did to the US and Europe it would be nice if our Senator's knew that Iran's population is larger than Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria's populations (at the point of their regime change attempts) combined.

I'm more confident in this administration's ability to enforce our territorial sovereignty than previous ones. We don't actually need to let them in, no matter how many there are.

The administration that caved and eventually brought back an ms-13 member all because there was a minor clerical error and, despite him being cleared for deportation, he wasn't cleared for deportation to El Salvador specifically so the media spent an entire month throwing a fit about it? I lack your faith. All the institutions are still aligned against Populists.

Unfortunately, once they're already in the nation, they get significantly more protections due to the madness of the American left. That's why it's very important to keep them out in the first place, which is something this administration can do -- and, I have faith, will.

This all may be true, to an extent (it's obviously not as simple as adding people means more state capacity).

No. It is true. There is no "may". These things I mention being complicated and multifaceted doesn't mean there is a chance or a scenario in which population is not critical in their determination.

But again: so? I'm confident America is superior regardless.

America was superior to Iraq (2003), and Syria, and Afghanistan, and Libya. Did our intervention in these countries go well for America? No, they did not.

It does not matter if America is superior to Iran. It matters if America can achieve what Ted Cruz wants to do, in the way Ted wants to do it, at an acceptable cost. If Ted Cruz does not know basic facts about the capacity of Iran to impose costs, how will Ted be able to know what costs Iran can impose?

No. It is true. There is no "may". These things I mention being complicated and multifaceted doesn't mean there is a chance or a scenario in which population is not critical in their determination.

It remains "may", because as said, scaling a population up doesn't necessarily improve its military or state capacities.

America was superior to Iraq (2003), and Syria, and Afghanistan, and Libya. Did our intervention in these countries go well for America? No, they did not.

The wrong goals were pursued in all of these cases.

It does not matter if America is superior to Iran. It matters if America can achieve what Ted Cruz wants to do, in the way Ted wants to do it, at an acceptable cost. If Ted Cruz does not know basic facts about the capacity of Iran to impose costs, how will Ted be able to know what costs Iran can impose?

I asked this to another, I ask it to you: at what point do you think the US military asks Ted Cruz to handle logistics? This is not a Senator's role. The country's population numbers are not an important concern for him. They are trivia.

The wrong goals were pursued in all of these cases.

Yeah its why I said that American superiority doesn't matter. Seems that you should be not confident in American superiority. And yet you are. Ok.

I asked this to another, I ask it to you: at what point do you think the US military asks Ted Cruz to handle logistics? This is not a Senator's role. The country's population numbers are not an important concern for him. They are trivia.

No, it is not a senator's role to do logistics. Yes, it is a senators role to make informed choices on the people he wants to declare war on. Ted Cruz not knowing basic information about the country he wants to attack is an excellent indication that he is not making informed choices.

Knowing a country's population and demographics is not trivia when you want to overthrow its government. Tucker asked those questions for a reason. Iran's government is not popular. Iran has ethnic separatist movements, there are close to 15 million Azeris. How many want to join Azerbaijan, does Ted know? 10 million Kurds, how many want a Kurdistan, does Ted know? If Syria, with a quarter of the population of Iran, caused a refugee crisis, why does Ted think that won't happen in Iran? Ted Cruz thinks everyone in Iran is Shia Persian, Ted doesn't even know there are tens of millions of ethnic minorities who have a history of separatism. The fact that Ted Cruz could not answer those questions, that he didn't know there were large minority populations, is a damning indication that he did not consider that regime change very likely means civil war and refugee crisis.

Yeah its why I said that American superiority doesn't matter. Seems that you should be not confident in American superiority. And yet you are. Ok.

America loves doomed interventions and military misadventures, but it loves them because it has such an overwhelming military and wealth advantage over everyone else it can afford to be reckless and half-ass imperialism.

No, it is not a senator's role to do logistics. Yes, it is a senators role to make informed choices on the people he wants to declare war on. Ted Cruz not knowing basic information about the country he wants to attack is an excellent indication that he is not making informed choices.

I reject that population size is an important factor when deciding to halt nuclear proliferation. It is the military and the President who will handle the logistics of destruction and/or conquest.

The fact that Ted Cruz could not answer those questions, that he didn't know there were large minority populations, is a damning indication that he did not consider that regime change very likely means civil war and refugee crisis.

What? No, of course it means those things. Why do you think Ted Cruz or people who support bombing Iran care about another civil war in the Middle East? So long as they're not nuclear, they're welcome to go full Mad Max.

America loves doomed interventions and military misadventures, but it loves them because it has such an overwhelming military and wealth advantage over everyone else it can afford to be reckless and half-ass imperialism

Not true, not convincing

I reject that population size is an important factor when deciding to halt nuclear proliferation. It is the military and the President who will handle the logistics of destruction and/or conquest.

If stopping proliferation were all Ted wanted to do in Iran maybe youd have a point. But its not. So you dont.

What? No, of course it means those things. Why do you think Ted Cruz or people who support bombing Iran care about another civil war in the Middle East? So long as they're not nuclear, they're welcome to go full Mad Max.

Becauase if there is a civil war, then all of the progressives in America are going to do whatever they can to import a billion refugees.

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As far as anyone can tell, the US government is currently considering military action against Iran. Surely a factor in whether that occurs is the population of Iran. There are many direct and indirect differences between bombing a country with a population of 90 million and 5 million. The population has ramifications for the number of deaths, the economic impact on the country and region, potential refugees, potential enemy combatants, and many other variables.

As a basic conceptual matter, I can't take someone's commentary on a country seriously unless they at the very least have a rough sense of the country's population, GDP, GDP per capita, major religious groups, major ethnic groups, and basic government structure.

If you're just trying to keep your boot in their face, then it doesn't matter. Blow up their economic and military centers and keep them from building up. Sadaam was begging for a deal in 2003 but Bush was too stupid to make one.

It certainly becomes difficult if you seriously want a regime change or occupation.

I continue not to see why their population matters to our bombing campaigns. At no point does Iran have too many people such that we shrug and accept them going nuclear.

I'm finding this response - which is echoed by a few others on this thread - really strange and hard to wrap my head around.

Even if the population of Iran has little-to-no bearing on whether military intervention is wise, it still has major implications on a million other relevant variables that accompany military intervention, like the death toll, the economic impact, the refugees, the counter attack, etc. Ceteris Paribus, using strategic bombing to stop a country with the population of Slovakia (5 million) from getting a nuke has very different ramifications than using strategic bombing from stopping a country the size of Indonesia (population 280 million) from getting a nuke. If Jakarta is wiped off the map and the government of Indonesia collapses overnight, it could tank the economy of southeast Asia and lead to millions of refugees flooding borders and tens of thousands of deaths in chaos and mass civil war, etc.

Even if you shrug and respond, "I don't care, I just don't want Indonesia to get nukes at all costs," it's still worth understanding the ramifications of that policy. You should have a sense of what carrying out this policy entails, what its costs will be, and what sort of secondary effects it will have, and all of these factors will in-part depend on the country's population. And it's not like national population figures are esoteric statistical knowledge or something; it's really basic info about a country.

I feel like I'm talking to someone who confidently declares that he doesn't care about prices when selecting a restaurant, and then I point out that prices will impact the cost of going to the restaurant and prices are strong indicators of food quality and decorum and may indicate how you should dress when going to the restaurant, etc., but the guy just keep saying, "I don't care, I have a lot of money, so no matter how expensive a restaurant is, I can afford it."

prices will impact the cost of going to the restaurant

True but the point the rich guy is trying to make is that he is perfectly happy to drop hundreds on a meal and not think twice. Yes, I personally know people who don't care about spending $5 or $500 on a meal as long as it's the best around.

prices are strong indicators of food quality

Very much so not true.

decorum and may indicate how you should dress when going to the restaurant

Not a problem if you always dress classy enough to drop into a michelin star restaurant any day of the week.

So maybe you care about how expensive the restaurant is, but that's because of your own circumstances and motivations. Don't project those onto others.

Even if the population of Iran has little-to-no bearing on whether military intervention is wise, it still has major implications on a million other relevant variables that accompany military intervention, like the death toll, the economic impact, the refugees, the counter attack,

These are logistics, and it is not the place of US Senators to do the logistics work of the US military. The actual strategic planners and number-crunchers can figure out how many faceless Iranians need to die -- but no number will justify letting Iran go nuclear.

I feel like I'm talking to someone who confidently declares that he doesn't care about prices when selecting a restaurant, and then I point out that prices will impact the cost of going to the restaurant and prices are strong indicators of food quality and decorum and may indicate how you should dress when going to the restaurant, etc., but the guy just keep saying, "I don't care, I have a lot of money, so no matter how expensive a restaurant is, I can afford it."

Yes, this is accurate. None of the things you think matter I think matter. I can go to the restaurant dressed however I please, and I don't care if the meal is especially tasty or not. I just want to get some food.

Or, rather, not get the food. In this case, I don't want to extract anything from Iran.

Yes, this is accurate. None of the things you think matter I think matter. I can go to the restaurant dressed however I please, and I don't care if the meal is especially tasty or not. I just want to get some food.

If none of those things matter to you, I don't want to go out to eat with you.

If you pick the restaurant, you're liable to pick a $200 a plate sushi restaurant when I said I wanted a quick snack; or take me somewhere that's absolute shit and say "I don't care if the meal is especially tasty." If I try to take you out to nice dinner to celebrate a friend's birthday, you're liable to show up in gym shorts and a wifebeater and say "I can dress how I please."

Similarly, if Ted Cruz doesn't care about the size of a country he wants me to go to war with, I will ignore Ted Cruz' opinion on who we should go to war with. If Ted Cruz wants to personally go to war with Iran, that's his call, but I'd prefer he not drag me and my country with him.

Fortunately, I'm not inviting you out to eat, and Ted Cruz isn't reading The Motte. Everyone wins!

Ted Cruz didn't go on Tucker for a chat, he went on Tucker to convince the American people (ME) of the correctness of his views. Ted Cruz is advocating for a position.

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These are logistics, and it is not the place of US Senators to do the logistics work of the US military.

Doing another Ceteris Paribus, I would much rather my elected officials understood the scope/scale of the military conflict they are pre-commiting the military people to executing on.

For a more tangible point, every missile fired at Iran, and every defensive interceptor used to protect American assets against Iran, cannot be used for a war against China. The bigger Iran is, the more of those you will need. T

here is a serious opportunity cost to committing to a war, especially when you are in a cold war with a country that is expanding its military faster than you.

Maybe you think it's more important to smash Iran than be maximally prepared against China, in which case fair enough.

But to confidently say "I don't care if the people in charge of deciding to start a war don't understand basic facts about the scope and scale of the war they're committing us to" I think you should have much higher standards for your elected officials.

All fair concerns for you to have, just not ones I share. I genuinely don't think it matters at all if Ted Cruz knows the population of Iran, because its population isn't one of the relevant metrics for our decisions.

I guess what I'm trying to understand about your view is why knowing the scale doesn't matter.

Bigger country = need more bombs = less bombs to deter China. Why isn't that important to understand?

I guess you can respond by saying "well we should simply make more bombs", which is correct, but the political party who is more willing to make bombs is currently in power and they're not exactly going hard on increasing defense production (happy to be proven wrong here, I would like USA to be stronger vs China than it is).

If Ted Cruz overplays America's hand due to ignorance, we all suffer

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At no point does Iran have too many people such that we shrug and accept them going nuclear.

This is just funny to say when your main rival is Communist China.

I don't think there being a billion Chinamen is the reason we don't nuke China. Them already having nukes is the big obstacle there.

That's a pretty good argument for why Iran should get nukes don't you think?

Yes, Iran and not-Iran have different wants and incentives This is quite typical.

What utility does knowing Iran's population matter? What relevance is the specific number of Iranians to any American interests?

If you're considering replacing its government by force, the size population you'll end up administering (at best) or fighting seems quite relevant.

Why? We're not looking to nation build there, last I checked, we're looking to nation destroy so they don't develop nuclear weapons.

Splendid. Nation-destroying Syria worked out so great for Europe, there's nothing that would bring me more joy than doing it again to country ~4x it's size.

Europe can, at any time, start enforcing its own sovereignty and defending its borders. I believe in you guys. I'm also not European, though, so if you fail, no skin off my back.

Realistically they are bound by international laws about refugees that they are unlikely to tear up. Also considering both the UK and France have a nuclear triad you don't want to destroy one country just to end up with 2 new nuclear armed foes in a few decades.

Realistically they are bound by international laws about refugees that they are unlikely to tear up

International law only requires the first safe country that the refugees reach to accept them, refugees aren't given free reign to shop around for the best place to live. The overwhelming majority of "refugees" that flooded Europe in recent years passed through multiple safe countries but Euro governments cucked out and let them stay anyway.

Realistically, there is no international law that America disagrees with, and that especially includes a rule of "you must let yourself be overrun by undesirables". I would personally sign up for Trump's Golden Gestapo to mow down orcs by the boatload.

I'm not sure where you are from but 'Bomb everything and then watch mass starvation, suffering and death whilst shrugging your shoulders saying 'Iran can't have nukes' sounds, at best, bizarre.

Like, at what point does nuking Israel just become a more humanitarian option to your proposals.

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I believe in you guys.

Thanks, but we're being ruled be literal lizardmen, and we don't have nearly as many guns in the hands of the common people as you do.

If that's true, then you're fucked no matter what happens in Iran. You'll eventually be washed away in a tide of foreign brown.

Israel has already moved their goals from “destroy nuclear sites” to “destroy ballistic missile capabilities”. But it isn’t easy to destroy all of Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, perpetually. This is something that Cruz would know if he had even a passing curiosity in the country which his funders want destroyed. A 1 minute YouTube short would inform someone that it has a topography uniquely suited for hiding missile development and launch sites, with 370,000 square miles of mountainous terrain.

The “Iran is almost out of missile launchers” is eerily similar to “Russia is almost out of missiles” of 2022. Except the difficult part of launching hypersonic missiles is not the launchers, it’s the missiles, and they already have those in abundance.

So keep bombing them. Kill all their scientists, all their engineers. Transform the mountains into infernos. Let them all die to defend their ambitions.

The missiles aren't sitting on the mountains, they are under the mountains. For some sites like fordow it's unlikely even the largest conventional bunker buster in the US's entire arsenal would be able to penetrate. We don't have the power to simply destroy entire mountain ranges. Not even counting nukes.

One MOP may not do it, but the MOPs are made to be used in multiples.

A shame if the bunkers themselves are truly impenetrable. In that case, we'd have to destroy everything except the bunkers.

I really think you're delusional/mistaken about how powerful the US air force is at that kind of thing. It's built for precision strikes, not mass destruction (unless nukes). "kill every single scientist and engineer" and "transform mountains into infernos" is just not what they do. Israel wants them to use this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP on Iran's mountain nuke research facility, but there's only 20 of them in existance and that's basically the only weapon capable of penetrating (maybe?) deep into a mountain. And Iran has a lot more than 20 mountains.

It's built for precision strikes, not mass destruction (unless nukes).

Yes, the USAF is built for precision strikes, but the US builds guided bombs the way the Russians build artillery shells. We've made over half a million JDAM kits (although of course we've used a lot of them). Assuming a stockpile of around 200,000, we have roughly one precision guided-bomb for every squad in the Iranian military. That's without getting tapping our inventories of cruise missiles, guided missiles, guided and unguided rockets, or cannon ammo at all.

The MOP is a bespoke weapon designed to fill a small niche, and the fact that it has been procured in small numbers doesn't reflect on the broader state of the USAF's procurement of guided weapons.

One way of looking at that is that Iran is 600,000 square miles, much of it mountainous, so there's roughly 1 bomb per 3 square miles. So not nearly enough to destroy the country with bombs alone.

Another way of looking at is is that Russia has been firing something like 10,000 shells a day for years on a country less than half the size of Iran, and it's still been a slow grinding war of attrition.

I'm pretty sure no one in the air force would claim they have the capability to destroy Iran with air power alone like what's being discussed here. Not to mention that Iran has spent decades building up its defenses against such an attack.

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We can always make more. I'm not persuaded by material limits -- we're the richest people in the history of the species.

You're not? Cool. As a lefty, can I have your support on having a robust social safety net? Because I guess the budget doesn't matter now.

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There's been a suspiciously long pattern of US leaders thinking "we can solve this problem with strategic bombing, no ground invasion necessary." But then it turns out the strategic bombing is actually not that powerful, especially in a country as large and mountainous as Iran. This is a country roughly the size of the entire US west. It seems like they will always, inevitably be able to hide an enrichment facility somewhere. North Korea and Pakistan certainly did.

The problem is US leaders consistently failing to identify the real problem or lay out appropriate goals. Bombing can't nation-build. The US needs to utterly abandon its desire to nation build, to spread democracy, etc., etc. It doesn't work. What it can do is keep a non-nuclear power in the stone age with overwhelming violence.

Nobody went into Vietnam, Iraq, or Agahanistan thinking they wanted to nation-build. The plan was always "we'll just do a few air strikes against specific targets, then get out. should be easy."

It kind of sounds like you want to nuke them, with the way you're talking about "keep them in the stone age."

No, the fallout would probably hurt their neighbors. I'd prefer we stick to conventional bombs.

"Nation destroy" isn't sufficient in Iran. Israel probably could have killed off the regime's civilian/religious leaders by now. But if they did, Iran would just get a new set and they'd get right back to work building nukes. Because the lesson of Libya, North Korea, and Ukraine is if you want to survive and be independent of the world powers, you need nukes. An Iranian regime that is under US hegemony isn't going to come about except by force, and neither Russia nor China is in a position to take Iran within its orbit (not that they'd be likely to accept that either). So you'd need to either totally occupy or install a puppet regime backed by your military, (probably both in that order), and the population matters there.

So you'd need to either totally occupy or install a puppet regime backed by your military, (probably both in that order), and the population matters there.

Why does regular bombing campaigns leaving the country unable to create the necessary infrastructure not a viable path forward? I see no particular reason we can't just annihilate them.

Why does regular bombing campaigns leaving the country unable to create the necessary infrastructure not a viable path forward?

You don't need the US to be directly involved for that. Israel can handle it all on their own.

I see no particular reason we can't just annihilate them.

"Annihilating" Iran, Carthage (or Circassia) style, isn't on the table.

That depends entirely on who's making the decisions, I think. I'm going to vote for people who are okay with destroying our enemies.

It would help to identify our enemies first. Iranians are friendlier to Western Civilization than Israelis.

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I don't think you'll have any luck finding serious American candidates who advocate for genocide.

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Many have explicitly said regime change is the goal.

Change tends to be inevitable when you blow up the current regime! But that's substantially different from us, personally, trying to groom a new generation of good boys in the Middle East.

Sure, but I think it's fair to say that someone who is interested in regime change would be better off knowing some basic facts. It's of course not necessary - you can hold whatever opinion you want with or without facts - but an individual who has done some research is likely to be more adept at the decision making involved. It has utility.

At what point do you think the US military asks Ted Cruz for population estimates in order to plan the next bomber run?

Some somewhat unstructured thoughts:

Why doesn't Ted Cruz know the population of Iran? And what is with him generally? Or the whole upper echelons of the US govt?

While "Cruz doesn't know anything about Iran" seems to have been the big takeaway that people focus on from this interview, I think the much more important and more alarming part is, as you pointed out, the religious element - but I don't think it's a case of stupidity, at least on that specific issue, or of ignorance. "What is with him" is that he genuinely believes that his God, through scripture, has commanded him to support Israel, and there are many in the upper echelons of the US government who genuinely and wholeheartedly believe the same thing.

"Republicans want to go to war in the Middle East because they're Millennialist Christians" is one of those horseshoe / bell-curve-meme situations where if you know nothing about the state of the American right, you probably believe it, if you are sort of read up on the American right, you probably think it's nonsense, and if you really listen to everything they say and the actions they take and try and discern their motivations, then yeah, it turns out they really just do believe it. Yes, sometimes they'll give other justifications based on liberal principles or American statecraft or plain might makes right rhetoric, and sometimes those justifications make sense, but they are all made in the shadow of the initial basis of theology. They are add-ons, NOT the central thing itself. In that way, it's telling that Cruz gives two reasons for his unconditional support of Israel, and the first one he describes is theological.

I really wish Tucker had asked the natural follow up, which is, "If your God has commanded you to support Israel, then surely you would do it even if it was actively against American interests?", but he instead chooses to focus on the difference between what Israel meant in the Bible and whether it can be understood to refer to the modern-day polity of Israel (the answer is very obviously no, because the polity did not exist in any meaningful form, but Cruz refuses to engage properly on that point).

HOWEVER, with all that said, I would be curious as to whether Tucker himself disagrees with the idea that Christians have some obligation to support some form of Israel, whether that is just "the chosen people" (i.e. Jews). I've heard some Christians explain this away by saying that "nah, doesn't matter because Jesus, new covenant, we're all God's chosen, etc. etc." but I don't think that holds out when you read through the Bible. I, personally, follow in the strong and storied European tradition of pick-whatever-works faith, so would be interested in what the more theologically-minded Christians of the motte believe.

The promises to Abraham which Cruz references are interpreted in the New Testament as applying to Christians as follows:

Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Christ. […] All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.

I think the easiest argument against any kind of dual covenant is that the first recorded preaching by Peter is to Jews in Israel, in Acts 2. They are told to repent, be baptized and believe in order to be saved.

"What is with him" is that he genuinely believes that his God, through scripture, has commanded him to support Israel, and there are many in the upper echelons of the US government who genuinely and wholeheartedly believe the same thing.

I don't want to go off the deep end speculating on his stated faith, but at first glance, this part felt somewhat post-hoc to me. I don't doubt that his support for Israel is tied to his faith to some degree, but I also doubt that that particular verse is the driver rather than the justification.

It is suspicious to me that he had the verse memorized (and corrected Tucker on the exact wording at one point, to narrow his interpretation even though his quote was not quite right anyway.), and had the 'I learned in Sunday school' framining, but didn't know where in the Bible it was, or provide any additional context outside of the single quoted verse.

It just came off to me like a digestible soundbite to rattle off, rather than the starting point for a developed point of view. I think Tucker sufficiently surfaced this in his pushback, but it didn't come out explicitly.

"If your God has commanded you to support Israel, then surely you would do it even if it was actively against American interests?"

Mu. Cruz' position is that God blesses those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel. It's less of a commandment and more of an explicit statement handed down From On High that helping Israel is in America's interests.

I don't agree with his interpretation of those verses, but it's worth clarifying this.

if you really listen to everything they say and the actions they take and try and discern their motivations, then yeah, it turns out they really just do believe it

I think bribery is a much more accurate and succinct explanation, actually. I don't actually believe that Cruz would hold this opinion without substantial donations riding on it.

There are certainly parts of the American right for which this is a legit religious conviction, I don't think they're of much consequence today anymore versus MIC interests.

These politicians hardly act as devout christians who believe every word of the bible. They are paid by AIPAC and are terrified of Mossad and jewish influence in the media.

These politicians hardly act as devout christians who believe every word of the bible.

They act as most devout Christians act, in my experience: when it's something that doesn't impact them directly on a personal level (e.g. nuking Iran), they're all for it, when it's something that inconveniences them personally (e.g. not having sex with underage male prostitutes), they had a moment of weakness and will return to the Lord.

That doesn't mean they don't believe it, it just makes them human.

I've heard some Christians explain this away by saying that "nah, doesn't matter because Jesus, new covenant, we're all God's chosen, etc. etc." but I don't think that holds out when you read through the Bible.

Why doesn't it hold, in your opinion?

The Bible makes it pretty clear that there is something special about the relationship between the Jews and God, that this is passed down in a tribal fashion, and that this was not, at least in its entirety, entirely erased by the crucifixion and resurrection (e.g. Romans 11). I would personally read it as "the tribe of Israel is very special, but now everyone is able to become part of that tribe in a new, special way that didn't exist before, and this is partially because of how the tribe of Israel really dropped the ball".

Christian understanding does not end at the Bible. Indeed the Bible says not to use itself that way (2 Thessalonians 2:15). This would seem to be quite a problem for Protestantism but that's beside the point.

The point here is that for a couple thousand years Christians have understood God's relationship with Israel to have been transferred, in a sense, to the Church. Early Christians understood themselves to be part of the fulfilment of the Jewish religion; that Judaism has become Christianity and gentiles have a place in it. They didn't understand 'Judaism' to be a separate thing from Christianity.

However, especially with the destruction of the second temple, the Jews who rejected Christ underwent a radical shift in their beliefs and practices, leading to what we today call "Rabbinical Judaism" -- not the same religion that (partly) transformed into Christianity and, indeed, a younger religion than Christianity, which fairly heavily and consciously defined itself against Christianity.

Within this rubric, what we today call 'Judaism' is rather a Christian heresy and no, there's no expectation that its adherents have any special role that Christians need to worry about. The Church is the 'True Israel'.

For non-Protestant Christians, having so many Protestants in political power is bemusing, frustrating, and sometimes terrifying. This case is all three.

Christian understanding does not end at the Bible. Indeed the Bible says not to use itself that way (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

If you have another reliable record of apostolic teaching, you should listen to it. But you don't – both Rome and Constantinople have a history of backdating later innovations to ascribe apostolicity to them. Tradition can be useful, but to call it authoritative is an error.

Fortunately that's not needed here, because the Bible speaks to the issue. If Cruz gets it wrong, well, Cruz gets it wrong.

For non-Protestant Christians, having so many Protestants in political power is bemusing, frustrating, and sometimes terrifying.

I'd like to respond with some clever remark about Roman Catholics in power, but that'd be silly because, like Protestants, they are too varied a group to generalize about that way. As far as I'm aware of Eastern Orthodox politicians in traditionally Orthodox countries, they seem more driven by ethnic nationalism than by any particularly Christian concerns.

I understand the covenant as God having had a relationship with the righteous Hebrew nation. He did not have a covenant with those outside the righteous nation. Not with gentiles, obviously. But also not with Hebrews (= pre 70 AD descendants of Abraham) who abandoned the Law and adopt gentile worship and customs. If having the tiniest shred of Abraham's DNA made you one of the Chosen, there should be more consternation in the Bible about the Babylonian captivity or the children of kidnapped Hebrew women, but those people are just treated as gentiles AFAIK.

I think God probably gave the Hebrews living after 33AD a grace period, but the He really underlined His point in 70AD, after which AIUI it was no longer possible to continue the traditional Hebrew religion as commanded by God. So, after a brief period, the Hebrew diaspora (=Jews) created a new tradition partially rooted in the pre-70AD religion. I don't think God recognizes this new tradition as legitimate, and the NT says that the Christian church is the new Israel. There's the question of the 144,000 in Revelation, but I don't really know what to make of that, maybe some special mercy for descendants of Abraham of good conscience. Or some people say it means Christians. I don't know.

Edit: IIRC God promised the Hebrews: land, descendants, a relationship (one god/one people), and a messiah through the line of David. The land is now the whole Earth (evangelization), the Hebrews have myriad spiritual descendants, the God/people relationship remains intact, and the Messiah is Christ.

Your objections are

  • Ted Cruz doesn't know the population of Iran
  • You don't like Ted Cruz's interpretation of scripture
  • You don't like Ted Cruz's SUPPORT of Israel
  • Religious people (Huckabee) using religious language.
  • An uncorroborated claim that Bush didn't know there was difference between Sunni and Shia
  • A similarly uncorroborated claim that Bush used religious language speaking to Chirac
  • Various claims, from his enemies, of Trump being unable or unwilling to read
  • Biden's senility
  • Democratic trans policy.

From this you conclude "There are serious structural problems with how America selects its politicians if this is the calibre of talent that's drawn into positions of great power." But this is mostly a Gish gallop. Cruz certainly fucked up not knowing the population of Iran. But neither Cruz's interpretation of scripture nor Cruz's open support of Israel support that. Nor does the use of religious language; you may find it embarrassing but it doesn't indicate a lack of talent. The various claims mostly from tell-all books published much later (and usually disputed) are pretty much worthless as evidence. As are claims reported in the press about Trump in general. Biden's senility is only weak evidence of a problem with selection; it seems clear his senility got much worse after he was elected. And perhaps I'm being uncharitable, but I'm pretty sure Democratic politicians CAN tell the difference between men and women, but they lie about it for policy reasons; they're evil, not stupid.

Well it is a big problem that our discussion about the merits of bombing iran is being derailed into debates about the interpretation of a fairytale book. Cruz is openly admitting that his religious fantasies are a primary motivation for his foreign policy, which in my opinion should disqualify him from holding public office.

Why? Political ideologies, liberalism the prime example among them, are fairy tales.

No, liberalism is an opinion about how things should work. A fairy tale is a story with supernatural elements, usually with simplistic moral themes designed to teach people life lessons. The Bible, the Quran, Harry Potter, and Hansel and Gretel are examples of fairy tales. There's nothing wrong with them, but they shouldn't be the basis for government decision-making.

I guess I have to take the L on not realizing fairy tales are a different genre from parables and other forms of didactic folklore, but apart from the supernatural element, the shoe does seem to fit right in, in particular "usually with simplistic moral themes designed to teach people life lessons".

There's nothing wrong with them, but they shouldn't be the basis for government decision-making.

I disagree, every policy will reflect some moral principles, and these (including liberalism itself) often come from religious texts.

Cruz is openly admitting that his religious fantasies are a primary motivation for his foreign policy, which in my opinion should disqualify him from holding public office.

Why would a man following the edicts of his conscience disqualify him from office? The state isn't to make laws imposing religion; there's nothing at all forbidding individual politicians from being religiously motivated. You probably wouldn't like the end result if we started policing the inner worlds of representatives.

I think there should be some restrictions on politicians being religiously motivated. In the same way that people objected to Biden being in office with cognitive impairments, I think it's a problem to let government officials base their decision making on religious delusions.

Explain to me how belief that God blesses those who support the state of Israel is more irrational than believing that the iron laws of history produce classless socialism through a process of dialectics.

Both of those sound about equally irrational.

I agree. Now explain how it is more rational to believe instead that "the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

Well I do believe that enlightened liberal societies tend to outcompete backwards, repressive, superstitious ones. But that's not some supernatural force bending history, it's just a result of natural selection. There's a reason why countries like Israel and Ukraine can fight off much more populated but less enlightened aggressors. Liberal values lead to a competitive edge in everything, including warfare.

I think there should be some restrictions on politicians being anti-religiously motivated. In the same way that people objected to Biden being in office with cognitive impairments, I think it's a problem to let government officials base their decision making on anti-religious delusions.

Believing that magic isn't real isn't a delusion, it's a logical conclusion based on evidence. Religious people admit that faith is their sole justification for believing that magic is real, which is delusional.

Thinking that an argument by assigned terminology ("magic") is remotely persuasive is a delusion. You're also deluded as to what you think "religious people" "admit". Your bare, unquestioning faith in bad metaphysics probably also rises to the level of being a delusion.

I agree it's pretty fucked up that our representatives believe insane things. There's many I'd like to be rid of, too! Alas, we cannot police their inner hearts and minds, and we can no more punish them for being religious than we can thinking we live in a patriarchy, or that communism is good, or anything else.

Well Chirac said that's what happened and he was on the phone with Bush.

I think it's strange and concerning that leaders of a nuclear superpower are using this apocalyptic, religious language regarding high-profile foreign policy, plus general lack of thought. There are both deniable (Chirac and Trump stuff) and undeniable instances of this weirdness. Diplomats do not usually send back this kind of message to a head of state, Huckabee is a wildly inappropriate choice for ambassador but that's to be expected at this point.

I don't like Ted Cruz's support of Israel but it seems to be more than simply 'I've been paid off' or 'I know this is good for my political career', it's 'I am a true believer'. The latter has fewer limits on their enthusiasm and is more dangerous because of it.

Leaders should be reasoning in a sober, secular way, weighing up the pros and cons. When a CEO says 'God is guiding my hands' then it's a bit sus. Why should Ted or Bush or anyone bother weighing up the pros and cons if God is on his side and will sort it out anyway?

Why should Ted or Bush or anyone bother weighing up the pros and cons if God is on his side and will sort it out anyway?

You have perhaps heard the sayings "God helps those who help themselves" and "God is on the side with the superior firepower"?

Helping oneself would logically include knowing one's enemies.

There is stupidity along with evil. Many, many unnecessary mistakes even from an evil-maxxing perspective. It is not an unreasonable expectation for backroom dealmakers in 2020 to foresee that Biden would become a problem and that Kamala would not necessarily be an ideal candidate.

While I don't believe Cruz is stupid (based on his background, he is probably one of the most intelligent members of the current batch of leadership amongst the American right, although to be frank I think there are some genuinely not very smart people amongst them so perhaps I'm being too charitable due to who I'm comparing him with), the one thing that I genuinely thought was pretty 'stupid' in this interview was his inability to engage with the issue of whether the polity of Israel in 2025 is the same Israel referred to in the Bible. His arguments elsewhere were not particularly 'stupid', they were just occasionally dishonest or misleading, but in this one instance he seemed to be genuinely confused as to how two things that have the same name and are somewhat similar in 'type' couldn't be the same thing.

Also, even one accepts that there is a Christian duty to support the Jewish People, and that supporting the modern state of Israel is an extension of that duty, does that really require one to enthusiastically approve of every single act of depraved lunacy that comes belching out of the Israeli military-intelligence complex? Especially when those acts stand a high chance of getting regular Israelis and Jews killed. I’ve never seen anyone seriously suggest that supporting America means having to happily support the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, Operation Northwoods, or dosing random businessmen and hookers with LSD.

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