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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   29718 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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Trump has bombed Iran's nuclear sites, using B2 bombers dropping 30,000-pound massive ordinance penetrators. All aircraft have successfully cleared Iranian airspace, and Trump is claiming that all three nuclear sites were wiped out. No word that I've seen of a counter-attack from Iran, as yet.

AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment. Fetterman thinks it was the right move. Both are, I suppose, on brand.

My feelings are mixed. I absolutely do not want us signing up for another two decades of invading and inviting the middle east, and of all the places I'd pick with a gun to my head, Iran would be dead last. I do not think our military is prepared for a serious conflict at the moment, because I think there's a pretty good likelihood that a lot of our equipment became suddenly obsolete two or three years ago, and also because I'm beginning to strongly suspect that World War 3 has already started and we've all just just been a bit slow catching on. That said, I am really not a fan of Iran, and while I could be persuaded to gamble on Iran actually acquiring nukes, it's still a hell of a gamble, and the Israelis wiping Iran's air defense grid made this about the cheapest alternative imaginable. I have zero confidence that diplomacy was ever going to work; it's pretty clear to me that Iran wanted nukes, and that in the best case this would result in considerable proliferation and upheaval. Now, assuming the strikes worked, that issue appears to be off the table for the short and medium terms. That... seems like a good thing? Maybe?

I'm hoping what appears to me to be fairly intense pressure to avoid an actual invasion keeps American boots of Iranian soil. As with zorching an Iranian general in Iraq during Trump's first term, this seems like a fairly reasonable gamble, but if we get another forever war out of this, that would be unmitigated disaster.

This is a huge W for Israel. And frankly a necessary W for the country. If my generation continues to hold the politics that they hold now as they age, Israel is stuffed in about 20 years. They need to win these wars now, and make peace with the people that they are able to now, or they won't survive when the blue-hairs start being elected to the senate.

I'm not sure I really understand why so many zoomers are so rabidly pro-Palestine. I get being against what is happening in Gaza, but so many people seem to be completely ignorant of the history of conflict, perhaps willfully so. I used to enjoy going on /r/stupidpol, but that place has become as cesspit of pro-Hamas propaganda. Even if you think the state of Israeli was a Western colonialist project (debatable at best), the fact is there are 9 million Jews living there now. If Hamas/other Arab nations get their way, those 9 million Jews will either be all dead or displaced. How is that any better than what they think is happening in Gaza and the West Bank? Part of me hopes that most of my generation isn't really thinking about things that way, but based on reactions in my graduate department to 10/7 (immediate pro-Palestine protests despite the fact that ISRAEL was attacked), make me think that a lot of my generation actually just wants Israel gone. Which makes me pretty sad.

I lived in Israel in 2019, and as far as I could see, it was a country that would be worth preserving. The public infrastructure was functional, vast amounts of food are grown on relatively small amounts of land, and best of all the people there actually seemed to believe in something greater than themselves. I spent a bit of time in the north where most of the 1 million Arab citizens live (and also more time in Jerusalem where non-citizen Arabs are), and while they had complaints about their economic situation/racism from Ashkenazi Jews, it seemed like their lives were far far better than their relatives in the West Bank or even in other Arab countries. Heck in Jerusalem there were Israeli soldiers guarding the entrance to the upper temple complex to make sure I didn't go up there as a non-muslim. Would a Palestinian government grant the same kind of protection to a disenfranchised Jewish minority? For some reason, I doubt it.

I'm definitely much more liberal than a lot of people here, but this is one thing I just cannot stomach from my own tribe. It would be one thing if we just disagreed in the abstract, but most organizations on the left seemed to be obsessed with tying support for Palestine for everything. My grad union for example wants to send union dues to Palestine and to bargain to try and get Hopkins to divest from Israeli companies. I didn't fucking sign up for this shit when I signed my union card.

I'm not sure I really understand why so many zoomers are so rabidly pro-Palestine.

Because Israel is white and neo-colonialist. In their view. And that's pretty much the worst thing you can be.

This is just idle speculation on my part, but I feel like I'd read before, on the subject of Iran, that one of the giant, deep gulfs within the Democratic party at the upper echelons is the issue of the relative power of blacks, and the relative power of Jews. Just as a matter of deeply important sub-coalitions floating around. I think I saw this discussed specifically in the context of Obama, and important parts of his elite posse, so to speak - a bunch of them deeply resented how much power and coddling Jewish power got within the Democratic party (according to them), and they wanted to see the Jewish part of the coalition taken down significantly.

The last 15 years has been an unrelenting window in to how those groups take other groups down a peg - #metoo puts men on the back foot, #blm puts whites on the back foot, non-stop Pride month puts unsupportive religious people on the back foot. It's always about raising the salience of some public issue, forcing attention on it, and framing the split in ways that foregrounds a specific group and disfavors them. I'm not saying this is entirely astroturfed, either - I think it's something like a savvy awareness of how mass politics actually works. Smart, well-connected activists lay the ground work for narratives, plant the seeds, agitate in the right places, and then if they've done their job well and have luck on their side, other people organically pick up the threads and the whole thing snowballs.

I'm not saying, exactly, that this is all there is to the Palestinian issue. But I am saying, at the very least, that it does pattern match to a preexisting split in highly placed circles that is highly useful to certain powerful people. That's my impression, anyway.

While I'm much less white-identitarian than most people on here, it's entirely possible that among the specific set of 'young blue tribers who never leave the ivory tower bubble of academia' the position really does boil down to 'white people have no right to exist'. As it applies to the USA this is basically a luxury belief- the serious antiwhite racists are mostly a subset of AADOS(+a few natives) who are begrudgingly tolerated by their coethnics. In Israel, on the other hand...

I'm not sure why Iran getting a nuclear weapon is such a disaster. Like, bad, yes. Saudi Arabia would nuclearize pretty much immediately and Turkey probably wouldn't be too far behind, and that means Ukraine and Taiwan, maybe Egypt too, would probably take it as permission, and...

But the Iranian leaders aren't actually insane and Iran is uninvadable anyways. Pakistan and North Korea haven't used their nukes; they're expensive dick-measuring contests that deter ground invasion and not something which even nutsy regimes would use in anger.

Turkey is NATO, we are contractually obliged to aid them when they come under attack, which is commonly understood to involve turning Tehran into a parking lot if the ayatollah foolishly attacks them with a nuke.

My problem with Iran is that I do not have a good model of just how nutty they are, really. I would model their close ally Hamas as being willing to sacrifice every soul in Gaza to kill a few 10k or 100k Jews. Presumably they are less crazy than that. It is of course much more convenient if the kids of their allies are bombed in retaliation, and the ayatollah certainly did not have a problem aiding with actions which would predictably result in a lot of Gazans killed.

I mean, if Iran's version of Islam considers any Muslim bombed by unbelievers to be a martyr who will go straight to heaven, then getting their cities nuked is what an utility maximizer would do. Then again, their past behavior indicates that they care a lot about maintaining power, and not so much about sending their population to heaven in the quickest possible way.

Isn't one of their political platforms death to America?

I think that's a good reason to stop them from having a nuclear bomb.

Isn't one of America's political platforms to go to war with Iran? Seems like a good reason for Iran to get a nuke...

This doesn't refute America's incentives, so what you're saying without realizing it is that we're in existential conflict and should eliminate Iran.

Isn't one of America's political platforms to go to war with Iran?

Can you point to the platform of any party or politician that says "Go to war with Iran"?

Does McCain's singing bomb Iran to the tune of Barbara Ann while he was a sitting senator and on his way to being the republican presidential nominee?

It's about as close as you can get, and still, no.

It's right next to Iran's political platform of 'death to America'.

No, it isn't. Iran's political platform is explicitly and publicly stated by their political leadership and their supporters. We have some hawks who will not miss a chance for an opportunistic war. You are constructing a false equivalency. Iran and the US are not the same in their terminal goals towards one another.

I'm not sure why Iran getting a nuclear weapon is such a disaster.

I suppose it depends on how seriously one takes their maximalist rhetoric against Israel.

Yes that may be a disaster for Israel. How exactly would that be a disaster for the USA?

Seems like preventing a regional power that hates your guts from getting nuclear weapons is probably worth a dozen bunker busters.

There hate for us is not unwarranted.

How strong is the evidence that this action will prevent them from getting nuclear weapons rather than convince them they absolutely need them and that we are duplicitous and not to be trusted?

Their hate being warranted or not is irrelevant to our incentives. They do hate us. If they're deadset on going nuclear, we must destroy them.

Iran's only hope is to stop being so hateful. Even if they think it's justified.

I don't think any president wants to have to make the call of "Hey, this country just nuked a non-Nato country and wiped them off the map. Do we... respond?"

You don't want to set the precedent that there's no response or a limited one, and you also don't want to be the one who gets dragged into a nuclear/heavy-handed military response that has to try to force regime change.

We've already tried regime change in Iran, Operation Ajax / Operation Boot. 'Our guy' was so unpopular he fell to a popular Islamic revolution.

Which non-nuclear power do you anticipate they'd wipe off the map? MAD brought stability.

The US claims to have an interest in non-proliferation and international order. If Iran gets one, Saudi Arabia gets one. Israel already has one.

So now, instead of one independent-minded nuclear power, you have three in a region of the world a huge amount of oil and trade passes through. Lots of chances for drama. (Also, harder for the US to threaten a nuclear nation)

Maybe nothing happens. But it'd just be better to not deal with this.

US claims to have an interest in non-proliferation and international order

Kayfabe.

You're looking at it from the perspective of someone that just wants to live a peaceful life and look after their and their family's own interests. Iran getting a nuke and the rest of the ME following suit means no more imperial expansion into what is basically the nemesis of the western empire's fucked up and vulnerable back yard.

Even if there isn't enough public support for a ground war today. It keeps the option open down the road and makes color revolutions and that kind of thing more possible. As it's questionable to regime change a nuclear nation since you don't know what the power vacuum and instability will bring.

I'm surprised how much political capital he was willing to spend on this. No clear evidence that their nuclear program is knocked out, a pretty strong incentive now between the outcomes of Libya, North Korea, Israel and Iran for any country that doesn't want to be a colony of either the eastern or western bloc to develop nukes. Meanwhile half his base is in open rebellion against him and his biggest source of support right now are Mark Levin type republicans which all of the younger "joe rogan" base despises.

You could almost draw a straight line between the republican party being overthrown by the populists and the Iraq / Afghan wars. Of all the mental gymnastics the base will commit to polish up his obvious faults I don't think he will get a pass here. He's pretty much lost the republicans Joe Rogan viewership numbers of votes. It does make the claims of Israel having compromising intel on him seem more likely.

Can add to that this kills Tulsi Powell, Rubio, and maybe even Vance's future prospects as well. George W. Trump pictures being spammed all over his x posts.

No clear evidence that their nuclear program is knocked out, a pretty strong incentive now between the outcomes of Libya, North Korea, Israel and Iran for any country that doesn't want to be a colony of either the eastern or western bloc to develop nukes.

This would be true regardless of whether the US conducted this strike or not. One might argue that allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons without any sort of kinetic response would have encouraged state actors to pursue nukes even more rigorously.

I'm surprised how much political capital he was willing to spend on this.

I don't actually think a few airstrikes on Iran are worth that much political capital.

Trump was never a dove, and MAGA was never pacifist or pro-Iranian. At most, hit platform was a bit isolationist, but more in a "us playing world police is a bad deal" than "let us downsize our military to what we would reasonably require to defend our country" way.

Assassinating a few enemies or weddings with drone strikes or dropping a few bombs on countries your constituents could not find on a map is very in character for any president.

I mean, sure, if he announced that he was invading Iran, his base might get deja-vu, but if he spends a smallish fraction of the defense budget on personal pet projects like military parades or bombing Iran, I doubt any of his voters will care much.

He's already testing the waters for regime change

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114729009239087163

Israel's goal was never the nuclear program. Most people realize this is unlikely to end here that's why it's costing him so much. At best it'll be a frozen conflict until new made up intel comes out. Israel is already saying they have an idea where the enriched Uranium was shipped. Other people are pointing out that Iran has other bases under other mountains.

And I mean, the president that ran on getting out of the middle east and America First is now posting to make Iran great again? How can that not cost you.

Obama ran on anti-war, tax payer financed medical care and reduced income inequality. Obama did the exact opposite and the left reinvented itself with woke.

We could see republicans doing the same and forgetting about reducing the deficit, America first, American industrial policy and instead finding an equivalent of the trans issue to channel their energy.

The US people will never be allowed to vote on immigration, billions to Israel, warmongering, Medical insurance companies extracting wealth and the surveillance state. It doesn't matter America elects or what the polls show, those issues are settled by the elite for the elite.

Republicans have forgotten about the deficit and American industrial policy.

Medical insurance companies extracting wealth

It's interesting to note that on this specific question, obamacare was an attempt to reach a continental European style universal healthcare system. It just doesn't work. It has the same bones- strictly mandatory employer provided health insurance, welfare-funded healthcare for the poor and old, a subsidized exchange system for everyone else. It just doesn't work as well. There's a lot of reasons for this, but the median Frenchman or German pays for health insurance- and spends less than the US consumer does.

The US people will never be allowed to vote on immigration

What do you think he got elected for this time, looking sexy in swimming trunks? I think stopping illegal immigration, deporting illegals and so on was the number one issue with his voters, and so far he is making a good show of this actually being a priority for him.

--

Other than that, I can only advise you to give that system called "proportional representation" a try. It will allow multiple parties to compete. Sometimes, you will have an issue where (n-1) parties are leaning towards one side, but one party canvases with being on the other side and wins big in one election. Often, this will cause the other parties to flip.

Sadly, this often happens with opinions which I do not share. For example, a single state victory of the green party after Fukoshima was enough to kill nuclear power. More recently, the anti-immigrant AfD has won big in the federal elections. While they are not yet in power, Merz has taken to personally drown a migrant child in the Mediterranean sea each morning before breakfast the CDU/CSU/SPD coalition is basically trying to enact the AfD program, as far as migrants are concerned.

He's taco'd pretty hard on immigration. He paused deportations for hotel and farm workers, then revoked that, and is now talking about some kind of weird visa but not calling it visa system for them. We still aren't even deporting at a fast enough pace to undo the damage Biden did, let alone get rid of the 10s of millions of illegals already here.

the CDU/CSU/SPD coalition is basically trying to enact the AfD program, as far as migrants are concerned.

Mass deportations are on the table? This is news to me. Anything in particular you’d recommend I follow to learn more?

instead finding an equivalent of the trans issue to channel their energy.

The trans issue, but on the other side.

The difference is 'my opponents literally, not a misuse of figuratively but actually do want to let men and boys in your daughter's locker room and discipline her for being upset about it' is a winning issue for Republicans.

"Kamala Harris is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you."

I agree tbh. The thing is the imperial core is nearly completely hollowed out by this and the gains on the frontier are no longer outpacing the decay at home. So eventually their system will simply collapse and they'll face the same fate as elites in all the other dying empires.

The Joe Rogan base will either forget about this in a month or write it off as 'Trump is no Bush, he drops bombs and leaves, no ground war'. The strike is probably insanely popular among everyone else- nuclear nonproliferation and boo Iran are both pretty popular, and there's no boots on the ground here.

I’m lodging my prediction that there will be American boots on the ground within five months.

Feel free to make money on polymarket.

That’s too anonymous; I’m opening myself to embarrassment if I’m wrong.

I'm not sure who is in a bubble as I can't find a single place where this is popular outside of say /r/neoliberal or the neocon talking heads on twitter. Even /r/conservative it seems to go 50/50 from thread to thread. Israel is intensely disliked by the younger generations, there is a reason the US suddenly decided to ban tiktok after Israel started the Gaza genocide. If you're basing it off of opinions here I think this place has gotten pretty out of touch on it's political views.

I'm surprised how much political capital he was willing to spend on this.

I'd like to hear the case that this was actually significant political capital. Democrats were already flipping out (Fetterman excluded) over Trump's failure to stop Israel from bombing Iran and continuing to conduct effective operations in Gaza. So they are already on team Hamas/Iran and not on team Israel/MidEast stability. This strike was just a logical move along the route of letting Israel win all the wars we'd otherwise have to fight if they got wiped out, and from time to time we lend some aid.

I think you are dramatically overestimating the cost of this strike.

I’m rather impressed because of the political capital used. This isn’t the kind of decision one should make with an eye to what the people will think about it. If you need to prevent an enemy from getting too powerful to deal with, you need to act even if it is unpopular. An Islamist state with a history of supporting terrorism is not a state that should be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. It’s beyond crazy to me that everyone is worried about poll numbers here when the issue was Iran with access to a weapon that could kill millions.

That's incredibly short term thinking. If you win a battle but lose the ability to fight the war it's a bad move strategically. Even if this strike wiped out all the mentioned bases it doesn't mean Iran will never be able to make a nuke ever again. Lose the midterms as is incredibly likely and he'll be even more impotent then he is now for any of his domestic policy. This does nothing to reverse Israel's already rapidly declining status in the west. It won't be long before people start questioning why we send them 4 billion a year, how it benefits us to have a rogue parasite state that manipulates our government into war.

No, if Iran with a nuke is dangerous, letting them have it because you don’t want to lose a midterm is short sighted. A nuke detonated anywhere on earth would kill millions. That would certainly be worse than losing a midterm. Especially if that nuke hits an American or allied city, an American military base, or some high value target in the Middle East.

Israel is Israel and they’re frankly not part of my analysis here. If Israel didn’t exist, I think the history of Islamic radicalism would make an Islamic nuke a danger to world stability. A religion that says those who kill for God with a weapon that can obliterate a city is not something that would improve my insomnia.

and if you lose the next few terms and the government is full of college campus pro-palestine types and Iran gets the bomb anyways, what then? This isn't a one and done. Iran still exists and has more incentive than ever to develop nukes. There are likely more facilities, new facilities can be built, etc.

If bombing Iran buys us five or ten years, it’s probably worth it. I don’t think they can restart a program we just blew up and have a bomb in two years.

A nuke detonated anywhere on earth would kill millions.

Certainly not. Hiroshima and Nagasaki together killed maybe a quarter-million. Bigger bombs' damage doesn't linearly scale with kilotonnage (which is one reason many small bombs became more fashionable). Tel Aviv and Haifa together have less than a million people, and while nukes are big, nothing Iran would be likely to build could wipe out an entire metro area.

No, everybody hates Iran. Trump won't lose the midterms over this unless he does something dumb like trying to invade by ground.

This will happen only in ground war with Iran. Serbia bombings didn't hurt clinton. And let's be clear - MAGA americans love those kind of display of american might mic drops. As long as the bodycount is 0 and the involvement short - it may even net him votes.

I'm old enough to remember the chest-thumping that happened when Trump dropped a MOAB on ISIS (we do love our acronyms, don't we folks?).

Also when he iced Soleimani.

And when they spent like a week celebrating that dog that helped kill an ISIS leader.

He damn well knows that inflicting a black eye on international opponents without getting your own people killed plays well.

Even OBAMA knew this, hence the fanfare around taking out Bin Laden.

And he's also making a number of his opponents run cover for Iran directly.

Maybe, it's hard to tell these days with online spaces often being echo-chambers. I know quite a few normie republicans in meatspace that are now sitting the midterms out and won't vote for him though, but that is just a single anecdote. The polling for involvement in Iran was incredibly bad, worse than Ukraine. It'll be difficult for the dems to capitalize on given their shift to liberal interventionism and continued support for the Ukraine war at least.

I know quite a few normie republicans in meatspace that are now sitting the midterms out and won't vote for him though, but that is just a single anecdote.

The midterms are far away. Prolonged involvement will tank trump. But a no-fly zone over iran that is manned by Israel, funded by Saudi Arabia and US just selling fuel and munitions and repairs to Israel probably won't.

AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment

I'm assuming there's no good analysis as to why this airstrike is grounds for impeachment whereas all the other airstrikes and drone attacks over the decades weren't?

It’s just aesthetically a very good axe for her to grind. It lets her criticize Trump, but also distinguish herself from the more hawkish establishment boomer-neoliberals in her own party. It curries favor with both isolationists and third worldist zoomers. And there’s little downside risk since almost no one else in Washington will listen to her.

Does she claim those weren't? If she's willing to bite the bullet and say "it was a problem when Obama and Biden did it too" then there's no problem. I certainly would agree with her in that case; the constitution is quite explicit that Congress is to be the one authorizing war.

If it was a problem, why did she not call for their impeachment?

I can't possibly answer that question. You might want to ask the woman herself. I just don't think one should accuse people of hypocrisy without evidence, even (as in this case) people I don't like.

Its interesting how the past approximately 10 years of diplomacy in that arena has led to this being possible.

There was some Salami-slicing going on during Trump 1 thanks to the Abraham accords, a number of major Arab countries brought into the Western orbit and shown the benefits of being onside and chilling out about Israel. I have my misgivings about their reliability as 'allies' (something something scorpion and frog) but clearly they have the ability to sit on their hands when told to.

Then Russia got itself entangled in a conflict that keeps it from offering much in the way of support/deterrence.

Then Syria's government fell.

Probably a few other things I'm forgetting, but it all ultimately left Iran with no major buddies to lean on (China, I suppose) and thus the immediate consequences of going it 'alone' against its western adversaries.

Which is what made it safe enough for Israel to pulverize their defense systems from several angles.

Which made it safe enough for the U.S. to commit a huge portion of its strategic stealth bombers to the operation with assurances they'd all make it back, and presuming they had the firepower needed to do the job, could expect to actually cripple Iran this time.

I dunno how far in advance this stuff was planned and anticipated but I think this pretty much answers the "why didn't we do this 40/30/10 years ago" question. Too many uncontrolled variables, much higher risk.

Nothing's ever over. If I were Iran and I had some breathing room I'd probably be offering China near Carte-Blanche to give me some nuke tech. That strategy doesn't usually work in, say, Civilization VI but hey, the U.S. is vastly far ahead on the Science Victory, Cultural Victory, and Space Race Victory tracks, so options for both me and China are limited.

I'd vaguely fear Iran deciding to go full 'blaze of glory' mode and activate any and all contingencies and proxy parties it has abroad and just fire off 90% of its remaining missile stockpiles into Israel and daring the U.S. to put boots on the ground again.

But I don't see that as being the rational response and even if they don't come to the bargaining table, they're probably better off waiting to see if any other conflagration points pop off that might distract U.S. attention.

There was some Salami-slicing going on during Trump 1

Actually Salami was sliced by the Israeli strikes just over a week ago

Okay, I guffawed you clever bastard.

Reuters reporting that the Iranian parliament has voted to close the Straits of Hormuz. Rubio calling for China to pressure Iran into backing down. Are we getting the US Navy involved next? Coalition To Make Sure The Oil Keeps Flowing?

Close with what exactly? Until they sort out their air defenses everything they have there will be sitting ducks.

They can close it with their navy, which would have a lifetime measured in days if not hours I expect. They can fire on ships from shore, but any fixed installations won't last long so they'll be left basically being the Houthis of the Straits... except facing a lot more opposition. They could mine the straits, but minesweepers exist. And it's quite possible any minelaying will be met with active opposition. But if they really want to do it and are willing to take a lot of damage, they probably can -- it wasn't possible to remove the Houthi capability without invasion. So if Iran is determined I think they could make this end up with boots on the ground, which would definitely be a loss for the US, though a bigger one for them.

They can close it the way Yemen closed the red sea. Tankers are massive, slow moving ships that are easy targets for drones and missiles. They have over 1500 km of mountainous coastline with tankers sailing in proximity to their shores.

The US failed to win against Yemen in a year and a half. This war will be much, much harder.

Mines, missiles, and drones? Civil ships are not exactly small targets and Iranian drones have seen some use in Ukraine. Could get ugly. It's likely the gulf states, East/South Asia and to a lesser degree Europe would be more affected then the US (who is, after all, a net oil exporter these days), so this hits US allies (and China, India etc.) much more then the US and Trump hasn't shown a high degree of concern about them...

Naval mines are one obvious possibility. It’s even conceivable that the mines are already in place, awaiting remote activation—though if they were, I’m sure US/Israeli intelligence would be aware

If anyone wants to watch the press conference from this morning you can find it here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ARwRsOvVmew (starts around 41 minutes).

I didn’t think they really said anything particularly interesting. Still waiting on more substantive comments on the amounts of damage done at the facility.

I'm hoping what appears to me to be fairly intense pressure to avoid an actual invasion keeps American boots of Iranian soil. As with zorching an Iranian general in Iraq during Trump's first term, this seems like a fairly reasonable gamble, but if we get another forever war out of this, that would be unmitigated disaster.

I'm guessing Trump only did this because the MIC assured him we could keep Iran under our figurative boot simply by pushing buttons from afar, doing strikes from the air and continuing to sell weapons to Israel.

That could obviously be false but it's quite pathetic for Iran that Israel and the US can attack them from the air with impunity. Their threat to blockade the Strait of Hormuz was dubious already, and after the events of the last week it seems laughable.

There's simply no reason to do a ground invasion.

Will we get regime change this way? Yeah I dunno. Can we keep wrecking their shit and reduce their threat level to near zero? I would bet on that sure.

Think campaign to collapse Syria and not war to oust Saddam Hussein.

Think campaign to collapse Syria and not war to oust Saddam Hussein.

It should be noted that Syria had a decade of civil war before the regime finally collapsed (after Israel took out Hezbollah).

Back in the day, the Allies dropped a massive load of bombs on Nazi Germany, which caused people all over Germany to rebel against the regime now that the Luftwaffe did no longer hold them in check. I kid, nothing of that sort happened, because what kept the people in check was ideology and the GeStaPo, neither of which can be effectively neutralized from the air (without killing literally everyone).

I am not convinced that US/Israel can even indefinitely prevent Iran from acquiring the bomb through targeted bombardment only.

Counterpoint: two really huge bombs on Japan made them surrender unconditionally

I am not convinced that US/Israel can even indefinitely prevent Iran from acquiring the bomb through targeted bombardment only.

The best thing about this question is there's no need to speculate, we seem on track to run the experiment and find out. !remindme 48 months

Has the USG directly confirmed the use of MOP? I’m asking seriously. I only see reports where it’s implied based on the context of us having spent the last week talking about them. The X community seems to doubt they were used. There is a lot of speculation that this was another telegraphed strike that allows US and Iran to save face and deescalate.

I have zero confidence in my ability to know what actually happened here and make any predictions about the future.

I decided to check in on plebbit over at /moderatepolitics/. What a total embarrassment. There’s 1000 comments there all basically saying that Iran has been denuclearized, defanged, and is is either about to collapse or lash out with mass casualty events against the USA. As I said, I suppose that’s possible. Perhaps we did fully destroy Fardow with 6 MOP and it was a perfect op. But the lack of even entertaining other possibilities is sad, but not surprising.

It's not possible for a MOAP to destroy a facility 100m deep in rock. It's intended to strike bunkers 40m deep in soils.

You would need a lot of successive strikes, possibly with something in between else to remove rubble and allow deeper penetration.

Has the USG directly confirmed the use of MOP?

Yes. 14 MOPs from 7 B-2s. I don't think any bomb damage imagery has been released, however.

The X community seems to doubt they were used.

Watching the DR apply the same "America worst" logic formerly typically used by the antiwar left is certainly amusing.

Watching the DR apply the same "America worst" logic formerly typically used by the antiwar left is certainly amusing.

I get the impression that the DR largely is the antiwar left, who got kicked out of the left because reasons.

Watching the DR apply the same "America worst" logic formerly typically used by the antiwar left is certainly amusing.

The woke right strikes again.

How is that the woke right?

I don't think any bomb damage imagery has been released, however.

BBC has a satellite photo, showing six entrance points at Fordow. I say "entrance points" rather than "craters", because you won't see the true extent of the damage from above ground.

Has the USG directly confirmed the use of MOP?

There are only 3 things being thrown out of this airplane in that kind of operation that make sense. They are by order of letality MOPs, Nukes and Chuck Norris. It wasn't nukes. We would know. It wasn't chuck Norris - you would only need 1 plane, not 6. And there won't be a need for in flight refueling - when they run out of fuel he will just get off the aircraft and push it to the destination. So it leaves MOPs.

And inside those facilities there is a shitload of nasty stuff that could create what sjw call toxic working environment. So I think that even minor damage could cascade into unsalvigably contaminated facility.

There is always possibility that iran has backup facility and some sort of top secret clandestine protocol that they will pull all of the enriched stuff to it with first signs if danger. And they already did it two weeks ago. Whether they are capable of pulling such tight opsec is exercise left to the reader.

And inside those facilities there is a shitload of nasty stuff that could create what sjw call toxic working environment.

The activity of U-235 seems to be around 80MBq/kg. Not something to keep under your pillow, but also not something where any reasonably quantity will kill you within minutes.

Sure, for the centrifuges, you need UF6, but even that becomes solid below 56 degree centigrade.

To get to that you would also require hydrofluoric acid and fluorine, both of which are definitely nasty, but also things you can clean up even if you care about the environment or the life expectancy of your cleaners, which likely are not issues for Iran.

Hitting the enriched uranium would be hard in any case. The Iranians anticipated the possibility of an attack, so the obvious thing to do would be to dig a kilometer long tunnel, and have a few people whose job it is to carry the good stuff to a randomly selected point in the tunnel every half hour. Unless half of your guards work for Mossad (in which case you have a bigger problem), this should work well enough.

I think the main thing to hit would be the centrifuges. They are not very portable, require a ton of power and supervision and are nothing that the Iranians can easily mass-produce, so losing them would really hurt them.

Of course, we do not know if the attacks actually hit them.

In the long run, I expect the Iranians to win this one, because it is much easier for them to tunnel through another few 100m of bedrock than it will be for the US to bomb through that.

The alternative would be to settle for bombing the entrances of access tunnels whenever they pop up, but that would be a long-term commitment.

It wasn't chuck Norris - you would only need 1 plane, not 6.

Well, clearly the other stealth bombers are diversions to disguise Chuck Norris's actual entry point for as long as possible.

Umm... The common between Chuck Norris and the necrophiliac is that every point is an entry point

What for? He'll intercept any missiles with his bare hands. Or feet, as it were.

There is always possibility that iran has backup facility and some sort of top secret clandestine protocol that they will pull all of the enriched stuff to it with first signs if danger. And they already did it two weeks ago

It seems unlikely that they could do this without being seen by Israeli or US assets. You can hide stuff underground but when you start moving it, it's visible.

Here a Premier London agent named, Sigismund Neumann kept the large diamond for safe keeping. When they transported the large diamond, they had to take extreme measures to keep it safe. The Cullinan was sent in a plain box via parcel post while detectives from London were asked to transport a replica as a decoy publically.

They have 500kg of the good stuff. That is 25 liters of uranium. It takes two plain vans. In the chaos after a strike with all the ambulances, contractors that repair and so on it is easy to be lost in the fray IF you have guys that can keep their mouths shut and their signatures are not too visible. You only need couple of embedded guys there with the proper credentials to take over the uranium when it hits the fan.

AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment. Fetterman thinks it was the right move. Both are, I suppose, on brand.

I suppose AOC would be (tautologically) right if she had the votes, but she doesn't. As I read it, the War Powers Act only requires notification after the fact in this case.

On the one hand I don't think Iran has provided the US sufficient reason to attack them (at least not one that's recent and public). On the other... eh, Iran's government sucks and I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

On the one hand I don't think Iran has provided the US sufficient reason to attack them

Eh, you say "Death to America" even once and I consider my country wholly justified in destroying you. Talk shit get hit is natural law.

On the one hand I don't think Iran has provided the US sufficient reason to attack them (at least not one that's recent and public). On the other... eh, Iran's government sucks and I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

That is the consensus in my part of twitter.

I am skeptical the US used any MOPs or even B-2 bombers. One, of the images/videos I've seen, these attacks look like cruise missiles and the damage appears mostly superficial. Two, the US didn't even use B-2 bombers against the Houthis in the failed campaign against them. If I had to guess, the Trump admin even warned Iran when and where they were going to attack and basically begged them to not retaliate and to allow this to be a one-off attack.

This appears to be a made-for-tv theatrical performance to claim something was done and to hope that's the end of it. In my opinion, this is going to lead to Iran continuing their daily attacks against Israel and withdrawing from the NPT. I don't think they'll directly attack US assets in the area, but I do think they'll close the straight of Hormuz for any European or American traffic. And I also think the Houthis will resume their attacks against any European or American ships in the Red Sea.

Trump admin behavior during this ordeal has been profoundly unserious, counterproductive, and dumb. If this strike leads anywhere other than stopping here, I'm going to predict a major loss for Trump and the GOP in any upcoming elections. This move allows Democrats to pivot from defending criminal illegals being deported and other losing 80-20 issues to claiming the anti-war mantle (however silly that is given recent history) and it will work. Of the MAGA and Trump supporters I know, they are not happy and will simply refuse to show up and vote at all unless Trump manages to deliver something big.

the US didn't even use B-2 bombers against the Houthis in the failed campaign against them

I'm not sure what your point is there - why would the US have busted out B-2s against the Houthis?

they move them into the area for use and decided the risk profile was too high against the Houthis so instead they used almost entirely standoff munitions

I don't think they'll directly attack US assets in the area, but I do think they'll close the straight of Hormuz for any European or American traffic.

This is less devastating than people think because Iranian oil flows to China, Japan, India and elsewhere would continue and even Europe is less reliant on Gulf oil than it previous was (and the shortfall could be made up).

The real impact would only happen by closing off the strait (by mining it, probably), which would send the price skyrocketing and which would infuriate China.

Aren't Israelis guaranteed to blow up the Kharg island oil terminal and any other terminals if Iran refuses to hand over the uranium?

The skyrocketing price may infuriate China, but the Chinese won't do anything about it. More importantly, it will cause the price to skyrocket in the US, which give the Iranians leverage. Not much leverage, but the narrative could become that Trump made an unnecessary strike on Iran that he acted like was a one-off but that caused gas prices to soar and necessitated US naval intervention, escalating the war.

Things could get weird. The US (and North America as a whole) are net oil producers these days. Shutting off the gulf is such a large shock to the system you could see some pretty significant price divergence and shortages between regions as infrastructure limits could prevent fully arbitraging the difference. You could also see political impediments to price balancing as well (wouldn't put it past Trump to ban oil exports to keep US prices in check even if it's a huge blow to our allies) and most Canadian crude has to transit the US to reach the world markets. You could even see divergence in the US where West Coast is more exposed then East coast due to Jone's Act restrictions making it difficult to move oil around the Rockies.

In addition to just Iranian oil, I think something like 80% of all traffic through the straight is to Asian markets. I doubt the Iranians will mine the straight because of the likelihood is will harm non-targeted traffic, but if their capability in the straight or their significant assets there (the port there controls the overwhelming vast majority of trade in and out of Iran) are targeted I could see them doing it anyway.

Iran originally decided to pursue 60% enrichment after Israel attacked their nuclear sites in 2021. This attack happened 3 years after Trump ended an agreement to inspect Iranian nuclear sites, which was criticized by NATO, EU, France, the UK, etc, but was clearly requested by Trump’s Zionist funders. Iran’s radiopharmaceutical industry is genuine — they commercialize isotopes that only Germany has been able to produce. Iran needs to pursue its own cancer treatments because sanctions prevent access to state of the art treatments.

I hope Iran gets a nuke now. We can’t have religious extremist states have nukes — Israel is well on its way in becoming majority Haredi, whereas Iran is on a clear secularization path. A nuclear Iran would counter the power that Israel exerts in the region and may even prevent the genocide of Palestinians.

whereas Iran is on a clear secularization path

[citation needed]

A beginner overview

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/iran-secular-shift-gamaan.html

A study

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/16/5/592

People have been saying this since the late 1980s. The IRGC and mullahs’ grip on power is too strong. There is a fed up secular elite but their casualty tolerance is extremely low and as long as they can take their money in and out and vacation in the many countries where they can drink/fuck/etc (and they largely can) they won’t be a threat. The regime essentially banned dog ownership a few weeks ago just because it started trending on their social media and some scholars consider it un-Islamic; not the behavior of a regime desperately accepting some liberalization. The same happened after the hijab protests, they didn’t give an inch even if enforcement remains somewhat lax in Tehran (which it was before too). In the 1990s (the last major liberal turn) they assassinated a bunch of people effectively openly and then even semi-admitted it (politicians, businessmen, authors, journalists, public intellectuals) until the PM backed out of all his promises.

Wishcasting, as has been going on with respect to Iran since the waning days of the Reagan administration. Most likely they're reaching a non-representative set, with religious Iranians being more likely to eschew their survey. Islam tends to the more strict, not less, from the bottom up; any moderating influence comes from a "degenerate" (or Westernized) elite, which Iran lacks (largely because they killed them or drove them out in the Revolution)

What metric would you trust?

  • TFR is going down, indicative of women no longer internalizing the values of Islam

  • Hijab is becoming less common. The requirement is for the veil to fully cover the hair, but from watching any video of Iranian streets most women totally ignore this — it just barely covers the back of their hair

  • a majority of Iranians use VPNs

The Iranian people were always pretty secular. They never had a grassroots Wahhabist movement like the Arab states did. It’s like the Soviet ‘20s where the state is ideological but the people are mostly indifferent.

They didn't have a grassroots Wahhabist movement because Wahhabism is Sunni and they're Shiite. They did have a popular Islamic revolution which resulted in the current regime.

TFR is going down, indicative of women no longer internalizing the values of Islam

TFR is going down in almost every country. In Iran, which had a brief 1970s baby boom under the Shah, TFR has declined almost every year since the Islamic Revolution, even when it was rapidly becoming more conservative.

Yeah.

Any argument based on "TFR is going down, which clearly shows that X is the cause" is trivially defeated by the fact that every country has this same outcome regardless of the cultural starting point.

Its almost legitimately bad faith to deploy that argument.

If the argument is “Iran is a religious extremist country”, then we should see religious extremist TFR, which coincides wherever there is religious extremism, always. In such diverse places as

  • Minnesota, where the Salafi-infused Muslim households have a TFR of 5, and the women wear niqab with more frequency than Iran

  • Brooklyn New York, where the Haredim have a TFR of 6

  • The rare regions of traditional Catholicism in France

  • TLM-attending Catholics throughout America (simply represents the most extremist branch of Catholicism)

If you’re telling me that Iran has a religious extremist problem, and yet they can’t manage to get their women to have more than 2 kids or wear a veil property, I am going to conclude someone has lied to you. Because this is the hallmark, textbook sign of a society filled with Abrahamic conviction. Especially among Muslims, where the particular sphere of women has always been greatly delineated. Religious extremism means “clerics tell me what to do and I obey”, and if not even the women obey then no one cares. So I conclude that there is no extremism, based upon this fact in addition to other facts.

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Any argument based on "TFR is going down, which clearly shows that X is the cause" is trivially defeated by the fact that ever country has this same outcome regardless of the cultural starting point.

The starting point may differ, but do those countries share any cultural drift? For instance, is there any country that has a lowering TFR over a span of time where women's education and liberty are reduced? I think there's a strong argument that globally, TFR is falling anywhere where women are getting more empowered. The degree and rate of empowerment might differ, of course, but as far as I can tell the root cause everywhere is women in higher education and the workforce.

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TFR is closely tied to religious conservatism everywhere in the world. Iran’s TFR has been down since 1984. Their small blip from 1974->1980 is even less than than 1945 to 1957 America and its decrease coincides with an economic slump. The fact that the Iranian revolution even happened disproves the idea that a majority of Iranians were even on board with the secularization trend.

Maybe in the sense that as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps becomes ever more entrenched as a state-within-a-state, the corruptive influence of all that money and administrative self-interest will secularize it like the Egyptian Army?

Of course, then you get dynamics where the IRGC's perks and privileges derive from a permanent proxy-war footing, which merely means they'd increasingly rationalize sustained proxy conflicts on increasingly secular grounds, as Pakistan does.

Maybe? I would not mock someone who would claim that secularization is possible/likely. But "Iran is on a clear secularization path" is just baseless as of now.

The reason Westerners see an Iranian nuke as a lynchpin is because if Iran proves it has nuclear weapons, then Turkey and Saudi Arabia will quickly also get nuclear weapons and essentially the NPT will fall apart; however, given the US attacked IAEA inspected sites in direct violation of the treaty, I believe they've hastened its demise anyway.

Iran was already in violation of the treaty. IAEA report to this effect is what prompted the Isreali air campaign in the first place.

'You don't have a sufficient explanation for a radioactive aluminum ring from the year 2003 which we've brought up 74x therefore you're in violation of your obligations under the safeguards agreement from 1974 w/re to the NPT and we cannot verify your nuclear program is for peaceful purposes' isn't really in the same category of violation as 'NPT member-state attacks IAEA inspected facility in another NPT member-state almost certainly using information gained from the IAEA inspectors themselves.'

One is the sort of violations you could likely find in any NPT member-state if they were subjected to 1/10th the harassment and silliness Iran has dealt with for decades and the other is a serious and meaningful violation of the NPT's explicit language.

The vast majority of the report is many years old which makes the conclusion now rather puzzling. The actual impetus appears to be the stockpile of 60% enriched uranium, but 60% enriched uranium isn't itself a violation of the NPT.

Not to mention how the report and the ensuing aftermath quickly revealed the IAEA is full of hostile spies which coordinate and communicate with non-member states who have secret nuclear programs.

Israel isn't a NPT member state.

The actual impetus appears to be the stockpile of 60% enriched uranium, but 60% enriched uranium isn't itself a violation of the NPT.

With modern centrifuges that's a few days away from material for efficient uranium bombs.

60% enriched uranium isn't itself a violation of the NPT

Israel isn't a NPT member state.

the United States is

The linchpin is Israel: a country with an undeclared nuclear weapons program in violation of international law, who some speculate killed our President in 1963 in order to secure nuclear weapons, who stole our own uranium to create their weapons, and a country that we provide aid to in violation of our own laws which prohibit us from providing aid to countries with undeclared nuclear programs in violation of the IAEA.

Israel’s illegal nuclear weapons and behavior in the region compels every sane country to pursue nuclear weapons, especially when they see what happened to Iran, a country which could have pursued but did not pursue nukes. Saudi Arabia apparently has some agreement with Pakistan to obtain nukes whenever requested, because they originally invested in its nuclear program. According to Russia yesterday, there are other countries interested in supplying Iran nukes, perhaps China, or perhaps this is a bluff.

undeclared

This word is doing a lot here. Declaration doesn’t really mean anything; it made sense for Pakistan for obvious geopolitical reasons, and every single nuclear state is aware of Israel’s nuclear capability. They could ‘declare’ it tomorrow and nothing would change, none of the major nuclear powers accept or are fully truthful around any international inspections or the full extent of their capability for standard secrecy reasons.

”undeclared” is doing a lot here

Not at all. The Symington Amendment and the Glenn Amendment forbid America from providing aid to countries which have no IAEA oversight.

This is the first time I have heard "Jews did this" as the reason behind the Kennedy assassination.

This is the first time I have heard surprise at a theory of 'Jews did this' for conspiracy fodder events.

Honestly if Jews really did half of the shit they are accused of doing they'd be the coolest ethnic group on the planet hands down.

Well it couldn't possibly have been the CIA, the Mob, or some radicalized socialist, ergo it must have been the perfidious Jew.

Been a theory floating around for a long time. The death of JFK was certainly beneficial to Israel with regards to JFK's consistent stance on being against nuclear weapons. Which is more than enough to get the conspiracy impulses going.

Saudi Arabia wants nuclear weapons because of Iran, not because of Israel. It's hard to accept the NPT/MiddleEast is lynchpinned by Israel when they lied, schemed, and betrayed their allies into nuclear weapons 60 years ago but it's been 60 years and all of the countries mentioned do not have nuclear weapons.

If Israel surrendered its nuclear program, I doubt it would change the landscape much. Iran has a latent capability because of the US, not because of Israel. Previously they had a latent capability because of Iraq, not because of Israel.

Iran has so far resisted joining any defensive block and their cooperation with other great powers has been pretty minimal in order to maintain their sovereignty and independence. I would guess they will have offers of assistance and they're more likely to swallow the costs now and it will make the world worse as a result.

The US/Israel continuing down the path of behaving insanely and the world relying on other actors to be reasonable to avoid catastrophe is eventually going to end in disaster.

their cooperation with other great powers has been pretty minimal in order to maintain their sovereignty and independence. I would guess they will have offers of assistance and they're more likely to swallow the costs now and it will make the world worse as a result.

HESA Shahed 136/Geran-2 alone is enough to drop "pretty minimal", I think

They provided blueprints and a couple thousand, so maybe (gasp) $30,000,000 in crappy drones. That's less than a single jet.

Russians are now making Geran-2 drones wholly on their own.

who some speculate killed our President in 1963 in order to secure nuclear weapons

and some speculate that moon landing was faked, "some speculate" is worth nothing

do you believe this nonsense? Then at least state it openly. Do you consider it as nonsense? Then why you mention it?

The risk is that this escalates to a broader conflict. Not Iran vs whoever--Iran is a paper tiger, and all other factors being equal it's good that it's now further from getting nukes than it was (one hopes). But I'm worried this triggers a series of international incidents that leads to a Taiwan war. Although it seems far-fetched, it also seemed far-fetched that an assassination of an archduke could spiral to a world wide conflagration.

Iran needs to respond somehow, for domestic political reasons if nothing else. And, one thing leads to another, and Hormuz ends up mined, and China decides, well, the world is going to suck for a couple years and the US is otherwise occupied, might as well take advantage of the moment.

Don't worry about Taiwan war.

American magazines of anti-missile interceptors are so low they'd never even get carriers in range to help Taiwan.

The war would be, perhaps, a blockade of Malacca straits and some posturing/cyber warfare etc.

Although it seems far-fetched, it also seemed far-fetched that an assassination of an archduke could spiral to a world wide conflagration.

That is absolutely not what happened. The war was inevitable at this point. It is not surprising that the killing of the archduke lead to the war, it is surprising that it had taken so long for something to lit powder keg.

Yes, the world at that point was a powder keg, and you can name at least a dozen incidents before the assassination that could have set it off. The assassination was far from the root cause, but it was the proximate event in a spiral.

The world is in a similar state today, and normalcy bias is what prevents us from seeing it. Seemingly minor events can trigger repercussions far out of expectations if conditions are right.

The world is in a similar state today

Not really.

There were two main dynamics to the state of geopolitical affairs that let WW1 be WW1. One was the treaty situation, in which most involved states on both sides had staked their security policies / international prestige / credibility that they also needed for other interests into the alliance system. The second was the fact that four great powers (France, UK, Germany, Russia) were competing for influence in a very constrained geopolitical area (peninsular Europe) that they could all project power into. The later is what led to the former is what led to the domino effect.

There is no equivalent concentration of competition or overlap of treaties. As much as the Russians have tried to style a [insert term of choice for grouping] of resistance to the US amongst Iran, Russia, NK, and China, the relationship between them has been fundamentally transactional, not alliance based, and the last few years have emphasized that. The US alliance network similarly does have overlapping effects- there are very few obligations (by design) for out-of-regional issues. Relatedly, most of the non-US actors in the modern system cannot project power to each other if they wanted to, and most US allies in different regions cannot and would not project power to the other as a 'we will fight together' sort of way.

There were two main dynamics to the state of geopolitical affairs that let WW1 be WW1.

Another reason for WW1 is that for millennia, being belligerent was a net positive to states in most cases. I mean, obviously having a war was always net negative (unless the alternative was starvation, perhaps), but in earlier times, it had at least been a good deal for the elites (and arguably even some of the commoners, though not the commoners finding themselves in the path of an army) on the winning side. The militant nationalism of the 1800s was a consequence of that.

But by 1910, the underlying reality had changed, because weapon systems had gotten a lot more deadly and railroad logistics limited the land gains made from offensive operations, leading to the trench stalemates. Suddenly being belligerent was maladaptive. Few politicians or populations would have been enthusiastic about starting WW1 if they had known the meat grinder it would become. Instead, they were enthusiastic -- finally a chance to kick some hated foreigner's butt again, like in the good old times. Instead they got Verdun.

When WW2 started, there was a lot less enthusiasm all around, because most participants were not looking forward to more industrialized warfare.

Excellent addition. Especially as not only have the costs of war risen since then, but so have the costs of occupation post-'victory.'

AKs and RPGs were enough to break the cost-benefit logic of emperial economies, and IEDs and manpads could make even 'less total' occupations prohibitively expensive. The modern development of drones are an even greater obstacle to projecting power at a, well, global scale.

This doesn't mean a 'world war' is impossible, but it really does beg the question of who is going to be fighting where how. The US ability at power projection is absolutely going to be hemmed in in the weeks/months/years/decades to come, but so is everyone else.

Total informational blackout, facial ID systems and military drones are going to make occupations much less painful. If you can conduct head counts, track every single person with with cameras or transponders and run AIs to spot suspicious activity, anomalous food use or insurgent activity, war of conquest gets a lot easier.

Also, the age of hobbyist level drones being militarily useful against China or Chinese friendly states ends 5 years from now, at worst.

Total informational blackout, facial ID systems and military drones are going to make occupations much less painful.

And then I use some zero day because you vibe coded the software and your own network is busy killing you.

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...until you get outside of the cities with the infrastructure to support a constant surveillance system. Which is to say, most of any given country, including China.

Smart city technologies are indeed a significant counter-insurgency technology. They are not, however, the end-all-be-all, particularly if you have to fight your way into a country to install your own. 'I won't have this problem if I set up a nation-wide panopticon' still requires you to set up a nation-wide panopticon, and those are expensive even without active local and regional resistance, let alone global support flows from cyber attacks / satellite communication support / sanctuary and safezone logistics / etc.

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Also, many ways things that made war profitable (at least to winners) are far less valuable nowadays or treated as not acceptable.

Slavery? Used to be absurdly profitable and OK, nowadays it is neither. Except extreme fringe cases.

Looting? Looting modern factories gives you nearly nothing, Russians stealing fridges in Ukraine resulted in mockery, not envy.

The same for occupation, glory, rape and so on - now occupation is clear net negative for basically all involved. Glory? There may be a bit, but not much and many will hate you. Rape? In general opinion here changed in direction similar to slavery and it got less useful with sexual revolution.

In the end, Iran will have nukes. They’re too large, too developed and have a relatively good academic pipeline in the hard sciences such that it’s inevitable. It might be a year, three years, five years, but they will have them.

A ground invasion of Iran by the US is impossible. The only hope for regime change is either that there’s some mass minority uprising against the Persians (very unlikely, they’re not staunch ethnic nationalists and have mollified most of the minorities quite well) or that there’s a middle-class ‘color revolution’ in Tehran and the mullahs and IRGC just kind of give up in that late stage GDR type way and melt away into the crowds (which is also extremely unlikely because they know what they have to lose).

At the same time, Iran’s near term options for retaliation are limited. They can’t shut down the strait because the Chinese will hit the roof and selectively bombing ships is a bad idea (the true shutdown scenario, as I understand it, would be mining the strait, and that’s not going to distinguish between Chinese ships and Western ones). If they bomb Saudi oilfields it will only hasten the return of Abraham Accord type stuff just when they’d achieved some diplomatic successes with the Gulf Arabs.

mass minority uprising against the Persians

Azeris staff most of the government, presidents, generals, ayatollahs etc. There is no racial animosity here.

Exactly, and it would have to be them.

Persians rising up against the Azeri controlled state, is more plausible, since in a purely national lens, Azeris currently control the government as both the current president and supreme leader are Azeri. (I don't think either will happen nor that nationalities are a useful lens here, because there are so many and very few people are "only" "Persian".)

This. The question is simply if it is better to delay their bomb by a few years at the cost of further antagonizing them.

Most nuclear powers have paid a very low blood toll for their nuclear weapons program. (Arguably, the US paid a tremendous indirect toll, as all the resources they earmarked for the Manhattan project would otherwise have gone into mundane military equipment which would have saved the lives of their soldiers, which is doubtlessly one reason why the pressure to use the bomb was so high. But emotionally, this is not equivalent to the Axis having assassinated Oppenheimer and a dozen of his colleagues and having selectively bombed Los Alamos.)

Not so the Iranians, when they finally hold the bombs in their hands they will have paid dearly with the lives of their best and brightest as well as hundreds of workers and years of sanctions. Simply going the North Korea route of MAD, announcing that their days of getting bombed are now over, and thank all the martyrs for securing the peace of Iran might not play well with their stakeholders, who have been raised on the promise of driving the Jews back into the sea. (Of course, it could also be that they plan to nuke Tel Aviv the minute they have a bomb, consequences be damned, and that this was the plan since the 80s, in which case antagonizing them further would not matter.)

From a tactical perspective, Iranian nuclear missiles will be extremely fragile. You can put your centrifuges in a deep mine to recover them after they get bombed, but there is no way to have your ballistic missile launch-ready and still have it launch-ready after its silo gets hit by a conventional bunker-buster. I think in wargaming, threatening your enemies nuclear missiles, so that they either have to use them or lose them is how conventional wars go nuclear.

A lot of nuclear powers do not really have to worry about someone taking out their retaliatory capabilities. The USSR had ICBM silos a thousand kilometers within their airspace, and nuclear missile subs which would have been hard to take out. They certainly had satellite surveillance to detect US mass launches.

Now consider Iran with a few nuclear silos. They know that the West is willing to bomb them to destroy their nukes. They also know that Israel can violate their airspace with impunity. (Presumably, Israel would first knock out their radars during a normal attack, which would give them some advance warnings, but how confident are they that they can see the latest US stealth bombers on their radar? And given that Western intelligence was able to infect their centrifuge control system with malware once, how confident are they that their radar systems are clean?) They know that Israel has invested a ton in missile defense and would probably gamble on being able to shoot down a lone surviving ballistic missile or two.

This means that they will be on a hair trigger. The US and Israel will have no credible way that they are willing to engage in MAD with Iran instead of trying to take them out with a first strike. Any time an animal gets into a transformer and electrocutes itself, cutting power to a radar station, there is a decent chance that whoever is in charge will decide that this means that Israel is finally going for their nukes and launch.

(Arguably, the US paid a tremendous indirect toll, as all the resources they earmarked for the Manhattan project would otherwise have gone into mundane military equipment which would have saved the lives of their soldiers

Like what really?

American industry provided almost two-thirds of all the Allied military equipment produced during the war: 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces, 86,000 tanks and two million army trucks. In four years, American industrial production, already the world's largest, doubled in size.

American soldiers stationed in the pacific used airplanes to churn ice cream (mount on the wing use some kind of RAM turbine to stir, fly high for one hour), and they converted the excess ships into ice cream supplies for the fleet.

Warheads on missiles are removable. All they'd need to do to launch a nuke is replace the warhead in one of their missiles with a nuclear one.

They know that Israel has invested a ton in missile defense and would probably gamble on being able to shoot down a lone surviving ballistic missile or two.

Israeli ABM consistently fails to intercept fast missiles that evade. It's simply too hard a problem. You need to track them exactly and guide interceptors, which have guidance issues bc of aerodynamic heating onto the incoming stuff.

They can intercept ballistic missiles all right, but not the more modern, faster ones that glide ..

This is not an argument for the inevitability of a nuclear Islamic Republic, it is an argument to expand the target list.

I would be shocked if this results in boots in the ground. Like with Soleimani, seems like gamble that stops with the air strikes (plus whatever Israel is up to).

People exclaiming loudly about how dangerous this is while also campaigning for increasing escalation in Ukraine against an actual nuclear adversary are not serious people.

I'm highly against more foreign intervention but this seems fine to me. A nuclear Iran seems to be very bad in very obvious ways.

People exclaiming loudly about how dangerous this is while also campaigning for increasing escalation in Ukraine against an actual nuclear adversary are not serious people.

I see few people arguing that NATO should enter a shooting war with Russia. Even providing air defense coverage (which would involve NATO shooting at Russian planes) is not in the overton window. Providing conventional military aid to a proxy has long been established as an acceptable cold war conduct with low risk of nuclear escalation.

I'm highly against more foreign intervention but this seems fine to me. A nuclear Iran seems to be very bad in very obvious ways.

I agree that a nuclear Iran seems bad, but the question is if US airstrikes will indefinitely delay the Iran acquiring nukes. If Iran acquiring nukes eventually is a forgone conclusion, then these attacks might be net negative in that they make it much more likely that Iran will not stick to MAD.

I've long been interested in how people, when talking about Ukraine, use generic terms with little meaning like "increasing escalation" to make comparisons of things that obviously aren't comparable - in this case, the direct use of the American bomber fleet, which obviously hasn't been happening in Ukraine and does not seem like something that is happening.

American weapons guided with American intelligence have hit Russian targets. I fail to see how different that is to bombers dropping bombs.

Ukrainian naval drones depend solely on Star link for comms.

Supplying weapons and intelligence is widely considered as different than using your own weapons, controlled by your soldiers using your intelligence.

Does not exactly make sense, but that is how it was treated for long time.

Whose bombers?

Tbh the distinction between forces attacking and just supplying other forces that attack is somewhat lost on me, but a cursory reading of cold war era conflicts (Vietnam, Afghanistan etc) clearly indicates states consider it to be very different.

Kinda has to be, if every single country involved in manufacturing any bullet used to fire at your troops is now at war with you, things would escalate very rapidly.

All the more so in the current age of globalized industry.

That said, yeah, if your country is selling fully manufactured high end weaponry to another country with the basic knowledge that its going to be used in an extant conflict, you're clearly tapdancing on a somewhat blurry line.

Selling gasoline to a belligerent country is at least plausibly deniable, since it has civilian uses.

There's an obvious difference between tapdancing on a blurry line and flagrantly, obviously and unambiguously running hundreds of meters on the other side of the line, which is what sending the bombers would be doing.

Yeah, sending the bombers, training the pilots, providing support services and maintenance and okaying their use, but denying any role in the outcome because "well WE didn't fly the planes" is patently silly.

If there are two guys having a shootout and you go over to one of them, hand him a gun, hand him the bullets, help him load the magazine, give him a few tips on marksmanship, and point out where the other guy is hiding, the other guy could pretty rightfully consider you an enemy combatant at that point.

But I dunno how many layers of obsfuscation are required before it becomes a wash.

"We sold the bombers and training to this other country, who then lent them to the belligerent country, and it just so happened that this other country has access to our satellite network to help with targeting, but we didn't tell 'em to do anything with that" is probably the furthest you can get without being obviously culpable.

And that's only because the intermediary country does have the option to just not do the thing you're hoping they do.

More comments

Individuals also tend to consider it to be very different in terms of moral responsibility, and culpability, when helping other people do things they want to do versus when you do something yourself. Individuals have agency and individual responsibility for the actions they choose to do.

Of course, that there is the rub. A common stumbling block in characterizing international affairs is the hyperagency versus hypoagency bias, where the a country's agency is inflated and anyone else's agency and responsibility is diminished / ignored.

People exclaiming loudly about how dangerous this is while also campaigning for increasing escalation in Ukraine against an actual nuclear adversary are not serious people.

I'm not that plugged in to the American commentary, so I might have missed something, but are there people doing that? I agree it sounds rather schizophrenic.

The pro-Ukraine, anti-Israel crowd is not small. It's the default position of the western left.

Pro- one country and anti- another is one thing, I thought we were talking about why it's dangerous to antagonize one country, but somehow safer to antagonize a bigger and better armed one.

The elites of the USA (who are often to be said to be captured by the left) are pro-Ukraine, pro-Israel, though. A substantial fringe of academics and student protestors doesn't change that.

Democratic party elites are strongly pro-Islam and see Isreal as creation of western imperialism, hense the current panic.

Republicans are generally anti-islam and see the Isrealis as natural allies who won thier war of independence fair and square.

Invading their neighbours three times, attacking Iran, backing all sorts of terrorist groups in Iran and then bombing for over a week seems to be the best way to convince them to get nukes. The best way to convince a country not to get nukes is to not be hyper aggressive towards them.

Yes, if Israel just let its neighbors invade them and did not respond to Iran's funding of Hezballah, Hamas, and the Houthis, surely Iran would realize that peaceful coexistence with Jews is the way forward.

backing all sorts of terrorist groups in Iran

can you give some examples?

the best way to convince them to get nukes

Iran was convinced already, that changes little

can you give sine examples?

I don't see how that's related to anything, but sure, here you go.

Citation needed

The best way to convince a country not to get nukes is to not be hyper aggressive towards them.

And to not have nukes yourselves. People warn that if Iran gets nukes, it will trigger a regional arms race, and Turkey, Saudi, etc will also have to get them, but that arms race already began when Israel acquired nukes and created an imbalance.

Except Israel's had Nukes for decades.

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