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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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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.