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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31180 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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I wrote up a post late last week about Trump ordering airstrikes against Iran's major nuclear facilities. Consider this a follow-up:

CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE! It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED! Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World. During each CEASEFIRE, the other side will remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL. On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR.” This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!

DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

On the one hand, this seems literally incredible. On the other hand, Vance is on TV right now answering questions about the process, so they're committed to the bit, and it would be a rather strange thing to lie about. On reflection, it's possible that both belligerents have taken enough punishment that they're ready to call it a draw.

If this is not real, it's going to be about as humiliating as imaginable for the administration. If it is real, on the other hand, it's going to throw a lot of the discussion over the last few weeks, and particularly since the airstrikes, into fairly sharp relief. I'm particularly interested to discuss Nick Fuentes's remarkable predictive accuracy with regards to this new development.

There's been some discussion lately about whether it is better, on breaking events, to hold one's tongue and wait for further developments, or start talking immediately. Many have argued that it's better to wait. I disagree: When one of these things happens, and we want to talk about it, and we experience the nervousness that we might be making fools of ourselves if what we say is proven wrong by revelations tomorrow morning, in that moment we have an opportunity to be far closer to honesty, with others and with ourselves, than at any other time throughout the year. Uncertainty is the prerequisite for charity, and these moments of uncertainty force us to realize that we ourselves can, in fact, be wrong. People should be more open to talking about breaking news, not because it allows for hotter takes, but because it gives one skin in the game and favors rational analysis over sophistry. It is good for us all to call the coin before it has landed.

In that spirit: I think this is real. I think Iran and Israel have in fact agreed to a ceasefire and to an end to the war, and I think there's a high probability they'll stick to it. I think the strikes actually worked, and Iran's nuclear program has in fact been pretty thoroughly wrecked, with their timetable set back by, say, more than five years.

If this is what it appears to be, it's a hell of a thing.

That didn't last long.

I think it did: Shaky ceasefire between Iran and Israel takes hold as Trump voices frustration

Agreed. A single instance of tit for tat is impressive. Almost all the way there.

Trump is acting as though he expects the ceasefire to be respected. Notably, he's acting like he expects both sides to respect it, and is willing to criticize Israel for shooting back. It seems pretty clear that Trump is, in fact, imposing a ceasefire on people who have a strong preference to continue shooting; if this is the case, then both sides are going to want to goad the other side into accepting blame and consequences for breaking the ceasefire, so that they can continue shooting with their opponent in a worse position. If that's the situation, then getting the ceasefire to stick means convincing both sides that they will not succeed in this and that brinksmanship games are an unacceptable risk, which is what Trump and his administration appear to be doing.

I maintain that Trump at least appears to be doing the right thing: pursuing obvious American interests as efficiently as possible, while actively avoiding entanglement in the problem. Trump declaring a ceasefire and blasting both Iran and Israel for limited violations makes it significantly more likely that the fighting will stop, and indeed both Israel, Iran, and the media are acting as though the ceasefire is a real thing that there are consequences for violating. But also, it seems to me that Trump's general approach vastly reduces the chances of America getting dragged into the war, because our stance now is that there is no war to get dragged into, and contradiction of that narrative by Iran or Israel is being framed as wrongdoing.

This seems like a pretty significant change from the status quo, and I am happy to see it.

[EDIT] - ...And skepticism and resistance to the contrary, it does in fact appear to be working. Per CNN headlines:

Iran is ready to resolve issues with the United States, [Iranian] president says on call with Saudi crown prince
Israel lifts country’s restrictions, and airports will resume full operations

And of course:

Rep. Al Green introduces articles of impeachment against Trump over Iran strikes

...some things never change.

Indeed, by the standards of Middle Eastern ceasefires, this one seems to be holding together OK. Iran fired off two missiles (most sources say both were intercepted, one says one hit a residential building), Israel dropped two bombs in response (and told Trump they would have dropped more if he hadn't yelled at them, quick thinking on Netanyahu's part), and nothing more. Also no Houthi attacks on shipping, no closure of the Straits of Hormuz, and no bombing of Iran's oil terminals

How can you hate that guy?

He certainly has his moments.

Especially speaking off the cuff. It’s a gift.

My interpretation is that Israel is short on interceptors, Iranians are short on missiles bc Israelis almost certainly bombed exits of tunnel storages and possibly generally short. Rumor is Iranian air defenses rallied and made striking Tehran harder.

Both sides have refrained from truly damaging strikes so far. E.g. Israel didn't hit oil terminals at Kharg island, Iranians didn't hit turbine halls of the five Israeli power plants.

American bombing effort, if it wasn't fake (smaller yield bombs dropped) almost certainly failed to destroy Fordow enrichment facility which was engineered to absorb such damage.

Iranians want to withdraw from the NPT and are reportedly more avid than ever for a nuclear program. So, if Israelis are truly dead set on dismantling that, they're going to have to continue bombing until Iran turns into a failed state.

Can they? Do they have the munitions, spare parts etc?

Looks to me like Trump imagined that because the US is large, it has magical powers to compel others to do what it says. I’m getting a strong feeling that this is the same exact thing as happened with Russia and Ukraine. Wasn’t he supposed to end that war? What happened there?

Looks to me like Trump imagined that because the US is large, it has magical powers to compel others to do what it says.

Trump appears to be compelling others to do what he says. Israel's airports have just resumed full operations. Iran is telling the Saudis that they're ready to resolve their differences with the US.

I’m getting a strong feeling that this is the same exact thing as happened with Russia and Ukraine. Wasn’t he supposed to end that war? What happened there?

Trump does not actually have magical powers. He has considerable power, but exercise of that power comes at unknown but significant costs. So far, ending the Ukraine war is beyond him. We'll see how it goes in the future, though.

The Ukraine War is tougher because the United States has less leverage over both parties. Russia is an already heavily sanctioned nuclear nation and the only major stick that can be deployed against them is the threat to deploy American ground troops in Ukraine, which is unlikely. Europe is still convinced that the war is a good idea and if they are willing to sacrifice a bit they could continue to fund and arm Ukraine for the next several years, even if all US support is cut off. Both Ukraine and Russia seem to be convinced they can still win and that continuing to pursue the war is in their own best interest. There’s not a lot that America can actually do to force them to stop.

Trump, on Truth Social, after reports of Israel continuing to bomb Tehran:

ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

This tone towards Israel is, to me at least, unexpected given the terms of the ceasefire. I expected Israel to have carte blanche to 'finish the job'.

Maybe a reductive take but I genuinely believe the next move depends on what Trump is currently watching on television. If Fox News presenters start covering for Israeli actions, or harping on about Iran 'breaking the ceasefire first', Trump may be convinced. It really is a shame that Tucker isn't on a major network anymore - if it's not on TV, Trump doesn't care.

Israel can’t actually finish the job on their own, at least not with conventional arms. Their whole strategy was to suck the United States into the conflict, preferably with a ground invasion. Trump knows this, hence his annoyed tone.

Israel says Iran violates ceasefire announced by Trump, orders new strikes

Looks like Iran fired two missiles, Israel dropped two bombs in response. Given that the missiles were intercepted I would think Israel could afford to ignore the violation, but probably they figured that would make them look weak.

More likely they didn’t want a ceasefire to begin with, but Trump made it a pre condition of their using the B2s. So now they are taking any excuse to renew the conflict.

If this is not real,

It isn't real. Both sides are still shooting at each other. Israel is claiming that Iran should be blamed because they fired the first shots after Trump's deadline, and they are just retaliating. What is definitely the case is that both sides tried to do maximum damage in the hours between the ceasefire being announced and entering into force, which is not what people who actually want a ceasefire do.

It's real. In the sense that this looks like a tit-for-tat draw down preceded by a mad smash and grab. It is not real in the sense that "ceasefire" means ceasefire. The two nations haven't conducted open diplomacy for 40+ years. I don't think anyone believes a "ceasefire" looks anything like peace. Iran will mostly get its airspace back after the launch missile quota, the US gets to leave for a moment, and Israel must be satisfied with the operation. None of these things prevent future actions or new phases. If you require a "ceasefire" be a ceasefire, then it's not real. It's still a meaningful change in posture.

On the morning of November 11, 1918, World War I was effectively over. The armistice had been signed hours earlier, and at exactly 11:00 a.m., the guns were set to fall silent. The battlefield was already filled with soldiers – on both sides – who were simply waiting out the last few moments of a war that had consumed the world.

And yet, just one minute before peace, a single shot rang out. Henry Gunther, an American soldier, was dead. He became the last official casualty of the war, but his death wasn’t an act of heroism – it was something much more tragic.

More

I note with dismay the link was written using chatGPT's default slop style.

Nearly 3,000 soldiers were killed between 5:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. – all because the Allied commanders refused to end the fighting immediately. Instead of letting the war end as soon as the papers were signed, they decided that the war had to officially end at 11:00 a.m., supposedly to give the news time to spread. In reality, it was a decision based on pride – a final show of force against a beaten enemy.

I think the ceasefire is fake, like the Russia-Ukraine ceasefires. Both sides are just manoeuvring to look like they want peace when they really want victory. They'll say 'oh they broke the ceasefire' and continue on. Israel has broken no small number of ceasefires throughout the years and the Iranians do similar things with their proxies.

Trump's powers are not that great. He can produce drama and break things but he cannot mend or create to any significant extent. He can rugpull Ukraine for instance but he cannot actually achieve peace with honour like he promised. He can rugpull the NASDAQ with tariffs but he cannot actually reorder the world economic system to spur sustained manufacturing growth in America per his goals, let alone abolish the income tax per his musings. Note that both of these are very difficult tasks!

The prospects of him using diplomacy effectively on Iran of all countries is very slim. Firstly, Trump does not know how to do diplomacy in general. Secondly, his entire Iran policy consists of being as untrustworthy as possible, reneging on treaties, issuing ultimatums and bombing the country.

They both want victory, but Iran clearly cannot achieve it. Israel can't either, though they may think they can. Peace may be the next-best-option.

Iran's victory condition is avoiding civil war, preserving their strategic forces and forcing Israel to accept that Iran also has nukes.

Israel isn't Russia or US, it has limited resources. Iranian victory is possible.

Iranian victory is surviving, and climbing in the Jihadist Power Rankings.

IRGC helped put down ISIS and unlike Americans,never provided CAS for them.

They're not friends of 'jihadis',they have their own league.

They've also allied with Hamas, which is primarily Sunni.

There's a global jockeying for status among Islamist groups. Part of that will involve actually killing each other, part of it will involve harming Israel/USA or drawing the attention of Israel/USA and proving their ability to take a hit.

Of course it's real. What else could Iran have done? They can't project power, their long-range weapons are running low, their terrorist groups abroad have already reached the limits of what they can do. They won't exactly just cancel the Islamic Republic and call the game lost. Anything drastic they might do - buy nukes from Pakistan or the Norks, mobilize their army and march on Israel through whatever is in the way, or rebuild Fordo two miles below the mountain - will take time, and time is exactly what a ceasefire buys them. Does the same for Israel, too, but I suppose that's a gamble worth making when all your alternatives range from wishful to fantastical.

Edit: Time to eat crow. I guess Iran is taking a stand on principle, where the principle is "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me". That, or they don't have their missile men under control.

Agreed. In an exchange of missiles and bombs, Iran would be losing decidedly, so it makes sense for them to not engage in it.

From my understanding, this ceasefire is mostly that both sides will cease lobbing missiles at each other for now, not anything about Iran stopping their nuclear program.

If either side feels they have anything to gain by breaking the ceasefire (e.g. Israel seeing another opportunity to delay the Iranian nuclear program by bombing them), then they will break it.

While it is a defeat for the Iranian regime, it is a defeat that they likely can survive -- they ideology is not based on how they are technologically superior to the West, after all. I imagine that support for their nuclear program has actually increased, because it seems like the only pathway to prevent the IDF from bombing Iranian generals whenever they feel like it.

Of course Trump announces the ceasefire like he had just negotiated the fucking Good Friday Agreement, when all he did was bomb Iran without getting into an indefinite missile war with them, which few if any people claimed was the main downside of bombing them.

Trump’s bombastic, over the top rhetoric has always been his strongest spot. The average person doesn’t check geopolitical realities and likelihoods, they check ‘who’s shooting at whom’.

I wonder if that's how presidents had to be in the past, and the rest of us reading the newspaper listening to radio watching on TV following social media real-time feeds just weren't as knowledgeable about those realities until recently.

Building on this, the 'more important' ceasefire for most of the world isn't even Israel-Iran, but US-Iran.

The US entry was limited to the bunker buster attack (which Israel could not get on its own). Iran responded with the telegraphed attack on the US base in Qatar. This was a basic tit-for-tat, and the 'cease fire' had neatly concluded that.

A lot of Iran's more major potential escalatory steps- shutting down the Straight of Hormuz, needing a nuke for regime survival- are assets more against the US than Israel. But they are also assets with higher global fallout for global energy markets / global proliferation than just the Israel-Iran conflict as is/was.

It's not that the Israel-Iran part isn't important, but even if it breaks down (and there were reportedly some late-fires already) it won't have the same implications of the US being directly involved.

I imagine that support for their nuclear program has actually increased, because it seems like the only pathway to prevent the IDF from bombing Iranian generals whenever they feel like it.

This part I'll disagree with, however. Nuclear deterrence does not work as a 'I can hit you, no hit backs' shield, which already has a good deal of precedent not only in Russia-Ukraine but also in, well, the Iran doing retaliatory missile strikes against US bases in the middle east. The precedent for this line of thought failing have already been established, notably by Iran.

As long as Iran remains wedded to its proxy war strategy against Israel (and the US), it will be subject to retaliation strikes. That Iran has reached a point where its proxy strikes lead to direct retaliations is more of a measure of strategic misplay of proxy warfare* than an issue that can be resolved by gaining nukes.

*The first rule of proxy warfare is that plausible deniability requires the opponent to variously not know, or have enough doubt, such that they prefer to avoid the consequences of direct conflict and prefer to focus on the proxy regardless. If the proxy lacks plausible deniability, then there is no meaningful difference to the receiving state, and the proxy-using state has no higher authority to appeal to if the receiving state wishes to retaliate directly.

Nuclear deterrence does not work as a 'I can hit you, no hit backs' shield, which already has a good deal of precedent not only in Russia-Ukraine but also in, well, the Iran doing retaliatory missile strikes against US bases in the middle east. The precedent for this line of thought failing have already been established, notably by Iran.

As long as Iran remains wedded to its proxy war strategy against Israel (and the US), it will be subject to retaliation strikes.

Counterpoint: the two main participants in the Cold War, the US and the USSR, were both very active in fighting proxy wars with the other. Supporting Hamas against Israel is not that different from supporting Bin Laden against the USSR, for example. Both sides tried very hard to avoid situations where US soldiers would have a shootout with USSR soldiers, because both sides were very aware of the danger of escalation.

This meant that if one side was a belligerent in a conflict, the other side abstained from officially sending troops as well. Sure, the other side would support the opponents with weapons, and they might send the odd liaison or special op soldier, but these would generally not participate in the killing of US/USSR soldiers and if they were killed, their side would not sweep that under the rug.

So if Iran was a nuclear power, as far as the cold war etiquette between the US and Iran was concerned,

  • the US supplying chemical weapons to Saddam would be within the norms, because the US are not the ones using them
  • Iran supporting Hamas against Israel would be within norms -- a classic proxy war
  • the US assassinating IRGC general Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020 would be against the norms -- like if Brezhnev had used a Soviet missile to kill Kissinger while he was in France
  • Israel dropping US-manufactured bombs on Iran would be within the norms
  • Trump bombing the Iranian nuclear sites would be against the norms

Another point of etiquette is that you do not try to critically destabilize a nuclear power, even through indirect actions. While their soldiers are out bringing freedom and democracy or the glory of communism to some backwater, they are fair game for your proxies, but you want your proxies to stick to their local theater, not engage in intercontinental terrorism. For example, you would not back 9/11, or arm Ukraine to the point where they might force a regime change in Moscow. (As far as cold war etiquette between a hypothetical nuclear Iran and Israel are concerned, the Oct-7 attacks would be debatable. Attacking civilians -- especially in the deliberate manner displayed by Hamas -- of a nuclear power is going to piss off that power, and you generally don't want to be anywhere nearby in the causal chain of events.)

Tail risks are an important consideration for military interventions. If you are pushing around a conventional enemy on another continent, the question to "what is the worst that could realistically happen due to bombing them?" is likely stuff on the level of "they miraculously manage to sink an aircraft carrier" or "the sponsor a terrorist group which manages to kill a few thousand citizens". If you try to push around a nuclear enemy, then even for NK the answer is a lot bleaker -- they might not be able to nuke you on another continent, but they will certainly be able to drop a nuke or two on your regional allies.

There is also a case to be made that the knowledge that your side has nuclear weapons will make you more careful when engaging other nuclear powers. At the moment, Iran can lob rockets towards Israel whenever they feel like it -- the tail risks are sharply limited -- Israel is not going to nuke Tehran over a few dozen citizens killed, at the most they will kill a few hundred Iranians in return. By contrast, if you are an actor who has some but not absolute control over a nuclear armed side, perhaps a general or military advisor, you want to be careful to avoid a spiral of escalation where your side might be the first to use nukes and gets destroyed in retaliation. Say nuclear Iran launches a few missiles, Israel responds in kind, and as usual their missiles are much more effective than the ones fired by Iran. Suddenly there is some possibility that someone will nuke Tel Aviv, and Israel will nuke Tehran in response.

In conclusion, no, a nuke does not make you completely untouchable, but it very much protects you from direct confrontations with other nuclear powers both by limiting their and your own conduct. I can totally see why the ayatollah regime wants nukes.

This meant that if one side was a belligerent in a conflict, the other side abstained from officially sending troops as well.

I think the mutually-agreed, informal rule in the Cold War was (after Korea, where both sides violated it for no net gain) that you don't attack the other superpower's client directly, only with your own client. So the US could send troops to defend South Vietnam, but not to attack North Vietnam. (And the USSR couldn't directly participate in North Vietnamese attacks on South Vietnam, but they didn't need to because they had a much better proxy). And the US couldn't invade Cuba with regular forces, which they otherwise clearly wanted to do, given that they did the Bay of Pigs.

Plausible deniability isn't in practice about plausibility to the other side's leadership, although it is possible that the Truman administration (who coined the phrase and initially developed the doctrine) were stupid enough to think it was. It is about plausibility to a sympathetic audience (primarily your own domestic audience, but also sympathetic neutrals). The Soviet leadership was rarely fooled by US denial of responsibility for obvious US covert ops. The US people frequently were.

Sometimes it provides a face-saving exit for the victim - if the USSR pretends to believe a "plausible denial" from the US then the domestic political consequences of not retaliating are mitigated.

In the modern sense, "plausible deniability" generally means "everyone knows I did it but if it can't be proved in a formal quasi-judicial process my dittoheads can go on pretending to believe that I didn't"

Also yesterday Israel started getting serious in eradicating IRGC

How so and will they continue with the ceasefire in effect?

Probably no. Which is why I think that the ceasefire got accepted.

This is what I have always said - don't kill the schmucks. Kill the elites. Easiest way to bring someone on the table to negotiate is to put their skin on the line

I disagree: When one of these things happens, and we want to talk about it, and we experience the nervousness that we might be making fools of ourselves if what we say is proven wrong by revelations tomorrow morning, in that moment we have an opportunity to be far closer to honesty, with others and with ourselves, than at any other time throughout the year.

As someone who argued for "wait two weeks", I actually agree with this, but the core ingredient is that it has to be a deliberate choice, and that the speaker willingly puts his credibility on the line. I still owe @fmac, who couldn't quite believe I was being serious, a reply, but this is part of why I said what I said in that post. Exposing yourself to the possibility of having your credibility shot is the mechanism by which just going with your gut ends up yielding superior results to meticulously calculating all the Bayesian probabilities.

People should be more open to talking about breaking news, not because it allows for hotter takes, but because it gives one skin in the game and favors rational analysis over sophistry. It is good for us all to call the coin before it has landed.

Sure, only making predictions on things you are confident making predictions on is a bit of a cheat, this is why I always rolled my eyes at Scott's annual "calibrating" predictions. That said, there does need to be some space for "I honestly haven't a clue". There are cases where I can see a clear signal in the vibes (see "tides turning on trans" or "Elon Musk is cooked"), but there are others where I try to listen to the vibes, and all I can hear is noise, and I think it would be unwise to stake a claim under those circumstances.

Assuming it is real and Iran will stick to the ceasefire... what would that mean for Ukraine/Russia? What would that mean for USA/China? I mean, it would seem like the "Axis of Evil" would be a little off balance, no? That wouldn't be great for China, right? Or would it not affect much?

I hadn't considered that perspective. It isn't nervousness that I might be wrong that stops me from commenting on breaking news, it's the dearth of information. Anything I might say is going to be an uninformed opinion, and the same is true for everyone not in the administration. If people were able to argue without getting personal, maybe, but everybody gets so heated that even playful criticism wounds people - and to get like that over an event which doesn't have basic facts nailed down yet is madness.

But you are right about uncertainty and skin in the game promoting rational analysis over sophistry, and I loathe the idea of people thinking I'm scared of being wrong. So I would like to say I hope and believe that this is real and with that conditional I also hope and believe Netanyahu will retire within the next year.

to hold one's tongue and wait for further developments, or start talking immediately

I 100% believe waiting for further developments is better. Unless you are a direct actor, I believe there is negative value and insight following the news minute by minute. Without greater context, everything looks random and chaotic, offering no clearer understanding of the world. My own community transformed into a news feed and we've faced insight collapse, although some lovely contributors track less popular things, contextualizing them etc. illustrating the problem precisely.

Iran launched missiles 30 mins ago. The ceasefire is over or rather is between certain groups, since multiple entities share/negotiate sovereignty within Iran. Let's see what this actually means, next week.

Half an hour ago, Iran's foreign minister said no ceasefire. Fifteen minutes ago, Iran's foreign minister said ceasefire.

On the topic of premature declarations, the second would be a mightily overconfident thing to say if no agreement were actually reached, so it sounds like there's something real. But given how today's gone, for all I know, nukes could be flying before I hit "comment."

Related: Israel phoning 20 Iranian generals and telling them that they will bomb their children unless they renounce the regime.

I pray that it is real.

I previously expressed some skepticism about the details of the US strike. And I noted that many on X were questioning it as well.

One narrative was that Trump executed some clearly telegraphed strikes on Fardow that didn’t accomplish a whole lot other than be a highly visible strike on the Iranian nuclear program. The 5d chess speculation was that this was a clearly telegraphed move that didn’t in fact cross any Iranian red lines as a way to appease the Iran hawks.

Now it appears that this Iranian attack on the Qatar military base did no damage, cost no lives, and, if Trump is to be taken literally, the Iranians called them up and told them it was coming.

And now we have a ceasefire.

Was this just all theater? If it were, what would look different?

Obviously it’s a good outcome. The only downside it see is that it makes the US look incredibly weak to be led around by Israel. But then again, that’s par for the course.

What a puzzling thing. Another downside would be further emboldening Israel, the Israel US lobby, and the pro war faction of our leaders.

Things will start to make much more sense once you understand that we are not playing chess (5-d, 3-d, or otherwise) Mr. Spock. We are playing poker.

Remember, in the game of chess you can never let your adversary see your pieces.

If Trump thinks we are playing poker, we are doomed. Poker is a zero-sum game where you want your opponent to go all-in and lose. War is a negative-sum game where an all-in confrontation and showdown means everyone loses.

In a tournament, yes. But in a cash game, you can cash out at any time.

Tournament and cash poker are equally zero-sum.

In poker, if you are strong you want to hide your strength so people pick fights with you and lose. In war, if you are strong you want to advertise it so nobody is stupid enough to pick a fight with you.

And you often do the same in war. Sun Tzu says that exactly— where you are weak you want to look strong and where you are strong, you want to look weak such that your enemy attacks where you are strong and not where you are weak.

But the biggest part of poker is the fact that it’s one of the few games where the entire point is that you have incomplete knowledge. And therefore a lot of the strategy is about using the odds and psychological power to make the most of the cards you have. This is how both war and politics work. You don’t know what the other guy has or is going to do, so you act to maximize your odds based on tge cards you have. Trump seems to be pushing hard on the “I have really good cards here, you better agree to this ceasefire or im going to take it all.” It’s not a check, it’s a raise. Agree or get more of what I just did to you.

If we want to torture this particular metaphor to death: historically war is poker with extremely high blinds and extremely high rake. The cost of maintaining a war footing has always been high, high enough to bankrupt players without sufficient stacks, high enough that players are quickly forced to go all in or lose without ever playing a hand.

Do I need to quote Blood Meridian again?

One narrative was that Trump executed some clearly telegraphed strikes on Fardow that didn’t accomplish a whole lot other than be a highly visible strike on the Iranian nuclear program. The 5d chess speculation was that this was a clearly telegraphed move that didn’t in fact cross any Iranian red lines as a way to appease the Iran hawks.

Compounding on this aspect of the narrative, I see people theory crafting that Trump denied Israel their cause celebre to continue strikes against Iran. So they get ahead of Israel, without bombing any hospitals or apartment buildings, and then try to make it seem like everyone is even now, capiche?

I have no fucking clue how much of the theory crafting I see is true. I have no clue if this truce is even real. I've seen reports than Iran is reporting they know nothing about it, and other reporting saying it was back channeled through Qatar.

I've been trying to disengage from politics as best I'm able. Which isn't very. But an effort is being made. Largely because the information space is being too polluted to even be worth the effort of forming cogent or accurate models to discuss. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm waiting until the midterms. Either my life will be better or it won't. World War 3 will have begun, or it won't. Whatever day to day nonsense happens between now and then I'm powerless to effect, and seemingly being lied to from all directions.

I will say, re: the theory that Trump used the strikes to get ahead of Israel, if any of this shit is real, Trump is either the luckiest fucking man on the face of the Earth, or he truly is a 4d genius. If it's all bullshit, well, it's not that much different that Biden just announcing the that the Equal Rights Amendment passed with practically zero basis for actually asserting it. We're fully into Clown World already, and I'm not going to hold it too against Trump if he's bold faced lying and making shit up out of whole clothe like all the rest. At least he isn't trying to sterilize and mutilate children.

You can't fight against a man who has the Mandate of Heaven: history bends to his whim, success manifests in his chamberpot. All that the hero king touches turns to gold before his manifest destiny.

I think this is real. Iran not wanting a ceasefire and truce at this point would be literally crazy- and while they have a different value system from the west I'm pretty sure they're not literally crazy. Trump can definitely bully Israel up to a point, too, and they probably also want a ceasefire now they're taking casualties.

I'm no expert on Middle Eastern politics, but to me it looks like they agreed to a ceasefire because neither government has anything to gain from continued hostilities. Israel has already achieved its strategic objectives and Iran is struggling to effectively retaliate. Getting into a protracted war would be costly and destabilizing for both of them.

Israel just tried to blow up the Ayatollah. Multiple bunker buster strikes in Tehran, other cities in Iran. I don’t know if this technically counts as a ceasefire violation, so the deal may still be on?

EDIT (2:20 GMT) Iran is now launching ballistic missiles at Southern Israel. I’m seeing some sources saying that the ceasefire time is a bit ambiguous and might not start for another hour or two.

EDIT (4:35) It is now well past the agreed ceasefire time and both sides are still enthusiastically bombing each other.

Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World.

Am I understanding this incorrectly or does this essentially mean "Israel gets 12 hours to do whatever it wants to Iran"?

I mean, you could say that avout any ceasefire. Most of them don't take effect immediately, and a lot of people keep their guns firing until the alotted time for various reasons (some professional, some personal).

By my reading, only "officially", while the "true" agreement is for a simultaneous ceasefire as described in the previous sentence.

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