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PaperclipPerfector  19hr ago (text post)   4049 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Trump has given a "red line" to Iran about killing protestors, but we still aren't seeing US involvement as deaths move into the thousands, reportedly. If the regime follows through with its claims, it will be executing many if not most of the thousands it has arrested.

I have an essay on my view that the US/West/Israel should clearly intervene in the Transnational Thursday thread, but the Culture War dynamics strike me as interesting in that it's not really Culture War Classic material. Traditionally, the Left has been soft on Iran and the Right has been hawkish. Iran has tried to kill Trump and Trump officials, as revenge for the Soleimani assassination.

There's a strong anti-interventionist Right and Left. During the 12-Day War, Trump went from tweeting about regime change, to abruptly demanding cessation of hostilities, which Israel and Iran complied with. (I think had the war continued the regime would already have fallen, given how easily Israel was bombing them.) This is something that's already kicked off, unlike the Maduro rendition. My understanding is that action got more popular in the polls having succeeded, though it's an open question what Venezuela's fate will be.

The Right strongly criticized Obama for declaring a red line in Syria, and then backing off. In hindsight, I think it would have been correct to have intervened against Assad. Here, I think there's a clear cost-benefit analysis case, whether you care about the plight of the Iranian people or the amoral realist power dynamics for America First Global Superpower Edition.

IMO the allegation that Iran tried to kill Trump is frankly too absurd to take seriously. The Iranian agent conducted an interview with the FBI while in Iran? Like he is employed by Iran for a super secret mission, and voluntarily decides to confess guilt in an interview with the FBI, while still in Iran? And it’s a phone interview, so it could be literally anyone on the other side of the phone? Disregarding the absurdity of Iran ever trying to do this, never in a million years would they task a 50-year-old who spent a decade in prison with such a mission; that is like a television drama’s idea of how intelligence work plays out in real life. I think whoever is responsible for this bizarre event gave the game away with this:

he allegedly told the FBI of the IRGC's desire to kill an Iranian American activist and target Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka with a mass shooting event. Shakeri also told investigators that the IRGC tasked him with surveilling two Jewish American citizens living in New York

Would Iran, with its half-million strong diaspora in America, able to call upon thousands of Shiite Muslim Americans to do their bidding, task a criminal for four of their highly sensitive operations, none of which have anything to do with each other? And we know all this from a phone call interview? Press X to doubt.

Would Iran, with its half-million strong diaspora in America, able to call upon thousands of Shiite Muslim Americans to do their bidding

Come on man. Think about it. They came to America. They are not regime fans.

I have some "lived experience" with Iran assassination plots and I can tell you it's real.

You're assuming he knew he was talking to the FBI when he gave up that information. You'd be surprised what people will say if they think you're in the know.

Iran has a documented history of using criminals, foreign and domestic, to conduct assassination operations because they have leverage and plausible deniability. (See how easy it was to get you to believe there's no way it could be Iran?)

Come on man. Think about it. They came to America. They are not regime fans.

For the most part I agree, but I think it's more about the circumstances of their departure, i.e. they are elites who fled Iran in the 70s in connection with the revolution. One can contrast them with Israeli-Americans who tend to be very pro-Israel.

Some % of Iranian Americans are likely Shiite extremist or Iranian extremists simply as a matter of statistics; it is not unheard of for extremists to be the children of those who left their country because of extremism. According to the official documents they were “voluntary telephonic interviews” and

SHAKERI's stated reason for participating in the interviews was to attempt to obtain a sentence reduction for another individual ("Individual-1"), who is serving a sentence in U.S. prison, by providing assistance to law enforcement on this individual's behalf.

But this really stretches the imagination, as Iran would brutally torture him to death for conducting such an interview, were he a real person.

Iran has a documented history of using criminals, foreign and domestic, to conduct assassination operations because they have leverage and plausible deniability

Plausible deniability would be paying someone who is not Iranian. Really this all sounds similar to the string of antisemitic arson attacks in Australia, where some mysterious overseas organization hired criminals to commit random acts of criminality against Jewish organizations, most of which never constituted a real threat, coincidentally as the Australian Jewish community pushed for tyrannical antisemitic hate speech laws:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8057j0mz5mo.amp

Australia's federal police have said they are investigating whether "overseas actors or individuals" are paying local criminals to carry out antisemitic crimes in the country.

There has been a spate of such incidents in recent months, the latest of which saw a childcare centre in Sydney set alight and sprayed with anti-Jewish graffiti. No-one was injured.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a snap cabinet meeting in response, where officials agreed to set up a national database to track antisemitic incidents. Thus far, the federal police taskforce, set up in December to investigate such incidents, received more than 166 reports of antisemitic crimes. Albanese said it appeared some of the crimes were "being perpetrated by people who don't have a particular issue, aren't motivated by an ideology, but are paid actors".

These “attacks” were designed specifically to cause no damage: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/3/10/mob-faked-attack-on-australian-synagogue-police

The caravan had been easily located, the AFP said, adding that the explosives were clearly visible and no detonator was present, suggesting there was never any intent to attack Jewish targets. “The caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit,” Krissy Barrett, AFP’s deputy commissioner for nation

This has also been blamed on Iran, because of course.

You're right that it "could be" the case that Iranian-Americans were willing to conduct terrorism on the Islamic regime's behalf. That rate is infinitesimal, empirically.

Presumably Shakeri thought the FBI wasn't going to publish the fact of the interview. I don't know the logic of why the FBI did what it did.

There's a well-documented history of Iran conducting operations against Jews worldwide over decades.

People love to mistake Iranian incompetence for "ah they didn't actually want to hurt anyone." "They couldn't be that irrational." Like the time they wanted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US in Washington DC. Or like the time they fired ballistic missiles at US forces in Iraq and didn't do much, so the explanation among nonsensical people was "clearly it was all for show." For their part, the Iranians believed the MSM lied about the casualties they had actually caused, because they knew their missiles hit the geocoords. (We did have troops in bunkers get TBIs from the impacts.)

I've personally got to witness Iranian efforts to kill Americans and Jews, so I know not to confuse their incompetence with malicious intent.

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