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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   24146 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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(1) Three dead American servicemen confirmed by Centcom

U.S. Central Command said Sunday that three American service members were killed and five others were seriously wounded during Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran

(2) A disinformation war is happening in regards to whether a school in Iran was hit, and if it were hit, whether its destruction was caused by Iran, Israel, or America. 100+ Iranian girls were killed.

(3a) It isn’t clear why negotiations failed with Iran. A day before the attack, the designated Omani mediator asserted that Iran conceded fully on enrichment and nuclear weapons: “The single most important achievement, I believe, is the agreement that Iran will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb,” said Albusaidi, describing the understanding as “something completely new” compared to the previous nuclear deal negotiated under former US President Barack Obama. He said the negotiations have produced an agreement on “zero accumulation, zero stockpiling, and full verification” by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), calling it a breakthrough that makes the enrichment argument “less relevant.” On existing stockpiles inside Iran, Albusaidi said that “there is agreement now that this will be down-blended to the lowest-level possible … and converted into fuel, and that fuel will be irreversible.”

(3b) It appears that Witkoff and Kushner were instrumental in the decision to strike Iran: ”Witkoff and Jared Kushner, U.S. officials said. They told him the talks had gone badly: Tehran wasn’t willing to end its nuclear enrichment or dismantle its missile program, the officials said. That further confirmed for Trump that he had one option left, the officials said. The U.S. also had intelligence that Iran considered attacking American targets before Trump authorized strikes, a senior administration official said, adding a sense of urgency to the president’s decision. U.S. casualties and damage to American interests would be higher unless the U.S. moved first, the senior official said.”

Here's my question: What would have to happen for Iran to stop being attacked by the United States and Israel? There are three reasons that people give for why Iran should be attacked:

  1. Iran funds terrorism and Islamist militias. This is true, but they mostly fund Shia militias and direct resistance to Israel (i.e. Hamas). Islamic terrorism in Western countries is almost always ISIS or Al Qaeda inspired. The Shia militias are the ones who did the dirty work of defeating ISIS on the ground, so it's not clear to me that removing Iran's funding of these groups would reduce terrorism in the United States and Europe.

  2. Iran is building a nuclear weapon. We had a deal on this, and Trump tore it up. If they were deadset on building a bomb, they would have done it by now. This seems like the kind of concession we could get in negotiations if the United States and Israel participated in good faith.

  3. Iran oppresses its own people. Okay, what's your plan for a regime in Iran that doesn't opress its own people? Here are some common options and why they don't work:

  • An Islamic Authoritarian Regime - This is what we have now. It resulted in massive protests from the secular urban population which had to be repressed by force.

  • A Truly Democratic Regime - Lots of potential problems here, but even if it had mass buy-in and legitimacy the Iranian population hates Israel and would likely continue support for the Axis of Resistance.

  • A "Democratic" Regime - This would be a US puppet government. Devout muslims would be disenfranchised and oppressed (obviously we can't allow terrorist parties to run).

  • A Secular Autocratic Regime (i.e. The Shah) - Same problem of being a US puppet as the "democratic" regime, but even less popular legitimacy.

Let's not forget the events that led to the Islamic Revolution to begin with - democratically elected government cancelled imposed agreements and expropriated BP (Western oil extraction), the West organised a coup to install the Shah to get back the oil, he was so unpopular that the devout faction then successfully revolted. And now, Trump is already openly being grabby about oil again. Perhaps advances in propaganda mean we could now stop the Iranian populace from wanting to control their hydrocarbons or sedate them with short-form video enough to make them put up with the Shah, but how confident are we of this and do we have enough national executive function to never slip up with the opinion control?

More. For the first two points I think America/Israel feel like we’ve already dismantled terrorist networks/nuclear program for probably a decade. I’m not going to pretend that America cares that much about Iran killing 30k Iranians. So for the three things you mentioned I think we already feel like victory has been achieved.

My gut says we want the events to unfold to at a minimum to make Iran unaligned in global geopolitics. They are not a big player outside of the ME but they still for geopolitical reasons align with Russia/China. It’s why when Iran does have something useful like drones they get sold to Russia.

Then the question is what sort of vassal do we want out of Iran. If you are going to play the game thing is no reason to stop the game with Iran being neutral especially since Iran has long had elements that are Western. The Saudis are a vassal but still get to run some of their geopolitics independently. They have played games in the oil markets we did not like. Then there is a level of vassal that has to do whatever you tell them to do. Venezuela may be in this camp now, but they bring very little value. Argentina may have chosen this path now. Trump could probably call Milei he needs 50k soldiers for peacekeeping on Wednesday and the troops would be delivered on Friday.

To summarize at this point we are not talking any given action they take. It’s alignment. Probably some change in government structure to guarantee the alignment change.

What would have to happen for Iran to stop being attacked by the United States and Israel?

There's no good way to knock over a regime but the Trump Method is probably close to optimal for minimizing human suffering. This question demonstrates why. It's the same question CNN anchors keep asking. What's the plan, what do we want, how do we structure this new blah blah blah....

The Hegemon has conveyed that it is unhappy with the current leadership of the country. It doesn't care how or in what form the Iranian people choose to reconstitute their leadership. That is - as it should be - up to them. The Hegemon has simply declared the existing leadership unacceptable in the clearest way possible.

How do you get it to stop? Show the Hegemon that someone / something else is in charge that's sufficiently different in behavior from the previous leadership. What's sufficiently different? Intentionally strategically ambiguous - you do seem to have the strongest possible incentive to make it something acceptable to the Hegemon, though, and it can continue communicating its displeasure until you find an acceptable answer.

It's like training a dog or a model.

I just don’t understand any way to explain the US caring about Iran other than us being Israel’s slave

The mental model that I find predicts things the best so far is that the US is not Israel's slave, and Israel is not the US' slave. Rather, they are one entity.

If that were the case, wouldn't there be a symmetrical relationship? For instance, you'd see Israeli troops fighting in US wars like how British or Australian troops fight alongside America. Or maybe America would sell Israeli technology to Israel's rivals like Iran like how Israel sold US technology to china.

Israel already sells its technology to third-party powers that can easily export it onward to Iran (and already have trading relationships with Iran), this isn’t really a gotcha, there’s no defense against that happening.

The US has a whole legal requirement to maintain Israel's 'qualitative military edge', so they refuse to sell advanced hardware to anyone that might be or become anti-Israel. The Egyptians for instance get the crappiest versions of the F-16, no AESA radars and no AIM-120s.

Israel meanwhile has no such concerns about damaging US interests by selling on technology. This is what I mean by the relationship being asymmetric.

Good article exploring how Iran is a key geopolitical chess piece regarding China: https://open.substack.com/pub/zinebriboua/p/the-iran-question-is-all-about-china

China imports roughly 70% of its oil, most of it transiting the Strait of Malacca. In a Taiwan contingency, those sea lanes become contested. Beijing will need alternative energy sources and will look westward to Iran, Russia, and any Gulf state willing to sell outside the dollar system. If the Middle East has already drifted into Beijing’s economic orbit by the time that crisis arrives, China begins the confrontation with a strategic energy reserve that American planners cannot disrupt.

The Strait of Malacca wouldn't be "contested": it's a narrow choke point that the US will easily dominate. No oil from any country in the Middle East is reaching China in the event of a Taiwan contingency. There are also no overland pipelines from Iran to China: the inconvenient Himalayas stand in the way, making it uneconomic. Whether Iran is a American or Chinese pawn doesn't really play into it.

The main thing taking Iran's regime off the map does is they won't be able to cause (additional) trouble in the world economy by shutting off Persian Gulf oil.

Sometimes I wonder if it has to do with airspace and access to China from the west. If Iran isn't a problem, a plane could get from Saudi Arabia to Western China without much trouble.

The desired end goal is to blow Iran to pieces and leave a bunch of squabbling separatist factions fighting each other, like Libya on steroids.

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