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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29432 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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There are conflicting reports on if Iran was starting to concede it's nuclear stance during negotiations last week.

On the one hand, Oman said Iran was going to reduce it's stockpile.

“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.”

“I think we have agreement on that, in my view,” he added.

Wall Street Journal says the opposite though. Laurence Norman, WSJ reporter in Germany, says, "My understanding comes from non-U.S. officials close to the talks as well as what Washington has said. This is what we have from 3 people."

Iran came to Geneva on Thursday with a draft text of a few pages as it had been asked. It did not permit the U.S. or others to keep the text. It was planning to do so Monday at the technical talks. But they talked through what was in it. But the draft text was not the key text

Attached to the text was a single piece of paper, which Iran described as its 10 year nuclear plan. The text was based around the idea that as Iran's enrichment needs expanded, it's enrichment should be permitted to expand. The paper set out an ambitious set of targets or expanding its civilian nuclear program. The new version of the Khondab reactor (formerly known as Arak heavy water reactor) would be completed. A number of other long-planned, never-built research and power reactors would be put into operation.

In order to fuel those supplies, Iran would need to run 30 cascades of IR-6 advanced centrifuges Tehran said. That's more than 5,000 advanced centrifuges. Iran would need to be able to enrich up to 20% to meet the demands. That is what Iran was proposing.

Let's compare that for a moment to JCPOA. For the first decade under that accord, Iran was permitted around 6.000 IR-1 basic centrifuges. For 15 years, its enrichment purity cap was 3.67%. In other words, Iran was saying the enrichment deal shld be weaker than the Iran deal.

Overall, I don't think we can take it for granted that Iran was capitulating during talks.

Is there any way for Iran to credibly promise not to get a nuclear weapon in the foreseeable future?

It strikes me that with each Israeli-USA attack on Iran, it becomes more obvious to any Iranian that a nuclear weapon might be a useful thing to have. The bombings might set back the physical process, but they increase the motivation.

If a bunch of guys come to my house several times and kick in my door and beat me up and break my furniture and tell me "you better not get a gun, if you get a gun we'll get really angry!" My first thought, and I would think any man's first thought, is "I better get a gun."

I just can't see a way for Iran to credibly make a promise that they don't want a nuclear weapon in a world where they quite obviously should want a nuclear weapon.

It strikes me that with each Israeli-USA attack on Iran, it becomes more obvious to any Iranian that a nuclear weapon might be a useful thing to have. The bombings might set back the physical process, but they increase the motivation.

This sort of thing is obvious only to people who accept axiomatically that Israel needs to be destroyed, and that this concern overrides literally everything else. If Iran wants to not be bombed, they could simply give up on this goal, with quite literally no downsides.

Sure, but Iran is made up of Iranians, who do want this; giving up on this means the end of your regime and the installation of someone who does still want this.

Palestine has the same thing going on.

There's really only the one solution to it.

Is there any way for Iran to credibly promise not to get a nuclear weapon in the foreseeable future?

Lots of countries make their facilities open to IAEA inspectors. South Africa was declared to have fully dismantled its nuclear stockpile upon inspections. The USSR and USA inspected each others' facilities as part of arms reductions treaties. Etc.

Lots of countries make their facilities open to IAEA inspectors.

(e: as a response to "Is there any way for Iran to credibly promise not to get a nuclear weapon in the foreseeable future?") Yes and no.

Yes: My understanding is that no country on Earth has ran a truly hidden nuclear program since 1960s or so. Required facilities (mines, reactors, material pre and postprocessing) are too big, numerous and noticeable to run in secrecy and are easily observed by satellites. You can put them in underground bunkers, but construction of such bunkers is easily observed, too. Consequently, everyone know which facilities IAEA should inspect, and if you let the inspectors on site, hiding the details convincingly is difficult. Exact numbers of fissile material can be smudged, perhaps enough for few warheads, but a ballpark estimate (amount, enrichment level) can be deduced. If you obviously hide enough to hide production of many warheads, discrepancies are enough to let the inspectors know you are hiding something and are probably in violation. Like, everyone knows where the NK reactors are, and they kicked the inspectors out when they got serious about making the fissile material. Everyone knows Israel makes their nukes in Negev, the US inspectors could count their steps and compare maps and notice they were not able to see all areas. Etc.

No: Lack of nuclear program and IAEA inspectors stating they did not find any, did not exactly help Saddam Hussein. Doubt was enough, because it is difficult to prove a negative.

Doubt was enough, because it is difficult to prove a negative.

On the Iraqi nuclear programme (as opposed to chemical weapons, which were deliberately conflated with nukes under the WMD label) there was never any real doubt that the programme had made very little progress and had been dismantled after the first Gulf War - the Bush administration just lied.

South Africa was a strange, strange case. The collapse of apartheid meant that the former government was suddenly very motivated to remove its nuclear capabilities. Not sure those circumstances are present in Iran. Good video about it here.

That said, I agree that nuclear (or WMD) inspection is at least theoretically possible. The industrial capacity isn’t as dual-purpose as something like a chemical plant, right?

That said, I agree that nuclear (or WMD) inspection is at least theoretically possible.

I always wondered about that in the case of highly industrialized nations (or nations aided by one of those). How hard would it be to secretly build a large centrifuge stack and then obtain either a lot of ore or a bit of high assay low-enriched fuel (basically 20% U-235)? With tight integration, you could spin that into a bomb in a week.

Are the fourteen eyes really that good? Will their spies notice and report inconsistencies in, I don't know, centrifuge bearing part inventory and then locate where exactly those ended up in time? If you keep pouring state grants into small modular reactor startups (there's over 100 of those today) and two dozen of those companies end up needing 20% enriched fuel right around the same time, and all those fuel shipments get confused at the post office and they end up getting U-238 pellets by accident... will the fourteen eyes see?

The classic nuclear threshold states are pretty clear, I guess. If Japan or South Korea want the bomb, the time window to stop them will be tight. Still, I'd be curious if all their centrifuges are accounted for (and if there's bunker busters on the shelf that already have those coordinates pre-programmed). But could Australia or Canada cook the books at their mines and start a little stockpile on the side? Could Germany repurpose all that fuel just sitting in those mothballed reactors on the down low?

Fine post, but tangentially you have me wondering how many feds have discovered this place due to keyword flagging and stayed to lurk our conversations out of personal interest.

We have several actual intel operatives posting here, do you think that we’re not being monitored to begin with? Dean and Ashlael probably can’t post to a My Little Pony forum without everything being analyzed by palantir.

This is a common theme among all forum users. I've been on plenty of tiny forums where a relatively obscure topic is discussed in an effortpost and then it appears on the world stage some time later.

I don't necessarily think its being collected or monitored, but it could be a case of multiple discovery.

That being said, I have seen some strangely professional counterposts on here and other forums by obscure lurkers trying to downplay certain lines of thinking against strong logical arguments, so who knows.

We certainly know the FBI had an agent lurking 8chan and tried to argue with anons about which psy-op was russian originated. Further and more hilarious back during Gamer Gate, the anti-gg woke side managed to dox a couple of GG posters from Twitter, one or two of them turned out to be a fed agent with secret clearance, it was a whole hullabaloo as the eyes of the state turned back on the anti-side for a split second. So nothing is impossible.

Related: a few (former?) forum regulars have gone on to national-level profiles via Substack or Twitter.

Iran was one of these countries until 2020 or so. Except Trump backed out of the JCPOA for spurious reasons and while Iran continued to abide by its terms after the withdrawal, it led to a growing distrust of the West among Iranians. So in 2021 they end up with a more conservative government since all electing moderates does is get you burned. The idea that a deal would be useful now only works under the idea that Trump is extremely petty and backed out of a perfectly good deal because he didn't like the fact that Obama negotiated it. You can bitch about specifics all you want, but Iran was getting inspected during this time. If you're going to make the argument that Iran was trying to covertly violate the deal then fine, that gives an excuse to pull out, but if that's the case it makes no sense to try for another one.

Iran was one of these countries until 2020 or so. Except Trump backed out of the JCPOA for spurious reasons and while Iran continued to abide by its terms after the withdrawal, it led to a growing distrust of the West among Iranians.

I don't think the reasons were spurious because I think the correct and credible reason was that Iran was not, in fact, "one of those countries" and the JCPOA was worth less than the paper it was written on. And Iran was not abiding by even the JCPOA's extremely lax provisions.

Iran was one of these countries until 2020 or so

Well do you agree with the criticism that the JCPOA contained a sunset clause, i.e. the restrictions on Iran ended after 10-15 years?

Do you agree with the criticism that the JCPOA did not permit so-called "anytime anywhere" inspections but instead gave the Iranians the ability to delay inspections of facilities?

Well do you agree with the criticism that the JCPOA contained a sunset clause, i.e. the restrictions on Iran ended after 10-15 years?

Is this an actual criticism that anyone levied? It's pretty standard practice for treaties/laws/contracts to sunset after a period of time with the understanding that they will be renegotiated before the term of the contract ends.

Is this an actual criticism that anyone levied?

Absolutely. The concern was that Iran was getting a lot of significant concessions up front and in return was agreeing to limitations which were only temporary.

I don't think this is true. (But would very much appreciate a correction if I am wrong.)

I recall following these negotiations closely when they were occurring and don't remember anyone citing upfront concessions as a reason not to do JCPOA. Everyone of the negotiators was familiar with the failure of KEDO in North Korea (for promising nuclear reactors now in exchange for disarmament later), and a lot of effort was spent to avoid this failure mode. Skimming the Congressional Actions section of the wikipedia article on JCPOA, I don't see any mention of legislators saying they won't vote for JCPOA because of upfront concessions, and this wapo article from the time about reasons people won't vote for it does not mention upfront concessions.

There are of course other reasons that Republicans did not vote for and eventually withdrew from the treaty, but again I do not think time-based concessions was one of them.

Me: Well do you agree with the criticism that the JCPOA contained a sunset clause, i.e. the restrictions on Iran ended after 10-15 years?

You: Is this an actual criticism that anyone levied?

Me: Absolutely. The concern was that Iran was getting a lot of significant concessions up front and in return was agreeing to limitations which were only temporary.

You: I don't think this is true. (But would very much appreciate a correction if I am wrong.) I recall following these negotiations closely when they were occurring and don't remember anyone citing upfront concessions as a reason not to do JCPOA.

According to "United Against Nuclear Iran":

The deal provides Iran a clear pathway to nuclear weapons as restrictions on its uranium- enrichment and plutonium-processing capacities lift and the deal “sunsets” over the next 10 to 15 years.

In exchange for temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, Iran is receiving permanent benefits up-front.

Link: https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/sites/default/files/jcpoa-fact-sheet-pdf-052019.pdf

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"Anytime anywhere" inspections is a pretty big ask. I can see why the West would want it, but I can't see any major power agreeing to it. I doubt the Russian inspectors in the US were ever allowed into Area 51, for example.

"Anytime anywhere" inspections is a pretty big ask. I can see why the West would want it, but I can't see any major power agreeing to it.

Given Iran's actual behavior, I don't think it's unreasonable.

Iran's behavior was pretty typical foreign policy. For a country to support various paramilitary proxies and unsavory non-state actors is commonplace in geopolitics. I've never seen any good evidence for the theory that if Iran's religious government got nukes, they would use them offensively.

I have enough theory of mind to understand why the argument that "even a 0.00001% chance that Iran would use nukes offensively is too much, and in any case we should keep them defenseless so we can do whatever we want to them" is appealing to many Israelis and to US hawks. It's not appealing to me, however.

Iran's behavior was pretty typical foreign policy.

To help illustrate your point, would you mind identifying two countries whose behavior is analogous to that of Iran, including the groups which are analogous to Hezbollah?

I've never seen any good evidence for the theory that if Iran's religious government got nukes, they would use them offensively.

Well do you agree that (1) Iran substantially controls Hezbollah; (2) Hezbollah has repeatedly launched attacks directed at Israel in general; and (3) Iran's leadership has, in substance, called for Israel to be wiped off the map?

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Iran’s behavior in the current war offers plenty of evidence- the attacking random countries thing.

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The JCPOA was negotiated after the US invaded Iraq due to patently false claims of WMD. It is widely understood that the WMD inspections led by the US/IAEA helped the US invasion in identifying/destroying military targets.

Therefore given the US's actual behavior, this restriction did (and still does) seem pretty reasonable to a majority of the outside world.

Then they could have let Germany do the inspections; they weren't gun-ho supporters of the Iraq invasion, but could be trusted not to look the other way knowing at whom any Iranian nuclear weapon would be aimed.

The JCPOA was negotiated after the US invaded Iraq due to patently false claims of WMD. It is widely understood that the WMD inspections led by the US/IAEA helped the US invasion in identifying/destroying military targets.

Therefore given the US's actual behavior, this restriction did (and still does) seem pretty reasonable to a majority of the outside world.

Are you saying that WMD inspections in Iraq were of the "anytime anywhere" variety?

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I generally agree with you, I'm just observing it's a huge ask and probably a hard sell.

Is there any way for Iran to credibly promise not to get a nuclear weapon in the foreseeable future?

I would say "probably, yes." As an extreme example, they could agree to permit the establishment of a joint US/Israel military base within Iran; that all the money from their oil sales would go through an escrow account in the United States to be immediately frozen in case of non-compliance; that a US led task force would have the right to inspect any location in Iran at any time without advance notice and remove and/or dismantle any nuclear materials or equipment; that the US led task force would have the right to install kill switches in all Iranian ships and military vehicles allowing the US to remotely immobilize them with the touch of a button; etc.

It strikes me that with each Israeli-USA attack on Iran, it becomes more obvious to any Iranian that a nuclear weapon might be a useful thing to have. The bombings might set back the physical process, but they increase the motivation.

I think the motivation is pretty close to being maxed out at this point.

If a bunch of guys come to my house several times and kick in my door and beat me up and break my furniture and tell me "you better not get a gun, if you get a gun we'll get really angry!" My first thought, and I would think any man's first thought, is "I better get a gun."

Well, if they only came to your house and beat you up when you yourself had beat up their family members, it might occur to you that it might make sense to simply stop beating up their family members.

I just can't see a way for Iran to credibly make a promise that they don't want a nuclear weapon in a world where they quite obviously should want a nuclear weapon.

Well there is a difference between "get" and "want." I agree that they can't credibly promise not to WANT a nuclear weapon, but if they are willing to make enough concessions, they could probably make a compelling argument that they will refrain from trying to GET a nuclear weapon.

Well, if they only came to your house and beat you up when you yourself had beat up their family members, it might occur to you that it might make sense to simply stop beating up their family members.

I am pretty sure that Iran and Israel have been going at that for decades, so at this point the question of who escalated at which points is moot. Israel had Trump kill Qasem Soleimani, then Iran helped Hamas commit Oct 7, then Nethanyahu killed a couple of ten thousands in Gaza, and now convinced Trump to kill the Ayatollah. We will see what Iran will do next.

But at this point, it feels to me that this is a conflict without good guys, and the rest of the world should simply stay out of it. Perhaps after five years of ground warfare both sides will wisen up and deescalate. Or perhaps the religious nutjobs will stay in power.

I am pretty sure that Iran and Israel have been going at that for decades, so at this point the question of who escalated at which points is moot.

That may very well be so, but the question I was addressing is what Iran can do -- as a practical matter -- to stop being attacked by Israel and/or the United States. One possibility would be to acquire nuclear weapons and/or otherwise get so strong that (perhaps) nobody would dare attack them. A second possibility would be for Iran to (1) stop supporting Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other similar proxy organizations which is uses to engage in terrorist campaigns against Israel; and (2) stop calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, etc.

"But that's not fair! Israel is the aggressor!" I can hear people saying. I disagree, but even if that were true, Iran could still take the second option.

But at this point, it feels to me that this is a conflict without good guys, and the rest of the world should simply stay out of it.

With respect to most of the conflicts Israel is involved in, I would agree. But with Iran, I am not so sure. My impression is that Iran is fomenting Shiite unrest throughout the Middle East, including in the Persian Gulf. This implicates vital American interests.

A second possibility would be for Iran to (1) stop supporting Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other similar proxy organizations which is uses to engage in terrorist campaigns against Israel; and (2) stop calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, etc.

The problem is that it is hard to know if a deescalation would be reciprocated. If your opposite is playing a non-zero-sum game, he might reciprocate. Or he might be playing chess, where any attempt to deescalate will fail because your opponent is committed to crushing you no matter what. Together with institutional inertia, this tends to keep negative-sum conflicts going for a long time.

My impression is that Iran is fomenting Shiite unrest throughout the Middle East, including in the Persian Gulf.

Sure. Iran is one of several regional players using ethnic tensions to advance their influence. For example, Daesh ('ISIS') was Sunni, as was Al-Qaida. It is perfectly reasonable to be against religious terrorists both when they are funded by Iran and by Saudi-Arabia, though.

This implicates vital American interests.

This is not literally true. If Iran takes over the whole ME, that will not cause a single American to starve. Ukraine has a vital interest that Putin does not take Kiev.

The interests of the US in the ME are hegemonic. That does not mean that they are invalid -- being a hegemon is a good deal for the US voters, generally, and also for some of your client states (e.g. in Europe).

The problem is that it is hard to know if a deescalation would be reciprocated.

In this case, it's not that hard to know. Israel clearly has the power to roll in and crush Jordan; same thing with Egypt; same thing with Gaza; and same thing with Area A. But as the saying goes, one of these things is not like the others.

This is not literally true. If Iran takes over the whole ME, that will not cause a single American to starve.

If food is the only consideration, then sure. But at the moment oil is also a vital resource. And I'm sure you are aware that a major fraction of the world's oil comes from the Persian Gulf region.

In this case, it's not that hard to know. Israel clearly has the power to roll in and crush Jordan; same thing with Egypt; same thing with Gaza; and same thing with Area A. But as the saying goes, one of these things is not like the others.

  1. Syria is an obvious counterexample: they pretty much unconditionally surrendered to Israel and were rewarded by getting bombed into oblivion, having their territory seized, and just generally getting humiliated.

  2. This is obviously not true. We've had a two year test case in which Israel tried and failed to roll in and crush Hamas, the smallest and weakest of its opponents.

Syria is an obvious counterexample: they pretty much unconditionally surrendered to Israel and were rewarded by getting bombed into oblivion

When exactly was this unconditional surrender?

We've had a two year test case in which Israel tried and failed to roll in and crush Hamas, the smallest and weakest of its opponents.

And what do you suppose is the reason for the failure you are alleging?

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In June 2024, "Only around 20 percent of respondents want the Islamic Republic to remain in power, according to the survey." I think that number went even lower after the recent violent suppression of protests.

The US sees it more like intervening in a messy domestic dispute, where the male partner (Islamic Republic Government) keeps threatening to get a gun and shoot the police, the police (USA) keeps saying, "Don't do it or we'll have to come in there," and the wife and kids (80% of Iranian people) are hoping that the police intervene but are afraid of getting beaten up again.

The US sees it more like intervening in a messy domestic dispute

I don't really see any evidence of this. The current US administration rejects humanitarian concerns as a basis for foreign policy and has explicitly disavowed the idea that this is a regime change war.

Trump first explicitly called it a regime change war and said it was Trump fulfilling his promise to intervene if the government of Iran started killing protestors. He's also said it's not a regime change war and governing Iran isn't his responsibility. This contradiction seems to be Trump's typical MO: https://scholars-stage.org/on-bombing-iran/

Recall that in my story, I said the guy with the gun is threatening the police, not just the battered wife. America also is tired of putting up with Iran and their proxies threatening shipping and launching ballistic missiles at American bases every year. It can be tired of Iran providing weapons to Russians and oil to China. And maybe, the thought of stopping these irritants while being able to be the big damn hero, riding up to rescue the battered wife, gave it the self-righteous push it needed to get the job done.

Things can have more than one cause - it can be a preponderance of snowflakes that creates the avalanche.

I think the metaphor is deceptive, not clarifying - it recasts the various actors in this conflict into roles they do not actually occupy.

This contradiction seems to be Trump's typical MO: https://scholars-stage.org/on-bombing-iran/

This should be taken as evidence that the Trump administration has no coherent plan, especially given that the stated rationale seems to change hourly, but we can look more broadly at their past record and see that current US leadership is not motivated at all by humanitarian concerns (corroborated by the rising civilian casualty estimates from these strikes, which will only continue to rise, alongside Hegseth's remarks earlier today).

It's my opinion that strategic ambiguity - ie, not knowing what the hell you want - can work if you're the monopole hegemon. It's up to the people you're messing with to come to you with an offer that gets you to stop. The bull in the china shop may not know why he's inside, but the shopkeeper definitely has an interest in leading him out. Not that any of this is well-considered or wise, but the question of 'what are we doing here?' can be answered by 'I don't know, but we're sure to find out if we break enough plates.'

Do you think that those 80% of Iranians are ultimately in favor of a government whose policies would be acceptable to the USA/Israel? Or would a hypothetical liberal Persian democracy still have to accept a world in which they can be bombed at will if their democracy were to go into an unapproved direction? Ok you've killed the abuser, is she allowed to get herself a gun to keep herself safe in the future?

And more to the point, how does she credibly tell you she won't get a gun in the future? What promise would be accepted?

I think those 80% of Iranians would be in favor of a government less focused on supplying their proxies with weapons and more focused on water conservation and management. Which in and of itself is a win for the US.

The American public just elected a government on the premise that they would focus on reducing inflation and avoid foreign adventurism. That government just instituted a policy of kinetic regime change in Iran, and the CPI is identical to the September before the election.

Would an Iranian democracy be allowed to be democratic, or would it be subject to bombing? How would such a government promise not to develop nuclear weapons in a way that the USA/Israel would trust?

The American public just elected a government on the premise that they would focus on reducing inflation and avoid foreign adventurism.

Americans love display of military might as long as the bodybags are few. They don't want forever wars. So far in Iran war US has lost less people that they lose in Ukraine in a month where they don't even have presence ( there is this weird pattern where Russians by mistake and incompetence hit a civilian building, and couple of days later there is some crash in the USA or allies in which some people die).

The promise is fairly easy - Iran is prohibited for possessing air defenses, except on the borders with pakistan, afghanistan and iraq. US inspectors have unlimited access to all Iran infrastructure. Iran, SA, UAE and the gulf states pay couple of billion for funding US bases there ready to punish Iran.

Ok, so the promise is easy: the USA engages in a forever war occupying an unfriendly country, while the Iranian government surrenders all legitimacy among its population.

That is without boots on the ground. Why occupation, when assassination sends the same message. We just blow up from above the leaders.

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How do you know Japan will not develop nuclear weapons and attack the US? Of all the countries in the world they have the most right. But to suggest such a thing today is laughable.

It would not have been such a laughable thing in the 1940s.

Things can happen. The world can change. America made Japan the way it is now, we can do the same to Iran if we wanted.

...So we intend to station 500,000 troops in Iran, drawing down to about 200,000 in the next five years, and maintain about 100,000 troops in Iran for the next 80 years while fully integrating Iran into our economic sphere?

I don't know what they intend, nor do I expect to guess. We could probably pull it off with fewer people, but a long term base of 100,000 troops right up against Russia's butt wouldn't be a bad outcome for the US.

Iranian average IQ (IIRC estimated between 99 and 105) does enable all sorts of things that weren't feasible in Iraq or Afghanistan.

It would be interesting to see how Iranian culture compares to Japanese in context during some kind of major reconstruction.

But the US of 2026 is not the US of 1946. I don't think there will be any titanic reconstruction effort in Iran. Here on the homefront we're already panicking about budgets, spending, and general sclerosis. Show me that we can build a rail system here before we speak seriously about reforging Iran nearer to our heart's desire.

Is the 99-105 figure accurate or coming from highly filtered groups (people in Iran who actually take the test). I guess I probably assumed Iran would be a less extreme India with very high IQ groups and some low IQ peasants. If they are a true 103 IQ country then they’ve probably hit below their weight for centuries.

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I honestly don't get the geopolitics of wanting to attack Iran in the first place, unless Israel has some plan in mind for controlling the future government of Iran. Which, in your analogy, would be that one of the intruders stays in your house and keeps a knife at your throat at all times so you don't get any funny ideas. You might even develop Stockholm syndrome.

But then again, any given leader of Iran isn't necessarily the guy in the analogy. The guy in the analogy was the ones who just got killed. That guy is dead now. The future leaders of Iran are the people who move into the now vacant house, even after being told by the intruders to see what happened to the last guy who tried to get a gun. Maybe the American policy is to present a credible threat to any future leadership of that country, and follow through on it if they don't play along, until the Iranians just accept perpetual foreign domination? Seems unlikely, given that America can switch out its leadership and abandon any policy every few years.

tl;dr: I have no idea how this is supposed to work. Getting nukes ASAP cuts the gordian knot.

The goal is to wreck the middle east and keep all other players weak. The goal in Syria wasn't a prosperous democracy, it was to shatter the country into pieces with no functional economy or cohesion. The goal isn't to "liberate" Iran, it is to weaken its leadership, keep the country poor and keep it in a constant state of turmoil. This is great for Israel, expensive and bad PR for the US, horrific for the middle east and brings blow back for Europe.

No, what we have is two mutually exclusive attitude that US policy keeps ping-ponging between due to the difference mapping reasonably cleanly to Republican vs Democrat and Populist vs Technocrat.

The broadly Democrat-coded attitude is one of sympathy (if not active support) for Islamic revolutionary movements. These views are framed in terms of "Decolonization" their opposition to the left's hated enemy the right. The right is the outgroup, revolutionary Islam is the fargroup and if revolutionary Islam can inflict some casualties on the right that is a "win" in the left's book. This is why Carter left the Shah hanging out to dry, this is why Clinton and Obama offered backing to the various "Moderates" who would become ISIS/ISIL, this is where "Queers for Palestine" come from, and it is why they think that the killing of Qassim Soleimani is something the rest of us ought to be upset about while the killing of John Christopher Stevens is not.

The Republican-coded attitude is one of "Fuck Around and Find Out". That is that if the if US is going to occupy the role of hegemon we ought to play the role. To the extent that there has ever been a consistent through-line to US foreign policy, that line has been "Don't touch the boats", and in the eyes of the MAGA crowd that is what this is ultimately about. The Iranian regime thought that by laundering their attacks through proxies like HAMAS and the Houthis they could immunize themselves from retaliation, turns out they were wrong.

The US public doesn't want this war and there is a reason why Trump ran on America first and opposition to war rather than neoconservatism.

The republican position is that these wars are a giant waste, lead to massive refugee waves, cost trillions, kill Americans and grow the surveillance state. There is a reason why Matt Walsh, Nick Fuentes, Thomas Massie and Tucker are going hard against this war. It is a war for big government that kills typically red coded voters.

Don't touch the boats

Houthis

I am going to laugh quite bitterly if this whole Iranian adventure turns out to have as a promary purpose being the least-PR-unfriendly method of ending the Houthis: by removing their sponsor and letting the Saudis take care of them out of the public eye, as rooting them out via US boots on the ground would create remarkably negative photos for the domestic crowd.

Houthis aren't a puppet government set by Iran, it's popular movement because they have different version of Islam here, so this wouldn't end them, they will have less missiles and that's all.

I am going to laugh quite bitterly if this whole Iranian adventure turns out to have as a promary purpose being the least-PR-unfriendly method of ending the Houthis: by removing their sponsor and letting the Saudis take care of them out of the public eye, as rooting them out via US boots on the ground would create remarkably negative photos for the domestic crowd.

twelve years of bombing Houthis did nothing. The US lost its largest naval operation since world war 2 against houthis that have no navy.

Iran has way more capable systems in far larger numbers when it comes to disturbing shipping and way better geography.

Twelve years of bombing Houthis did nothing because the Houthis were never the root cause.

This honestly explains why I am MAGA. HRC did everything you just described. I blame it mostly on her having bad instincts and not because she actively wanted that result.

The entire reason I am MAGA and probably a lot of it is a trust in his instincts that he will get things to a position that is beneficial.

I am no HRC fan so I have no partisan angle to saying she was dumb instead of evil. I just like to assume people are incompetent am not evil.

Alright, so it all makes sense for Israel.

What's America getting out of it? Surely there's some angle more substantial than "the j00s control the government"? Not that the latter is impossible, just...I dunno, badly used-up.

If Iran falls Russia and China are effectively kicked out of the Middle East.

China does incomparably more business with Gulf Arabs than with Iran. This is post-hoc rationalization.

"the j00s control the government" people were the side that correctly predicted this war during a time it was very unpopular to do so. Trump was promising no Middle East wars in his campaigns, he was campaigning on mass deportations. The most JQ-influenced people, including me, were the ones on the record saying "I don't support Trump because he's owned by the Jews, we won't get mass deportations but he'll bring us to war with Iran." Now it's easy to say broken clock etc. but this was clearly the direction things were heading:

  • Benjamin Netanyahu has the best chance he is ever going to have in his entire life of conquering Iran and overthrow the regime. You really think he's just going to walk away and retire in the sunset or something? He's a man of history, he's been planning this his entire political life.
  • Yes Trump in particular is owned by the Jews and easily influenced by them (blackmail is potentially in play here as well, we can't know because there is no trust). Combine with point #1 none of us are surprised by the US going all-in now on regime change in Iran, we predicted it.

I also predicted the TikTok acquisition by Netanyahu allies before the law even passed, I predicted Paramount winning over Netflix. Nick Fuentes predicted the entire trajectory of this conflict on October 8th, less than 24 hours after the Hamas attack on Israel:

I'm sure most here have heard of Nick Fuentes, maybe seen clips where he's said something funny or outrageous. I do not consider myself a follower of Fuentes, I have my criticisms of him and his movement, but I have to give credit to Fuentes for churning out consistently correct predictions.

When it came to the Israeli-Gaza war, Nick Fuentes registered these predictions in this short clip, in summary from just the first 60 seconds:

  • The Oct. 7 attack is going to be the tripwire that enables Israel to finally solve the Gaza Question with ethnic cleansing.
  • Israel is going to conduct a "brutal campaign against Gaza" which they "know Iran has to respond to."
  • In doing so, their retaliation against Gaza will knowingly provoke a retaliation from Iranian-backed militias against Israel.
  • This will give Israel an excuse to widen the conflict and "to do what they always wanted to do, which is bomb Iran's nuclear program".
  • This will initiate war between Iran and Israel, and Israel will draw the United States into the war with Iran- Israel brings in the United States to "put Iran in check."
  • This will culminate in an end to the regime in Syria and an end to the regime in Iran.
  • This is the big play Israel is making.

Nick Fuentes registered these predictions on October 8th, less than 24 hours after the Hamas attack on Israel. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Fuentes may have registered the best predictions out of anyone in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7th (feel free to keep me honest here if you think someone else was even more on the money).

Hindsight bias being what it is, the accuracy of Fuente's predictions may seem less impressive than they actually are. But I still remember the huge amount of uncertainty leading up to the Gaza campaign, including a high degree of uncertainty over the strength of Israel's retaliation against Gaza- whether they would show restraint or even put boots on the ground in the first place, and even if they put boots on the ground would it be a relatively short and mostly symbolic campaign. Certainly at the time "Israel is going to ethnically cleans Gaza, provoke escalations from Iranian militias, and widen the conflict to try to draw the US into war with Iran" was a prediction registered by not very many people.

Fuentes drew a huge amount of criticism for vocally opposing Trump's campaign due to his belief that Israel would draw Trump into war with Iran. A lot of that criticism comes from the "Bronze Age Pervert" sphere, and BAP is a sharp critic of Fuentes for Fuente's low-IQ obsession with da Joos. But we can contrast Fuente's sober-minded and accurate predictions with BAP's own incoherent analysis of the conflict he published last week, chalking it up to some old-man syndrome while remaining baffled as to why Israel is pursuing the strategy it has engaged in since the beginning of the conflict.

At some point, you can just say it's a played out meme, and I agree there's truth to that, but the people who have this model of the world are the ones correctly predicting these things. I did not support Trump because I predicted this happening during a time it was very unpopular to make that prediction an ran contrary to what Trump/Vance campaigned on, and I'm honestly sad to be right but not surprised.

an end to the regime in Syria

But a main reason for that was that Russia was otherwise occupied and couldn't come to the aid of its client state. Nothing to do with Israel, as I recall.

Fuentes was right if you ignore him being wrong I guess.

Genocide? Thought I was on a rat forum - how many people on here think this?

It’s literally wrong - like saying the sun sets in the north. Or plutonium grows on trees.

The USA has domestic politics reasons for why any Iran attack will go over at least acceptably, has a lot of Allies who hate Iran(probably Saudi at least as much as Israël) and has additional interest in keeping them too weak to fund proxies.

Of course, Trump thinks military operations are good for him politically.

What's America getting out of it?

The US is effectively a client state of Israel and the politicians go out of their way to jump when the Israeli lobby says so.

It’s simply that the Jews control the U.S. government, likely through Epstein-related blackmail operations. “Low IQ” (or whatever low status indicators you feel necessary to impute for whatever reason) anti-semites are correct here. Do you need some hip and cool reason? Why?

It is curious to see posters preemptively feign fatigue for naming the Jew, as if all the MSM has been hypersaturated with doing so for years, instead of it being a marginal voice that normies are only starting to understand. It’s another reason to mock and dismiss the truth.

It’s simply that the Jews control the U.S. government, likely through Epstein-related blackmail operations.

Proactively provide evidence in proportion to your claims.

But also, most of your posts are extremely low-effort one liners, and it has been less than a year since you were threatened with a permanent ban. I would stop a bit short of calling you a true single-issue poster, but when you put in any effort at all it seems to be limited to making sweeping claims about "Jews" or occasionally other ethnic whipping-boys. At minimum, sweeping posts about "Jews" nearly always violate the rule about posting on specific rather than general groups.

You're banned for three months. And that's probably on the lenient side, which is something you should keep in mind should you wish to return to posting at that time.

An Iran that is influenced and supported by China and Russia is more dangerous to us than an Iran that is influenced and supported by Western powers. Ideally if you can oust the regime and have Western friendly leadership takeover, the balance of power in the area shifts even further toward American favor. Will that work? Who knows?

Also, the joo lobby is incredibly powerful so we do what they want most of the time because we are apparently convinced it is in our best interest to do so.

Worth noting that Iran backed the Houthis in their attempts to shut down international trade - the US has a longstanding tradition, going all the way back to its earliest years of an independent country, of going to war if anyone touches our international trade.

Also worth noting it is greatly in the interests of the United States to prevent other countries from getting nuclear weapons, and to deter other countries from acquiring such weapons. It might backfire in this case, but it might also keep a few wobblers on the fence.

Note also that allegedly not only Israel but also the Saudis were pressing Trump to bomb Iran. Note also that the Saudis can probably acquire nuclear weapons fairly quickly, and they [more] likely would if the Iranians became a nuclear power.

There's also the increased ability to control world oil supplies that others have mentioned.

Finally, Iran constructively killed a lot of Americans during the GWOT by backing anti-coalition forces in Iraq.

I'm not sure any of these are really the deciding factor here but it's not like the US gets nothing. If nothing else, it gets revenge.

250 years of US foreign policy summed up in four words: "Don't touch our boats."

When you're a maritime nation (weird as it can seem at first glance to say that about a nation half the size of a continent), you live or die by your boats. England knew it, and the US knows it.

Or did, at least. The state of shipbuilding is something else.

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