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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4006 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.

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.

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.

"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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