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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29707 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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Haaretz recently reported on a trove of new documents pertaining to the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians by Jewish Zionists. They are quite interesting, as they provide evidence toward the disputed claim that the Zionists used a conscious strategy of terror to expel the Muslim and Christian inhabitants.

The most important documents for closer historical examination were those that dealt with the War of Independence. One document that stood out among the papers that had been tossed into the garbage was written by Yitzhak Broshi, commander of Golani's 12th Battalion in the war. It was an order from July 1948 that Broshi sent commanders of the brigade's companies that were engaged in combat in the northern part of the country, titled "Conduct in captured villages where there is a population." The contents of this document are not the type of material one finds in Israeli history books. Broshi informed the officers that after an Arab village was captured, identification certificates were to be issued to the inhabitants. If someone transferred their certificate to another person, both were to be shot. If someone did not report on time for military inspection, they were to be shot and their home was to be blown up. If an "outside Arab" was found in a village, according to Broshi's directives, he was to be shot immediately. In general, the rule was to shoot "every 10th man" in a captured village where outsiders were found. In addition, all the men in any household in which property stolen from Jews was found were to be executed.

Moreover, while there was an order to raze villages, in some cases that was not enough. For example, when it came to Arab a-Zabah, a Bedouin community in the Lower Galilee, not a soul or a trace was to remain. "Every Arab among the Zabahim is to be killed," the order stated. These were not vague directives conveyed by word of mouth. This one and others appeared in "black on white" and were signed by Broshi in his handwriting. In another order dated July 1948, Broshi instructed his troops to mount a search for Arabs who might have hidden in the Mount Turan area of the Lower Galilee, after the site had already been conquered. The order was: "Kill anyone who is hiding."

Among the documents is one stating that "Arabs in a small number are wandering about in the [captured] villages," apparently to collect possessions and food. As per the instructions in the document: "The area is to be cleansed of Arabs." Under the heading "The method," the document adds that "every Arab who will be met with is to be annihilated."

Kotzer's vast collection, some of which was quoted above, is part of a trove of thousands of legal documents from 1948 that were declassified by the military courts due to recent procedures initiated by the Akevot Institute. This rich resource, which was approved for publication by the Military Censor, sheds new light on the history of the Palestinian refugee question. Moreover, it completely dispels the Israeli narrative according to which the country's Arab inhabitants fled of their own volition at the behest of their own leaders. Although some such instructions were indeed disseminated, and some people left at their own initiative – it can now be confirmed, on the basis of an impressive range of evidence, that the IDF expelled Arabs systematically and violently during the War of Independence. The expulsion was effected by massacres, murder and a variety of moves aimed at terrorizing this civilian population and expediting its flight.

There are a number of insightful things here that are a bit too long to quote. It mentions one Shmuel Lehis who massacred 40 Palestinians, becoming the only Israeli convicted of a war crime in this period. He received just one year in jail (in practice: hanging out at a military base) before being pardoned. He went on to work with the World Zionist Organization and became the president of the Jewish Agency in 1978. He later won the Chairman of the Knesset prize, the highest honor bestowed by the Israeli Parliament. Another interesting file involves the commander of the most prominent brigade at the time conveying the dominant expulsion strategy: "How do you expel a village? You lop off the ear of one of the Arabs before everyone else's eyes, and they all flee. In practice, no village was evacuated without stabbing someone in the stomach or by means of similar methods. We won thanks only to the fear of the Arabs, and they were fearful only of deeds that were not in accordance with the law."

I think these documents will be influential in future discourse about the Palestinian Question and the Israel Question. How justified is the Palestinian drive to take back their land from forces of terror (or their inheritors)? How justified is the existence of Israel? Should the world reward a state for taking land through ethnicity-targeted terrorism? Or are these events simply too old to inform present opinion? Comparing these events to Ukraine, we might ask: if Russia were to begin a strategy of terror bombing civilian homes, so as to lead Ukrainians to flee en masse, in how many years should we forget they they’ve done this and welcome them into the World Order?

Isn't this the norm during WW2? What is the expected norm during the 1940s on military tactics related to civilian targets?

It may go against the 1907 Hague Convention (IV) in the following ways:

  • rights, the lives of persons, and private property, as well as religious conviction and practice, must be respected. Private property cannot be confiscated. Pillage is formally forbidden.

  • It is especially forbidden to… kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army [interpreted at Nuremberg to apply to civilians]

  • It is especially forbidden to… kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion

  • The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.

  • No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible

  • the inhabitants and the belligerents remain under the protection and the rule of the principles of the law of nations, as they result from the usages established among civilized peoples, from the laws of humanity, and the dictates of the public conscience.

The Nuremberg Court notes that by 1939 this was “recognized by all civilized nations and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war”.

Notably, the Nuremberg court never bothered to try Soviet officers for similar Red Army war crimes. Katayn, for example. Has "international law" ever been much more than vae victis?

Under vae victis, America could force Israel to hand back Palestinian land tomorrow. Vae Victis does not legislate that the winning power must act without morality, it merely states that the winner’s dictates are the established reality. America could simply dictate tomorrow that Israel hand the land back to Palestinians, which would satisfy the feelings of the global hegemon while promoting regional stability. That is also Vae Victis. Why shouldn’t the winning nation opt to feel good and promote peace?

Palestinian land

Would you mind identifying what land is "Palestinian land"? Does it include Gaza City? Hebron? Ramallah? Tel Aviv?

Also, how did that lend get to be "Palestinian land"? Was it just a matter of ethnically cleansing it and occupying it for a while? Or was more involved?

An international body of third-party experts should decide what constitutes Palestinian land, based on informed estimates of the areas depopulated due to the terror campaign. In the same way that one person didn’t decide the outcome of Germany after WWII, it would be silly to speculate the exact parameters of what is owed to Palestinians. A solid rule: if Israelis used terrorism to cleanse the land, that land should be returned to Palestinians.

how did that land get to be "Palestinian land"

At least around the Iron Age, based on DNA. The Christian Palestinians even have a Biblical claim to the land, being descended from the agriculturalists who “converted” to Christianity, and staying put as the Jewish community migrated to Babylon and then dispersed globally to pursue higher wages. There is no reason to think there is significant Arab admixture given how close their DNA is to Samaritans.

An international body of third-party experts should decide what constitutes Palestinian land, based on informed estimates of the areas depopulated due to the terror campaign.

Ok, and I guess you agree that any area depopulated of Jews due to a terror campaign is Jewish land?

At least around the Iron Age, based on DNA.

Just so I understand this, you are claiming that

(1) DNA analysis of Palestinian Arabs connects them to what is now Israel going back thousands of years; and

(2) DNA analysis of other groups, including Jews, does not do so?

you agree that any area depopulated of Jews due to a terror campaign is Jewish land?

Sure, and that happened with WWII reparations, with Germany paying some high number of billions. What’s wrong with that? If there is some ancestral quarter for Jews in Baghdad and the government made them flee through terrorism, they should have that back or be offered compensation.

you are claiming that (1) DNA analysis of Palestinian Arabs connects them to what is now Israel going back thousands of years; and (2) DNA analysis of other groups, including Jews, does not do so?

I provided some links in this comment. The Palestinians (particularly the Christians) show direct continuity with DNA of Ancient Israel. Samaritans show the closest link of course, which makes sense, and then there’s the Iraqi Jews showing a close link. Ashkenazim are somewhat far away in terms of genetics.

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An international body of third-party experts should decide what constitutes Palestinian land

We had that: international parties Sykes and Picot (with the assent of a few other powers) decided the land was properly British. Surely everyone there will agree to abide by this arrangement.

Sarcasm, if unclear, but I doubt you could get the parties involved to agree to binding international mediation for much the same reasons that fell apart to begin with.

decided the land was properly British

Oh, God, please no. Once was enough.

The issue is that no matter what you do the problem does not change. You have two legitimate claims by people who claim the entire land is theirs by birthright, and they both absolutely hate each other. There’s no real solution for this unless you give one group the exclusive right to Israel/Palestine and send the others packing. Most other solutions are wishcraft that will only last until the parties are finished rearming.

How is America the victor in the 1948 (or choose a more recent one if you want) war between the current state of Israel and various Arab powers (including the Palestinians) in the former British Mandate of Palestine to legislate the outcome? It wasn't a party there.

You seemed to imply that international law has always been vae victis. If that’s so, then America can simply do as she pleases based on her sense of justice, being the most powerful nation globally.

That presumes the US would be willing to fight and defeat the IDF (and also the other relevant parties) to enforce an outcome there, which seems laughable. It'd make invading Greenland (which by all accounts polled terribly) seem like a good idea, and isn't something a democratically-elected US government is likely to do.

It seems to be fair to conclude the Jews committed war crimes while creating the state of Israel. I am not sure I care at this point.

The scale of change in the first world on these issues is shocking how fast it occurred. Segregation in the US was out in less than 20 years from the time Jews (and many others post WW2) were doing things like killing every 10th men.

My gut says people just do what is necessary for their environment. Humans can do things we view as horrific when it’s basically necessary for survival. I feel with reasonable certainty that Jews needed to ethnically cleanse their country to create state.

Another reason why I have decided having a politically ideology is stupid. I choose the my ideology for my current reality.

This kind of indiscriminate murder was the norm among Axis countries. For example the "kill 1 in 10" rule was something the Germans frequently deployed when "pacifying" unruly communities in Yugoslavia or Greece or Italy. (They were likely to do far worse in Eastern Europe)

For the Allies, no this was not normal. Violence against civilians in occupied territory was either very rare (western Allies) or common and unrestrained (Soviets), but in any case not typically used as an overtly political tool to quash dissent.

Churchill gassing the Iraqis just entered the chat.

A fairly extensive Wiki article is dedicated to this mysterious subject.

The wiki isn't fantastically put together, but I didn't know about the conflicting sources. I've only ever seen it posited as an established fact, including by some individuals who otherwise defended Churchill. Thanks.

It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of [tear-inducing] gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum.

I always forget how clear a speaker Churchill is.

No need to mention it. I was myself surprised when I came across this article. I just assumed that the Brits deployed lethal poison gas there as standard practice without a second thought.

It was the norm for Allies as well, the prime example is ethnic cleansing and atrocities in East Prussia, but there are also additional atrocities after war related to ethnic cleansing of Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia. I hope you know that Stalin decided to move Poland couple of hundreds miles to the left - just because he could. So much for third worlders whining about "artificial borders created by ignoramuses during some stupid conference of superpowers". Welcome to borders of the whole Europe - especially after WW1 and WW2. All in all around 12 million Germans were ethnically cleansed from lands they lived in for up to 1 000 years with 500k-2.5 million deaths.

But there were also atrocities committed by allies. French and especially colonial forces committed mass rapes in Stuttgart and other cities, carpet bombing of allied cities such as in France with tens of thousand of casualties, and of course we can also mention how Allies and especially French just waltzed into Indochina and especially Vietnam and committed atrocities during the liberation, basically turning WW2 into Vietnam war. Many other bloody anticolonial wars were ignited right after the WW2 such as war in Algeria against France or war in Kenya against British Empire or "Malayan Emergency" - which also included a nice masaacre an ethnic cleansing and it was also a test of new chemical weapon called Agent Orange by Brits. You know, a cookie cutter (and very successful) allied police action. Post WW2 was incredibly bloody period, let's not kid about that.

Late 1940ies and early 50ies were a completely different period, it was still very much a period where carpet bombing, ethnic cleansing and huge conflicts was a norm. It is not as if it was not a norm after that, you still have sanctioned ethnic cleansing if you have the right backing such as ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia during operation Storm, or if you are not interesting for international audience various atrocities now being perpetrated in whole Sahel region including Mali, Northern/Central Nigeria, Sudan and many other places.

You’re mixing up a couple of things here. The atrocities that took place in East Prussia were the usual sort of war crimes committed as acts of revenge and as an outburst of revelry and barbaric violence. It’s a stretch to say that these represented a systematic state policy. The expulsion of the German minorities happened after the war and cannot be considered war crimes as such, and took place in the context where the Nazi government used the defense of those minorities as a pretext to occupy and attack neighboring countries. Strictly speaking, no military considerations were involved, only political ones.

The German war crimes that are brought up in this discussion were committed in the context of a hostage-taking policy, which in itself was not considered to be against the laws of war before 1949.

It’s more accurate to say that the western Allies did not use violence against civilians as a political tool after their states had surrendered. Hiroshima, etc.

Yes, that's why I specified "in occupied territory." The western Allies didn't necessarily consider enemy civilians to be "fair game" per se, but there was certainly a murkier moral world view than might have wished to be remembered. Certainly the strategic bombing offensives engaged in a similar kind of euphemistic language ("morale bombing", attacking the "enemy housing stock") as the Nazis did with respect to targeting civilian populations.

Palestinian drive to take back their land

Are you prepared to identify exactly what land is implicated by the "Palestinian drive to take back their land"? For example, does it include, Gaza, Hebron, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, etc.?

Also, how did that land come to be "Palestinian" in your view? Was it just a matter of ethnically cleansing the previous inhabitants and staying there for a while? Or was more involved?

It would be great if you could set forth the underlying principles -- if any.

The Palestinians have been displaced for too long, and have states of their own(they’re really not that different from Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese), this is just balkanian Kosovo je Palestine at this point. The people claiming the land weren’t born there. Their parents weren’t born there. Life sucks for the Palestinians, retaking recent settlements in the West Bank might be reasonable, but Tel Aviv je Palestine is just stupid. The reality is both sides have blood on their hands, the Palestinians seem to now be led by actual psychopaths when they aren’t led by corrupt, incompetent assholes, and the nakhba is more or less outside living memory.

Yet people who haven't lived there for 2000 years are allowed to move to Israel.

Israel is continuing to attack its neighbours, continuing to steal land and continuing to attack christians.

Yet people who haven't lived there for 2000 years are allowed to move to Israel.

FWIW there were Jews living in (Eastern) Jerusalem, Hebron, and Gaza City for hundreds if not thousands of years before the Arab ethnic cleansing of these areas in the 1930s and 1940s.

There have been christians there for 2000 years so why aren't all christians allowed to move there?

There have been christians there for 2000 years so why aren't all christians allowed to move there?

Why should they be? I mean, your argument is that

(1) Jews haven't lived in Israel in 2000 years; therefore

(2) It's unreasonable that Jews should be permitted to move back.

I am simply pointing out that the premise of your argument is incorrect.

It's also worth pointing out that Israel has not attacked Egypt or Jordan in quite some time. Because what you call "attacking" is actually just defense.

In any event, from whom exactly is Israel "steal[ing]" land, and how did such land come to belong to other groups in the first place? Was it simply a matter of ethnically cleansing the land and living there for a while? Or is it something else?

Is it your view that after the Arabs ethnically cleansed Hebron of Jews in the 1930s and 40s, it became Arab land forever, and if Jews come back they are necessarily "stealing"?

Israel is currently occupying parts of Syria after bombing Syria and backing jihadists for years. They are currently expanding their territory on the west bank. The few thousands of jews who lived there can stay. The Eastern Europeans can go live somewhere else.

Can we send other ethnic minorities back where they came from as well?

Maybe all the blacks who can prove that they have continuously occupied America since 1776 can stay, but the new ones have to go back to Africa? The whites can all stay, though, no need to expel people who are part of the same ethnic group as the one that is 'supposed' to be there. As long as they're the same color as the people I like it doesn't matter what continent they were born on. The only people who have to prove that they're 'supposed' to be there are the ones from the ethnic group that I, personally, want to kick out of the country for unrelated political reasons.

Can we send other ethnic minorities back where they came from as well?

Maybe all the blacks who can prove that they have continuously occupied America since 1776 can stay, but the new ones have to go back to Africa? The whites can all stay, though, no need to expel people who are part of the same ethnic group as the one that is 'supposed' to be there. As long as they're the same color as the people I like it doesn't matter what continent they were born on. The only people who have to prove that they're 'supposed' to be there are the ones from the ethnic group that I, personally, want to kick out of the country for unrelated political reasons.

I know you are sort of parodying here, but I think it's worth mentioning that in the early days of modern Zionism -- during the Ottoman days -- lots of Arabs moved to Palestine from what are now Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, etc. They did this in large part because of the enhanced economic activity which had resulted from Jewish immigration.

That's why, for example, "Masri" is a very common name among Palestinian Arabs. It means Egypt.

Logically, if Eastern European Jews who came into the area between 1890 and 1947 need to be kicked out along with their descendants, the same thing should happen to Arabs whose families came from Egypt, Syria, Trans-Jordan, and Lebanon.

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Israel is currently occupying parts of Syria after bombing Syria and backing jihadists for years. They are currently expanding their territory on the west bank. The few thousands of jews who lived there can stay. The Eastern Europeans can go live somewhere else.

To whom does the west bank belong and how did it come to be theirs?

Also, would you agree that Palestinian Arabs who are descendants of those who moved to the area from what is now Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria "can go live somewhere else"?

When you control land, that's your prerogative to let in whomever you wish.

If Palestine were in control then they could have an immigration policy as open as they wanted.

Funny how that logic never applies to me as a European when I don't want to let in the refugees from the countries that Israel attacks.

By the Israeli government, legitimately elected by admittedly narrow majorities of the Israeli public. Israel’s West Bank behavior is indeed bad; both sides suck and need to stop Balkans irredentist nationalism, but Israël at least has a functioning society wherever it goes.

How would you apply the “living memory” rule to other conflicts, actual and hypothetical, so that we know it’s not just an ad hoc rule? Eg, if China took control of Japan for 80 years, should no Japanese ever try to take it back? Should Europe have given up on retaking Spain after 800ad? There are Israelis currently living in homes built by Palestinians; is that not sufficiently “living memory”?

they’re really not that different from Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese

Christian Palestinians appear to be more similar to ancient Israelites than Ashkenazim. While an Englishman might be .018 away from a German using g25 coordinates, a Russian Jew is .09 away from an ancient Israelite while a Christian Palestinian is .032 away. They’re about two Samaritans away from an Ancient Jew, which seems pretty close.

If the native Japanese rose up after 80 years of occupation by the Han, then they would have the right to. If the Japanese diaspora attempted to invade their ancestral homeland which is now majority Chinese eighty years later, that’s just stupid.

Balkans rules of possession make things terrible. The Palestinians lost in Israël long enough ago that they need to accept that- but being very upset about their treatment in the West Bank seems entirely reasonable. Just like how Cherokees advocating for better reservation conditions or whatever is fine, but trying to conquer and ethnically cleanse parts of Georgia is psychotic.

All colonial partitions had displacement and some amount of killing and chaos. See also: the balkans, India/Pakistan, the US etc. As these things go, taking the worst possible interpretation of the documents here, it's barely on the scale. When India was partitioned, anywhere from half a million to three million people died or were killed and twelve million or so were made refugees.

Once again, we're supposed to care because jews act exactly like everyone else when they have to form a state, only a bit less so. States are force and violence. They cannot be created nor destroyed without force and violence. Some people have to win, and some have to lose. The alternative is the status quo.

A lot of british loyalists got run out of the states, their land stolen, and many were just killed. The Revolutionary war went on some years after Yorktown, ugly local fighting crushing the rest of the loyal colonial Americans, and subjecting them to the new revolutionary order.

This is all thin gruel. None of it creates a legal right of return, any more than Benedict Arnold had a right of return to the US. Any more than muslim refugees' grandchildren have a right to their ancestral home in India. Any more than the Hindu refugees' grandchildren have a right to enter Pakistan. This is how partition and population transfer work.

The Arabs ran all teh jews out of their countries, Israel took them. Israel ran a minority of the arabs out of their new country, and the arab countries did not take them. That's the real difference here. It's the hereditary refugee status of the Palestinians, and the refusal of their part of the partitioned territories to take them, and the failure of their own politics to produce a government that can even negotiate with the Israelis.

Indian partition violence was the result of mobs, not a top down military policy. But the violence of Israelis against Palestinians occurred as part of a conscious military policy involving ethnic cleansing and terrorism, which is shown in the documents. This makes them qualitatively different events.

You are making this sound far more clearcut than it is. The Partition and ensuing exodus involved both "organic" mobs, as well as significant action by paramilitary forces, as well as intentional complicity or willful ignorance by local police/military/judicial systems along partisan lines.

More importantly, the two nations hadn't even consolidated properly at that point, so organizing pogroms was both difficult to achieve top-down, and not particularly necessary. State force was definitely used against stragglers in the days-years that followed, both soft coercion as well as via more brutal means.

It doesn't. It's just confirmation bias. Plenty of countries have some amount of "military policy" about displacing groups of people for any number of reasons. This is not new, it is not distinct, it isn't even illegal. It's part of the "sovereignty" that allows countries to make deals about territory and absorb population transfer.

It is not illegal to massacre civilians and ethnically cleanse populations through terror? Nuremberg disagrees with you, as does probably every expert of international law not from Israel.

It is not. It is illegal to do that in the country next door, to the degree anyone feels like enforcing that law. No one at Nuremberg was convicted of mistreating Germans. Once again, this is one of those sovereignty things. It is not against international law, and is outside the purview of outside governments, for a government to use force to move or eliminate any portion of their population. These are internal matters.

It's not against the law for Iran to kill protesters, though we may use that for political advantage. It's not against the law for Hutus to genocide Tutsis, which is why no one did anything except the Tutsis. Where things get dicey is when people are being killed in an argument over who is the sovereign power. In those cases, it matters who wins militarily. Might does not make right, but it does make sovereignty, and sovereignty has certain rights.

Interesting; so had Germany genocided all of their Jews within their own borders, this would have been perfectly legal, totally beyond the purview of outside governments. Just an internal matter. TIL.

In any case, this doesn’t apply to the Nakba, as the newfound “State of Israel” did not have legal possession over the land that they terrorized. Immediately after 15 May 1948, the majority of the land belonged to the Palestinians.

As it happened, relatively few of Germany's jews were genocided, because most of them were pressured to leave ("ethnically cleansed") before the war really kicked off. And no, no one did anything about that. In fact, Britain sent boatloads of jewish refugees back to Germany for trying to get into Palestine.

Immediately after 15 May 1948, the majority of the land belonged to the Palestinians.

According to who? Part of sovereignty is deciding who gets to keep what land. Britain held the "mandate" previously, from the Ottomans, and they gave it up. There was no deal in place due to the arabs declining, so sovereignty is a jump ball. Everyone had an even break to form a state, and the arabs were in a much stronger position. But they did not declare a state, and the jews did. Whatever palestinian national aspirations might have proved died when they lost to the Jews at the local level and were occupied by their "allies" in the neighboring arab countries. Part of that whole process was some of those arabs being forcibly moved off their land for any number of good and bad reasons. New borders had to be drawn, and policed, and defended on both sides. A new government had to make a lot of decisions about who gets what, and there's always losers in that process. They tend to come from the losing side, but the fact that arabs remain a significant portion of the Israeli population in a way that jewish residents of arab nations are not is a pretty big clue to how relatively ruthless those groups are.

Poorly-organized mobs can still engage in ethnic cleansing: see Rwanda. International law, to the extent it exists, found no trouble finding and convicting people for it.

By the way, what should be done (if anything) for the descendants of Jews who were terrorized and ethnically cleansed in the 1930s and 1940s out of Baghdad, Cairo, Gaza City, Hebron, and so on? Do you agree that this was an injustice? And if so, what -- if anything -- should be done?

The word “trove” always makes me think of pirates. Did they find these using ground-penetrating radar, too?

Joking aside, I seem to recall you consistently going to bat for Russia. I have a hard time imagining you criticizing them for their tactics. Perhaps there’s some other group where you’d apply this standard? Do you subscribe to the case for reparations?

Yes - the Arabs rejected a UN-backed partition plan, invaded Palestine, and lost. During the war the Arab population of the contested territory left/was driven out, with more than enough blame to go round. Some of what the Israelis did probably counts as ethnic cleansing. But that was the norm pre-1945 - if you start a war and lose, you are SOL. If you win a just war, you are allowed to keep the spoils. Nobody complains about the ethnic cleansing of Germans at the end of WW2.

After WW2, there are a bunch of humanitarian treaties which establish the principle that it is no longer acceptable to move ethnic groups around by force. But these were agreed with the understanding that they were not retroactive - the German cleansings or the various ethnic cleansings associated with Indian Partition were recognised as irreversible. By 1950 it is expected that decolorisations will happen without ethnic cleansing. By the time of the Six Day War in 1967 it is absolutely clear that Israel isn't allowed to ethnically cleanse its new territory, so they don't.

The inane arguments about the morality of the Nabka seem to me to boil down to whether it should be judged under WW2-era or post-WW2 standards. Or to put into lawyerspeak, the Israelis are right on the edge of the statute of limitations for ethnic cleansings.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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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...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.

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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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.

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.'

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).

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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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.

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

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?

"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.

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

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.

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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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.

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 in the current war offers plenty of evidence- the attacking random countries thing.

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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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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

More comments

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

In related news, meeting to select new Supreme Leader was targeted by Israeli strike. As if time for negotiation has ended, as if there are no plans to talk with Iran any more.

We know we should always trust the experts, but maybe these ones should be exception. Really, is it so hard to establish secure communication channel that precludes need to meeting in person? Especially in Near East, part of the world with ancient tradition of messenger pigeons?

Top Administration Officials Are Now Openly Admitting That America Is Israel's Bitch.

Rubio: "The president made the very wise decision—we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."

This wasn't clipped and quoted from a fringe groyper. This was posted by an official White House account.

I can't believe this shit. The United States has abdicated strategic initiative to Israel. The American armed forces in the Middle East have been reduced to reacting to and mitigating damage from Israel's operations in the theater. The straightforward interpretation of the above quote is that Israel started a war that killed American troops.

I was watching Tucker Carlson lay out this exact theory and thought, “well that’s an interesting idea. Too bad we’ll never know for sure.” And then the first thing I see when I tab over to Twitter is Marco Rubio making the exact same thought.

If Iran attacks the US in response to an attack by Israel, whose fault is it?

When Israel has the capability to acheive its objectives and has already planned a strike, does butting in to get a piece of the glory make the US Israel's bitch?

Or does it somehow look better to just sit around twiddling your thumbs while Israel takes care of it, all the while taking some collateral because Iran thinks it's a good idea to bomb literally every country in the region?

I would dispute whether it is inherently glorious to bomb shit and topple governments. I suppose it is cool, but not even I am callous enough to consider that a full justification.

I guess it comes down to what America is supposed to be getting out of the alliance with Israel. I can see the appeal of having a Westernized client state in the Middle East to hold down the fort, but typically one expects foreign policy optionally to be held almost exclusively by the suzerain.

If Israel can decide where and when to start major regional wars then I don’t see what the United States is getting out of this.

I guess it comes down to what America is supposed to be getting out of the alliance with Israel. I can see the appeal of having a Westernized client state in the Middle East to hold down the fort, but typically one expects foreign policy optionally to be held almost exclusively by the suzerain.

For decades its mostly served as a distraction and resource sink for the local crazies who want to conquer the world in the name of Muhammad and Allah. Recently its also been a leverage point that gave some people in the region the option of not being crazy in exchange for peace, and that seems to have worked decently for SA and the rest.

The option of getting out of the Israel business means you need some other proxies in the region, and there aren't good options, and there are obviously bad ones, like Iran, who only galaxy brain guys like Ben Rhodes think are a good option.

I would dispute whether it is inherently glorious to bomb shit and topple governments.

It is inherently glorious to bomb shit and topple the government whose official slogan is "Death to America", who started its existence with taking 66 Americans as hostages, and which had murdered over a thousand of US citizens since, and is operating the largest and strongest terrorist network on the planet. Oh and which also has a very strong ballistic missile and drone programs (strong enough that Russia is basically has them as their major supplier for their war) and are within arms reach of getting the nukes, after which the opportunity for bombing shit is gone because nobody would dare to bomb a country that is capable of nuclear response.

I don’t see what the United States is getting out of this.

Rubio literally told you. "if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties." If US did not use the opportunity to go together with Israel, but instead did their own thing, at different time, more US people would die as the result. With Israel - less American deaths. Without Israel - more American death. How do I explain it in more simple terms? Do you understand "less casualties" is better than "higher casualties"?

who started its existence with taking 66 Americans as hostages

Yeah, I think not enough people take this into account. Trump is old (so he remembers this personally), patriotic, and holds a grudge.

Well if we’re going back to the 70s, you know which country killed a lot of Americans? Vietnam. We have the technology to find the current addresses of 80-year-old war veterans in Hanoi with American blood on their hands.

Obviously it would be completely deranged to go back and bomb them now 50 years after the fact.

Yes, because Vietnam did not maintain and escalate the level of hostilities since then. They are not building nukes and do not commonly chant "Death to America" in their official meetings. In fact, they have been working for the last three decades on consistently normalizing and improving the relationships. And that's why nobody wants to bomb them - because the war is done there. The war with Iran isn't.

It is inherently glorious to bomb shit and topple the government whose official slogan is "Death to America"

It's almost as if they have a reason to hate America, they didn't spawn on this multiplayer server with the "hates freedom fries" perk pre-selected. Funny how people seem to forget why they hate us.

It's almost as if they have a reason to hate America

That's fine, they have the reason to hate America, and America has the reason to bomb shit out of them. They had a choice - give up acting on their hate, either stop hating or maybe hate without actually murdering Americans (and of course non-Americans, including hundreds of thousands of their own citizens over the years). A lot of countries took that choice. Iran did not. They chose the hate above all (same happens to Hamas and Hezbollah btw - birds of feather) - and that eventually leads to consequences. They had a lot of time to make a different choice. They consistently refused, and the time is up.

If Iran attacks the US in response to an attack by Israel, whose fault is it?

It's pretty silly to mass mobilize the military on the border of Iran and then claim a threat of retaliation from an Israeli strike as justification for a "defensive" preemptive strike. If the US didn't build its forces it wouldn't have needed to worry. Iran didn't strike US in 12-day war except as symbolic retaliation for Fordow.

Interesting account from the NYT today about Rubio not disclosing the consideration of a regime-change operation:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel walked into the Oval Office on the morning of Feb. 11, determined to keep the American president on the path to war.

For weeks, the United States and Israel had been secretly discussing a military offensive against Iran. But Trump administration officials had recently begun negotiating with the Iranians over the future of their nuclear program, and the Israeli leader wanted to make sure that the new diplomatic effort did not undermine the plans.

Over nearly three hours, the two leaders discussed the prospects of war and even possible dates for an attack, as well as the possibility — however unlikely — that President Trump might be able to reach a deal with Iran.

Days later, the U.S. president made clear publicly that he was skeptical of the diplomatic route, dismissing the history of negotiating with Iran as merely years of “talking and talking and talking.”

...

But on Feb. 24, hours before Mr. Trump’s annual State of the Union address, congressional leaders from the so-called Gang of Eight gathered in a secure conference room in the Capitol to speak on video teleconference with Mr. Rubio and Mr. Ratcliffe. The two officials were just down Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House, but security arrangements for the president’s speech made the two-mile trip onerous.

Mr. Rubio and Mr. Ratcliffe talked about the intelligence behind the strikes, the possible timing and the potential “offramp”— if the Iranians were to give up nuclear enrichment at upcoming talks.

And yet Mr. Rubio never mentioned that the administration was considering a regime-change operation.

In the briefing, Mr. Rubio argued that, no matter if Israel or the United States struck first, Iran would respond with a powerful barrage of weapons against U.S. bases and embassies. It was logical then, Mr. Rubio said, that the United States should act in concert with Israel, since America would be dragged in anyway. And Israel, Mr. Rubio said, was determined to act.

This logic sat poorly with some Democrats, who thought the Trump administration was letting Mr. Netanyahu dictate American policy — and was making a circular argument that the United States had to attack because its military buildup could prompt Iran to strike.

So Netanyahu walks into the oval office, Trump mobilizes a good portion of our military to defend Israel, then we attack Iran on the logic that Iran would attack user after Israel's attack.

The real question is what did Netanyahu tell Trump in his many visits to the Oval Office.

Walk me through the logic?

Would Israel not have struck Iran if the U.S. weren't involved?

If Israel struck Iran would Iran NOT have launched attacks that put U.S. personnel at risk?

And if Iran did strike U.S. bases or personnel, would the U.S. not have taken that as an act of war and retaliated?

If the fact is that Israel was going to strike, Iran would retaliate, and THEN the U.S. would retaliate as a matter of course... then yes, the inevitable conclusion is that a pre-emptive strike in cooperation with Israel is preferable all around.

I don't think making the game-theoretically sound action is the same as being the other party's bitch.

Or in other words, if Israel went in alone and lit the candle, and Iran dropped ordinance on Americans, would you be blaming that on Israel or Iran right now?

Would you be against the U.S. taking further action?

Or is your contention that Israel would have withheld their actions if they didn't have U.S. backing guaranteed?

You are ignoring the military buildup. Yes, the military buildup would be likely to provoke retaliation, but why do it in the first place? Because America is Israel's bitch and Israel cannot take on Iran alone and it knows it. So Netanyahu goes to Washington, Trump sends an obvious preparation for an attack, and then the US attacks on the logic that an attack would prompt retaliation. It's not a matter of "game theory", it's a matter of the US dancing to the tune of Netanyahu. This buildup was always going to lead to an attack, you don't bluff with that degree of military hardware.

...and you're ignoring the fact that the build-up was itself a response to the Iranian regime gunning down protestors after being explicitly warned that doing so would have consequences.

Trump is not Obama, when he sets a "red-line" he means it.

Trump claimed credit for stopping the executions, and the mobilization happened after the protests died down. So he already claimed victory on that front, not to mention the fact that the protests themselves were pushed by the US and Israel.

And earlier you said:

Would Israel not have struck Iran if the U.S. weren't involved?

No they wouldn't have, their plan relied on US involvement and Netanyahu made sure of it.

Would they have attempted a false flag operation to ensure U.S. involvement?

What's actually remarkable is that there was no false flag, not even a false pretext like Iraqi WMDs. Trump didn't even try to justify the war to the public to any significant degree. People here are struggling to develop alternative explanations (we are overthrowing Iran because of the protests, funny people actually believe that). There's not even really a solid "narrative" for the apologists for the war. The Administration briefly claimed they had intelligence claiming Iran was planning an attack on US assets, which was immediately debunked by our own intelligence agencies.

So why even need a false flag? They aren't even trying to get the support of the public, they are just doing it, that is a testament to their level of control they don't even go through the motions of trying to justify it. This Rubio statement is literally the best they can come up with! Their hands were tied by Israel, according to them.

With Iraq the dialectic was "we're doing it for Oil" versus "we're doing it to prevent WMDs and spread Democracy" (of course both sides of the dialectic were wrong, we were doing it for Israel). But there's not even anything like that dialectic for this war, Rubio's position is "our hands were tied by Israel". So people who support it and planned it and people who oppose it essentially agree we are being pulled into this by Israel.

Why'd we abduct Maduro?

Sure there were drug boats being sent over but Venezuela is even less a military threat than Iran.

The grand strategy seems to be isolating China from allies they can use to pester the U.S. or use as a staging point for their own operations.

I dunno, after managing to achieve voluntary accords with every single other regional power there, Iran is the singular inflamed festering boil that stands out as an obstacle to some semi-permanent peace. It likewise (as opposed to, say, North Korea) seems to have a significant portion of the population opposed to the current ruling party.

Generally I'm all for leaving them alone and caring primarily about domestic issues. But if a direct conflict with China is on the horizon, ensuring all the nations they could import energy from are either on our side or are sidelined entirely is just good game theory.

You're right on the china front, Venezuela was also selling oil to China/Russia. I'm sure the drug thing was just a bonus, the real considerations being grand strategy.

And earlier you said...

Where did I say that?

Trump claimed credit for stopping the executions

And then Iran kept rounding up people who were involved with the protests.

The Iranian authorities have carried out sweeping arrests across the country in recent days, seizing people during night‑time home raids, at checkpoints, in workplaces, and from hospitals. In addition to protesters, among those arrested are university students, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, and members of ethnic and religious minorities.

30 of whom still face the death penalty.

but why do it in the first place?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres

Look, even as someone skeptical of Israel's influence on American politics, the Iranian government is NOT some innocent widdle victim in this little drama.

And its worth mentioning that our relationship with the current government of Iran STARTED by them taking a bunch of our diplomats hostage for over a year.

As far as I know Israel was not involved in that.

This is not a state that we could happily co-exist with. Even Kim Jong Un was willing to shake Trump's hand, at least. The stick was the only way this was ever going to go with the Ayatollah, in my estimation.

In this particular matter, U.S. and Israeli motives and goals are in very close alignment. And the Israelis are clearly putting some skin in the game. Its their cities that are getting bombarded, I've seen videos of that I'm pretty sure aren't AI.

If the ultimate position represented here is "I want to see Israel get its shit pushed in even if that means Iran gets a nuke and consolidates its grip in the region" then fine, just say that.

If you think Israel is capable of kneecapping Iran unilaterally, then I'm not sure why U.S. intervention would piss you off... provided little American blood or treasure is spilt in the process.

Or if your position is that Israel would happily false flag an Iranian attack on U.S. troops to get the U.S. involved, then SAY THAT. I just want the logic explained so I can assess.

That's what I'm saying. If Iran wouldn't retaliate against U.S. assets, but Israel will happily fire on our boys whilst claiming it was Iranian missiles, THAT is a stronger argument.

Iran_massacres

US grand strategy politics are NEVER based on massacres or other heart warming considerations. It sat idly by as the UAE and Israel bombed the ever living shit out of military and civilian targets alike in Yemen. You will also notice the complete lack of action counter the various ethnic pogroms occurring in Africa on the daily.

Consider that these protestors were acting specifically in resistance to the current regime, though.

Practically, this makes them a much more useful tool.

Morally, well, its usually better to lend support to people who are actually asking for it and, in turn, have some capacity to act on their own once you give them that support.

Likewise with Venezuela, we have a friendly party to throw in with.

If you're hanging out at a party or a bar and you notice that your friend is getting (or has already gotten) himself into an altercation that may escalate to violence, do you put down your drink and get ready to back your friend's play?

If not, how good a friend are you really?

If it’s the third or fourth time he’s done this I think I would have to let him learn the hard way that he needs to take care of himself.

"Hey, I didn't fight in no war. Best of luck, though."

Depends on if your friend is the one who's picking a fight or not, I suppose.

I've done this twice with 2 different guys at two different stages in my life. They had a habit of getting into fights. I sat down (with others in our group) and told them to stop or it would end our friendship. One guy pulled his head in and we stayed friends. The other did not and we are no longer friends.

Israel and the US have been 'friends' for decades. Israel has an established habit of getting into altercations and dragging the US into it. The US has had many many opportunities to sit them down and put them straight.

'Friends' don't drag their friends into fights time and again.

Edit: Should say I backed my friends in the moment, but read them the riot act afterwards.

That quote doesn't seem so bad if true? It is much easier to hit missiles on the pad than to knock them out of the air.

I am personally much more interested in the consequences of the Iran war for nuclear proliferation. For potential dictators, the lesson of Libya, Ukraine, and North Korea was that your leadership cadres will be secured in power if they can get nuclear weapons, but that giving up a nuclear program is asking to be harrassed by your neighbors. The winning move for Iran was thought to be the nuclear progam, delaying Israeli intervention until enough weapons-grade fissile material could be covertly manufactured.

This war in Iran flips the apparent incentives. The bombing of capital ships and leadership greatly increases the costs (both military and personal) to leadership discreetly pursuing nuclearization. The new rule effectively seems to be "running a nuclear program is not enough to secure your power: you'd better complete nuclearization before you are detected." This seems like it will be a successful means of deterrence against nuclear proliferation, which benefits everyone. I strongly approve.

It is also especially interesting that this is now the third time that the US is has committed surgical strikes against leadership cadres instead of full-scale ground conflict. In the short term this provides strong motivation for leaders of other states to capitulate to US demands, and reduces casualties for everyone who is not in leadership cadres. In the long term, localizing the effects of wars close to the people who start them seems like it will be great for the achievement of world peace. I wonder if the strategy here is asymmetric in favor of the US (Iran having a higher population of Israeli informants than camels), or if the defensive game is hard enough that this opens up US leadership to threats (Iran does have a large military drone sector, but Trump is just old enough that he doesn't care).

One must also wonder what would have happened in Iraq if Saddam Hussein was droned and his replacement was told "behave, or you get droned, too." Talk about aligning incentives.

I agree with this take, nuclear proliferation is an extraordinary global risk and this really seems to be a low cost to way to prevent it.

https://www.amazon.com/Fallout-Story-Secret-Nuclear-Trafficking/dp/1439183074

Is a fantastic book which illustrates some of these risks.

Echoes of the Gulf War here, everyone was stunned when Saddam offered to let in inspectors to check for WMDs. Putin offered to mediate. But the Israelis couldn't have that, they were going 'oh well there's no way to be sure, inspectors can be deceived' and the war started anyway. The troops were being moved in, the decision had been made, all this diplomacy was just to tighten the noose, to establish the face-saving rhetoric, not for the ostensive purpose.

In this case, the US had already moved an enormous amount of striking power into the region, those F-22s, the AWACs planes, the carriers and tankers. There was clearly a strike planned. The Israelis just didn't want Trump to chicken out at the last minute, they make each stage on the path to war seem like the path of least resistance.

The Israelis were nudging and pushing and cajoling the US into this situation from start to finish. Netanyahu was constantly flying to Washington to do this cajoling... I bet the Israelis were encouraging the US to go in with maximalist objectives for the diplomacy, providing 'intelligence' that the Iranians were lying or planning a pre-emptive strike. Then they create a deadline, make it seem impossible to back out.

Attacking Iran makes little sense as a strategic objective for the US otherwise.

The US is on the other side of the world! What does MENA matter to America, now that America is energy-independent? Why were there all these troops in the Middle East in the first place? Why not make a deal with Iran to pull them away from the Russia-Chinese camp? All these Gulf allies do deals with China anyway, they are not exactly loyal or capable allies.

If you're worried about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, why would you assassinate the man who made a fatwa against producing, deploying, using nuclear weapons? That's stupid. It's possible that this is all part of the plan, they want Iran to try nuclearizing and then that will 'justify' a massive disarming strike or ground invasion, possibly nuclear-armed, blow the conflict completely out of proportion. Or perhaps it's a risk they've considered and approved. Israel can run rings around this administration, that much is clear.

One also wonders what leverage Israel has on Trump. Trump feels free to scorn his other billionaire donors like Musk or the entire business lobby with his tariffs, suggesting that it's not just Adelson money at play here. Perhaps it's just natural affinity, he was after all Grand Marshal of the Salute to Israel in NY. Or maybe the Kushner connections. Or maybe something else, who can say?

Isreal knows its on its last presidential legs with the US as the main pro-isreal populace ages out and will be replaced by zoomers who instrinctively hate their guts, it's now or never. That's why we see the renewed vigor with the Iran shenanigans.

I don't buy what Rubio said in that quote. He makes it seem like the Israeli action is like some natural phenomenon that cannot be stopped, like an earthquake or volcanic explosion. Whereas the reality, I'm pretty sure, is that if the US government really wanted Israel to not strike, Israel would not strike. Would Israel ignore the US if it was faced with a genuinely existential, immediate threat? Yes, I think so. But this situation was not an immediate existential threat.

On a similar note of "stuff I don't quite believe"... there's now an article in the Financial Times about how Israel tracked Khomeini. Allegedly, with sophisticated data hacking and analysis. Now, was there sophisticated data hacking and analysis? Probably. But I don't quite believe the details presented. It would be stupid of the Israelis to leak the actual details of how they did it, thus educating their enemies. Of course, an unauthorized leak is possible. But I notice that the Financial Times article is another data point in an ongoing pattern: first the info that came out about Stuxnet, then the info that came out about the pager operation in Lebanon, and now this. A series of supposed leaks about tremendous intelligence capability being deployed against Israel's enemies. It's unlikely that the intelligence agencies involved would keep letting such leaks happen over and over again.

I think it's likely that these supposed leaks are actually America + Israel running a deliberate intimidation campaign to make their enemies scared and also to potentially make them waste energy taking wrong precautions. Because if the leaks are part of a deliberate intelligence campaign, then it would be reasonable to conclude that the details are inaccurate: most likely, a combination of accurate details and inaccurate ones put together in such a way as to have enough truth to seem plausible to Israel's enemies, while being inaccurate enough to cause them to take wrong actions in response.

I'm pretty sure, is that if the US government really wanted Israel to not strike, Israel would not strike. Would Israel ignore the US if it was faced with a genuinely existential, immediate threat? Yes, I think so. But this situation was not an immediate existential threat.

Yeah, this is pretty much where I am. I think Rubio is playing up the 'we had to because Israel and we couldn't let Iran strike first' as a cassus belli. It does make the US look like the tail is wagging the dog though.

Now, was there sophisticated data hacking and analysis? Probably. But I don't quite believe the details presented. It would be stupid of the Israelis to leak the actual details of how they did it, thus educating their enemies.

I've seen people (ex spooks) talking about targeting analysts in the public sphere. I think there's a fair bit of tradecraft guides and other bits and pieces out there, so it seems like contemporary govts aren't that concerned with basic methods that have been around for decades getting out into the public sphere.

How do we even know the method described in the Times is the one they used rather then disinformation?

I don't buy what Rubio said in that quote. He makes it seem like the Israeli action is like some natural phenomenon that cannot be stopped, like an earthquake or volcanic explosion.

Mike Johnson confirmed Rubio's statement

“Israel was determined to act in their defence here, with or without our help… Because Israel was determined to act, with or without the U.S., our commander in chief had a very difficult decision to make…”

Whereas the reality, I'm pretty sure, is that if the US government really wanted Israel to not strike, Israel would not strike. Would Israel ignore the US if it was faced with a genuinely existential, immediate threat? Yes, I think so. But this situation was not an immediate existential threat.

Why? What leverage do we actually have over them? They could easily fund themselves if we cut aid (after all they spend tons of money on their universal healthcare and free higher education, they aren't hurting finacially) and that's a big IF considering how aggressively pro Israel most of the Republican and Democrat parties are. Restoring any aid cuts to them might be one of the few things that makes Congress act.

We're in more dire financial straits than them, yet we give them money as they fund things we consider frivolous back home. If that's not being their bitch then I don't know what possibly could be.

I think you're underestimating the multifaceted nature of US influence over Israel beyond just the annual aid package (which, sure, is "only" about $3.8 billion but is also overwhelmingly military specific, funding things like Iron Dome interceptors and David's Sling defence systems that can't be easily self replicated overnight). Now yes, cutting that wouldn't bankrupt Israel (they're a high-income economy with a GDP per capita higher than most of Europe, after all) but it would materially constrain their operational capabilities in a prolonged conflict like this, especially when they're already stretched thin across Gaza, Lebanon, and now Iran.

Now add intelligence sharing (the US provides a huge chunk of Israel's real time targeting data and satellite recon), diplomatic cover (vetoing UN resolutions that could lead to sanctions or isolation), and arms resupply pipelines (Israel's F-35s, JDAMs, and bunker-busters are US sourced and require ongoing parts/maintenance approvals).

If the White House truly went all-in on opposition (say, by halting those exports under the Arms Export Control Act or even threatening to abstain on a UNSC vote condemning the strikes), Israel would face immediate logistical headaches and international backlash that could force a rethink. We've seen glimpses of this before: Reagan delayed F-16 deliveries in the '80s over Lebanon incursions, Bush Sr. withheld loan guarantees over settlements in the '90s, and even Obama slow-walked munitions during the 2014 Gaza op. Israel grumbled but adjusted.

You're right that Congress is overwhelmingly pro-Israel, and restoring aid cuts would likely be bipartisan lightning fast. But this situation started with Israel's June 2025 unilateral strike on Iranian nuclear sites, which escalated to the ongoing joint op after Iran's retaliations threatened US assets directly.

It's not purely about defending Israel from an "imminent" nuke (though that's what is claimed). If the US had drawn a red line earlier and enforced it with those levers, I doubt Bibi pushes this far without coordination. I'll have to reiterate @Goodguy here, both Rubio and Johnson's statements feel like post-hoc justification for Trump's decision to join rather than restrain.

For sure, countering Iran immediately appears to align more with Israel's interests than the US', but I'm not convinced that the US has zero strategic interests in this joint op (though what those interests may be, I'm not 100% sure).

If the US did all of that, we might actually get all the Epstein files released, but by Mossad.

Israel isn't the country it was even in 2014 - religious Jews outbreeding secular Jews has changed the balance of power.

There was a soft right wing of Likud, including people like Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, who thought that Israel's best hope of security was to annex as much land with as few Palestinians as possible, build a fence to keep the vast majority of the Palestinians out, and rely on American support (based on shared interests and values) for defence against Iran and friends. That soft right is now de facto the centre left (parties like Kadima and Blue & White), and even so can't win elections against the Netanyahu coalition. (The only government without Likud since 2009 was a short-lived monstrosity formed when far-right Naftali Bennett went into coalition with the centre-left because he was disgusted by Netanyahu's personal corruption. It lasted 18 months, after which Bennett's party was wiped out).

Netanyahu's coalition don't want to build a fence (at least in the West Bank - Gaza is a shithole nobody wants) - they want to fill Eretz Israel with Jews (sometimes explicitly for religious reasons - religious Zionists are a core part of the coalition) and somehow-or-other have the Palestinians who currently exist there go away. And given a choice between relying on God or the United States for Israel's security, they are going to choose God. Israeli religious Zionists don't have shared interests and values with the US, but there is a popular evangelical heresy which wrongly teaches that they do. Given Netanyahu's ability (or at least perceived ability) to sic AIPAC (in a Democratic primary) or Christian Zionist evangelicals (in a Republican primary) on individual American politicians who cross him, his approach to the US is closer to oderint dum metuant.

This was confirmed by Mike Johnson too

“Israel was determined to act in their defence here, with or without our help… Because Israel was determined to act, with or without the U.S., our commander in chief had a very difficult decision to make…”

Yes, we did this because of Israel. It's incredible how powerful their influence is. They forced the Tiktok sale because they were upset about pro palestine content and politicians barely even tried to hide it.

Mike Gallagher said in his calls to ban it

rampant pro-Hamas propaganda on the app should serve as a wake-up call to Americans

Josh Hawley said

"less often discussed is TikTok’s power to radically distort the world picture that America’s young people encounter. Israel’s unfolding war with Hamas is a crucial test case,” Hawley said in a letter to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday.

They're so powerful that we give them lots of aid and money without any political controversy despite them clearly being the dominant power in their region and having universal healthcare and free higher education. We're literally giving our tax money away to a country with things we don't even have, meanwhile PEPFAR gets cut as the "waste".

If Republicans are going to be Israelis bitch can the Jews decide that they will play on my side in domestic politics?

I will take the deal gladly. ADL comes out and says white lives matter. Open borders are stupid. Advocate for deporting 200k Somlians. Kagan writes some eloquent opinion that birth right citizenship is obviously false.

I’m fine with shipping $200 billion in bombs to Israel if the bulk of Jewish intellect plays on my team. We can motte and bailey all day long on whether “Jews run the world” or they just “play way above their size” because they’re smart. My big issue with Jews is the bulk of their community seems to have played a game that is against my interests.

The left is too infiltrated with third-worldism for their old political arrangements to work out. If you want MAGA support then I want to see Jewish money going 80% to MAGA and the Jewish vote being 80% MAGA. I feel like these are reasonable terms.

Maybe Jews as a group have too many ancestral memories in their culture to ever end up giving 80% of their money to something like MAGA, at least for the foreseeable future. For them, MAGA has too many unpleasant connotations of past cultures that were violent toward Jews.

On a side note, I think that while Jews lean left in American politics, they also happen to be over-represented relative to their population size in American right-wing politics. Unsurprisingly if one believes in the hypothesis that they are influential mainly because of high intelligence, they're basically over-represented relative to their population size in every political movement that does not deliberately exclude Jews.

Maybe Jews as a group have too many ancestral memories in their culture to ever end up giving 80% of their money to something like MAGA, at least for the foreseeable future. For them, MAGA has too many unpleasant connotations of past cultures that were violent toward Jews.

What makes MAGA different from the causes they're actually supporting, like infinity Muslim immigration, or the Blue Tribe in general?

Blue tribe doesn't have the connotations of "stupid angry white hicks who will come to our village and pogrom us".

The Muslim immigration doesn't seem like a viscerally real, tangible problem because so far it has only built up to small minorities in Western countries.

Blue tribe doesn't have the connotations of "stupid angry white hicks who will come to our village and pogrom us".

How so? They're the ones doing all the "antisemitic" protests that they were complaining so much about.

The Muslim immigration doesn't seem like a viscerally real, tangible problem

Then why were they complaining so much about all the people celebrating October 7th?

How so? They're the ones doing all the "antisemitic" protests that they were complaining so much about.

That's very recent and mostly confined to a small subset of Blue tribe. So far it's not much compared to hundreds of years of being pogromed by people who seemed more like Red tribe.

Then why were they complaining so much about all thr people celebrating October 7th?

You can get viscerally upset watching some people celebrate the killing of your co-ethnics without it making you decide that their entire ethnic group is inherently unassimilable to Western civilization. And I think that Jews have been turning more against Muslim immigration recently.

These two issues were relevant enough for them to (successfully) lobby for state actions like deportations and withdrawal of government funds. If they were such a small issue that they don't warrant any reciprocical support, their requests should have been denied. Hell, they should not have made them in the first place.

Well, they're not a monolith. Some of them wanted such radical actions, some were opposed, some indifferent.

My overall point is that, even though Jews in Western countries have been moving a bit to the right recently, white-dominated right-wing populist movements probably have, to a Jewish perspective, so much historical baggage that I don't expect 80% of Jews to support them any time in the near future. They might do it if Muslims rise to make up like 20% of Western populations or something. Even then I'm not sure.

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I feel like this is a comfy US Jewish view that’s been accepted for a long time. I don’t believe the state of Israel shares this view.

Abu Zubaydah when he was captured told the CIA officer that he didn’t really want to kill Americans he just wanted to kill Jews.

The main difference between third world antisemitism and white antisemitism is whites are very good at war. Overall Western Europeans are likely less antisemitic than other groups but when we do turn on Jews we can kill a lot of them.

It's all propaganda. In reality, anti-semitism in America was historically not a Red Tribe phenomenon. Anti-semitism in America wasn't pograms, it was stuff like Harvard's Jewish quotas, country clubs refusing Jews, that sort of thing. There was the Klan, who hated almost everyone, but Jews weren't their main focus. There's also black anti-Semitism and Muslim anti-Semitism -- the latter is basically imported and the former fairly recent and not Red Tribe either. Meanwhile, there's some revanchist with a Confederate flag muttering the N-word and the someone calls him an anti-Semite, and he scratches his head and says "Wasn't our Secretary of State named Judah Benjamin?"

Black anti-semitism goes back quite a ways, actually- it’s always been part of black power/black liberation.

Agreed, but I guess I'm not American enough to consider that "a long time".

This seems obviously false now. We have seen the brown people march and chant “from the river to the sea” now.

Maybe 5-10 years ago it was not viscerally real. Today the visceral reality seems very real. Team third worlders if they had enough political power to pogrom Jews seem fine with it.

We have seen the brown people march and chant “from the river to the sea” now.

We have seen it. The average Jew is not a politics-obsessed person who watches the latest aggregated videos of demonstrations on social media and automatically distrusts mainstream framings of topics.

Jews don’t watch the news seems like a poor argument to me. Compared to the average American even adjusted for education they donate more to politics, volunteer more in politics, and spend more time on message boards. They are literally the most politically engaged group in America.

Blacks are the most "being an NBA player"-engaged ethnic group in America, yet the vast majority of blacks are not NBA players.

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Quasi-ethnic majoritarian nationalism with strong but unadhered to Christian themes has… not tended to be a good bargain for Jews in the past.

That hardly explains why they'd prefer infinity Muslims, or the Blue tribe.

The Blue tribe is the Jews. To be more precise, the Blue Tribe is the Anglo-Jewish culture that appears when not-Orthodox PMC Jews and PMC WASPS start working at the same banks/law firms etc. and joining the same golf clubs.

The blue tribe has generally been good to Jews, does that need much explaining? Imperial centralizing scholar-bureaucrats usually are.

The blue tribe has generally been good to Jews, does that need much explaining?

Yes, actually. The most fanatical support for Israel and Jewish people in general seems to be coming from a particular brand of Evangelical Christianity, not the Blue Tribe. If lack of support for Christians is supposed to be explained by Christianity rhyming with Nazism, the Blue Tribe rhymes with should prevent support for them as well.

I think it’s fair to say every group hates the Jews. Being a minority group that ends up with more people at the top and does have some of their own independent desires is just not a good place to be. It’s the same thing in S Africa with the 10% white population. The 90% black population will end up singing “kill the boer” when the 10% control everything.

A multicultural society of third worlders will mostly end up hating the Jews too. As we have seen.

Is there evidence that they actually support infinity Muslim immigration, as opposed to just enough of any immigration that no ethnic group gets the strength to advance its own interests by virtue of numbers? Do they encourage further Muslim immigration to countries that are majority or nearly majority Muslim, like Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania or Indonesia?

(Maybe you could argue that (((they))) islamised Syria, but that was more about Russia. Weaponising Muslims against Russians seems like more of a gentile Anglo civilisational project to me.)

(((They))) might not advocate for literally infinite muslims, but (((their))) leftist catspaws certainly do. To them (them, not (((them)))!), immigration and muslims have become poles of GOOD on the moral compass. There is no quantitative limit; more is better.

(((This))) is fun.

I mean, you can watch the same guy wishing for this deal turn around and accuse Jews of running their own blood libel. I could see how that would be a deal-breaker.

Yeah, but that "same guy" is as MAGA as he is Jewish, I wager.

Despite the claims of our swastika-enjoying members, American Jews aren't a monolith. The ADL is more likely to support Hamas than MAGA no matter what, but Jared Kushner isn't the same. Nor are the Haredim, though they're a problem for other reasons. During the last election we saw a few prominent Jews peeled off the "ADL" side by the antics of universities, and possibly we'll see more of that, but I don't expect the bulk of American Jews to abandon leftism any time soon. Though if some Democrat does go full Hamas, more of them may hold their nose and vote your way in a specific election.

There is a reason I said I wanted them 80-20 MAGA. It’s not a monolith. But they’ve been close to 80-20 against for a long time.

The pro-life movement vote 95-5 with MAGA. In many ways GOP is not a natural place for Roman Catholics. Most of the Catholic (European variety) have always voted for big welfare state. So yes if you want MAGA bombs you better give us the votes and figure out how to make friends. This is how politics work.

If you want to talk in practical terms, now is the unique moment that this can happen. American Jews had been traditionally Democrat voters. And when Democrats were just the socialist-curious wing of Uniparty, that worked pretty well for them. Once the woke left declared their alliance with Islam and went full-in on their program of destroying the Western civilization, that stopped working. American Jews, of course, as any multi-million population, are not homogenous. But most of them would be fine with a little socialism here and there, and maybe a little social progressivism, and with what Democratic party offered in 1980s-1990s. But a lot of them are not OK with the cult of Hamas and the antisemitic frenzy embraced by the woke left. Harris lost almost a million of Jewish votes compared to previous elections. There's certainly some potential for more gains here.

So what some of the geniuses on the right do now? Of course they hastily organize their own antisemitic wing so that the left antisemites do not have a corner on that market. They blame Israel for everything that goes wrong in the foreign policy, and blame Jews for everything that goes wrong in the domestic policy. They unearth every blood libel that can be discovered, and invent some new ones just for fun. They say radical Islam is not so bad, because see, they hate Jews and gays, just like we do. They declare every Jew in US politics their enemy, no matter how many common goals there could be between them. Is this a smart way to build a coalition? Is this the way to convince the Jews who never thought about voting anything but Democrat, but now thinking maybe it's worth considering, to switch? Is this how you build the team?

I think it'd be very smart and very beneficial for America to build a team like that. But there are a lot of people right now on the right that work very hard to make it impossible. I hope they fail, but I can not be sure of that, unfortunately.

If you want MAGA support then I want to see Jewish money going 80% to MAGA and the Jewish vote being 80% MAGA. I feel like these are reasonable terms.

That could happen. I'd like to see that happen. But for this to happen, Qatarlson, Owens and their ilk can not be part of the deal. Right now, the towering stature of Trump makes them tiny and irrelevant. But Trump will be gone from power, at least officially, in 2028, and it is not at all clear he would be able to exert any power on the movement, and have enough clout to say who's in and who's out. And Vance, who is the presumed heir, still sitting on the fence there. And if the groypers remain in, and have the influence on the movement, the Jews will not be voting for MAGA, not 80% and not even the majority. Some committed conservatives could pinch their nose and still go with it, but it won't even get to Trump numbers, let alone exceed them. Why would one vote for a movement that literally considers you a demonic entity that must be eliminated?

The problem is the Jews did do a lot of the things the right accuses them of. We are just the big party that can be transactional.

Israel and their backers did run a blood libel against white identity using the holocausts as justification. And they did a very good job of it. The ADL was the primary Jewish interest group and they’ve been promoting the blood libel for decades. I can understand how they thought that was in their best interests but today we need a new deal.

Israel and their backers did run a blood libel against white identity using the holocausts as justification.

This is more or less meaningless word salad.

Come on Israel thru their proxies like the ADL have actively been trying to destroy white identities for decades. It’s not a word salad. And factually it’s like true. You can just read the ADL website.

It’s verifiable they did the thing. And that side had a complete victory for most of my adult life.

The problem is the Jews did do a lot of the things the right accuses them of.

Like what specifically? I mean, of course there are Jews that did any particular shit. There are Jewish thieves, Jewish rapists, Jewish murderers, Jewish terrorists, Jewish gangsters, Jewish anything you like. There are a lot of Jews, a lot of them are very smart, and if one also happens also to be a psychopath, you'll get yourself a very prominent criminal or a communist leader or something like that. But I'd like to figure out, what exactly is the problem about which we're talking here.

Israel and their backers did run a blood libel against white identity using the holocausts as justification.

That's not true. Israel had never been an active participant in US culture wars. Especially not in the Great Awokening, which had been thoroughly infested with violent hate for Israel. It is true that some of the Jewish organizations - like ADL - shamefully, used the Holocaust as justification for their left-wing propaganda, but Israel had nothing to do with it, and most of the Jews neither endorsed it nor had any influence on the matter. ADL is not some kind of Jewish representative, it is just a bunch of grifters whose grift happens to be in being Jews and serving Democrats. Other Jews can't really do much about it.

The ADL was the primary Jewish interest group

No it wasn't, and it certainly isn't. They were a bunch of loudmouths who were somewhat listened to because they weren't obviously corrupt, and now that it's obvious they are, they are about as representative as Naturei Karta. One can say they are "a" Jewish group, that's true, but nowhere even near "the primary" Jewish group, especially once they sold their soul to the woke. That is not exclusively Jewish phenomenon - organizations like ACLU, EFF, Greenpeece, and many others suffered the same fate, once they were maybe a left-leaning, but fundamentally sound organizations with a cause, which can be agreed or disagreed, but there was a proper cause, one which people could talk about without buying into the whole woke package. Now they are just skinsuits that the woke left wears when it's tactically convenient. ADL now happens to be a Jewish woke skinsuit, but that's where its connection with the Jewishness ends.

And if you want to make practical gains in luring Jews into MAGA, you message should not be "ADL are Jews, therefore all Jews are the same and as bad as the worst of ADL". That's just doing the same shit the left is doing to you. And I mean it can feel good, but does it work? Did it work on you when they called you a Nazi? Did you think "oh gosh, the Left called me a Nazi, I must rethink everything and change!" or did you think "fuck that noise, I am not listening to them anymore!"? If you want to do better, your message should be "ADL are Jews, but they are bad and lost the right to represent Jews in any way. Come here, my fellow Jews, let's unite under our umbrella of common sense and reject the bullshit ADL is peddling you!".

Denying the ADL after they are no longer useful. That’s like the CIA denying a spy after the fucked up. Of course you deny it now.

“The best funded Jewish group who were hardcore zionists - wasn’t us”

Whether Israel directly worked with them in messaging is a tough question. But Israel could have shut them down at any time. They are zionists. That’s like a the pope calling me and telling me I can’t do something anymore. I have to listen.

Denying the ADL after they are no longer useful

Nobody is "denying" anything. You are trying to pre-suppose you are correct and your opponents' arguments are illegitimate, this is not something that you get for free just because you want it. I described you in detail what is the deal with ADL - it was one thing, now it's a different thing. Things change. If you think what I described is not true, please address it on substance, not just resort to name calling.

That’s like the CIA denying a spy after the fucked up

No, it's not like that at all - nobody is "denying" ADL are Jews, and nobody is "denying" they fucked up.

“The best funded Jewish group who were hardcore zionists - wasn’t us”

I am not sure who you are quoting, so I am not sure I need to address that, unless you explain what do you mean.

Whether Israel directly worked with them in messaging is a tough question.

No, it's not tough at all. It didn't. Israel has its own messaging, and the interest in participating in US culture wars in Israel is pretty much none. Israel has its own troubles. It is true that Israel values US as an ally greatly, and will do a lot to help keep US as an ally and keep the positive relations between US and Israel. But there are much better venues for that and ADL does not play a major role in it, especially the woke part of ADL.

But Israel could have shut them down at any time. They are zionists.

No, it could not - Israel does not finance it and has no operational control over it. And, frankly, why would Israel shut down political activities of US citizens on US soil? Yes, they are zionists - but being zionist is not some chip that you install in your head that puts you under control of the Israeli government. Being zionists just means you don't think Israel must be destroyed. It's a pretty low bar - it is absolutely fascinating, to be honest, you even need a word for it. There's no word to call people that think Japan does not need to be destroyed. There's no word for people that think Morocco is a legitimate state that should exist. Pretty much any country on the face of Earth - sure, there might be people that want to destroy this country, haters gonna hate. But only for Israel there's a special word for people that don't think genocide is a good idea. For all other countries, these people are called "normal people". Such is the sad reality to which we are used. So yes, there are zionists. So what?

That’s like a the pope calling me and telling me I can’t do something anymore

No, it's not like that at all. First of all, Jews don't have a pope and never did. Even within Judaism, even within the most Orthodox of the Ortodox Judaism (which in the minority of Jews) there's no such concept - if you bother to study about it, Judaism had always been a pluralistic religion, and propagation of the religious law could not be more dissimilar to what Catholics have. There literally can not be an analogue to Pope in Judaism (except for Moses once and the Messiah when he comes, of course, but beyond that, none). I am not saying this to say Catholics are wrong, just in Judaism things work very differently, that's a fact.

Second, of course, not all Jews are religious or Israeli or agree to what any particular Israeli government is doing (that's an understatement like saying when the bomb explodes not all the parts stay perfectly still in the same place). ADL has neither religious nor any other obligation to listen to anything anybody in Israel says, whether in power or not. Sure, they could cooperate with Israel when they think it makes sense for them - and they do. But voluntary cooperation and total control that you are implying are very different thing. They don't have to listen to anything. They may decide to listen, or may decide to ignore.

Now, the important part here - if you are still reading - going back to what started the conversation. If you want to get more Jews to be part of the MAGA movement - which I think is a good goal, as there is a lot of intersection between what most of the American Jews want and what most of the MAGA people want - then picking up how ADL hurt you and how much Israel is at fault for that is a useless activity. I mean, it may be attractive for you, but it is useless for reaching that goal. If you want to get more Jews voting for MAGA, then chanting "you are shit because ADL is shit and you are responsible for it!" is not going to do that. We can agree ADL has become shit. You can convince more and more Jews to stop listening to ADL on this basis - because nobody likes listening to shit, so if you can convince people ADL is a shitty organization now, you can get them to stop. But if you insist that ADL is the same as Jews and Israel, and forever has been, and forever will be - they you don't leave any common platform to stand on. How then would you enable the future cooperation?

Historical intelligence and sharing allegations: In the early 1990s, a major controversy arose when San Francisco police raided ADL offices, uncovering evidence of extensive spying on thousands of activists, organizations (including Arab-American groups, anti-apartheid activists, and others critical of Israel), and individuals. Court documents and reports indicated that some of this information was shared with Israeli government officials and intelligence agencies (including Mossad). The ADL settled related lawsuits without admitting wrongdoing, but sources like The Nation, MERIP, and others described it as part of close ties where the ADL provided data to Israel (and sometimes the U.S. State Department or FBI) on critics of Israeli policy.

  • So yes in the past they have literally operated as an arm of Mossad. From Grok.

Listen, you need to decide what you want. If you want to vent about how ADL hurt you, sure, go ahead. I mean, I don't care but you are free to do it, we're in a free country. I won't debate you about this because frankly out of all shit that is happening what information ADL shared in 1990s with Mossad is pretty low on my ladder of priorities, sorry, there are much more important (for me) things that are going on right now.

If you genuinely want to get smart Jews to join MAGA, then I am just telling you right now, starting with how ADL is bad because it supposedly spied on commies and/or Jihad activists in 1990s (ah the times where there were so few of them you needed to actually seek them out instead of just pointing at a random leftist!) and how all Jews are now tainted because of it - is not going to work very well. Just so when it does not work very well at all, you won't be surprised. I mean, out of all ways to get people to play on your side, you choose pretty bad ones so far. If you really want it (and not just using it as one more item on the list of why Jews totally suck) I'd probably try some other strategy.

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The obvious hypothesis would be that Jews are not, in fact, a hivemind capable of making deals collectively.

Israel can do what it wants, but it actually doesn’t control the ADL or random donors. And the Republican Party has spent long enough pissing those individuals off that it can’t expect a sudden reversal.

I suppose I also think it’s wrong to describe “the left” as a monolith for similar reasons.

Then I wouldn’t back bombing Iran if they can’t give us that. Iran is not very important to the US. It is to Israel. No reason to help Israel if they can’t return a favor.

Practicing Catholics vote 80%+ GOP. Maybe it’s even 95% for regular attendees. For decades we’ve been told we can only vote Republican. Either Israel can deliver that or they can not.

If specific people in power in private corporations can coordinate enough to unperson/deplatform and debank Alex Jones, Tyler Oliveira, Nick Fuentes from media, they can coordinate enough to push pro-maga/anti-immigration messaging. We already saw the level of 1984 tier bullshit google search/youtube search pulled. There was a time when you would search for Tucker Carlson's tv show and the first video was always a shitty attempted takedown by the time telling bundle of sticks from the UK's comedy show, a video with trash ammount of views compared to any other from Tucker.

So you don't need ALL jews to be a hivemind, just a couple of good old boys who can coordinate their companies version of reddit's orwellian sounding "Anti-evil operations" team.

the bulk of Jewish intellect

the bulk of their community

80% to MAGA

I dunno, it sure doesn’t sound like he was talking about the good ol’ boys.

time telling bundle of sticks from the UK

Ironically, I can’t seem to find it. Who are you hinting at?

It was this video. Don't know if they thought it would be an anti-radicalisation force in any way, but that specific video made me like Tucker, Just that little bit more. This was back then when they had not yet removed him from FOX.

It’s certainly a very convenient defense going into midterms. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense though. From an Israeli perspective this is all 6-9 months too late. The IRGC is too deeply embedded to overthrow with a decapitation strike on the civilian/clerical leadership and the biggest protests in 30 years were quickly and mercilessly crushed a few months ago. Nuclear sites and stockpiles are dispersed and deep underground and it would take a nuclear strike or boots on the ground to have any chance of destroying them now.

The timing and other (eg WaPost) reporting suggests that MBS / the Saudis gave their go-ahead last week, which would be a major turnaround from the last two years of rapprochement with Iran on their part.
Possibly something to do with the negotiations; it was very interesting that even Oman and Qatar were hit by Iran.

Yeah, and every day that the Iranian government survives is also a day that they can use to kill more of their domestic opponents, which to them probably seems like a really really tempting thing to do right about now. I don't think that the American/Israeli bombing raids can really do much to stop a bunch of government supporters with light weapons from going around and killing unarmed or lightly armed civilians.

It's certainly a litmus test of how much support that government actually has from its population, and how many of its elites and security/military personnel are actually committed as opposed to being opportunists. I wouldn't be surprised if the government fell tomorrow, and I would be surprised but not totally shocked if it was still around a year from now.

The IRGC is too deeply embedded to overthrow with a decapitation strike on the civilian/clerical leadership

While I have a cursory understanding of Iranian governance, I'm not an expert. What would you say would be the number of targeted killings before the government wasn't functional?

In the US, losing 18 key people would put the entire line of succession at risk - there's no precedent for who would take over. Even if we assume that the government could lumber on for a while under some kind of provisional military government, that's really only adding about eight more people to the chain. Let's assume that a few charismatic governors could take up the mantle for a little bit and hold things together - that takes the number up to about thirty people.

How does that compare to Iran? How many people would have to be neutralized before their government formally stops working?

In the US, losing 18 key people would put the entire line of succession at risk - there's no precedent for who would take over.

The House of Representatives can select a new Speaker, who then becomes President. Or the Senate can select a new President pro tempore, who then becomes President. So an adversary going to have to knock out all of both houses of Congress to prevent anyone from taking over.

So let's bump that number up - enough senators and house reps to prevent a quorum. That's about 270 people, or 300 total.

How does that compare to Iran's structure?

The United States has been a vassal state of Israel for the entirety of my existence. How is this suprising news to anyone?

I'm not seeing much discussion of what would have been a dominant explanation two decades ago: the military industrial complex.

There are companies, deep state actors, and military generals that are more than happy to start a hot war with Iran anyone even if the strategic consequences for the US are negative.

They want to test their latest toys and inventions. And while Ukraine gave them opportunities to test close range weapons (close by modern standards). Iran lets them test long range attacks and defense.

Of course this explanation for getting into the war sounds even worse than "we are Israel's bitch". Trump is usually willing to get up there on the podium and try to sell his policies, even if they are unpopular. I think most politicians would try to justify what is happening even if they didn't have control, because criticizing what is happening proves you don't have control of it. Trump is possibly just throwing a subordinate at this unpleasant job rather than doing it himself.

For the military industrial complex people that could drag the US into this war, making the civilian arm of the government that they don't get along with look bad is just a double win.

There are companies, deep state actors, and military generals that are more than happy to start a hot war with Iran anyone even if the strategic consequences for the US are negative.

If you are properly cold calculating Corrupt Corporate Executive of E.V.I.L.Inc you want state of cold war prolonged indefinitely (or at least till you retire).

You want to deliver small number of super weapons at extraordinary cost, replace them after few years with super-hyper weapons and then with super-hyper-duper weapons, without anyone ever using these marvels to find out whether they work as promised.

Doesn't serve the needs of the generals that want a hot war for promotions. Or the deep state actors that pleasure themselves playing puppet master.

If the people capable of pulling strings and getting America dragged into a hot war, the corporate money makers seem least in control. They are happy to benefit and will make sure the wealth gets shared around, but it's not them alone causing this.

This is a pretty bad immediate pivot of your argument after drawing out the tired MIC talking point.

needs of the generals that want a hot war for promotions

Big general? Generals are replaceable middlemen, despite their status. Promotions are unrelated to the MIC, unless you flubbed this too and meant to talk about military contractors hiring them after retirement. Which, fair, but even then, they don't need a hot war. There are plenty of peacetime generals who went/go to military contracting companies after their service.

deep state actors

Not even MIC, discounting the conspiracy-isms here.

If the people capable of pulling strings and getting America dragged into a hot war, the corporate money makers seem least in control.

Did you leave out a clause here? I'm not being an asshole; I cannot parse the end the first part of this sentence.

They are happy to benefit and will make sure the wealth gets shared around, but it's not them alone causing this.

Fair point, agreed, even though it seems counter to your original point.

Ya my effort goes down as the thread gets deeper. I try and make my points at the higher level.

I don't know what MIC stands for

Military-Industrial Complex.

Or the gulf monarchies, very influential in the trump regime, who also hate Iran.

In the wake of Epstein files release (btw not as bad as I imagined from all the hype, though pathetic and occasionally very funny), I've noticed the popularization of terms like “goy”, “goycattle”, “goyim” (the “goyim in abundance” line was legitimately comedy gold, as was Masha Drokova's calculation of Jew percentage – she's a very entertaining person herself, and my friends in SF tell me that her parties have the hottest Russian women somehow, it's the norm to go blabber about technical secrets there, "ahaha just kidding"). There are plenty of edits of Gigachad Epstein and super-Diddy, kids are imagining ideal worlds where they have to worship pedophiles. Jews are understandably unnerved about all the Antisemitic Dogwhistles and correctly recognize over-the-top endorsements of ZOG as sarcasm and trolling, but I think it's evolving in the direction ultimately aligned with their interests. It's habituation. Israelis are more openly talking about Amalek as policy justification (and generally moving far to the religious right), Huckabee on Tucker's show has de facto endorsed Greater Israel and so far has kept his post, Kiriakou says AIPAC has all US politicians by the balls, and the public reaction is… what? Incomprehension? Trying to shoo it away like usual? Genuine Evangelical approval? Some baffled chuckling? Chuds going “we told you so”? Patriots power-tripping over the decapitation of Iranian regime and living vicariously through Israeli dominance? That's all shades of low-agency complicity, cuckoldry… Oh, I've forgotten about the insane left that hates Israel because it reminds them of Western civilization, Christianity, capitalism, heterosexual families and their own parents, reinforcing the false “Zionist vs Commie Third Worldist” dichotomy – these guys sure have fallen off. Incidentally, Israeli stocks are ripping, like 66% up over 12 months. The market is betting on Israel achieving its operational goals, even as everything else is going to the dogs.

In the end, I guess people of Western extraction are accustomed to hereditary transnational elite, and they've ran out of their own aristocracy (and it was kind of dumb and non-meritocratic anyway). Recognizing the natural nobility and greater leadership qualities of Jews and deferring to their choices in international decision-making is in line with the advice of Nietzsche and von Coudenhove-Kalergi, with best practices from Nixon (Kissinger) to Biden (Blinken) to Trump (Kushner) with lots of others in between. And frankly, haven't we all started from this, with LessWrong and Scott gushing over the genius of the Ashkenazim, Eliezer dreaming of the eugenic Dath Ilani like himself, Gwern scheming to clone or embryo-select John von Neumann, others planning to have an army of them save the world from unaligned AGI? Aren't all top AGI projects, aligned or not, led or owned by the Ashkenazim in our timeline – Altman, Amodei, Brin&Page, even Sutskever in Israel (Elon is an outlier like usual, though, but his project seems to be shitty in comparison)? Obviously Jews should make all the important decisions and the dominant American religion amounts to approving their divine right to make all the important decisions and succeed in every endeavor. That slip from Rubio is just acceptance, I think. Yeah Israel steers American foreign policy, because Jews are a natural higher caste in the American society, on account of being smarter and more based; if you oppose Affirmative Action, you have to accept this reality. Whether from the religious, from the biological or from the meritocratic perspective, deference to superiors makes perfect sense. In contrast, resistance is futile, Netanyahu had said it 25 fucking years ago: America is something really easy to steer in the right direction. G-d willing, in a few more years Americans will incorporate the doctrine of exterminating the Amalek into official policymaking.

And frankly, haven't we all started from this, with LessWrong and Scott gushing over the genius of the Ashkenazim, Eliezer dreaming of the eugenic Dath Ilani like himself, Gwern scheming to clone or embryo-select John von Neumann, others planning to have an army of them save the world from unaligned AGI?

Do not worry, the Chinese are aware of Ashkenazi super powers and are closing this gap too.

While the Judeo-Hapa ruling class had been foretold, I am still not convinced it's any better than Jews and Chinese separately.

I think the canonical Judeo-Hapa text is Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Did it work? How did her children turn out?

Full professors IIRC.

all shades of low-agency

This is the truest blackpill IMO: collective agency has been eradicated from Westerners, and it will take at least a century to rebuild the necessary infrastructure to produce it again. A shared sense of tribal origin and identity, shared heroes, shared ritual celebrations, shared sacred affinities, shared (invented) memories, allegiance to a promised land, a shared enemy, and shared tragedies are the evolved ways to collaborate as humans. Even more important is the sense of catastrophic danger to the tribe which activates threat detection. While the Westerner has all of these instincts manually turned off through years of cultural conditioning, the religiously and/or nationalistically Jewish collective does the opposite, and tries their hardest to place every member through a rigorous process of in-group allegiance to enable collective collaboration. It is a kind of asymmetrical cultural strategy and it will win every single time, because the conditioned member of the group will choose what’s best for the group for free, and more robustly.

This plays out practically as follows: the President has not been conditioned to hyper-value his own tribe, but Kushner has, so Kushner persuades Trump toward a certain path which benefits the tribe. Trump’s cabinet make-up was significantly informed by people from the tribe, and they got rid of Gaetz through what looked like a kompromat op. Trump’s favorite news guy, Mark Levin, has allegiance to the tribe, and caters his message to persuade Trump. There’s a cadre of lobbyists who will all work passionately to benefit the tribe and they are motivated by deep biological triggers and not just money, and they can wield an enormous amount of influence as we saw with Les Wexner. In fact, while the Wexner Foundation would host talks about the dangers of White nationalism, they developed a meticulous decades-long strategy to increase loyalty to Israel among American Jews and decrease the intermarriage rate (which they catastrophized as a second holocaust), employing billions of dollars toward this aim. Why would Rubio or Hegseth risk their careers and livelihood to stand up against Trump when they have no deep reflexive in-group favor? And then you have billionaires like Miriam Adelson who don’t waste their money on a random African charity but have been trained to employ it toward Israel, and she admits to this. What we see are only the branched-off actions (Miriam has a lot of money) and not the root (Miriam was conditioned at a young age, her husband was given a job by a tribe member, tribe members sought to influence her support by activating her biological instincts).

In politics, “agency” isn’t an individual thing, but a product of social network and reflexive habits and values. If a tribe member wanted to “do something positive” for his group, he can call hundreds of organizations which will paternalistically guide him and even train him toward the most effective path to benefit the group using decades of experience (“volunteer here…” “join this…” “I know a guy in this industry…”). There is no organization which does this for Westerners. You can’t just cold email someone who will hype up your feelings of collective pride, remind you of your ancestral enemy Amalek, and then tell you to do x and y and then work in z because “it’s good for the Jewish people”. Westerners are woefully behind the winning strategy of power as it is actually acquired according to EvPsych.

This is the truest blackpill IMO: collective agency has been eradicated from Westerners, and it will take at least a century to rebuild the necessary infrastructure to produce it again

Overly pessimistic, I hope. I think it could/would be rebuild much quicker through a collective crisis. I'm watching China with a lot of interest partly because of that. I think a descend into a Cold War era international order, followed by a defeat of the West at the hands of China - could be a relative minor thing like Sputnik - would jump start the entire thing right quick. Probably requires media alignment and effective political leadership, but I assume that would emerge more or less naturally.

This is the truest blackpill IMO: collective agency has been eradicated from Westerners, and it will take at least a century to rebuild the necessary infrastructure to produce it again.

The blackpills don't end there! Demographics is destiny, and the West does no longer have "at least a century" to rebuild anything. A century from now, Westerners will no longer be in charge of what is currently thought of as the West. The world may at that point be African, or Muslim, or Chinese, or some new atomized globalized urbanized uniform brand of cultureless human mass, but it won't be recognizably Western.

Beware of black-pills by people who hate America.

Growing awareness of the extent and mode of operation by Jews in European society has never led to habituation, it has always led to blowback, maybe this time it will be different but the cracks are beginning to show: for the first time ever Americans are more sympathetic to Palestine than Israel (yes that is largely inspired by rote third worldism but every passing day even the third worldists are sounding more antisemitic rather than just pro-Brown.)

The NYT already reported Democrat leaders questioning us being led into this war by Netanyahu, which never even entered the minds of our political representatives during the Iraq war. The Jewish archetype and genius is optimized for maximum effectiveness when it's inscrutable, when it's out in the open it historically does not work very well. Maybe this time it will be different. Or maybe Iran is able to make this war painful for America and its Allies, even if it has no chance of actually winning, and there will be blowback to Israel and diaspora Jews.

Certainly there is no plausible narrative for this war other than being led into it by Israel. You underestimate the pincer movement closing in against Jews and Israel from both the right and the left. A quick victory that beer guzzling Patriots can hang their hat on has the highest chance of fortifying their hegemony, but it's not certain and if this escalates into a prolonged crisis the Jews will be blamed, which did not happen with the Iraq crisis.

Well unlike last time the Americans aren't going in for a ground war and occupation, just bombing. It's already fairly unpopular as a war. With Iraq there was at least a modest honeymoon period of support.

And most of all the whole operation seems to have been planned out by a gang of dribbling buffoons. Trump has just declared that the US will safeguard shipping in the straits of Hormuz (a repeat of the Red Sea campaign) but the Navy says no, all their warships are allocated. Rubio says there are issues with missile shortages, Trump says munitions stocks are virtually infinite... They're blurting out random justifications and new strategies daily, (we'll try arming the Kurds, that's a neat trick!) Now Trump is lashing out at Spain for not providing assistance. Events have drifted out of their control.

The Ashkenazi elite are not showing proof-of-intellect either. Perhaps they simply cannot sway anyone with a high IQ, perhaps all the clever planners in the Pentagon think this is deeply retarded? Colby never wrote anything about more wars in the Middle East in his strategic vision. The Israelis are reliant on these religious weirdoes who, per the disconcerted reports of their subordinates, are saying the campaign all part of God's plan, Armageddon and the end of days. You can install a religious weirdo in the Pentagon or various high offices but you can't make the general staff and the troops all convert to Evangelical Dispensationalism.

There are limits to Israeli control of America. They have considerable power at the top end and in media but not deep within institutions or amongst the general public.

The idea you suggest, that Jews are Just Better and Anti-Woke Whites need to Get With The Program is, well, certainly an opinion.

I don't believe it'll be very effective, long-term, but who knows? Perhaps those movements to oust critics of Israel from college campuses will be the thing that keeps them from gaining much more sway?

That's a pretty high heat-to-light ratio of a headline.

Israel didn't make America bring half its military assets to Iran.

Rubio's full remarks make it clear - the US was going to attack on its own, but at a different time. Israel changed the timing when it discovered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take out all of Iran's leadership. It did not drag us into a war we weren't prepared to fight.

I highly recommend everyone watch the full 12 minute video because it is the clearest explanation of the US's rationale the leadership has given yet.

The straightforward interpretation of the above quote is that Israel started a war that killed American troops.

That's nonsense. That war started in 1970s. The official slogan of Iran is "Death to America" and you still don't believe there's a war? The fact that you are not getting action in a specific moment of time does not mean the war disappeared. As Israel itself learned very well on October 7, and US learned before it on September 11, and on many other occasions where Iran or Iran's proxies murdered Americans. You can choose when the war turns hot, or you can let the enemy choose it for you.

Yes, Israel has its own war with Iran, and it is not going to surrender because some miserable assholes in America hate the Jews. It is an independent state, with its own independent goals. It is a very close ally of the US, but still US has its own priorities and Israel has its own. US can afford waiting for Iran to build up (though it's not smart, but US is so powerful even built-up Iran is no existential threat for the US), Israel can not. So the US can use the opportunity Israel's actions provide, or can waste it. Trump smartly decided not to waste it. Describing taking this excellent opportunity to wage war (and, with luck, end this war with a resounding victory) efficiently and coordinating with US's strongest and most motivated ally as "mitigating damage from Israel" is either stupid, or strongly motivated by finding Israel's fault in any situation, no matter what happens. It is natural that Tucker Qatarlson is doing it, that's what he's being paid for, but for any person whose brain is not replaced by Qatar's money it is just stupid.

And describing American casualties as Israel's fault is completely insane. There are casualties in every war, and in US's war in Iran there had been many and will be more, until Iran's insane government, whose official slogan is "Death to America", is destroyed. Saying it's Israel's fault because Israel is US ally is just bizarre.

9/11 was carried out by (mainly) Saudi nationals based from Afghanistan. The Beirut bombing would be a better example.

I'm not singling out Iran specifically here, I am talking about the mindset that "if there's no shooting/bombing right now, right this second, then there's no war". It doesn't work this way, and it had been proven over and over that you can't just ignore things like aggressive death cults because they aren't bothering you right now, because they will bother you later. When it's quiet for a while, people start thinking "oh, it's ok, it's not happening anymore" and they get complacent and relax - and then it starts happening again, because the underlying reason is still there. And yes, Iran is not the only reason, but it's a very major one.

There are such things as frozen conflicts, where the arms fall silent despite both sides maintaining competing claims.

Are you saying that it is right and proper to thaw any frozen conflicts, such as Cyprus, China, Kashmir, Korea?

Or take the Cold War. In a way, Iran was following the Cold War etiquette when it enabled Hamas to commit Oct 7 -- enabling local freedom fighters/terrorists to blow up your enemy was a pretty standard move both for the US and the USSR. (Though I will grant you that in the cold war, you normally had your terrorists slaughter civilians of some state which did not matter rather than your peer competitor.) Of course, they found that the cold war etiquette does not really apply to non-nuclear states.

Both the US and the USSR considered each other to epitomize everything what was wrong with the world, used terms such as 'Empire of Evil' etc. Would the world be better if the conflict had gone hot?

Often, the correct move when faced with a conflict which is not in a shooting stage is to not start shooting and hope the conflict goes away. Sometimes it does. Sometimes your enemy will turn it into a shooting war eventually, e.g. in Ukraine or Nagorno-Karabakh. But sometimes, it really works out, the world is a lot better for the USSR collapsing instead of nuking it out with the West.

Yes, of course, frozen conflicts exist. But Iran had been in no way "frozen" - it was actively seeking to establish long-range strike and nuclear capability. While at the same time engaging in a proxy war with the US.

You can't compare Iran with USSR though - US could not get into a hot war with USSR that it could have any hope of winning (at least if your definition of winning does not include nuclear wasteland). In fact, it can't even do this with Russia, which is much smaller and weaker than USSR. With Iran, there is a possibility of direct kinetic action that can be successful in removing the threat. But that window would be closed forever once Iran gets nukes and long-range strike capabilities. The latter he had already possessed, and reportedly was within months of the former. So the choice was a potentially short hot war now (I mean didn't have to be February 28, but sometime within 2024-2028), or 50-year-long cold war later. And given as US pretty much lost the capability to wage long cold wars anyway (the first Democratic president would immediately roll back any gains made by preceding Republican administrations), I don't think "it will eventually work out" was really a viable option. There are a lot of nations that hate America, and that's fine, as long as their hate is, as you noted, "frozen". But then there is Iran, who does not want to remain frozen. They want to arm themselves for the battle with Great Satan. That's the whole underpinning of their ideology - coexistence with Great Satan is not something that you intend to do long term, it's something that you do while you gather your forces for destroying it. Well, they got their final battle a bit sooner than they expected, hopefully it would be final enough.

Saudi nationals based from Afghanistan

I remember reading about these guying learning to fly in USA. I do not remember reading anything about them visiting Afghanistan. Bin Laden did but he wasn't carrying the attack.

Still, @yunyun333's overall point stands: most of the Islamic terrorism which reaches outside the ME is in fact Sunni terrorism (though funded and committed by citizens of allied gulf states rather than Afghans) rather than Shiite terrorism.

Blaming Iran for 9/11 (which was at least implied) is as absurd as blaming Saddam.

The tendency of some Iranians to hate America did not just appear out of nowhere in the 1970s. There was US support for the Shah. When it comes to overall tensions between Iran and the West, we could go further back to the 1941 Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.

Nothing in history has ever appeared out of nowhere. There are always historical reasons. We can go to 1970s, or 1940s, or to Cain murdering Abel, if you want. All that does not change the fact that Iran, as a state, had always been in war with the US, and never considered US anything but the Great Satan. And they hadn't been quiet and theoretical about it - for them, the war is real, and violent, and if they are too weak to strike the US directly, they certainly are very willing to strike at the US by any means accessible to them. Iran (as the Islamic Republic) has always been aggressive and violent. So pretending there was no war and everything had been fine is just ignorant. The causes why there was a war is a separate business, but it does not change the fact of the existence of the war.

There were multiple Islamist terrorist attacks on US soil, none of them Iranian. Does not not look like they are very willing to stirke by any means.

They are willing to strike by means available and convenient to them. I don't think it makes sense to debate the meaning of the word "any" - the point is Iran is at war with the US, and this has been confirmed by many hostile actions, costing lives of many US citizens (as well as many other people). Is it "any" means or only "some" means that Iranians use to murder Americans, is immaterial for the question.

Who cares? They want to kill us have spent 50 years trying to kill us and now want to acquire nuclear weapons so we can never do anything about it. It wouldn't matter if they were totally justified, they're our enemy, they hate us. (Support for the Shah 50 years ago is anyways extremely thin gruel.)

From the recent Merz photo call:

The first question Trump's asked about the Middle East is if Israel forced his hand. "No, I might have forced their hand," he responds.

Referring to Iran, Trump says: "We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion they were going to attack first."

"I didn't want that to happen," the US president says. "So, if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand."

So we have two theories:

  • Israel maneuvered America into war with Iran
  • America maneuvered Israel into war with Iran

I'm sure all those visits by Netanyahu to the oval Office were Netanyahu taking Trump's orders for staying on the warpath (despite media reports that the opposite was the case).

Notably Trump qualifies his belief that Iran was going to attack first as his "opinion", because US intelligence has confirmed that they were not going to attack first.

Senator Warner, a top member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and "Gang of Eight" had this to say about Trump's opinion:

Let's also be clear... there was no imminent threat to the US by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If you equate a threat to Israel as equivalent to an imminent threat to the United States then we are in uncharted territory.

Warner is only wrong that we are in uncharted territory, we are in the territory that brought us to Iraq twice and now here, only instead of platitudes and debates and lies about Hussein-9/11-Al Qaeda connections, existing WMDs, babies being ripped from their incubators in Kuwait, Spreading Democracy, they don't even feel the need to lie to us anymore with high ideals or fabricated intelligence.

So I guess "Iran was going to attack first" is the narrative they are going to go with, but they don't even have any fabricated intelligence or false flag or anything. IC says that is false, and Trump just says it was his opinion.

But why don’t you ascribe any agency to Trump, here? You consider it necessary that one must have manipulated the other into war.

It seems the simplest explanation. Trump likes doing things. Bibi says, here's a thing. Trump says, great, let's do it! I can't see either of them needing much prodding to get on board.

The only reason someone would need more than that was if they bought the line that Trump was some Ron Paul-esque paleo isolationist. I don't think many people believe that now.

Referring to Iran, Trump says: "We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion they were going to attack first."

Oh, so he’s just lying.

The idea that Iran would launch an unprovoked attack on the United States is almost as absurd as Ukraine launching an unprovoked attack on Russia.

Trump as far as I can tell has been the only US official to take this position. Nobody else has mentioned a possible Iran first strike.

I do not get the impression that most Trump supporters care if he is lying.

That said, I would also expect his administration to close ranks in whatever way helps him save face. Perhaps there will be a Tweet explaining our foreign policy.

I would not even call it lying, because a lie requires someone to potentially believe it, and at this point only the 10% most gullible would even consider taking Trump's word for anything. It is more like bullshitting, like a drunkard bragging about that time he caught a fish larger than himself. Or perhaps an applause light, 'I am saying something nice about my side, and by extension America. Only someone totally unpatriotic would try to fact check such a statement'.

What's really fascinating about this whole affair is that it really illustrates the whole "Trump lies like a used car salesman" idea that was popular around here a while back. Over the past two days, it's been regime change, definitely not regime change, degrading Iranian capabilities, getting compliments for Trump, preempting retaliation triggered by Israeli strikes, and protecting the US/Israel from an imminent threat. And I've probably missed some other statements coming out the administration's senior leadership. It's all nonsense, but I don't know that it's meant to be believed so much as to disorient critics.

My gut instinct is that they thought they were about to pull a repeat of the Maduro operation or Midnight Hammer. Everything was going to be over and done too fast for the haters to do anything but wring their hands. The Iranian government was going to be cowed into submission and make a much more favorable deal than the one Trump tore up. Only it hasn't been quite as clean or decisive as anticipated. We'll see how it ultimately shakes out, but I wouldn't be shocked to see them double down for fear of looking weak.

Yes, sometimes you have a nice three days of special military operation planned but your enemy did not get the memo and does not stick to your timeline.

I'm going to put on my tinfoil hat here for a moment.

There's a whole lot of circumstantial evidence that Epstein had ties to Israeli intelligence, and that his job involved gathering blackmail material against strategic targets in the USA.

If you can buy that premise, this almost makes sense. The continuous slow leak of the material in question lowers the value of that material - you can't blackmail somebody if the blackmail material is already out in public. The Israelis are smart. They likely know that if they're going to squeeze any value out of whatever's left, they'd have to use quickly before it was released, and make sure that whatever they planned to do with it was worth it, since they might never be able to use it again. A "joint" US/Israeli strike against Israel's biggest remaining enemy in the region would probably fit the bill.

If I may…

On July 17th the Trump birthday card was first publicly reported in the WSJ; that same day, Trump called for Iran to unconditionally surrender, and he began striking Iran on the 22nd. Recall that Israel may have previously blackmailed Clinton with the Lewinsky tapes. One researcher believes this was related to the “Mega” investigation:

https://www.wrmea.org/1999-april-may/gideons-spies-the-secret-history-of-the-mossad.html

Thomas implies that downgrading the FBI search for “Mega,” just when the circle of suspects had been narrowed down, was linked to Clinton succumbing to Israeli blackmail based on the Mossad’s tapes of his telephone conversations with Monica.

Mega was some mysterious person or entity which was a conduit of the Israeli government. It likely referred to Wexner’s influence operation:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/jan/10/inside-ring-former-nsa-counterspy-says-jeffrey-eps/

Former National Security Agency counterspy John Schindler says he has connected the intelligence dots regarding the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and linked him to an Israeli influence operation.

“the heart of the Epstein saga was a clandestine intelligence operation devoted to compromising and blackmailing rich and powerful people,” Mr. Schindler said.

”We know that MEGA was viewed by Israel intelligence officials as a vehicle for espionage and influence operations in the United States,” Mr. Schindler concluded. “We know that it was co-founded by Jeffrey Epstein’s billionaire benefactor. The rest remains speculation.”

Re Epstein and Mega: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/inside-jeffrey-epsteins-decades-long-relationship-with-his-biggest-client

During the 1990s, both Epstein’s and Wexner’s profiles grew on the world stage. In 1991, Wexner cofounded a philanthropic organization of Jewish billionaires known as the Mega Group, which uses some of its vast resources to shape Middle East policy. In 2003, Wexner’s foundation commissioned GOP messaging guru Frank Luntz to advise American Jewish leaders on how to rally support for Israel. “For a year—a SOLID YEAR—you should be invoking the name of Saddam Hussein and how Israel was always behind American efforts to rid the world of this ruthless dictator and liberate their people,” Luntz’s recommendation stated.

It’s possible that the first time Israel blackmailed an American president, it was to stop an investigation into the Wexner-Epstein blackmail ring. The second time they blackmailed the president, it was using the very material from that blackmail ring. I’m convinced that the Trump birthday card is significant in this regard. It is really hard to look at this and not conclude they are referring to underage girls. There is some notable secret shared between Trump and Epstein, which involves an enjoyment that can’t be named; it is the one thing “more to life than having everything”; after they agree on this secret pleasure, Trump writes “enigmas never age”, and Epstein replies “this was clear to me the last time I saw you”. It was, ostensibly, written by Trump, with his signature on the bush of a woman’s silhouette, while another entry from the birthday book (Joel Paschow) implies that Epstein had “sold” a woman to Trump:

a photo shows Epstein holding a large novelty check for $22,500 with a "DJTRUMP" signature. An accompanying note jokes that Epstein sold a "'fully depreciated' [woman] to Donald Trump for $22,500." The New York Times reported the page was made by Joel Pashcow, a member of Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club.

There’s one last piece of evidence toward this conspiracy theory (truly the platonic ideal of a conspiracy theory): the Israel-Trump-Guccifer election interference story.

I can reveal here the details of an elaborate covert operation personally directed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that aimed to use secret intelligence to clandestinely intervene at the highest levels in the presidential election on behalf of Trump.

As part of the Mueller investigation, the bureau had conducted an extensive search for any foreign interference in the 2016 election, and the warrant was directed at securing the Google accounts of a mysterious Israeli agent acting under the direction of someone identified as “PM.” The FBI agent who wrote the affidavit noted, “I believe ‘PM’ refers to the ‘Prime Minister.’”

He would dispatch a discreet, highly trusted aide, armed with critical intelligence, to covertly “intervene” in the US election to help put his man Trump in the White House. Based on the FBI documents, the intelligence appears to have consisted of advance knowledge of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and it may have included confidential details from the stolen e-mails. It was likely obtained by Israeli eavesdropping operations that were targeting secret Russian communications, as well as those of WikiLeaks.

According to the FBI warrant, the same day that Stone communicated with the Israeli agent, he began Googling some very strange terms, including “guccifer” and “dcleaks.” It would be nearly a month before those same terms would make headlines around the world. On June 14, The Washington Post reported that the DNC had been hacked by Russian government agents. The next day, someone calling himself “Guccifer 2.0” took credit for the attack. He claimed to be an American hacktivist, but according to a Justice Department indictment in July 2018, he was actually a Russian GRU employee. Soon afterward, the website DCLeaks—another front for the GRU—began releasing hacked Democratic Party documents.

The prospect of an October Surprise, along with the offer of critical intelligence, apparently got Trump’s attention. On September 25, he and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met privately with Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer in his Trump Tower penthouse. Later that day, he publicly announced that if he was elected, his administration would finally “recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel.”

Trump being compromised would explain the great lengths Israel went to get Trump elected, eg preparing for “the Russians” (lmao???) hacking and releasing the DNC emails. (As one final conspiratorial tie-in, probably not material but more of a fun fact: 4chan’s /pol/ was instrumental, if not focal, in getting the Trump train going and in searching through the Hillary emails. Epstein met with m00t, the owner of 4chan, shortly before the political board opened, and there are a number of emails where he shares threads from the site, though it’s mostly cartoon porn.).

I don’t believe at all Epstein had Kompromat on Trump. He’s a New York real estate developer in finance so he’s obviously worked with and been around a lot of Jews.

He’s probably just super racists. And has realized Jews are hyper competent and good allies. He respects competency and money and power and in a meritocracy Jews have a lot of that. So making an alliance with a group that represents 30% of Western Civs elite and 15% globally makes sense to him.

A Jewish/Maga combo robs the left of having their intellectual firepower. Then their just a dying off WASP and third worlders party.

I don’t understand why our resident Holocaust deniers are so against Ellison owning WBD and Tiktock. He’s aligned with Trump now. Maybe someday that is a problem but for now I they seem to be aligned with Americas right.

A Jewish elite plus MAGA coalition is not going to lose elections to a Democrat party that’s headed by black females. We just have to remember they have their own tribal goals.


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