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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13990 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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-Iran was being actively bombed before this horrible catastrophe occurred

when? What was bombed? 8 months ago, two remote nuclear sites with precision bunker busters from B-2s?

Children are educated on military bases throughout the world. Iran was not living in a condition of war before you perfidiously started bombing them. They submitted a pretty good deal to Kushner and Witkoff, who refused, by all accounts because they're at once illiterate and bloodthirsty, as befits the upper caste of the Trumpian society.

This is all pointless mimicry of being a person, going through the motions of an argument. I don't even think you're being disingenuous. That's require more self-awareness.

when? What was bombed? 8 months ago, two remote nuclear sites with precision bunker busters from B-2s?

The first strikes in Iran were more than an hour before the school was struck. Why was there no government plan to evacuate schools near military installations in the event of Iranian targets being bombed? (At least the schools in former military buildings!)

Or, why was such a plan not followed?

It's not like the Iranian government had zero clue that the USA was considering bombing targets in Iran. There was a long buildup to this as you pointed out.

Children are educated on military bases throughout the world.

Do you think those children would continue being educated on military bases, when those military bases were at active risk of being bombed? Use some common sense, please.

This is all pointless mimicry of being a person, going through the motions of an argument. I don't even think you're being disingenuous. That's require more self-awareness.

This comment isn't remotely in good faith on your part.

An hour actually seems like not long at all.

Even if it took them 30 minutes to realize that targets were being bombed, they had plenty of time to leave. A 5 minute walk away and they would probably have been safe.

When I think about my childhood, the schools in my area would all close if there was even a little bit of snow on the ground. (Or even a forecast of some snow.) Snow!

So if American schools can show this level of concern for the safety of children, even when the risks are tiny, why couldn't the Iranian government show concern for their children when the risks were clearly much larger?

Like, unless they were total negligent morons, at some point they must have realized that there was some risk to converting a military building to a school, and they should have a plan to protect children just in case.

and they should have a plan to protect children just in case

Why? Those children serve as the hair trigger for the tripwire force (they've learned well from Hamas), and you don't even have to arm them for them to be effective in that role. Aggressively putting them in danger like that is kind of the point.

At least if they do get killed you don't have to wait very long for their replacements- it takes 14-16 years for a militarily-effective male to grow, but little girls can play the part of "cry for the cameras while being on fire" in as few as 5 or 6. Lightning fast by comparison. (Dead babies aren't quite as photogenic.)

Are you conceding that @KlutzyTraining's "worst case" interpretation of both the Iranian Regime's and the media's motives is accurate?

And the worst case scenario is that the Iranian government knowingly placed children in harm's way, expecting that if they put enough children in harm's way, some of them might get harmed. And in this scenario they knew from watching the Gaza war that when children get harmed, it presents a massive propaganda coup for the side associated with the child victims, no matter how negligent that side has been.

If so, why are you defending the Iranian Regime and the media?

Children are educated on military bases throughout the world. Iran was not living in a condition of war before you perfidiously started bombing them.

How long after the recent bombing campaign started did this school incident take place? I honestly don't know.

They submitted a pretty good deal to Kushner and Witkoff, who refused, by all accounts because they're at once illiterate and bloodthirsty,

I'm also interested in the substance and timing of these negotiations as well. What proposal was submitted and when? How did the US respond, if at all? How long afterwards did the hostilities begin?

Keith Woods has a pretty good article on some of the absurdity with linked sources:

On the question of the apparent nuclear threat, we have learned that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who led the U.S. negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, conducted the talks without nuclear technical experts and based their concerns on a research reactor, unaware that such a reactor is incapable of enriching uranium. When the Iranians made a good-faith offer to hand over their highly enriched uranium but keep the Tehran Research Reactor built for them by Eisenhower. Witkoff and Kushner, due to their ignorance of the subject, apparently interpreted this as a demand to become a nuclear power:

Elena Sokova, the executive director of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, called the administration’s assessments of the Tehran Research Reactor “confusing and misleading” and riddled with “technical errors.”“It mixes up different elements of the nuclear program and their potential proliferation capabilities,” Sokova said. “Research reactors are not capable of doing enrichment of uranium, whether for civil or military purposes.”

Witkoff defended the decision to bring no nuclear experts by saying he had “read quite a bit about it.”

Aside from having no technical knowledge and bringing no advisors or nuclear experts, Witkoff was apparently ignorant of previous agreements and negotiations with Iran, did not bring a diplomat who was knowledgeable of these things, did not take notes, and did not understand Iranian proposals.

Trump relayed to the press that Witkoff told him Iran’s message was "essentially, in a real nutshell: We want to continue to build nuclear weapons." None of the mediators present reported this. The Omani foreign minister who mediated the talks travelled to Washington and told J.D. Vance and U.S. media outlets that the negotiations had made “substantial, momentous, and unprecedented progress.”

Think about how insane this is — either the war was sparked by America’s representatives being totally ignorant of nuclear enrichment while negotiating a nuclear deal, and no one along the way picking up their error, or alternatively, they actively misled Trump to lead to war with Iran on Israel’s behalf. So that’s either gross negligence and incompetence or high treason.

Who would have thought that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner representing America's interest could have led to this result?

The Witkoff/Kushner subversion is the "Iraqi WMDs" 2.0.

Research reactors are not capable of doing enrichment of uranium,

I make no analysis about the broader situation, but this seems incredibly confused, game-of-telephoned, or taken out of any useful context.

Famously, nuclear reactors were never historically involved in previous weapons projects (yes, not for "enrichment", but for producing plutonium).

Whether or not this specific reactor is well-suited for that purpose is unclear from the context and the quote. IIRC the standard US research reactors were designed to be difficult to use this way. I'd trust the nonproliferation folks to know how all the physics works, but somewhere between them and the journalists the context was lost, possibly deliberately.

Would it surprise you that non technical people could make such a mistake (that a reactor does not actually do the enriching)?

No, more that it's seems kinda confused for a technical person to make such a claim as if it means something. If by 'enriching' we mean just the whole centrifuge deal, obviously reactors don't do that directly (modulo some liquid sodium-fuel mix stuff not relevant here or anywhere not currently on fire). If we say specifically 'enriching uranium' in the sense of getting weapons-grade uranium from the output, than obviously not, because they burn a fissile fuel from one starting isotope to another, so by definition and by the nature of the uranium fuel cycle a uranium-fueled research reactor doesn't output higher-density U-235 (uh, technically, for times less than 20k years).

But reactors naturally change the isotopic makeup of whatever fuel (and everything else!) that's stuffed into them, that's what 'react' is talking about. The normal fuel cycle doesn't enrich uranium, because they essential convert the majority from U-235... but converting into Pu-239 is one of the main immediate steps. That's the normal next step in the uranium fuel cycle, and it's nuclear bomb material.

Not all plutonium is useful for making bombs, and indeed that's a good part of what makes modern power reactors nonviable for producing weapons: the very rapid cycling and burn rate of fuel that's required to get a high proportion of Pu-239 is intrinsically opposed to running a nuclear power plant, in ways that can be observed from space.

However, research reactors work by cycling input material through a high-intensity bath of neutrons at a controlled rate. Some of those processes are slow, both in time and in neutrons, but others are not. There's some efforts to make it hard to turn a research reactor into a ghetto breeder reactor, and more ways of making it really obvious, but even before considering the age of the reactor here, none of these are impossible or insurmountable tasks.

I'm not a technical expert or professional for this specific field, so I may well be missing some information. Hell, there could be some information I'm not even allowed to know about the statement here. But at least from the publicly available info, this is a definition of 'doesn't enrich uranium' that would exclude a breeder reactor. It's arguably whether it's even technically correct, and it's really hard to believe it's meaningful in the sense it was phrased here.

You can make 239Pu from a LWR but it's horrendously inefficient and requires further processing. The bigger worry on that front was their heavy water reactor at Arak, but that was already shut down (and bombed for good measure). That's why all the talk is about their uranium.

Do you have answers to my questions? I'm not demanding them, of course. But it seems that your quotes do not answer them.

The Witkoff/Kushner subversion is the "Iraqi WMDs" 2.0.

It seems pretty clear to me that Iran has been trying to develop nuclear weapon capability. I guess you dispute this?

Do you have answers to my questions?

I did answer your question- Iran offered to turn over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and maintain enough enrichment for its civilian nuclear facility. It's a rational offer, not one that should have been reacted to with war.

It seems pretty clear to me that Iran has been trying to develop nuclear weapon capability. I guess you dispute this?

You can read the article I linked, there is in fact no evidence of that and none of the experts cited agreed with that conclusion. Iran offered to hand over all of its enriched material.

The major "ignorance" if it can be called that is Trump seemed to be under the impression that the Iranians negotiating 20% enriched material for their civilian reactor was equivalent to an assertion to be a nuclear power. But the fuel for that civilian reactor was already part of the Obama-era deal and no experts cited believed that fuel for this reactor would have remotely constituted the Iranian demands characterized by Witkoff/Trump:

Just 36 hours before the United States opened its military assault, Iran’s nuclear negotiators, along with Oman’s foreign minister as mediator, presented the U.S. with a seven-page proposal for a potential nuclear deal, according to U.S. negotiator Steve Witkoff. But the American negotiators, Witkoff and Jared Kushner — who, according to a senior Middle East diplomat with knowledge of the talks, chose not to include nuclear technical experts in the negotiations — balked at Iran’s request to continue using 20%-enriched uranium at the reactor, a facility for civilian nuclear development that the U.S. first built and provided to Iran in 1967.

“The claim that they were using a research reactor to do good for the Iranian people was a complete and false pretense to hide the fact that they were stockpiling there,” a senior Trump administration official told reporters during a briefing on Tuesday, three days after the attacks began.

But the Trump administration has yet to provide evidence or intelligence — to the public or to Congress — demonstrating that Iran intended to use the uranium at the Tehran Research Reactor for weapon development or that the facility was being covertly used for stockpiling purposes. In two classified briefings provided to lawmakers since the attacks, administration officials made no assertion that the reactor was being used for stockpiling purposes for a potential weapon, according to two people familiar with their comments.

...The reactor requires 20%-enriched fuel and a relatively minimally enriched amount compared with the material required for the production of a nuclear weapon. Under the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, known as the JCPOA, the reactor would have access to no more than 5 kilograms of 20%-enriched uranium at a time, supplied from outside the country and monitored by inspectors.

The reactor has not come under IAEA scrutiny for suspected nuclear development in more than 25 years, according to Katariina Simonen, a board member of Pugwash Conferences of Science and World Affairs and an adjunct professor at the Finnish National Defence University.

“TRR is not ideal for any other activity than what it is designed for — i.e., civilian use (isotopes, research, training),” Simonen told MS NOW. “It is a small, light-water reactor supplied by the U.S. under the Atoms for Peace program.”

Nobody has presented any evidence that Iran was trying to develop a nuclear weapon. None of the international agencies attest to that.

What is absolutely stunning is that 20% enriched material needed for Tehran Research Reactor was already resolved by the Obama-era deal that Trump ripped up. So Trump literally ended the deal that solved the exact controversy Witkoff cited as imminent threat and cause for war. It's really uneblievable.

Nobody has presented any evidence that Iran was trying to develop a nuclear weapon

What other reason would they have for 60% enrichment? As far as I know, there were zero indications they were pursuing naval propulsion, for instance.

Mostly bargaining chip, deterrence, and option to try to create a nuclear weapon in the future. That is not the same as "they are trying to develop a nuclear weapon now" which would constitute "imminent threat." The notion of "imminent threat" that could justifiably bring the world to the brink like it has now is important. There has been no evidence presented to anyone for "imminent threat", which is why the story is so inconsistent and has waffled between "they were going to attack the US" (no evidence) and "they are an imminent nuclear threat" (no evidence).

The Iranians also enriched that material after Trump reneged on the previous Iran deal. So is this responding to an imminent threat, or is this pretext for war on top of a planned controversy over this issue? Who was it again that lobbied most heavily for Trump to exit the Iranian nuclear deal in his first term?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday claimed to have evidence that Iran has lied about its nuclear program and urged President Donald Trump to “do the right thing” next month by pulling out of a 2015 deal designed to curb Iran’s atomic ambitions...

Netanyahu spoke less than two weeks before a May 12 deadline that Trump has cited as a decision point he may use to withdraw from the multinational agreement negotiated by the Obama administration...

One former Obama administration foreign policy official said that Netanyahu’s speech likely had “an audience of one": Donald Trump.

“That is just not an acceptable situation,” Trump said at the White House on Monday in response to a question about the Israeli leader’s remarks.

Trump also warned that Iran was not merely “sitting back idly,” but he declined to say whether he will terminate the agreement next month. “We’ll see what happens,” the president said. “I’m not telling you what I’m doing, but a lot of people think they know.”

Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, fired back on Twitter on Monday, calling the Israeli leader’s speech “a rehash of old allegations already dealt with by the [International Atomic Energy Agency] to ‘nix’ the deal. How convenient. Coordinated timing of alleged intelligence revelations ... just days before May 12.”

Also skeptical was J Street, a Washington-based liberal Israel policy group critical of Netanyahu’s foreign policy.

“While Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump have long been determined to undermine this agreement, their own security establishments continue to confirm that the deal is working and that Iran is compliant with all of its commitments. Nothing we were shown today contradicts or disproves that expert assessment,” said Dylan Williams, the group‘s vice president of government affairs.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the GOP chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, seemed to agree, telling Bloomberg TV in an interview that Netanyahu’s speech brought “nothing new” to the contentious debate surrounding the agreement.

In his remarks, Netanyahu argued that the seized Iranian intelligence proves the nuclear deal was negotiated in poor faith.

“The Iran deal, the nuclear deal, is based on lies. It’s based on Iranian lies and Iranian deception,” he said. “This is a terrible deal. It should never have been concluded. And in a few days, President Trump will make his decision on what to do with the nuclear deal. I’m sure he will do the right thing.”

So Trump breaks the deal, Iran starts enriching again, and then Witkoff and Kushner declare "imminent threat" on the mere existence of enriched material that Iran has proposed to hand over to the US as part of an agreement.

The Iranian offer to handover the highly-enriched material threw a wrench into the works, most likely, hence why the 20% enrichment for the Tehran Research Reactor is the "best" Wiktoff/Kushner could come up with to convince Trump of some "imminent threat" to justify another war for Israel.

Keith Woods has a pretty good thread

For people who do not have a Twitter account, see the word "thread", and immediately manually rewrite the URL from "x.com" (where a thread cannot be read by a non-logged-in person) to "xcancel.com" (where it can), I feel obligated to point out that your link leads, not to a thread, but to an "article" (apparently a new feature), which can be read on x.com by a non-logged-in person but cannot be read at all on xcancel.com (yet).

Also, a non-Twitter version of the same content is available on Substack.

Thanks fixed.

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