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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   14391 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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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.

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