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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   22215 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.

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.

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.

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"

This is some kind of conjugated tense more subtle than even the most complicated of romance languages. What's the meaningful difference between "they are trying to develop a nuclear weapon [{now}]" and "they are trying to develop [{now}] the ability to develop a nuclear weapon [{in the future}]" -- ? I'm not asking this question now by the way I'm trying to ask this question in the future.

Sure it's a subtle distinction but it's important to determine the threat-level. An actual nuclear bomb is a technology that requires the integration of many components, highly enriched uranium being one of the most important for sure. You can say "the engine manufacturer is trying to build a car", eh not really it's trying to build an engine. If you extended the logic to "well the engine would only be used in a car so they are building the car" then that would extend to Iran's missile program as well.

Iran is a country with highly competent engineers, the US stratotanker was shot down yesterday (killing 6) by an in-house developed anti-air missile. The notion Iran has been trying but unable to engineer this 1940s technology is false, it has not been trying to build a nuclear bomb, and this is attested to by all the international agencies who have weighed in and no intelligence has been provided suggesting otherwise. I already described the reasoning Iran had for enriching the nuclear material.

Most likely the plan was for this highly enriched stockpile to form the basis for "imminent threat" to muddy the waters in exactly this way. "Their highly enriched stockpile means they are trying to build a nuclear bomb now", even if that's not actually true, at least muddies the water with respect to Iran's motives.

But Iran offered to hand over that highly-enriched material in an agreement with the US. My take is that this offer, demonstrating actual good-faith towards a likely agreement, was their death sentence as they got bombed immediately after making that major concession.

But now Witkoff and Kushner can't point to that highly enriched stockpile to say "Iran was trying to build a bomb." So the Witkoff narrative shifts to the controversy over the 20% enrichment for the TRR which doesn't even come close anymore to the notion that Iran was trying to build a nuclear bomb, and we had to bomb them in the middle of negotiations in order to stop them.

The truth is that Witkoff and Kushner were not hampered in those negotiations by a lack of expertise. They had access to the highest expertise in the world to achieve their objectives of the negotiation, and their objectives were war with Iran. The idea that Witkoff misunderstood the enrichment for TRR as being an imminent threat to build a nuke is not true at all. The progression of the negotiations weakened the narrative, so they pulled the plug and worked with what they had to get the US started in the war.

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