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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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As a Republican who was broadly onboard with toppling Iran well before the most recent flare up, I would like to offer an alternate narrative to the one about Trump is a Joe-Biden-esqe meat puppet being controlled by a zionist cabal, that seems to be the popular consensus here.

First off what does winning look like, in the eyes of team Trump?

Ideally, Iran makes a credible and verifiable commitment to dismantling their nuclear weapons program and stop supplying arms to HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russian Federation, Et Al. Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.

Importantly we are not going to do the Clinton or Obama thing where we give them a whole bunch of cash and trade concessions in exchange for a pinky-promise not to act up again and then sit on our thumbs when they renege on those promises 6-monthes later. While I'm not privy to the specifics my guess is that the plan is to hold Kharg Island hostage to force Iranian compliance.

How is this in American interests? I think it is just as valid to ask as how is it not?

While there is something of an isolationist streak present in the online right the prevailing attitude amongst the wider GOP is that if the US is going to occupy the role of hegemon we must play the role.

First, I think it needs to be pointed out that, with the Biden-era environmental limits removed the US is once again a net petroleum exporter and the US economy is much better situated to weather possible energy-trade disruptions than say China is.

As the global hegemon, international trade flows freely (and for the most part safely) largely thanks to guarantees that are enforced by the US Navy. If the US is the world's cop, Iran is not some innocent brown kid who got shot for no reason, they're the habitual bad actor with dozens of prior complaints and arrests.

From my perspective democrats' attitude towards the Iranian regime seems to echo their attitudes towards illegal immigration, violent crime. If you ask them if they want violent schizophrenics on the train they'll answer "no", but at the same time they will vehemently oppose anyone who looks like they might try to stop violent schizophrenics from stabbing people on trains. They seem to view the occasional train stabbing or ballistic missile attack as simply the price of doing business.

The violent schizophrenics on the train example isn't a very good one. The US vs Iran isn't a nice peaceful law-abiding society vs violent schizophrenics, it's a somewhat less violent and much stronger schizophrenic versus a somewhat more violent and much weaker schizophrenic. And it's unclear to what extent the much stronger schizophrenic is actually substantially different in willingness to beat up innocent bystanders than the weaker one is - to some extent, the difference in willingness is an effect of the difference in strength. It's quite possible that if the stronger schizophrenic was backed into a corner and desperate, he would start beating the shit out of civilians with just as little care as the weaker one has ever displayed. Furthermore, the stronger schizophrenic has only displayed this kind of concern recently. A few decades ago (Cold War) the stronger schizophrenic was regularly helping his schizophrenic friends beat and kill random innocent people out of fear that if he didn't do this, those random people would turn to the other strong schizophrenic across the street for protection.

Western Civilization is better than the Third World and America is better than Iran. Even for all our flaws America at her best is and can be a force for good. Putting America and Iran on the same moral plane is actually a form of weakness because -- well, if it's all the same anyways who cares if Iran conquers? Who cares if barbarism or civilization prevails? It's all predicated on violence anyways right? Well no, I assert that the ends towards which I apply violence are actually more moral than theirs. I do prefer my civilization to theirs. I'm not a neutral third-party observer, I'm not a nihilist. My values are better than theirs and it's justified for me to use violence to defend what's mine.

There is a word for @JeSuisCharlie's proposal for "reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes". It is called "genocide", and it has strong negative ethical connotations.

The whole logic of "we are the good guys, therefore we are allowed to do bad things" is obviously flawed -- if you are the good guys then that will obviously show in constraints of your behavior.

I don't particularly like the Ayatollah regime. They support Hamas, which tries very hard to be pure evil. But do you really want the standard "any country which supports particularly nasty murderers gets wiped from the face of the Earth?" It is not like the US did not support bloodthirsty dictators, would it be okay to reduce their capabilities to pre-industrial levels in response?

If it is unjustified to level Kansas City in response to Pinochet, then it seems to me that it is also unjustified to level Tehran in response to Oct-7.

A lot of world leaders which I would prefer to have no nuclear armaments do have nukes. Some of them are of questionable sanity. I do not particularly see a line dividing the Mullah regime from the rest of them. Let them play mutually assured destruction with Israel, both of the regimes deserve each other.

The whole logic of "we are the good guys, therefore we are allowed to do bad things" is obviously flawed

It's good to destroy evil and it's evil to destroy good. That's what good and evil even mean. Quite literally it's different when we do it, we are not fighting Iran from a position of moral relativism.

But do you really want the standard "any country which supports particularly nasty murderers gets wiped from the face of the Earth?" It is not like the US did not support bloodthirsty dictators, would it be okay to reduce their capabilities to pre-industrial levels in response?

You're conflating several things here: the necessity of all states to commit violence; the extreme acts of aggression of Iran in particular that does not have a counterpart in the West; the value of supporting pro-West dictators over anti-West (Communist) dictators. Factoring all that in I don't think America is just another cartel country that deserves to be leveled by the laws of the jungle. (Not that anybody could.) However, for the sake of argument: sure. I'm glad we genocide evil men. I hope any country that supports particularly nasty murders gets wiped from the face of the Earth.

I do not particularly see a line dividing the Mullah regime from the rest of them.

Well I'm not moving to Iran but you're welcome to if you don't see a difference.

It's good to destroy evil and it's evil to destroy good.

This is an overly simplistic morality, the real world does not work like forgotten realms, where you have always chaotic evil races which can be slaughtered by good characters as an act of faith.

At best, you get ingroup moralities, where you support your country for the same reasons that a German in the 30s might support the Nazis.

A more universalist morality would start by recognizing that there is no group of school girls -- not American, not Israeli, not Iranian or Gazan or German or British or whatever who are intrinsically evil and thus deserve to be killed by air raids.

The key insight is that most people you are killing with bombs are actually closer to the school girls than to war criminals.

Take Nazi Germany, which established a new standard for evilness. In the Nuremberg trials and the subsequent trials, a few dozen people were found to have committed acts so irredeemably evil that they deserved death for it. Now, I will be the first to point out that this is only the tip of the iceberg, and perhaps hanging every concentration camp guard as an accessory to mass murder would have been closer to justice. If you also count the Einsatzgruppen and everyone who knowingly enabled the genocides, you might make a case that a decent fraction of the German armed forces deserved death, but I would claim that it is still a minority.

The median German soldier killed by the Allies was not killed because his death intrinsically made the world a better place, quite the opposite. Instead, his death was justified merely instrumentally -- he was part of an army which was preventing the liberation of the death camps, and defeating that army so one could liberate the camps had a higher utility than protecting the lives of the soldiers. (Note that this reasoning does not extend to Harris' morale bombing, though.)

Under a universalist morality, the best you can hope for is not that most of the opponents you kill in a war will deserve to die for their crimes, but merely that killing them is the lesser evil compared to letting their state continue with its crimes.

But for that to be the lesser evil, you actually need a plan to put a stop to their crimes. Soviets killing German soldiers in combat was the lesser evil because the Soviets made a ground offense which enabled them to liberate Auschwitz. By contrast, you could bomb Tehran until you only had a few thousand people left without removing the capability of the surviving IRGC members to slaughter civilian protesters.

Now, I will not claim that killing the Ayatollah or his generals is not intrinsically good. The problem is that for a consequentialist, one evil man getting his just rewards is dwarfed by the indirect effects. If we could turn Iran into a democracy just by murdering the Ayatollah, we would have done so a long time ago. Instead, what Trump accomplished was granting an aging old tyrant martyrdom, while replacing him with a guy whose father, wife and sister were murdered by the US. How is that an improvement?

Well I'm not moving to Iran but you're welcome to if you don't see a difference.

All things being equal, I would prefer not to move to any nuclear armed state, perhaps excepting the UK and France. (Not that this is a unique property of nuclear states -- I would nope most non-nuclear states as well.)

My point is that I am rather indifferent between Iran and say North Korea -- both seem about equally terrible in my opinion. And yet we allow one to have nukes but try to prevent the other from gaining them at large human costs.

Are you of the opinion that Iran is a much worse place than North Korea? Would you trade a 1% chance of having to move to Iran (current war aside) against a 10% chance of having to move to North Korea?

This is an overly simplistic morality

A binary "black and white" morality allows for twice the complexity of the unitary everything is gray morality you and others appear to be advocating.

Western Civilization is better than the Third World and America is better than Iran

But is the United States part of the Western Civilization? To me it looks like you're some mix of Middle Eastern (at the top) and South American (at the bottom) culture. Is Laura Loomer and Mark Levin, your two spiritual pillars as we now learn, "Western Civilization"? No, they're hysterical Levantines. Consider whom you've chosen as your representatives for a bona fide "Western Civilization" society, France: Charles Kushner. What is Charles famous for? Among all else, for hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother in law, for purposes of blackmail/retaliation. How did that play out long term? Kushner's son in your "administration" got the prosecutor Chris Christie fired from Trump team, claiming that Christie should've let the rabbis handle the matter. This is a primitive, clannish, theocratic society.

Sure, you have some trappings of the West, true (like "Senate", "Capitol hill" etc), you have "elections" to reinforce the legitimacy of this primitive system. But it's like Arabs when they were translating Aristotle. Stewardship of alien ideas. You also have advanced Western technology. But is that "Civilization"? Is China «Western Civilization» too, then?
And your notion of the Western Civilization is impoverished, it's just «Judaism with some shit on top». Nothing about the Greco-Roman world or Renaissance, science and rational thought. At this point, you are about as far from the West per se as Iran is.

Is the argument here that Jews are not part of Western Civilization? Trump praised Mark Levin on social media therefore America has severed all ties to Rome. Or is the argument that you don’t like America?

Sure, whatever, America is not part of Western Civlization, Americans can’t do rationalism or science, we lost them in translation. Let’s call America something new, it’s “Bestern Civilization” which is way better than those fuddy-duddy Old World Europeans with all that learnin’, or as I like to call it “Worsten Civilization”.

Now I advance the argument that Bestern Civilization is better than the Third world, and better than Iran, so I support our moral claims against theirs etc. etc. etc. etc.

Is the argument here that Jews are not part of Western Civilization?

Israel is obviously not part of the Western civilization, it's an older and completely distinct tradition, and as the demographic share of secular Ashkenazim in Israel is reduced, so the authentic Israeli culture comes more to the fore. And the American doctrine of Judeo-Christianity is laughably stupid retconning. Levin is an hysterical Israeli Firster who's shedding his assimilation, if it ever existed. Just look at how the guy posts.
But even before this recent obsession with Israel, many Europeans had remarked that the US is culturally not a white or Western society, though they differed in specifics. Consider Jung:

“The emotional way an American expresses himself, especially the way he laughs, can best be studied in the illustrated supplements of the American papers: the inimitable Teddy Roosevelt laugh is found in its primordial form in the American Negro. The peculiar walk with loose joints, or the swinging of the hips so frequently observed in Americans, also comes from the Negro. American music draws its main inspiration from the Negro, and so does the dance. The expression of religious feeling, the revival meetings, the Holy Rollers and other abnormalities are strongly influenced by the Negro, and the famous American naïveté, in its charming as well as its more unpleasant form,,,,” … “… for a wide-awake person, the primitive contents may often prove to be a source of renewal. The American unconscious is highly interesting, because it contains more varied elements and has a higher tension, owing to the melting-pot and the transplantation to a primitive soil, which caused a break in the traditional background of the Europeans who became Americans. On the other hand, Americans are in a way more highly civilized than Europeans, and on the other hand their wellspring of life energy reaches greater depths. The American unconscious contains an immense number of possibilities.”[34]

Hopefully you can notice this in your own manner.

Trump praised Mark Levin on social media

It's not so much that he praised him, it's that it was a weird hagiography one could expect from a Muslim or Jewish person, prompted by a personal request for backup in a petty online spat. And generally Trump is very clearly a representative of Middle Eastern culture, what with his extended family nepotism, corruption, bling, low-inhibition behavior, and yes, Israeli ties. To an extent that he represents America, being a legitimately elected populist president, this just means America is not part of Western civilization either.

Now I advance the argument that Bestern Civilization is better than the Third world, and better than Iran, so I support our moral claims against theirs etc. etc. etc. etc.

Fair enough. It's just that, not being your kin, the Western Civilization doesn't owe you shit. Worse, you're engaged in zero sum competition against it, trying to annex its lands, steal its markets, offload consequences of your tribal conflicts on it, rope it into your weird theologically motivated wars etc etc. You're not providing enough value to justify further tolerance of this behavior from an alien society.

Israel is obviously not part of the Western civilization, it's an older and completely distinct tradition

Israel is a settler state run by the grandchildren of European Jews. Perhaps it's diverged perhaps the Seph migrant influence was too great perhaps proximity to the Arabs is too much. But even if we adopt some Spenglerian definition of Western Civilization rooted in the Medieval Experience and let's even adopt the Khazarian hypothesis for the sake of argument and the Jews really have nothing to do with the shared root of Christianity and their influence on European-American-European history can be dismissed as a foreign one -- what are we talking about? What does Trump praising two Jews have to do with whether American is Western or not?

Consider Jung:

Jung is hysterical, Teddy Roosevelt's laugh is an expression of the primordial Negro? (Did Jung even meet Roosevelt? I can't decide if it's funnier to imagine Jung standing in a corner at a party seething while an American laughs, or whether it's funnier to imagine him hyperventilating over a newspaper caricature where Roosevelt is drawn with bugged-out eyes and a wide grin.)

Jung is so ridiculous I want to try to construct another argument so I can at least respond with some kind of decorum: Western Civilization has always been open to influence from the foreign. The British had India, the French Morocco etc. There's nothing unique in principle about America being influenced by the blacks. (America at the time Jung was writing was also 90% white.) The argument that the "transplantation to a primitive soil" is a definitive "break" is maybe stronger, but this is then an argument that falls apart if it generalizes: What of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.? Can no colony planted by the West be called Western? Or is there something special about America? (Well, there is, but it's not anything as crude as that.)

And generally Trump is very clearly a representative of Middle Eastern culture, what with his extended family nepotism, corruption, bling, low-inhibition behavior, and yes, Israeli ties.

Sounds like Agamemnon, sounds like Napoleon. Trump isn't Israeli, his family is German and Scottish, his grandfather built the family fortune running a saloon in Gold Rush Yukon Canada. That's just what New Yorkers are like. I don't think Western Civilization has some special claim to inhibited behavior and a disdain for bling.

It's just that, not being your kin, the Western Civilization doesn't owe you shit. Worse, you're engaged in zero sum competition against it, trying to annex its lands, steal its markets, offload consequences of your tribal conflicts on it, rope it into your weird theologically motivated wars etc etc. You're not providing enough value to justify further tolerance of this behavior from an alien society.

I really can't respond to every point thoroughly point-by-point or this my response will become even more unwieldly and unreadable, but I have to ask: What about you talking about? Western Civilization is now against "weird theologically motivated wars"? -- since when? (You should also stop believing every news article you read about how the Americans are doing this to bring about the end world or whatever, that's almost a disqualifying level of credulity, by the way.) Or that America is engaged in "zero sum competition" against Europe (stop putting tariffs on our goods!) and "trying to annex its lands". (I guess the argument that crossing the ocean represents a break between Europe and America doesn't apply to Denmark and Greenland? I can only assume you're referring to America asking for Greenland and the Europeans hallucinating a war.) Moreover: What are you even talking about? "Western Civilization" owes America a lot unless your belief is that everything would have been better off if America didn't intervene in 1941 or had just let the Commies win. Maybe Communist Italy wouldn't have been so bad, the reds destroyed the foodways of Russia but not those in China so maybe Italy would still have churches and bread. Well, we don't have to find out because America has been paying for Europe's defense now for 80 years. And the thanks we get is being told off about it. We're not providing enough value? Enough value? What are you even talking about?

What of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.?

No, those are Western nations.

Trump isn't Israeli, his family is German and Scottish, his grandfather built the family fortune running a saloon in Gold Rush Yukon Canada. That's just what New Yorkers are like.

New Yorkers aren't Western, indeed. They are spiritually Middle Eastern/African. Jung didn't mean ancestry (he makes it clear his argument sidesteps actual miscegenation) and neither do I. Trump isn't Western nor even white, sorry, this is just obvious.

I don't think Western Civilization has some special claim to inhibited behavior and a disdain for bling.

It very much does, it's one of the more obvious WEIRD traits. Culture of dignity, meritocracy, deferred gratification etc. Bourdieu called that Habitus. Trump-Loomer-Levin belong to the breed of people who shout Allahu Akbar before exploding, even if their religion is different.

What about you talking about? Western Civilization is now against "weird theologically motivated wars"? -- since when?

Approximately since the Peace of Westphalia. It's evolved and secularized a fair bit since the Crusades; and even those had nothing to do with your "Judeo-Christian Civilization", but rather with the opposite.

You should also stop believing every news article you read about how the Americans are doing this to bring about the end world or whatever, that's almost a disqualifying level of credulity, by the way.)

Do you understand that I consider your attempts to sanity-wash your culture as an entirely disqualifying level of gaslighting? I don't need news articles, I can make my own conclusions from what your savage tribal champions utter.

Seeing as I'm not interested in getting gaslit, there's no point to debate this. You're a self-interested tribalist and so you feel entitled to European gratitude irrespective of the balance of payment or current behavior. Well, until they establish military deterrence against your aggression, this is rational behavior.

>have ridiculous ideas

>call criticism gaslighting

>"i win"

Ok, based

More comments

The US massproduces and exports the very ills which put Western Civilization on its deathbed. Many in the US may tend the embers, but far from all and not from a position of strength.

I am not putting them on the same moral plane. I am pointing out that depicting the US vs. Iran conflict as analogous to polite society vs. violent schizophrenics would be an exaggeration of the actual degree of difference.

How is this in American interests? I think it is just as valid to ask as how is it not?

I don’t think equivocating the frames works in a world where opportunity cost exists.

The biggest reason it’s not in America’s interest is not the object level foreign policy goals but the cost of the already severely impoverished domestic policy agenda

How would you evaluate the opportunity cost of allowing the IRGC have nukes, or letting Iran continue to arm HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russians, Et Al?

Also what "severely impoverished domestic policy agenda" would you be referring to?

I think that the immediate effect of Iran having nukes would be that Israel would stop bombing them at leisure.

I don't think they could credibly threaten the gulf states allied to the US -- just make it clear that if they nuke Dubai, the US will nuke them in return.

I also find myself not caring too much how Israel fares, let Israel take care of its own security interests. If the religious crazies on both sides prefer to turn each other's countries into Gaza to coexisting, that it sad for the innocents, but does not seem a cause area where outside intervention can do much.

The immediate effect of Iran having nukes is that any drone or ballistic missile launched from Iranian territory (or territory controlled by Iranian proxies) must be treated as possibly having a nuke onboard.

...and countries like Israel and the UAE simply do not have the population nor quantity of territory necessary to face-tank a nuclear strike the way the US or Russia might. As such they would be incentivized to react to any launch as though it were an existential threat.

Essentially none of the comments like this are worth a dime if they don't contend with the progress in the negotiations, and in Iran's compliance with the former deal that Trump ended. Because you aren't even trying to lay out the case for why the escalation path you proposed is lower-risk than making another deal.

We have people here talking about how "oh we just bomb their desalination plants, and yeah maybe they retaliate against the Gulf desalination plans and oil infrastructure and bring the entire region to chaos, mass regional humanitarian crisis, likely mass refugee crisis, risk the global economy, but it's worth it." The fact is, if you are an American, the risk equation is UNAMIBUGOUSLY AGAINST this escalation path. It's only Israel that stands to benefit from this escalation path, nobody else in the world does so. There is no universe in which this escalation path is worth the alternative "risk" of continuing negotiations that, by all accounts other than Kushner and Witkoff, two Zionist Jews who were regarded as Israeli assets by diplomats involved in the negotiation, were proceeding very well.

This is why the Zionist element is the only explanation for why an American would accept this risk to their own interests and the global economy to scuttle those negotiations. This is also why, when someone like you lays out the case for this escalation path, you basically ignore the alternative and much lower-risk path that all parties agreed was alive and progressing well, but then was sabotaged by Witkoff and Kushner at the very moment they made the greatest progress by all accounts.

You also ignore the fact that Iran's hostility towards the US is downstream from our alliance with Israel. So that hostility and the risks associated with it are another cost of the Zionist integration in America. So every step of the way, from the first step to "bomb their desalination plants" is being influenced by Jewish interests, not American interests.

It could also be that Iran is untrustworthy, thus negotiating with them isn’t useful. Iran was not cooperative in nuclear inspections. They funded Hamas and Hezbollah. They don’t stop even when they’ve agreed to. What is the point of extracting an agreement if you cannot trust the other side to actually do what they’ve agreed to do?

You also ignore the fact that Iran's hostility towards the US is downstream from our alliance with Israel.

Because it's not. It's downstream of the US supporting the Shah over the current government, which is not about Israel.

Grudges that long are pretty odd in American history. We were in a decade long shooting war in Vietnam in between the overthrow of Mossadeq and the Islamic Revolution, and now Vietnam is practically an ally and a major trading partner despite being run by the same people who killed 50,000 Americans.

This could probably be better framed as a conflict between traditional values and Globohomo than as about the Shah or the hostages or Israel.

The grudge is about Iran's hostility towards the US, not the US's hostility towards Iran; it's not America's history that matters there, it's Iran's. US hostility towards Iran does in some way derive from the embassy hostage crisis, but likely wouldn't have lasted if Iran hadn't remained hostile the whole time. Vietnam hasn't spent the time since trying to overthrow Thailand or had its proxies attack Singapore. Nor did it make "Death to America" a slogan, nor refer to the US as "The Great Satan".

I think that US-Iranian hostility predates the US-Israel alliance, but that it certainly did not help matters.

Of course, there were times when deescalation was on the table, like with the JCPOA deal which Trump broke in his first term.

Ok so it's about the Shah not about American/Israeli intervention in overthrowing Syria, Iraq, Libya. Libya disarmed their nuclear program and then we promptly proceeded with regime change resulting in the public torture and execution of its leader. We surround Iran with military bases with an obvious concerted effort by Zionist Jews to get America to attack Iran, but Iran just has an irrational hatred for the US because of the Shah. That is so obviously false.

Libya disarmed their nuclear program and then we promptly proceeded with regime change resulting in the public torture and execution of its leader.

There were eight years and a Ghaddhaffist massacre of dissidents between those events.

Iran's hostility to America starts with the hostage crisis and continued through its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, through attacks on Americans in Iraq, through its tendency to kidnap American citizens passing through Iran, through cyberattacks, through missiles and drones used to attack American allies, through dozens if not hundreds of attacks on America and its allies in the Middle East. Really, this is ridiculous, Iran is not poor little innocent Iran, they are one of America's greatest and most consistent enemies. They have been for fifty years. They call us the Great Satan. Maybe in some alternate timeline where we weren't allies with Israel we could hold hands and sing kumbayah. So what?

The Hill: Inside Iran’s long history of attacks on US: A timeline

February 2021

An rocket fired by an Iran-backed militia at coalition forces in the Iraqi city of Erbil wounds a U.S. service member and four U.S. civilian contractors.

July 2021

Iranian-backed militias conduct at least three rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces in 24 hours in Iraq and Syria, wounding two U.S. service members.

February 2021

An rocket fired by an Iran-backed militia at coalition forces in the Iraqi city of Erbil wounds a U.S. service member and four U.S. civilian contractors.

July 2021

Iranian-backed militias conduct at least three rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces in 24 hours in Iraq and Syria, wounding two U.S. service members.

March 2023

An Iranian drone kills an American contractor and wounds five service members and another contractor when it strikes a coalition base near the Syrian city of Hasakah.

October 7, 2023

Hamas kills at least 48 Americans and kidnaps at least 12 Americans in a massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel.

January 2024

A drone launched by Kataib Hezbollah kills three U.S. soldiers at a U.S. military base in Jordan and wounded more than 40 other service members.

Do you know how hard we are now attacking Iran from our bases and military presence in Iraq and Iraqi airspace? Why were we in Iraq in the first place? You are just explaining how this all goes back to the same answer. We topple Hussein for Israel, Iran arms militias that resist. Oh well now the story is Iran just hates us for no reason, so we have to risk the world to achieve regime change in Iran as well.

How long are people going to fall for this circular logic?

Oh well now the story is Iran just hates us for no reason

I know why Iran hates us and it's even rational within the context of enmity. But I also don't care. I'm not taking the perspective of some neutral third-party, I'm taking the American side, I'm American. Iran won't absolve me of their hatred just because I'm critical of some things we've done in the Middle East. And until Iran makes peace with us even if Israel disappeared tomorrow or we dropped all support, Iran would still be our enemy and still hate us.

My enmity toward the Iranian regime does not dissolve on learning why they are hostile to me. That's actually not how we break the cycle of violence. Either we shake hands and make peace or someone has to surrender.

It matters because the "they're Islamo-Fascists who hate Americans for our freedoms", or as Trump put it yesterday "the worst people since Hitler", has been the conventional wisdom used to justify violence. They are rational actors. The notion they they are incapable of reaching and maintaining an agreement through negotiation is false. The idea they are some Rogue State that has to be put down immediately at any cost is false. The idea people propose here "the damage Iran is doing to the region is proof we should have started this war" are wrong. They are rational actors, we had other paths to balancing power and maintaining regional stability, we chose this catastrophic path for a very specific reason.

now the story is Iran just hates us for no reason

The governing elements of Iran hate us for reasons that are ideological and have realpolitik interests contrary to ours. This isn't "no reason" - the USSR opposed the US under similar conditions. It's a very normal set of reasons for states to fall into conflict. Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that the US engaged in hostilities with Iran well before its invasion of Iraq.

we have to risk the world

How exactly is the world at risk from US operations with Iran? The US and Russia playing footsie over Ukraine is much more high-stakes and even then it's probably an exaggeration to say that "the world" is at stake.

The world is at risk from US operations in Iran because Iranian regime faces an existential crisis, and its deterrence is folded into the threat of eliminating regional infrastructure that would cause humanitarian and global economic crisis. This ought to be a very strong incentive to avoid the escalation ladder, the problem is Israel wants to climb the escalation ladder, they will burn down the region to become the regional hegemon even if America is sacrificed as a result (especially if it is). They just bombed Iranian gas facilities today and Iran has ordered the evacuation of Gulf facilities in a possible retaliation.

the threat of eliminating regional infrastructure that would cause humanitarian and global economic crisis.

I agree that knocking out regional oil infrastructure would, at least temporarily, worsen the quality of life of the world generally, but that doesn't "risk the world."

The Iraqis set fire to Kuwait's oil fields, and on a quick Google it looks like the damage was repaired in about 2 years. It seems unlikely that Iran will be able to hit Saudi oil infrastructure both horizontally and vertically (causing long term damage to all Saudi oil infrastructure) so they would focus on chokepoints like refineries and export terminals that would be expensive and difficult to repair or replace.

In your scenario we're basically looking at, potentially, severe but imperfect risk to about 30% of the world's production, which can be at least partially mitigated in the short term by reserves, in the medium term by repairs and production elsewhere, and over the long term by repairs and new construction. It's not going to end the world.

Is this a good reason not to attack Iran? It's definitely worth throwing into the hopper. Is it "risking the world"? Nah.

even if America is sacrificed as a result (especially if it is)

If Iran could somehow snap its fingers and delete oil production for the Middle East, it would plausibly strengthen the United States (as a massive oil producer with huge reserves) over the medium-long term.

Most of this argument is pretty weak if you don't agree with the underlying implications that we should care about collateral damage done to Americans who willingly choose to head into the volatile middle east.

To me it's like going to North Korea, I feel bad for you but it's still your own fault if they kill you, not our responsibility. If you do contract work in Iraq instead of staying home, you're willingly putting yourself into that situation. If you get kidnapped in Israel, blame Israel and yourself. Especially when we already give them billions of dollars.

Why should we not care about Americans attacked abroad? To me this reads like a kind of nihilism, it's ok if part of the world is made ugly and dangerous because it's not my responsibility. So, retreat? Americans bombed in Israel are fair game because neighboring Iran is unstable. What's the logical next step? Americans in Europe are fair game because neighboring Middle East is unstable? Americans in London are fair game because neighboring Europe is unstable?

I don't want to suggest infinite responsibility here either, but it's not compelling to say that we have no responsibility anywhere. The Founders went to war in Tripoli over this kind of stuff.

"To me it's like going on the bus, I feel bad for you but it's still your fault if someone assaults you, not our responsibility." How is this different in principle?

Why should we not care about Americans attacked abroad?

If we should care about what happens to people for their own choices to travel into dangerous parts of the world, honestly where does it end? Do we start bombing if a tourist gets pickpocketed in Spain? If a US citizen in singapore gets a lashing for chewing gum?

We are not the world's police.

So, retreat? Americans bombed in Israel are fair game because neighboring Iran is unstable. What's the logical next step? Americans in Europe are fair game because neighboring Middle East is unstable? Americans in London are fair game because neighboring Europe is unstable?

Why should the US be responsible for defending London? The British should be able to defend themselves. I'm all for alliances, defense agreements, etc but if a country can't handle themselves then we should be able to tell them to fuck off.

"To me it's like going on the bus, I feel bad for you but it's still your fault if someone assaults you, not our responsibility."

A bus in the US should have the people following our laws. Criminals will still exist, but we have police for that. Or at least are suppose to have police for it.

If you leave the US and travel to Assaultistan and get assaulted, well too bad. We aren't the world's police.

We are not the world's police.

Who patrols the sea lanes? Who keeps the oil flowing? When Russia invades Georgia or Ukraine, which country does the world turn to do something?

Why should the US be responsible for defending London? The British should be able to defend themselves. I'm all for alliances, defense agreements, etc but if a country can't handle themselves then we should be able to tell them to fuck off.

This is just words, it doesn't mean anything. You're for alliances that help British defense but they "should be able to defend themselves". Well which is it, should we help them or should they help themselves? This is the question I posed in the first place. You have to actually draw a line somewhere.

If you leave the US and travel to Assaultistan and get assaulted, well too bad.

The example was Americans traveling to Israel getting assaulted by Iran.

Who patrols the sea lanes? Who keeps the oil flowing? When Russia invades Georgia or Ukraine, which country does the world turn to do something?

It sure seems it was flowing until war started. As for Ukraine and Georgia, what much have we done? We've provided financial aid and sold Ukraine weapons, but that's not being the world's police. I'm fine with charity or trade. It should make sense and be efficient, like PEPFAR saving individuals lives in poor countries makes more sense as a charity than giving money to Israel's military so they don't have to divert from their universal healthcare and free upper education.

But being charitable to victims isn't the same as rushing in guns blazing.

This is just words, it doesn't mean anything. You're for alliances that help British defense but they "should be able to defend themselves". Well which is it, should we help them or should they help themselves? This is the question I posed in the first place. You have to actually draw a line somewhere.

Alliances like this are supposed to be mutual. We get help when we are attacked and they get help when they are attacked. But they still need to be pretty sufficient on their own. If Britain is slacking, I think we would be perfectly in the right to tell them to do better or we quit our end.

The example was Americans traveling to Israel getting assaulted by Iran.

Then Israel should do better, or Americans should wisen up to the risk and not take it instead of expecting everyone else to spend billions and billions to bail them out for their dumb choices. Once you leave the country, you've given up most of our responsibility to you (unless you're like an official representative or something).

The idea that we should go to war for Americans abroad because we are responsible for them but not get them out of war zones because we aren't responsible for them is a pretty major contradiction here too. If anything, the latter is something we're more responsible for given the whole we started it part of the war.

Ideally, Iran makes a credible and verifiable commitment to dismantling their nuclear weapons program and stop supplying arms to HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russian Federation, Et Al. Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.

If the ultimate goal here is to dismantle Iran's nuclear weapons program, the path the administration is currently on isn't set up to do that. That would require a ground invasion to secure the known nuclear sites, destroy the equipment, and remove the fissile material. But Trump doesn't have the stomach for that, if only because he knows it would be incredibly costly and would likely drag on much longer than he can endure politically. Such an invasion would have a high risk of turning into an Iraq-style quagmire. You don't seem to be advocating for that either, and instead propose two half-measure options.

Option A is less likely to happen now than it was before the war, and the chances were already diminished after Trump backed out of the JCPOA. You can complain all you want about the lack of "any time, anywhere" inspections, but Iran was already giving up quite a lot in exchange for relatively little. The big prize for Iran was the lifting of UN sanctions, but those weren't affected by the US pullout. The actual US sanctions relief provided wasn't much, and there was no plan to resume normal relations. If Trump was concerned that Iran wasn't holding up their end of the deal, there were mechanisms for that to be adjudicated, but he had no interest in hearing what an independent panel had to say about the matter. All his actions served to accomplish was a more complete erosion of trust. If Trump wanted more from the Iran deal he could have gone back to the bargaining table and offered more concessions. As someone who likes to pretend he's a master dealmaker, he doesn't seem to understand that you get what you pay for.

Of course, Trump wasn't the first person to poison this well. Back in the days before anyone was concerned about a nuclear Iran, the Iranians elected their version of an opposition candidate as president, one who did not have the endorsement of the Supreme Leader and who ran on a platform of increased dialogue with the West. There were some early successes under the Clinton administration (largely undone due to suspicion of involvement in the USS Cole bombing), and Iran denounced the 9/11 terrorists and provided key US intelligence in the invasion of Afghanistan. Then Bush gave his Axis of Evil speech, which didn't help matters, and when Iran offered their assistance with the Iraq invasion, the Bush administration stonewalled them. The effect of all of this was that the Iranian electorate came to believe that dialogue with the US was pointless, and the moderates were driven out of power. Instead you get Ahmadinejad, a revived nuclear weapons program, and intransigence in the face of international pressure. And then after they think they have a deal Trump looks for a reason to back out. Why would the Iranian government think they can trust the US to hold up their end of any bargain? Even if they agree to the kind of verifiable reductions that you're talking about, the US doesn't have a great track record with those, either. Hans Blix said numerous times in the months prior to the Iraq War that his inspection teams couldn't find any evidence of WMD facilities, but the US decided to believe their own intelligence instead and invaded anyway. If Iran actually is a nuclear threat, then their best bet at this point is to develop nukes before the US stops them, which, as I said at the beginning, they aren't going to do.

Option B is more likely to happen, but you seem to forget that Afghanistan played a key role in the worst terrorist attack in US history. Such a key role that invading them was uncontroversial. And such a scenario doesn't preclude them from getting nukes. If Iranians cause another 9/11, what do you do then? You've already bombed them back to the Stone Age, so that isn't going to be an option.

If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.

What if actually trying to bomb Iran into the pre-industrial age would result in Iran retaliating by destroying every oil refinery, oil field, and desalinization plant within 1,500 miles? Still worth it?

Actually Iran being able to lay waste in 1500 miles is the best argument for dealing with them once and for all.

Anyway I don't think that they can do it. And don't remember that the gulf states have both money and armies. They could buy ballistic missiles in bulk, and unlike Uncle Sam those are people that don't mind being rough.

Actually Iran being able to lay waste in 1500 miles is the best argument for dealing with them once and for all.

So you're going to support military action to wipe out the rogue Israeli regime and their undeclared nuclear arsenal, right? Israel is capable of causing even more damage to the region and the world, so naturally you'd support dealing with them once and for all to an even stronger degree, no? They've even made explicit threats to do so (google the Samson option), which is actually more than Iran has done.

I think this is a reasonable tactical concern, but at some point in practice, yielding to Iran (and its funding of terror groups across the Middle East) lest it start attacking other states in the region (even relatively uninvolved ones like Oman and Azerbaijan) and disrupt the global economy, starts to look like paying the Danegeld.

Although I'm not personally going to endorse this position, I think it sounds reasonable on principle.

Qatar, Turkey not mention America were all funding terror groups in the Middle East too. Especially in Syria. Who were fighting with the Iranian terror groups and the secular government also supported by Iran. Should we invade Turkey because of the Islamist government in Syria? Or Qatar who also supports Hamas？

"We have to attack them because if we attack them, they'll attack our allies" is strange logic.

Israel deliberately chose to allow Hamas to grow until it blew up in their face. Maybe they should do a better job managing the terror groups in their backyard next time (and hey, right now they are, so we're not needed).

What if actually trying to bomb Iran into the pre-industrial age would result in Iran retaliating by destroying every oil refinery, oil field, and desalinization plant within 1,500 miles? Still worth it?

They now lack that capacity.

Do they? Shahed stockpiles alone are reported to be above 6k drones, and production capacity is reported to be at least 3k drones per year, according to conservative OSINT analysts, and both might be as much as 3x higher. Israeli think tanks report 80k and 12k, respectively (lol). Have either of those been degraded significantly?

And that doesn't even start with missile stock piles.

I can't imagine how optimistic you are to think Iran can't target Gulf oil fields and infrastructure. Tel Aviv, airports, and US embassies are still being hit right now but you can't think they can target oil infrastructure?

Their long-range stuff is largely blown up. There's a lot of Gulf stuff much closer than 1500 miles, which they can still blow up.

If the US is the world's cop, Iran is not some innocent brown kid who got shot for no reason, they're the habitual bad actor with dozens of prior complaints and arrests.

What's the worst three things they have done in the past 15 years? I don't follow the region closely. But it generally seems to me that the Iranian regime has moderated with its age and is just a normal country. A country with a lousy government that does not like the U.S., sure, but that's not a reason to start a war. Iran isn't some kind of irrational chaotic evil as some neocons claim. As I have heard, Iran actually cooperated with the U.S. in fighting ISIS. And when the U.S. or Israel has occasionally bombed Iran, Iran has mostly responded by politely alerting us prior to targetting and hit only empty buildings. Up until this attack, they did not close the straits of Hormuz, blow up crucial oil facilities, bomb Israeli civilians, etc. etc. What makes Iran so much of a rogue nation, worse than, say, Pakistan or Israel?

There is no real 'worst' in the sense of any moral transgression. For every single alleged Iranian misdeed there is a clear analog and reason as to why.

As an example: Iran funds proxies in the region as a continuation of the Iraq-Iran war. Where the US and other states provided direct support to Iraq so it could invade Iran. This is why there are no major 'terror' attacks by alleged Iran funded proxies prior to that invasion.

To put things into context, in total, the US has, according to AI, lost less than 1000 men to alleged Iran proxy attacks in the middle east. In contrast, the Iraq-Iran war killed at least 180 thousand Iranians. That's only counting the war and not the many thousands that die because of other US backed wars, strikes and their continued support for Israel, which does the same.

But none of this is ever mentioned by any anti-Iran advocates.

It's comical, really. The worst Iranian transgressions interventionists can point towards are all the direct consequence of their prior failed interventions.

Or as one person put it:

Islamic terrorist attacks are just blowback from America’s GWOT, which was just blowback from 9/11, which was just blowback from America supporting Israel, which was just blowback from the Ottomans fighting against America and Britain in WW1, which was just blowback from Britain seizing Egypt and supporting Greek freedom from the Ottomans, which was just blowback from the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople and hundreds of years of oppression, which was just blowback from the Crusades, which were just blowback from the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia, which was just blowback from the Byzantine Empire’s expansion into Syria under the Macedonian dynasty, which was just blowback from the Arab conquest of Byzantine Syria and Egypt and North Africa and repeated siege attempts against Constantinople, which was just blowback from the Byzantines no longer paying Arab tribes to defend the frontier against Persia, which was just blowback from an extended Persian invasion of the Byzantine Empire, which was just blowback from 700 years of warfare between Rome and Persia, which was just blowback from Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia, which was just blowback from Darius and Xerxes’ invasions of Greece, which was just blowback from Athens supporting the Ionian revolts against the Persian Empire, which was just blowback from Cyrus the Great conquering the Ionian Greeks of Anatolia, but before that everybody in history probably got along.

I appreciate the sentiment, but that sort of 'tracing back the blame' game, whilst fitting in a sense, isn't what's going on here. It's not about finding ultimate moral culpability via locating the human that cast the first stone. It's about judging the actions of Iran as being reasonable or not. Sure, some historical context is required, but if a nations motivations to attack are tracing themselves back a thousand year or two, I wouldn't call them reasonable.

From a geopolitical standpoint, when people ask why we need to bomb Iran and the reason given is that, effectively, Iranians are lunatics that fund terrorists as a hobby and block trade for sport... Some context is warranted. Context that the 'bomb Iran' crowd somehow never mentions despite being obviously relevant.

I mean, Iran did take over the US Embassy and hold Americans hostage November 4, 1979, right before the Iraq-Iran war which kicked off in 1980. It seems like there is evidence the current Iranian Regime considered the US their enemy before the Iraq-Iran war, and also perhaps some US participation in the Iraq-Iran war wasn't just shits and giggles but a response to actual grievances, such as 52 active hostages.

And this also happened decades ago, almost half a century ago, so either we're going back blow by blow or we aren't. At some point nations have to look at the world as it is now and make decisions based on what they think is best for the future, not past grievances. Iran was choosing a future where they have nuclear weapons that can reach Europe and the Continental US and a future where they are destabilizing their neighbors, arming terrorists and harming international shipping. And the US is trying to choose a future where Iran doesn't get to do those things. War is not the criminal justice system. Guilt does not need to be proven. It's divorce court and someone's going to get the kids and the house and the other is going to pay child support.

Even ignoring that the hostage crisis was because the US protected the Shah (whom they imposed on Iran) when Iranians wanted him tried, the idea that 52 hostages means that you can fund 50,000 Iranian casualties from chemical attacks is insane. Why do pro-Israelis seem to have no notion of proportionality? US protects Shah from revolution -> 50 hostages -> US supports Iraq inflicting 50,000 casualties on Iran through chemical weapons even as Iran petitions the international community to compel them to stop. Like what are we even doing here. And Iraq invaded Iran! It wasn’t even a defensive use of chemical weapons.

If I wanted a country to never again take my citizens as hostages I would've killed even more. That's what wanting someone to never fuck with you and yours means. Not essays or vibes.

So you’re saying that the Iranians, in their desire to deter America from ever again “fucking with them”, should have done a lot more than what they did? What do you think they should have done instead?

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As long as you're in a position of unassailable superiority, and fine with being feared and hated, alright. Just make sure that never changes.

As long as you don't mind looking like an absolute psychopath, sure. I don't believe that within America, 'Hanson Jr. raped my daughter so I slaughtered every child at his school with an AK' is considered appropriate. The Hatsons Hatfields and the McCoys were jokes even in their own time, not role models.

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Am I pro-Israel? Wasn't Israel on the side of Iran during the Iraq-Iran war?

What's the worst three things they have done in the past 15 years?

Just off the top of my head:

Threatening global shipping lanes by funding and supplying the Houthis (one of their proxies) which caused major disruption to ship traffic in the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal.

Attacking Saudi oil infrastructure (again via their proxy, the Houthis).

Supplying IEDs and shaped charges to insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill American troops.

As I have heard, Iran actually cooperated with the U.S. in fighting ISIS.

Yeah, no surprise there. ISIS was an overwhelmingly Sunni group, that often explicitly targeted Shiite Muslims. Iran is majority Shiite.

First off what does winning look like, in the eyes of team Trump?

Ideally, Iran makes a credible and verifiable commitment to dismantling their nuclear weapons program and stop supplying arms to HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russian Federation, Et Al. Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.

They've always been a bit vague on that. My guess is what they want is to use people from Iran's existing regime to run the country but take orders from Washington, similar to what the US did in Venezuela. As long as they stop selling weapons to terrorists they're free to run the country as they see fit, though of course we'd like to see some progress on human rights too. It's a good strategy, it just doesn't sound good in a press briefing.

So not "unconditional surrender" but more like what we saw in Japan post WWII: the Emperor stays, but the rest of the constitution is written by the United States.

Something like, Iran is still an Islamic Republic run by a supreme leader Ayatollah, but one neutered and friendly to US interests?

Sounds good to me. And there's no need to rewrite their constitution- they already have some democratic elements on paper there.

I've actually long been an admirer of the Islamic Republic's constitutional system, since learning about it in AP World Gov in high school.

Iran is a democracy, full stop, with certain elements that manage democratic change, similar for the most part to the US Judiciary. The Supreme Leader is chosen by the Assembly of Experts, who are directly elected. The Guardian Council, which vets candidates (including the Assembly of Experts) are appointed by the Supreme Leader.

The only real difference between our Constitutional Scholars at SCOTUS and their Islamic Jurists is the kind of law and tradition they study.

The actual government leaders, the parliament and the president, are elected by the people. The candidates are vetted by the Guardian Council.

It's a system designed to manage change and create stability.

That it has evolved (under pressure of repeated invasion, blockade, sanction, outside subversion against Iran and its neighbors) into a mix of theocracy and military state is unfortunate.

The ideas themselves aren't per-se bad. A similar system that produced a Supreme Leader that happened to be exactly to my tastes and values, and where the Supreme Leader held himself more aloof and less involved, would seem ideal for producing a consistent state and reduce values drift over time.

One can easily fantasize about an American Supreme Leader, the living embodiment of American values, who doesn't act day to day to carry out governance, but gets involved when the current government drifts out of line with core values. Or an American Guardian Council, which vets candidates to keep those out of line with American values from reaching the voters, demagogues and radicals. Eventually, if America shifts enough, both are subject to democratic change, but slowly.

Sure it's neat system in theory. But in practice it's totally broken down because the population has drifted far enough away from those core values that the managed democracy can no longer function because the people would choose totally different candidates organically than the ones they are allowed to vote for. Khomeini created the system to avoid values drift but it's utterly failed to do so because while they were able to avoid values drift in the government they weren't able to do so in the population.

I think it's important to be very cautious around this assumption. Would the Iranian people vote for a different government?

Probably, but it's not so just because a few Iranians say so, keep in mind how many Americans believe that an entirely different government would be elected if only we could get rid of the management of whatever mix of the deep state/corporate donors/AIPAC/woke media/civil rights law/voter fraud they think is keeping it from happening.

It's likely that whatever ultimately came out in a fully free democratic Iran wouldn't necessarily be what we would like, and certainly not in every case. If the Ayatollah's unconditionally surrendered, and we instituted a full liberal democracy with the US constitutional order ported over in full, and the Iranian people turn out to vote in a free and fair election, and the result is a government that abolishes the morality police but is hostile to Israel, what then?

Sure I think it would be closer to Iraq then Germany. However, post 2009 the constant suppression of mass protests with force and live ammunition shows that there is a huge amount of discontent that is not being expressed in the system. The revolutionary guards are also functioning as an unaccountable parasite given how much of the economy they've gradually taken over. I don't think Iranians would love Israel but their tired of they're meagre treasury being spent on foreign militia. Compare Iraq during Saddam's tenure to now. The democratic Iraq doesn't love Israel but it spends a lot less effort antagonizing them.

Iran is a democracy, full stop, with certain elements that manage democratic change, similar for the most part to the US Judiciary. The Supreme Leader is chosen by the Assembly of Experts, who are directly elected. The Guardian Council, which vets candidates (including the Assembly of Experts) are appointed by the Supreme Leader.

That does not sound particularly democratic. It sounds vaguely reminiscent of "democracy" in the Soviet Union, where you could vote for any Communist-approved candidate you wanted and all actual power routed through unelected figures in the Party or executive.

What is your standard for democracy that this system as written fails? Technically, the constitution vests sovereignty in God, but all power follows from elections. The Supreme Leader is appointed by a group of elected experts (see eg our own Doge system). The guardian council vets candidates, but the guardian council is half appointed by the supreme leader and half by Parliament, so itself it has a democratic base.

There are obviously problems with how it has developed, but many of them can be analogized to undemocratic or dead hand problems with the American conditional order. They have one supreme leader who serves for life appointed by 14 elected experts, we have nine supreme court justices chosen by one president and 100 senators.

Iran is an illiberal democracy. They don't have free speech or freedom of expression. They have a significant dead hand problem of an entrenched set of interests which steer the country through approval of candidates. But then, so do we, through other means, and it's tough to look at our candidates sometimes and not wish for Guardian Council to protect me from them.

What is your standard for democracy that this system as written fails?... Iran is an illiberal democracy. They don't have free speech or freedom of expression. They have a significant dead hand problem of an entrenched set of interests which steer the country through approval of candidates.

I think the combination of the influence of the IRGC and centralized approval of candidates by a functionally self-selecting body goes beyond the dead hand of the past. Like, if every candidate for federal office in the US had to be approved by the Supreme Court (with informal but significant input from the military + IC), I would be happy to say that the US was not a democracy under those circumstances. The fact that the Iranian government is regularly required to put down massive protests with violent force that utterly eclipses any comparable measure in the US or Western Europe is strongly suggestive of a basic legitimacy problem.

(Also, the US is increasingly illiberal in its governance, so v0v)

Interesting. I don't really know much about their system, just that they have a "president" who doesn't do much and a "Supreme Leader" who sounds scary. But that all sounds pretty good. Just more evidence that Iran has some really good parts under the surface, its just ruined by an oppressive government.

First, I think it needs to be pointed out that, with the Biden-era environmental limits removed the US is once again a net petroleum exporter and the US economy is much better situated to weather possible energy-trade disruptions than say China is.

The USA was a net exporter throughout the Biden administration.

I'm curious how many "facts" like this go stated and uncorrected on themotte here. I suspect it's common enough to meaningfully distort my worldview :(

If it's any consolation, the proliferation of factoids is endemic and not a particular defect of this forum; basically the only way around it is to assume everyone you talk to is either lying or doesn't know what they're talking about (granted, this assumption is usually true, but it's a hard way to live life).

It's a defect of this forum only in the sense that I trust the people in this forum more than I do of other forums. So when someone bullshits a factoid, I am much more likely to believe them.

I trust the people in this forum more than I do of other forums

You shouldn't. This forum self-selects for people with outsider right-wing beliefs. This means you get exposed unusual perspectives relative to, e.g., reddit, but a lot of those perspectives are crankish or blinkered.

If you (or, more accurately, Trump) could convincingly guarantee a US victory as defined by either your total capitulation or stone age scenarios, those are outcomes I'd happily take, at least given the situation we are in now. But it's not all a given that those aims would be achievable or even plausible, even for an administration that had shown the ability to focus on something for more than a few weeks at a time without stepping on a rake.

There's reasonable ambiguity about how things are going to play out from this conflict, and I'm highly skeptical that either of your scenarios will come to pass. Most likely, the US will continue bombing for two or three months more, get bored, and move on without getting any resolution to the root issue, leading to bad foreseeable issues five or ten years from now. And that's kind of a best case scenario: significant ground troops, loss of a significant military asset, and even breaking out into a much broader, global war are also outside risks that still might present themselves.

I don't consider myself qualified to argue the war on the merits, because I honestly don't know what's gone on behind closed doors, or even what the point of it really is. But I will ask you this.

If Trump had run on starting a war with Iran, would he have won the election?

I guess we'll never know. But I really, really doubt it. Instead, he claimed to be against exactly this kind of war. It's hard to look at this as anything but an overt betrayal of the people who elected him. At least when Bush started the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, there was a 9/11 standing between that and his campaign. You could understand why his position changed. (And I'm hardly defending Bush for this, the result was disastrous anyway)

There's nothing so visible here. He never made a case for this crap to the voters.

This had better turn out really, unbelievably, unexpectedly well or I don't see how this is defensible, except maybe in a really cynical realpolitik way, but even that will take a long time to shake out.

If Trump had run on starting a war with Iran, would he have won the election?

I think a lot depends on what you think "this kind of war" is, as I said down thread I think a lot of people here misunderstand what exactly a lot of republicans (and more moderate Democrats) found objectionable about the establishment's handling of Iraq and Afghanistan.

what exactly a lot of republicans (and more moderate Democrats) found objectionable about the establishment's handling of Iraq and Afghanistan.

That he failed.

If we're being honest.

If Trump can deliver a clear success, one so clear that no one can whine about media bias, Americans will accept it, regardless of the morality. Changing Supreme Leaders and another inconclusive war in Lebanon isn't going to count for much.

You forget the lying about WMDs.

That's the bigger deal because that's what makes it so hard to motivate a war with Iran.

They had one blank cheque for that and they blew it on Saddam.

This is painful for me to admit, because I'm at my emotional core an American patriot, but I don't really think Americans would have cared about that all that much if we had clearly succeeded in our goals.

Smaller, successful regime change actions in Latin America have generally been well received, and the reasons for doing so have rarely been well communicated and reasoned.

I think a lot depends on what you think "this kind of war" is,

Very much this. The shit they had guys like JTarrou doing in Iraq, the room to room sweeping with a random mix of civilians, fighters, and suicide bombers, where they had to pretend that everyone they met was friendly until they were being bombed or shot at? With RoE that seem almost designed to drive people insane or get them killed? Driven by the delusional belief that the only thing separating Uday Hussein from Will Stancil was a bit of pocket change and a lecture on queer puppet shows?

Yeah, the politicians calling for that can get fragged.

Bombing assholes into the Stone Age?

Talking about exactly that in the context of specifically Iran is actually where the we are gonna do things to you that have never been done before line comes from.

The current actions are perhaps on the upper side of expectations, but Trump was never a dove. He just isn't a medal-farming, nation-building retard.

So you think if trump ran on "I'm going to bomb Iran into the stone age, which will result not only in a lot of them dying for (currently) 0 gain, but will ultimately heavily disrupt international trade in a way that drives up gas and other prices" , you think that would be a winning platform?

No, nobody in America ever likes any policy whatsoever if you phrase it negatively and prompt them with only the downsides.

Nit: a "flair up" is a required action to participate in /r/politicalcompassmemes. A "flare up" is what you're describing.

What would it actually look like if we had quadrant flairs here? I'm guessing most would be Auth-Right with a significant minority of Lib-Right, a handful of Centrists, the occasional Purple Lib-Right, and virtually no Auth-Left or Lib-Left (sorry, Emily).

virtually no Auth-Left or Lib-Left

And what am I? The two of clubs?

Good catch.

Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.

This is where the issue appears - the US is not strong enough to do this without using H-bombs. And even if it were possible, it would be extremely costly and dangerous.

It is very hard to bomb an industrious country into being a failed state. Intense bombing was tried on North Vietnam and Cambodia. The US dropped about 50-70 kg of bombs per person on these relatively small countries. Iran is a large country. The number of bombs needed is extremely high! Even burning down whole cities is not sufficient. That was tried on Japan and Germany and again, did not work. A-bombs, famine, a Soviet ground invasion of Manchuria and the destruction of Japan's offensive capabilities in sea/air power were needed to force a near unconditional surrender. A ground invasion was imminent and they were preparing for it. In Germany the Red Army had to storm Berlin before surrender.

Let's throw the 'decapitation strikes killing leaders' theory of war right out, that has never worked in history and clearly isn't working here. Bombing people just makes them hate you more, they become less willing to surrender.

The US does not have the necessary ground forces for a ground invasion of Iran. It's extremely mountainous, difficult terrain on the other side of the world. The US navy doesn't even dare enter the straits of Hormuz because of all the drones and ballistic missiles. How is America supposed to deploy a million men or more to Iraq, to what bases, with what supplies? Those bases are being bombed and shelled. It'd take 12-18 months to get all the forces in the field. Would a million men even be enough? It's politically impossible, would incur a staggering number of casualties over a multi-year war with disastrous effects for broader US strategy. Iran doesn't fear a ground invasion, they know the US wouldn't try.

And then there are all the things Iran can do to strike back. Iran could attack with dirty bombs if they so chose, against the US or Israel. They could wreck oil production across the Middle East in revenge. They could launch drone strikes against the US homeland like how Ukraine does against Russia. There are all kinds of things 90 million smart people can do to make problems if they want.

While I'm not privy to the specifics my guess is that the plan is to hold Kharg Island hostage to force Iranian compliance.

It's not possible to force compliance by taking one small island. To force compliance you need to have enough strength to conquer the country. If the war goal is SMO style 'demilitarization', 'denuclearization' and 'de-antisemitization' (per Trump's rambling about picking the leader of Iran) then the US needs to credibly threaten a successful invasion and conquest of the country. Russia's ground invasion needs to reach that stage to secure victory. The Ukrainians would capitulate if their army was smashed. But they haven't capitulated since their army hasn't been smashed, they hold out hope for improved circumstances and just draft more troops.

Americans need to stop thinking as though the US is global policeman and more like a successful gangster. Lots of money and guns. But other gangs also have guns. Other gangs can impose costs too. The gains of a street war may not be worth the costs in blood, wealth and bitter feuding.

Bombing people just makes them hate you more, they become less willing to surrender.

You were suggesting that this would work against Taiwan earlier this month.

This is where the issue appears - the US is not strong enough to do this without using H-bombs.

The United States would probably not struggle to turn off the majority of the power in Iran. I hope we don't, for humanitarian reasons, but we absolutely could. (The Russians have had considerable success doing this in Ukraine despite having less airpower and inferior targeting capabilities, while Ukraine also has better defenses and an open line of supplies from its border with the world's richest economies; Iran will not have this advantage) The target set isn't that big (about 600 power plants, if we trust Google AI.) The US production line supports upwards of 100 JDAMs kits per day, so without even expanding production, the USAF could in theory hit every power plant in Iran weekly without dipping into reserves.

This might not cause Iran to collapse into anarchy or overthrow the regime but it would pretty much turn them into a "failed state" in the sense that state capacity would plummet.

You were suggesting that this would work against Taiwan earlier this month.

Taiwan is an exception, as I said then. Only small islands with massive reliance on imported food and energy can be bombed into submission. Large countries with land routes cannot. It also matters if the power in question doing the bombing has China-level industrial capacity.

Iran would retaliate by wrecking the rest of the Middle East's energy infrastructure, including Israel. This would probably end up being a US strategic defeat when considering the global-level balance of power.

Trump is trying to keep energy strikes 'off limits' for the war, as per his latest tweets. He is not keen on an energy-destruction war!

It also matters if the power in question doing the bombing has China-level industrial capacity.

As I explained, US munitions production is likely adequate to sustain the suppression of an Iranian power network indefinitely.

Trump is trying to keep energy strikes 'off limits' for the war, as per his latest tweets. He is not keen on an energy-destruction war!

Good! As I said, I don't want the US to destroy Iran's power-production ability. But you seemed skeptical that the US had the capability to inflict catastrophic damage on the Iranian power grid, and I do not think that is the case.

likely adequate to sustain the suppression of an Iranian power network indefinitely

The key factor is more sortie rates and speed at which grid infrastructure can be repaired/rebuilt than raw munitions production. Long range B-1 strikes and in-air refuelled F-35s may not have the necessary throughput given other targets. But say that the Iranian grid can be destroyed.

Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one

The standard of bombing needed to destroy the grid may not induce state collapse. Germany and Japan were bombed very aggressively but retained their industrial capacity. If even burning down whole cities didn't destroy the grid and military industrial capacity generally then how is the US going to fare today? Iraq's state did not collapse despite a Coalition air campaign successfully wrecking their electrical infrastructure, despite a Kurdish uprising, despite much of the Iraqi army being smashed in Kuwait. Iran is much bigger, smarter and stronger than Iraq in 1991, it seems doubtful that an air campaign alone could destroy their state capacity.

Iran's military facilities probably have their own hardened power sources too like Ukraine. They can probably get China to send them some transformers or power infrastructure, China and Iran are both on 50 Hz grids after all.

Furthermore, if the bombing campaign is explicitly part of a state destruction effort, wouldn't this strongly motivate nuclear weapons development? It seems like a bad option strategically, which is the 'even if it were possible, it would be extremely costly and dangerous' part of my argument.

But say that the Iranian grid can be destroyed.

This is pretty much all I am saying.

destroy their state capacity.

Sure, and that's why I said that their state capacity would plummet. It would not be destroyed. It would be badly degraded by a sustained anti-power campaign. Which I hope we do not carry out!

wouldn't this strongly motivate nuclear weapons development?

After skimming through some IAEA documents (thanks, Motte!) I'm pretty convinced they were doing this anyway, even before the US pulled out of the JCPOA.

If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.

This is where the issue appears - the US is not strong enough to do this without using H-bombs. And even if it were possible, it would be extremely costly and dangerous.

Of course the US is strong enough to do this without H-bombs. Bombing all of Iran's industry and infrastructure can be accomplished conventionally. Oil, electrical, manufacturing and water. The last being quite critical -- it'll be hard for Iran to rebuild while its population is dying of thirst. It wouldn't be all that costly or dangerous (except to Iran); the expensive part was taking out air defenses, B-1 missions with gravity bombs are much cheaper. And this isn't WWII; the US can hit the targets a lot better. It would kill a LOT of Iranians, however.

The US does not have the necessary ground forces for a ground invasion of Iran. It's extremely mountainous, difficult terrain on the other side of the world.

This US did that before. The US took Afghanistan, as you may recall. And held it for 20 years. Couldn't quash the insurgency (partially because it was based in Pakistan) but that's a different matter.

The US navy doesn't even dare enter the straits of Hormuz because of all the drones and ballistic missiles.

The US navy will enter the straits of Hormuz.

Those bases are being bombed and shelled.

Not much, not anymore. The US evacuated the bases, but now that Iran's capability to bombard them is way down, the US COULD use them for staging.

Iran could attack with dirty bombs if they so chose, against the US or Israel.

Maybe. If they can still get their nuclear material. And if they don't mind starting a nuclear war with two nuclear powers when all they've got is nuclear waste.

The US took Afghanistan, as you may recall

Afghanistan is in a totally different league to Iran. Afghanistan didn't have much of anything but light infantry in technicals (and that was still enough!) Iran is an industrialized country. They know how to fight.

If the goal is just killing lots of Iranians, there's a simple tool for that: H-bombs. Killing people is not sufficient to achieve US strategic goals, which are more complex than just destruction. The US wants some kind of positive regime change - this strategy has achieved the reverse. The US wanted security of energy markets and to retain control of the seas. The petrodollar is now under attack by Iran's control of the straits of Hormuz.

but now that Iran's capability to bombard them is way down

the expensive part was taking out air defenses

The US navy will enter the straits of Hormuz.

You seem to think the war is all but won. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Iran's capability to bombard US bases is not 'way down'. The US has been evacuating its in-air refuelling aircraft further away after Iran keeps striking them with missiles deep into Saudi Arabia. A meagre sortie rate from a couple of carrier groups and a handful of strategic bombers is not sufficient to win this war. 44 B-1s at 47% readiness are not going to do much.

The much-vaunted US navy couldn't secure the Red Sea against the Houthis after a whole year of escort operations and bombing, how the hell are they supposed to secure the straits of Hormuz? They're staying well away from the straits because they're not complete fools.

The whole concept of this war is unfathomably dumb. Even people like Bolton are publicly questioning war with Iran. Do you have any idea how off the rails this has gone if the hawk's hawk, the warmonger's warmonger who's been agitating for this war for decades is criticizing the strategy? The plan was clearly 'quick war', they never anticipated that they'd need to bring in marines or extra THAAD from Korea. They are improvising because the strategy has already failed.

Afghanistan is in a totally different league to Iran. Afghanistan didn't have much of anything but light infantry in technicals (and that was still enough!) Iran is an industrialized country. They know how to fight.

The US took Iraq also (including defeating the Republican Guard), and they were supposedly a juggernaut as well.

If the goal is just killing lots of Iranians, there's a simple tool for that: H-bombs.

There are lots of tools for that. Daisy cutters, thermobaric weapons, chemical weapons. The former two aren't even technically WMDs. Bombing water infrastructure, cutting off food supplies. Just shooting them. The world's militaries have been killing people wholesale since long before Edward Teller was a gleam in his father's eye. Atomic bombs are special in only two ways -- you can do the same destruction in far fewer bombs, and the persistent radioactive effects.

The US has been evacuating its in-air refuelling aircraft further away after Iran keeps striking them with missiles deep into Saudi Arabia.

Iran struck them once. That Iran's capability to bombard is down doesn't mean it's zero.

The much-vaunted US navy couldn't secure the Red Sea against the Houthis after a whole year of escort operations and bombing

The Houthis were being supplied from Iran.

The whole concept of this war is unfathomably dumb. Even people like Bolton are publicly questioning war with Iran. Do you have any idea how off the rails this has gone if the hawk's hawk, the warmonger's warmonger who's been agitating for this war for decades is criticizing the strategy?

Perhaps it just means Bolton is a reverse weather vane.

The plan was clearly 'quick war', they never anticipated that they'd need to bring in marines or extra THAAD from Korea.

Five weeks to a few months is what the administration has been saying. They haven't been too consistent but we haven't even reached the shortest timeframe.

The US took Iraq also (including defeating the Republican Guard), and they were supposedly a juggernaut as well.

Iraq was an Arab country, they didn't make weapons and never showed much proficiency in fighting. They just relied on Soviet weapons, US assistance in their unsuccessful war with Iran, who was fighting alone. Iraq was also strategically unprepared for the US invasion, they hadn't built up their military specifically over decades to deal with America.

Consider also that the Iraqis are the ones who quickly collapsed to ISIS and had to be bailed out by the US and Iran.

Iran is bigger, smarter and stronger with much more defensible terrain and decades of preparation.

That Iran's capability to bombard is down doesn't mean it's zero.

They just fired off their big alpha strike at the start and have since switched to a more sustainable firing pattern. Same with the US. The US launched its big alpha strike at the start and since then sortie rates have greatly fallen.

The Houthis were being supplied from Iran.

And now the challenge is fighting Iran... I don't see how that supports your case.

Perhaps it just means Bolton is a reverse weather vane.

What, so he was calling for war for the last 30 years and it was dumb then but suddenly it's smart now, when he starts expressing doubts publicly? What's the mechanic here? I think 'reverse weather vane' is an idea that sounds a lot more clever than it actually is.

Iraq fought Iran to a stalemate in the Iran/Iraq war (which Iraq started). They fell to ISIS after the US had destroyed their military and government the first time. The idea that Iran has a far superior warfighting ability than Iraq under Saddam is not supported.

They just fired off their big alpha strike at the start and have since switched to a more sustainable firing pattern. Same with the US. The US launched its big alpha strike at the start and since then sortie rates have greatly fallen.

Are you the Iran Propaganda Minister?

The Houthis were being supplied from Iran.

And now the challenge is fighting Iran... I don't see how that supports your case.

The point is the US could blow up the Houthi's missiles and they would just get resupply from untouched capacity in Iran. Iran itself doesn't have that option.

Are you the Iran Propaganda Minister?

There's clearly a huge gulf between our information sources on this war. You and I are not commentating on the same conflict, at a fundamental level. Maybe you're listening to the mainstream, 'approved' sources. I too saw a little bit of them. On day 1 they were clearly expecting some kind of mass revolution that overthrows the regime. They were clearly delusional. These are the same people who just recycle atrocity propaganda and 'Israeli government sources confirm' or 'US military announces' as news.

If the war was going well, would the Trump administration really be unsanctioning Iranian oil? They're flailing around like a drowning man.

The last being quite critical -- it'll be hard for Iran to rebuild while its population is dying of thirst.

Agreed, the USA could do this. Would it be worth it though? Would this be accretive for Pax Americana? Does this make America more secure as the world Hegemon? Or is it instance #69 of China getting to sit back and look like the rational reasonable alternative to the western "rules based world order"?

Sure, we can practically genocide (I know this word is not to be used lightly, however I'm not sure what else to call "wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to your clean water and energy nationwide?") Iran, but does that really make things better?

"The USA destroys Iranian industrial civilization, millions die" strikes me as one of the main events students memorize in 2126 for the "5 main things that caused the fall of American global empire"

Obviously this would be a terrible choice; I don't know if it would be better or worse than not preventing Iran from getting nukes. Depends on whether it makes them North Korea or they actually start a nuclear war or attempt nuclear blackmail (e.g. "Israel's Jews all leave or we nuke things") over it. I don't think these are the only two choices, but if they were, the choice of committing genocide upon Iran would be available.

Reasonable take! I like it

Sure, we can practically genocide (I know this word is not to be used lightly, however I'm not sure what else to call "wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to your clean water and energy nationwide?") Iran, but does that really make things better?

Are you implying that NATO did genocide in Serbia?

"If President Milosevic really wants all of his population to have water and electricity all he has to do is accept NATO's five conditions and we will stop this campaign. But as long as he doesn't do so we will continue to attack those targets which provide the electricity for his armed forces. If that has civilian consequences, it's for him to deal with but that water, that electricity is turned back on for the people of Serbia"

I mean I'm not a fan of that either for similar reasons, so if NATO had choked out Yugoslavia so hard that hundreds of thousands-millions of Serbs/etc started dying of dehydration and chlorea then yeah, that would be.

Im not a big "collective punishment" or "just overthrow your government despite the fact you don't have electricity or water (they do, they have guns so they have what's left of it)" and if you accomplish this impossible task you can drink clean water again"

If we want the Iranians to overthrow their government (I do , I want this for them) we should actually help the fucking protestors. But we clearly missed that window bc the Iranian govt killed 10-30,000 of the people most likely to stand up and rally around.

This US did that before. The US took Afghanistan, as you may recall. And held it for 20 years. Couldn't quash the insurgency (partially because it was based in Pakistan) but that's a different matter.

How is it a different matter? What we learned from Afghanistan is that even 20 years of boots on the ground didn't make for anything sustainable, the system we created collapsed within a year.

The takeaway here would suggest that we need permanent occupation in Iran and that the forever wars need to be basically indefinite in order to feign meaningful success. That's incredibly relevant when talking about other operations in the middle east.

Like what's the plan here, just keep playing whack a mole with the arab nations forever? Are we gonna loop this now, just spend tons of money fiddling around, pull back and then immediately go back in? "This time the mole won't pop up again, my predecessors just weren't smart enough to hit them with the plastic mallet"

How is it a different matter? What we learned from Afghanistan is that even 20 years of boots on the ground didn't make for anything sustainable, the system we created collapsed within a year.

It's a different matter because the question was whether we could successfully invade, not whether we could successfully build a US-friendly regime.

If invasions don't result in US friendly regimes, why would we be invading then?

If invasions don't result in US friendly regimes, why would we be invading then?

To destroy an unfriendly regime's capacity to act on their unfriendliness.

You can’t turn Iran into Afghanistan because Iran is populated by Persians and Afghanistan is populated by Afghan. That’s like saying you can turn Japan into Afghanistan.

Literally, afghans are persians. Their main language is a dialect of persian. Literal, actual, identical to the ones in Iran persians are the second biggest ethnic group, Pashtuns(the largest) are another persian ethnic group.

Per capita income world bank in purchasing power terms in Iran is like $19,000. Pre-US invasion Afghan had like $500 per capita income and with US war aid rose to $1000. One country builds nukes and the other herds sheep. Their might be some common language but they are not the same people.

Afghanistan, like North Korea, far underperforms its national average IQ for governance related reasons. So, for that matter, does Iran.

I think we can.

I think that without food, creature comforts, and legal consequence, many if not most people will revert to behaving like pre-civilizational savages in short order.

I posted this above and I want to ask you too

Agreed, the USA could do this to Iran. Would it be worth it though? Would this be accretive for Pax Americana? Does this make America more secure as the world Hegemon? Or is it instance #69 of China getting to sit back and look like the rational reasonable alternative to the western "rules based world order"?

"Do nothing: win" is rapidly becoming the dominant strategy for the CCP.

Sure, we can practically genocide (I know this word is not to be used lightly, however I'm not sure what else to call "wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to your clean water and energy nationwide?") Iran, but does that really make things better?

"The USA destroys Iranian industrial civilization, millions die" strikes me as one of the main events students memorize in 2126 for the "5 main things that caused the fall of American global empire"

...turn Japan into Afghanistan.

You mean the Sengoku jidai?

Admittedly it's not a perfect parallel, but it does go to show that countries can change rather dramatically.

I think that no matter how many bombs you drop you would have a lot of trouble turning Germany into Germany, too.

I'm just saying that the differences we see between cultures are not hard-coded into our DNA.

The problem is that some differences certainly aren't, but that doesn't mean other differences aren't. The questions here would be: (1) which characteristics of Iranian society/culture would need to change and how, for Iran to "turn into Afghanistan" as is meant by that statement here (presumably culturally/socially/governmentally or the like, rather than literally or demographically), and (2) are those changes within the bounds of what is possible in a population made of people who we would genetically categorize as "Persian."

Unfortunately, I feel like our level of knowledge on this kind of thing is akin to Archimedes's level of knowledge of orbital dynamics and special relativity. We just haven't done the (potentially centuries' worth of required) scientific work to actually gain meaningful insight into this.

Once upon a time Germans were stereotyped as romantic and sentimental while the French were seen rationalist and bureaucratic rules-followers.

For all history (until rise of Prussia from swamp backwater to great power in 18th century) Germans were stereotyped as lazy bums interested only in eating and drinking. The French had well deserved reputation of heroism, honor and war mongering.

(the infamous surrender monkey memes came from GWOT times)

I remember 18th century graphic depicting stereotypical ways to die for each European nation - Englishman dies at sea, Frenchman dies by sword, Italian dies of love, German dies of drink (can't find it anymore).

After the migration period and up to the rise of Prussia, Germans lived in hundreds to thousands of tiny principalities. What where they supposed to do, except work, fuck, eat and drink? That's just not the kind of political landscape that gives rise to attempts at conquering the world.

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styrian_Table_of_Peoples

Germans were stereotyped as lazy bums interested only in eating and drinking.

...and intellectual pursuits.

"In the beginning, the good God gave to the French the dominion of the land, to the English the dominion of the seas, and to the Germans the dominion of the clouds." --Jean Paul Richter

They never had a nuclear weapons program. That is not a real thing. No expert has alleged that. I think everyone would be okay with quietly destroying a legitimate nuclear weapons program in Iran. But that’s not even a card on the table.

we turn them into a failed state

Why would this be a proportionate response to their arming Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups which pose 0 threat to America and only the tiniest threat to Israel? Why would we even be interested in turning Great Civs to dust? This is not a noble pursuit. It seems sociopathic. The ideology behind this isn’t even found in Albanian blood feuds, which have some measure of honorable proportionality. This is like African Warlord moral reasoning, or ISIS reasoning. Iran is filled with people, some of them are very smart and talented. It’s a more aesthetically beautiful country than Israel. It has cool art. If you’re interested in urban architecture, you’ve probably seen modern Iranian buildings online without knowing it. Americans (before the conflict) could just go to Iran and travel. You could be invited to someone’s home. You would be treated with more hospitality than an American treated in some religious quarter of Jerusalem, by whom you would considered an eternal stranger.

An actual problem plaguing America is the amount of drugs that come from domestic and Central American gangs. This actually threatens us. Horrible casualties from drugs. we can actually just blow up these gangs, and it would be both morally sound and effective. The cartels work with the Mexican deep state (really), and we can declare war and blow them up to save American lives. But why would I want to destroy Mexico forever just because they are responsible for some tens of thousands of dead Americans, unless I am a genuinely evil person? I wouldn’t even want us to target the homes of Mexican soldiers, which I think we are doing in Iran right now. Do we really think that we will be hegemonic forever (note the demographics), so we don’t fear China will use the same strategies against our grandchildren in 2126?

I think it is just as valid to ask as how is it not?

Consider that America gains power in negotiation with Israel and the Gulf Arabs if there is a strong Iran threatening them. This makes us wealthier and safer: we can obtain more things, including technology, for less under the promise of our protection. If Iran is taken out, our advantage over these foreign countries is weakened. We have also closed the door on getting anything from Iran, which sucks because we could have certainly recruited hundreds of their 150 high iq human capital in exchange for sanction reliefs. That would have helped us against China!

The ideology behind this isn’t even found in Albanian blood feuds, which have some measure of honorable proportionality. This is like African Warlord moral reasoning, or ISIS reasoning.

Welcome to Israel's realpolitik, they would love for nothing less than the states around them capable of giving them real grief to be open-air slave market hellholes filled with starvation and suffering, and bibi (if he's even alive) wouldn't bat an eye at the inhumanity.

You state that Iran never had a nuclear weapons program but many organizations most notably the IAEA and the Iranian Government themselves have claimed otherwise.

You ask "Why would this be a proportionate response to their arming Hamas and Hezbollah?"...

...and my response is that I never claimed that it was "proportionate". In fact, I see no reason why it ought to be "proportionate". What I believe I said was that bombing them to a pre-industrial tech level was preferable to the letting the IRGC have access to nuclear missiles.

You talk about how a powerful Iran granting us leverage? My reply to you is that you're looking at the small picture, I'm looking at the fact that over 3/4ths of Iran's oil and just over a 1/4ths of the rest of the Gulf State's oil is bound for China and we want ensure that the Petro-Dollar stays a Dollar and doesn't become a Yuan because, once again, "if the US is going to occupy the role of hegemon we must play the role."

My question for you is do you think that allowing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to have nukes would have a stabilizing effect on world affairs or do you agree with me that it would have a destabilizing effect, if the latter how much of a destabilizing effect?

If you care about stability as a terminal goal, then we need to get rid of Israel’s nukes, and also get them out of their occupied land, which is a precondition for normalization among the Arab nations. But I don’t think pro-Israelis care about “stability”, they just care about Israel.

and also get them out of their occupied land, which is a precondition for normalization among the Arab nations

Is it though? Israel has had decent relations with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab nations for decades now.

get them out of their occupied land

Which land is that, exactly? "From the river to the sea?"

I would not characterize myself as "pro-Israel" but it's weird to me that you (and many, many others) present anti-Israel as the neutral position. The fact is, a significant percentage of Muslims will not be satisfied with anything less than the total annihilation of Israel. If the Muslims and Arab colonists terrorizing the non-Muslims in the region stop fighting, there will be no more fighting. If Israel stops fighting, there will be no more Israel.

Of course, "no more Israel" is plausibly a more stable equilibrium than "some Israel remaining!" But I don't think one needs to be "pro Israel" to suspect that "just somehow convince all the Jews and Christians to vacate the region, or agree to be subjugated under under Islamic rule" is neither a humane nor a plausible position.

According to Saudi Arabia, normalization is possible with a return to 1967 borders and a sovereign Palestinian state. My suggestion is that if “stabilization” was what we really wanted, this would stabilize the region.

a significant percentage of Muslims will not be satisfied with anything less than the total annihilation of Israel

I’m not so sure. Israel, as a condition for their recognition of a Palestinian state, can ask the Arab monarchies to enshrine its borders into law and penalize those who openly call to dispute these borders. I think MBS would genuinely consider doing this for regional stability, but would Israel ever consider it? (Likely not, they want more land!)

I do not think there is any country safer in the Middle East than Israel. They are nuclear-armed, they have western leaders constantly harkening to them, they have the most sophisticated intelligence network by a large margin, the have an incredible tech sector and they have an extraordinarily wealthy and committed diaspora located throughout the world. No single group is safer. I just do not see a reality in which Israel is threatened.

I’m not so sure. Israel, as a condition for their recognition of a Palestinian state, can ask the Arab monarchies to enshrine its borders into law and penalize those who openly call to dispute these borders.

What exactly does "rule of law" mean to a bunch of autocrats and how is it supposed to protect them from the paroxysms of their own people when they have to go murder Palestinians for the sake of the Jews?

Because that IS what it'll come to. And it won't be a clean war. It'll be the terrorists doing what they do now and hiding under hospitals and other places that'll make it even more monstrous in the eyes of the Ummah to do Israel's dirty work.

There's always this selective lack of realism . I don't think I've ever seen anyone suggest that passing a law would protect Ukraine from Putin's Russia.

Are you really asking why an absolutist monarch would be able to enshrine something into law and actually have it followed? Saudi Arabia does mass executions all the time. Including on Muslim clerics that they disagree with. If the King says that his subjects must assent to Israel’s borders and not protest, then they will obey him. MBS does not have a lot of Arabs openly disagreeing with him. Is Israel more trustworthy with their constant ceasefire violations?

An absolutist monarch can do whatever they like. Why bring up the law element? Presumably because you want something more stable than his whim.

But therein lies the problem: what an absolutist monarch has done, he can undo (or just ignore). The appeal to law is just pointless at best then. What you're actually appealing to is the idea that it's always going to be in their interests to not only suppress domestic hatred of Israel but also help suppress revisionist Palestinian attacks on Israel. Not turn a blind eye, be actively complicit (when simply refusing to do anything about Palestine is already unpopular).

And they're going to do this forever, no matter what happens, because ??

I personally wouldn't feel very comfortable here.

Is Israel more trustworthy with their constant ceasefire violations?

Is Saudi Arabia's defense against genocide taking Israel's word for things?

More comments

I do not think there is any country safer in the Middle East than Israel. They are nuclear-armed...

Sure, that clearly matters.

No single group is safer. I just do not see a reality in which Israel is threatened.

Perhaps not! And yet your own recommendation seems to have been in part--

we need to get rid of Israel’s nukes

By your own logic, Israel should give up (at least some portion of) their safety. And my response was, and is--that is not plausible, but even if it was, it seems very likely to end badly for them.

a significant percentage of Muslims will not be satisfied with anything less than the total annihilation of Israel

I’m not so sure.

I mean, sure, #notallMuslims, but as a rule a majority of Palestinians report that their preference is for Israel to cease to exist. (I believe that the reverse is now true as well, though my memory is that it did not used to be--most Israelis today apparently report a preference that e.g. all Palestinians be expelled from Gaza. I'm less sure about the West Bank.) Likewise, Egyptians do not seem to favor the existence of Israel. Other Muslims in the region seem to broadly follow this pattern. People want peace in theory, and favor de-escalation in principle, but are nevertheless comfortable with the proposition that Israel should not exist, that they should not do business with Israel, nor accept aid from Israel, nor come to Israel's aid in case of a natural disaster, etc.

Muslims are a diverse group, with a lot of factions and infighting, so there are always counterexamples, of course. Whether they should be required to coexist with Jews is an interesting question! But as things stand, I do not think there is very much likelihood of Muslims willingly coexisting with Jews anywhere Muslims wield significant political influence. I don't think it requires a person to be "pro-Israel" to observe the reality of public opinion among the Middle Eastern Muslim demographic clearly favoring the destruction of Israel. Realistically, I suspect that without the United States' continued involvement, we would eventually be looking at the genocide of Middle Eastern Jews as an inevitable historical outcome. Perhaps it is inevitable anyway. But certainly there is no Israeli capitulation beyond mass migration that I see the Muslim world accepting on a permanent basis, and I'm sure Israel knows that; certainly, they are beginning to behave as if they know it.

(But only beginning. If Israel still exists in 200 years, it may only be because they have, and perhaps will have used, nuclear weapons.)

The problem with Israel having nukes is that it incentivizes other states to have nukes. While the Israelis may be solipsistic enough to feel they are the only ensouled and rational creatures dwelling in the Middle East, we can’t actually expect other sovereign states and cultures to feel this way. If what we want is regional stability, then enemies don’t just get a vote, they also get theory of mind and dignity. Would Israel be fine with Oman getting nukes? Egypt? Is the region safer with Saudi Arabia under the nuclear umbrella of Pakistan? (Do you know that was triggered by Israel breaking all international norms by trying to kill a negotiating team in a sovereign country? How might a rational country change their policies after witnessing that?)

a majority of Palestinians report that their preference is for Israel to cease to exist

A majority of Palestinians exist in a perpetual post-9/11 state due to the relentless Israeli atrocities that go unpunished. Just this week, the stories are that a family of five was gunned down in the West Bank, while another family was tied up and raped as state-sponsored Jewish-supremacist terrorists beat random women and stole their valuables. This comes as the Defense Minister of Israel has apologized to five IDF rapists, believing that they should not have been charged for raping a detained prisoner, an act that was corroborated by the chief lawyer of the IDF (since resigned), a medical report, and a video. Just this week.

In any case, the surrounding Muslim countries have genuinely sought normalized relations contingent upon a Palestinian state. That was behind the Abraham Accords (no settling in West Bank). Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait are all willing to do this, unless you think they are just making things up. Turkey’s relationship with Israel has soured because of Gaza which shows that they are genuinely interested in Palestinian rights. Wouldn’t Jews behave the same way if the roles were reversed? If there were a group of oppressed Jews somewhere in the world, then Jewish communities worldwide would be pressuring their governments to intervene.

Okay, but it's not clear to me what I am supposed to conclude from all that.

I am trying to speak as descriptively as possible, here. If you think Israel should not exist (is that what you think?) then like--I don't have much to say about that. I'm not interested in (or, probably even very capable of) defending any particular Israeli action on the international stage. The country exists. Like all countries, I'm confident that they get up to some shady stuff. I don't know all the answers to your (rhetorical?) questions, but I don't think that any of them have any substantive bearing on my point.

If there were a group of oppressed Jews somewhere in the world, then Jewish communities worldwide would be pressuring their governments to intervene.

We do see some of that, though interestingly some American Jews seem to also be of the view that Israeli Jews should, ultimately, be subjected to mass migration or genocide (though they would not phrase it that way, it would be the result of their advocacy succeeding). Politics makes strange bedfellows! But one perhaps important difference between Middle Eastern Muslims and Middle Eastern Jews is that there are many Muslim countries, both in the Middle East and outside of it, and there is only one Jewish country. Strangely, very few Muslim countries are therefore willing to open their borders to Palestinians. Indeed, in many Muslim circles, Palestinians are scarcely better than Jews! Outside of Israel/Palestine, the Middle Eastern Muslim attitude toward Palestinians seems to be that they are useful idiots and foot soldiers, but you wouldn't want your daughter to bring one home for dinner.

If you're right that (A) Israel's nukes are what is substantially destabilizing the region and (B) Israel is safe because it has nukes then you are suggesting, deductively, that the stability of the region depends on Israel no longer being safe. I think that what I am doing here is agreeing with you, while pointing out that "therefore Israel should stop being safe" is neither a humane nor a plausible solution to the problem as you've described it. Indeed, it seems like your real argument boils down to something like "Israel's existence is what destabilizes the Middle East, so probably the rest of the world would be better off if Israel didn't exist."

I have my doubts about this--I think that the Middle East would be filled with different conflicts, absent Israel--but even if I'm wrong about that, I find myself quite unable to endorse "allow the expulsion and/or extermination of Middle Eastern Jews and Christians from Israel/Palestine" as a humane approach to the problem. YMMV! But that seems like one hell of a Danegeld.

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People want peace in theory, and favor de-escalation in principle, but are nevertheless comfortable with the proposition that Israel should not exist, that they should not do business with Israel, nor accept aid from Israel, nor come to Israel's aid in case of a natural disaster, etc.

A cynic might say people want peace when they're losing. When they're winning (or even vaguely appear to be inching towards their goals) they get emboldened.

When I hear pro-Palestinian supporters in the West complain that unilateral withdrawal doesn't work or withdrawing from Lebanon discredited the more peaceable types who wanted to negotiate I don't know how to take it except as an admission that the particular memeplex Palestinians have adopted (or has possessed them) makes showing weakness (what some call "good faith") the exact wrong thing to do.

Yeah, sadly I think this has become the new equilibrium in many contexts, including a lot of U.S. politics. Losers seek coexistence. Winners exterminate the opposition. The fact that this seems to inevitably descend into a cycle of conflict which both sides would be better off having never entered in the first place is simply shrugged off as a problem for some later generation. It's maddening.

but it's weird to me that you (and many, many others) present anti-Israel as the neutral position.

The lesson to take from this is that if you're unreasoningly hostile other people will find it more convenient to bend to you rather than forcing you to a compromise position.

No perverse incentives here of course.

People talk a lot about not paying the Danegeld, but the Vikings did have a long successful run.

What are you trying to say?

Did you intend to imply that "paying the danegeld" is/was the virtuous choice?

No, I'm saying demanding Danegeld often works.

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My question for you is do you think that allowing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to have nukes would have a stabilizing effect on world affairs or do you agree with me that it would have a destabilizing effect, if the latter how much of a destabilizing effect?

I mean... during my lifetime, no one had a more destabilizing effect on the world in general, and the Middle East in particular than the United States. If it's even true that Iran is scrambling for nukes, it's patently clear the reason they're doing so is because America deposed a ruler that handed off his in good faith, on the assurance that he will not be attacked. I'm not sure what effect a nuclear Iran would have, but a world that becomes more stable as a result is not difficult to imagine.

I mean... during my lifetime, no one had a more destabilizing effect on the world in general, and the Middle East in particular than the United States.

During your lifetime, the US has also been the glue that holds the world together. We "destabilize" within the paradigm that we are the source of all stability.

But ok, I have some sympathy with the notion that the rest of the world doesn't deserve the effort. How do you think that would go? Take a look at the Belt and Road, Empire of Dust, the fishing fleets, and explain why you think Pax China will be better.

The Chinese don't want a Pax China though. They aren't going to intervene in Middle Eastern conflicts no matter what. They don't intervene because they don't want to not because they can't. Russia had their fingers all over Syria and China did nothing. The same thing with this current Iran conflict. People keep asking why China doesn't help their ally! Because they aren't really allies just friendly associates and China doesn't see it as their business They'll condemn America and move on. Despite getting double digit percentages of their oil from Iran they are likely to come out ahead instead of trying to "secure their oil" by sticking their hands in the hornets nest.

Empire of Dust

Of the things you mentioned this is what I'm most familiar with. What's supposed to be the problem with building infrastructure while being mildly derogatory of the natives? Even if I'm the target, I'll literally take it over the gay race communism you guys shoved into Europe.

Empire was part of the broader Belt and Road Initiative, which was basically corporatist colonialism without any noblisse oblige. I namedropped it because I figured people might be more familiar with it. It's just a prompt.

Let's say the US massively pulls back from it's efforts stabilizing the world. What do you think fills the void, and why would it be better?

which was basically corporatist colonialism without any noblisse oblige

I'm happy to admit that European colonialism with noblesse oblige was better (I think even the Chinese were impressed with what was left over), but we seem to have decided that it's racist and it's better to do nothing, send food over every mce in a while, and constantly self-flagelate. So the Chinese seem to win this one.

Let's say the US massively pulls back from it's efforts stabilizing the world. What do you think fills the void, and why would it be better?

Probably some rough times initially, with people jumping in to fill the power vacuum, and later on more uneasy truces, and less galaxy brained attempt at End Of History-esque spread of liberalism.

Though I have a bit of an issue with the question - pulling out now means we'd get the worst of both worlds. You already messed up the world several times, and withdrawing isn't going to undo it.

during my lifetime, no one had a more destabilizing effect on the world in general, and the Middle East in particular than the United States.

That doesn't answer the question. Do you think that a world where the IRGC has nukes is more stable or less stable than the counterfactual that we currently live in?

Secondly the only two countries to voluntarily relinquish an existing nuclear weapons capability that I am aware of are South Africa and Ukraine, who are you referring to?

That doesn't answer the question. Do you think that a world where the IRGC has nukes is more stable or less stable than the counterfactual that we currently live in?

Yeah, the part that answered it is "I'm not sure, but it's not difficult to imagine". You can round it off to "yes" if you don't like my uncertainty.

Secondly the only two countries to voluntarily relinquish an existing nuclear weapons capability that I am aware of are South Africa and Ukraine, who are you referring to?

Gaddafi. Looking it up now, I see he didn't quite make it to the finish line.

no one had a more destabilizing effect on the world in general, and the Middle East in particular than the United States.

I think there's a decent case to be made that Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi had an effect at least comparable to the United States in the Middle East since 2011, being the spark that ultimately deposed 4 governments in the region (Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen), and indirectly kicked off regional wars (ISIS) in Iraq, Syria (ultimately deposing that regime as well), and Yemen. Longer term, several other countries have also seen major changes. Yeah, the US was involved in some of those peripherally (Libya, Yemen, likely political pressure on Egypt), but I hardly consider it central to those events.

Although I'm not an expert on the region and would be interested in hearing other opinions.

Given the crackdown of western governments against social media, when a few elections didn't go the way they wanted, I find it hard to believe that the role of the US in the Arab Spring was non-central, and it was all about some dude setting himself on fire.

Frankly, the very notion of "organic" mass movements is in dire need of evidence.

Why would the US organize protests against their allies?

To get local politics more on side. There was a story bout Trump looking into supporting the populist right-wing parties in Europe, or Europens helping the campaign against Trump, for example.

Also, during the era in question, liberalism was particularly high on it's own supply, and it seemed like the western elites literally believed the End of History thing, and thought they can turn Arabs into gay race communists overnight.

I find it hard to believe that the role of the US in the Arab Spring was non-central,

I see why it could look that way: at the time, it looked like a plausible hypothesis. But I'll also note that the deposed governments were a mix of traditional US/West enemies (Libya) and at least soft allies (Egypt, Yemen). Egypt, in particular, became much less Western-aligned during the tenure of the Muslim Brotherhood. Western relations with Syria had been improving prior to the kickoff of its civil war in 2011, then got worse quickly.

Middle eastern governments in 2011 were likely much worse at bullying social media companies than first world governments in 2020.

The companies were also probably not the same, in part because of the Arab Spring. IIRC around the time of ISIS Twitter was more libertarian about the whole thing but then were stuck on the horns of a dilemma. Do you let your platform be used to show beheaded Americans and propaganda that was actively radicalizing people? Do you shut down those accounts and kill possible intelligence sources? Their solution was more coordination with the government.

Once you cede that principle you're not going back.

Why crack down on social media if mass movements are not a threat?

Emphasis on "organic". Mass movements require coordination, and anyone who tried organizing something as simple as a book club will tell you how much inertia coordination typically needs to overcome.

I suppose an organic mass movement is not entirely impossible, but when we're talking about simultaneous uprisings spanning multiple countries, we're entering pissing on some and telling them it's raining territory. Even with the recent protests in Iran, you could literally see the blob prepping for the op.

They never had a nuclear weapons program. That is not a real thing. No expert has alleged that.

This is trivially false. From Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs:

The documents that the Belfer group were shown confirm that senior Iranian officials had decided in the late 1990s to actually manufacture nuclear weapons and carry out an underground nuclear test; that Iran’s program to do so made more technical progress than had previously been understood; and that Iran had help from quite a number of foreign scientists, and access to several foreign nuclear weapon designs. The archive also leaves open a wide range of questions, including what plan, if any, Iran has had with respect to nuclear weapons in the nearly 16 years since Iran’s government ordered a halt to most of the program in late 2003.

Or, if that's not neutral enough for you, from the IAEA:

Information available to the Agency prior to November 2011 indicated that Iran had arranged, via a number of different and evolving management structures, for activities to be undertaken in support of a possible military dimension to its nuclear programme. According to this information, the organisational structures covered most of the areas of activity relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.

You can read the entire report full of details of exactly what actions Iran took in support of the nuclear program they denied having. It's honestly pretty cool James Bond stuff:

Information available to the Agency in 2011 also indicated that Iran could have benefitted from the aforementioned foreign expert, who had knowledge of both MPI technology and experimental diagnostics and had worked for much of his career in the nuclear weapon programme in his country of origin. The foreign expert’s presence in Iran in the period 1996-2001 has been confirmed by Iran, although it stated that his activities were related to the production of nanodiamonds.

And it is true that the IAEA very measuredly declines to say that Iran's program is ongoing, pointing to historical evidence rather than more recent evidence. But their report strongly suggests that Iran did, historically, have a nascent nuclear weapons program:

The Agency’s overall assessment is that a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities took place after 2003.

There is a difference between a uranium enrichment program and a nuclear weapons program, but there’s not that much of a difference.

Similar to the difference between making gunpowder and making ammunition, I suppose.

It's more like the difference between making Bacardi White and Bacardi 151.

The only meaningful difference between reactor fuel and and the core of a fission bomb is the density of U-235 in the sample.

Seeing as how the process of enriching uranium - the hard part of building nuclear weapons - is altering the density of U-235 in the sample, the "only" is doing some very heavy lifting there.

My point is that if you already have the tools, the difference is mostly how long you let it cook.

Yeah sorting an uncountable number of atoms by mass quite a task.

as the global hegemon, international trade flows freely (and for the most part safely) largely thanks to guarantees that are enforced by the US Navy. If the US is the world's cop, Iran is not some innocent brown kid who got shot for no reason, they're the habitual bad actor with dozens of prior complaints and arrests.

I like how the view on free trade swings radically back and forth like this because Trump is a very strong protectionist but the reality is that international trade is so massively beneficial that fucking with it too much makes the admin and supporters have to defend trading with others because it truly does make things more expensive and worse when disrupted.

This Henry George quote will never go out of fashion

Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same—to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

Ironically what Iran seeks to do here with oil and trade across the strait now is exactly what Trump wants to do with other goods, even things that we literally can't do in the US like . Block things from being transferred and cause economic pain.

You lost on trade. Trump did tariffs and nothing bad happens, the economy did as good as before, stocks boomed, and a bunch of tax revenue was created.

We can quote some old dead guy. Or we just did an experiment and have results.

Even if it was true "our flagship policy didn't completely fuck us" isn't really something worth bragging about.

Even if it was true "our flagship policy didn't completely fuck us" isn't really something worth bragging about.

Seems too uncharitable when the original claim also included

and a bunch of tax revenue was created.

Which isn't to say that I agree. The whole tarrifs thing seems like a lot of noise for little good, IMO.

Trump did tariffs

Only partially, Trump pulled back a lot on the effective tariff rate from the ones at the "liberation day" announcement. Yes if you don't do the thing nearly as much as you say you will, the effects won't be as bad as predicted by economists.

Nothing bad happens

Untrue, lots of companies have suffered (especially small businesses like the ones that sued Trump). For example here's a news station interviewing local small businesses in eastern North Carolina

Heck even the Trump admin themselves acknowledged that tariffs were raising prices, because they removed/reduced some of the tariffs on food products in fear higher prices were upsetting people.

The economy did as good as before

So even if this was true, the best you can say is "it changed nothing" for the economy?

stocks boomed

Wait till you see how the US stock market is growing compared to others.. In an economic boom year worldwide, we're being outpaced. The thing keeping us afloat are our tech companies (AI) and healthcare. Things like manufacturing which the tariffs are apparently supposed to help are practically in recession conditions

And a bunch of tax revenue was created.

Yes if you tax businesses, you make tax revenue. No one debated that taxing people makes the government more money. We should start implementing even more taxes, it's free money and has no economic downsides.

IMO US stock market versus rest of the world isn’t a great counter-argument here. It’s mostly been a value stocks versus tech rotation. Low valuation stocks have done well everywhere. Foreign indexes don’t have mag 7 or IT/software which entered the period expensive. If you compare says banks or industrials (bulk of foreign stocks) their far more similar performance.

"If you don't count the US stocks that have done really well, foreign stocks have done pretty well too!" isn't such a great argument.

If you want to compare coal plants to coal plants etc then you would want to exclude a lot of software/tech stocks versus foreign stocks. Then you would be comparing similar industries. Most EM indexes are commodities, usually one Verizon type firm, and banks. It just doesn’t make sense to compare a copper mining stock index to Apple.

Wait till you see how the US stock market is growing compared to others.

Can I please get this chart in a version that goes back more than one year?

What does that have to do with tariffs that were imposed only a year ago

If you could see the exact same trend going back decades, then the tariffs had nothing to do with it. Or maybe it turns out that the recent trend doesn't add up to a spit in the bucket, and only looks bad if you zoom in extremely.

Any chart that mysteriously begins at the point of the thing it's trying to criticize is virtually guaranteed to pull that trick. Even longer (but still short term) charts are suspect, Paul Krugman was notorious for that shit, for example.

Fair points

https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/compare/vti-vs-veu/

and then sit on our thumbs when they renege on those promises 6-monthes later.

Is this a reference to anything? Was Iran in violation of the JCPOA prior to Trump pulling out? It looks to me like the USA was the one who reneged on their promise.

There is a trend I'm noticing where all of the "good" arguments for the war in Iran would also have applied to the war in Iraq.

  • Vague suspicions of WMD-related wrongdoing.

  • We've already been at war for years. We just need to finish the job.

  • Killing our enemies is good actually.

  • State-sponsored terrorism.

  • The regime oppresses its own people.

I want to know why these arguments were wrong when applied to Iraq circa 2003, but right when applied to Iran in 2026. In the alternative, I want the case for why the Iraq War was a good idea.

There is a trend I'm noticing where all of the "good" arguments for the war in Iran would also have applied to the war in Iraq.

People people here seem forget that what the "problem" with Iraq was not the initial invasion, the removal of Saddam Hussein, or even necessarily the first few years of nation building. The problem was that we ended up funneling a bunch of guns and money to allegedly "moderate" Salafists who would go on to become the Islamic State, effectively making shit worse.

The problem was that we ended up funneling a bunch of guns and money to allegedly "moderate" Salafists who would go on to become the Islamic State, effectively making shit worse.

That was the solution found to the problems with the first few years of nation building.

Was Iran in violation of the JCPOA prior to Trump pulling out?

My understanding is that Iran was technically in breach of JCPOA from the moment they signed it by failing to disclose their prior military-related nuclear activities, which they did not.

There is a trend I'm noticing where all of the "good" arguments for the war in Iran would also have applied to the war in Iraq.

As I think I've said in here before, Iraq is remembered as a "bad" war because the US tried to nation-build. The US conducted multiple punitive attacks under Reagan and Clinton (including operations against Iran) and George H.W. Bush drove Iraq out of Kuwait in a major regional war and while people sometimes criticize them on principle nobody suggests they were the massive blunder Iraq was. This doesn't necessarily mean that a punitive expedition into Iraq was a mistake, and what we are doing in Iran might also be a mistake, but if we just blow up all of their stuff and leave without taking major strategic losses it's unlikely it will be a mistake in the same category as Iraq.

Well it’s not a ground invasion for starters. It’s not a massive regime change. It may end up in that stupid way - but it’s not yet, and there’s hope it won’t.

Iran actually is / was on its way to a bomb eventually.

Iran (from what I understand but could be completely wrong) sponsors way more world terrorism than Iraq.

I know this isnt the main point, but what draws you the GOP/vote for republican.

This is is a worthy question that is difficult answer in detail without effectively doxing myself, but the broad strokes are that I grew up poor but my grandfather was a state representative. I managed to worm my way into the halls of power, only to recognize that "these are not my people" and that I was not theirs.

Huh, interesting to know that the big wigs at Harvard & Yale arent that much better than the rest of us!

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