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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6576 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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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!

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?

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.

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

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.

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