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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   1015 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 19, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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This is not factually accurate.

I am unaware of any U.S. military bases or U.S. troops in several of the attacked countries, of which there are over ten.

To list, at least: Israel, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Cyprus. By implication also the U.S., U.K., and France, and depending on how you want to count it Diego Garcia. Several of these were explicitly not getting involved.

I am also unaware of any evidence of U.S. military assets being present in a majority of the attacked civilian infrastructure. Some of the targets can be painted as part of an escalation ladder. Random civilian buildings can not.

unaware of any US military bases or U.S. troops

Israel

Come the fuck on. Are you even trying to participate in a good faith discussion? Are you going to seriously sit here and claim that Israel was not party to the attacks on Iran? Do you believe there's no military co-operation between Israel and the US?

Diego Garcia.

Are you for real? Did you forget a sentence or something here? If you aren't aware of any US military bases on Diego Garcia I think you need to go and do some more research before continuing to post on this topic.

I'm sorry - based off of your response I think you may have misread my comment, or at least you are not responding to what I actually said.

Given the specifics of the way you jumped in here it could be as part of some didactic exercise, please clarify if so.

Thank you!

Could you please clarify what your list actually meant then? When you said "I am unaware of any U.S. military bases or U.S. troops in several of the attacked countries" you then followed up with "To list, at least: Israel,". What, exactly, were you listing? I interpreted your post as listing countries that were attacked which lacked US military bases or US Troops, because simply listing all countries that had been attacked and implying that some of them lacked US Military bases or Troops would be ambiguous and useless in a good faith discussion. I'm not aware of any nations that Iran has attacked which didn't contribute to the attacks on them, with the exception of Lebanon (which is a difficult situation anyway, because to the best of my knowledge Iran has been attacking Israeli forces inside Lebanese territory).

because simply listing all countries that had been attacked and implying that some of them lacked US Military bases or Troops would be ambiguous and useless in a good faith discussion.

I think this implies you understood what I meant and decided not to interpret it correctly?

From my perspective, the two interpretations were you that you were wrong and/or didn't know the details of the situation, or that you were creating unnecessary ambiguity to obscure the actual argument you were making - what's the point of listing countries which were attacked and asking me to guess which of them your criteria actually apply to? I believed that the first interpretation was the more charitable.

I think Iran's response is massively scattershot, but Azerbaijan is the only country in that list without US bases and/or troops.

IIRC Cyprus wasn't the U.S. (well I think they might have some classified assets there maybe?), I'm not sure where France got attacked but that probably was non-U.S. Iran seems to have accidentally attacked Palestine and Lebanon.

Iran lacks the targeting ability to actually hit what they are aiming at, which further complicates matters (see accidental attacks in Palestine, Lebanon).

Ultimately I think the comment can be reasonably described as uncritical repetition of Iranian propaganda however.

It's true that Iran can't target very well over long distance, but accidentally hitting Azerbaijan is probably too far fetched. Like, when they want to hit "something" in Israel and end up hitting Arab village, that's likely random. But if they hit Azerbaijan or Cyprus, that's likely on purpose, whatever that purpose might be.

If you define random as "missiles unable to target adequately and therefore landing at random locations" they certainly to do lots of that.

If you define random as "flailing around targeting nearly every country in the area (every country but Syria?) intentionally and unintentionally for unclear reasons*" then that sounds random and that's happening.

Both are running at the same time.

*likely to sow terror and expense, which has been a frequent part of their strategic posture.

I admit I don't really understand what their strategy of "make everybody hate you" aims to achieve, but I think there's clearly a strategy. Maybe a crazy one, but there's a method in this craziness.

I mean it's deeply unethical but it isn't a bad choice if you don't care about that. "Don't attack us or we'll make you regret it" requires carrying out the threat. And again their whole vibe has often been well, terrorism.

The random pain inflicted is part of the point.

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