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Notes -
Third Gulf War Negotiations Thread
As we approach the end of the 5 day pause(?) before the USA ramps up attacks again, reports are coming in that the Trump team has sent Iran a 15 point plan for peace. I don’t think the full text has been credibly made public at this time, as should be expected, but from what I’ve gathered the points can be reduced from redundant and detail points, Iran gives:
— Iran stops funding proxies abroad, especially Hamas and Hezbollah
— Iran pinky promises to never get a nuclear weapon, surrenders nuclear material, agrees to various future restrictions/inspections
— Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz
In exchange Iran gets:
— Full sanctions relief, including removal of the snapback provisions that removed sanctions would go back on Iran immediately if Iran violated the agreement
— American assistance with their civilian nuclear program.
Iran, after denying that negotiations were happening at all, has come back with the following demands:
— Bombing of Iran ends, assassination of Iranian officials ends, guarantees that it won’t start again
— Reparations
— Recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the strait of Hormuz
— They won’t negotiate with Steve and Jared, only with JD Vance
Trump has delayed bombing Iranian civilian infrastructure for this week, while Iran has let some ships through the strait as a gesture of good faith, or as Trump put it a “very expensive present.”
Now none of this is being reported clearly, and this all might be bullshit, and maybe one or both sides is engaging in distractionism.
But I’m filled with a deep sense of disquiet and defeat. The Iranian regime is rebuilt, reinforced, made more powerful. The Iranian regime is given new credibility, where before my diasporic friends could claim that with a push the rotten structure would collapse, now they know it will not. Iran gets effective, if not formal, sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran gets sanctions relief. Iran gives up more or less nothing, just some fissionable material that is easily enough replaced and a few proxies that have already been degraded. I don’t really credit the promises Iran is making here for much, especially if the snapback provision is removed.
Giving Iran anything after they close the Strait is tantamount to recognizing their sovereignty over it, de facto if not legally. Simply by asking for it, and then making a deal, Iran is going to be perceived as getting sovereignty over the strait. The USA, by accepting Iran's "gift" of letting ships through the strait, is already acknowledging that Iran has control of the strait! And this would be disastrous.
The flip side is that there’s little guarantee that the US would keep its promises in the future, but that doesn’t feel very good to me either. I’m not sure where I see the off-ramp at this point that isn’t a full invasion of Iran.
Another view is that given the conditions, this isn't really the Iran war, it's the Lebanon war and the Iran war is a sideshow and a distraction. The casualties are higher in Lebanon, there are troops on the ground in Lebanon, Israel is considering expanding its territory into Lebanon, occupation will inevitably result in settlements which will not be removed, etc. Perhaps the purpose of the Iran war never had anything to do with Iran herself, which is why the goals against Iran never seemed achievable, but were instead more local to protecting the Israeli homefront against Hezbollah. The USA distracts Iran and forces it to accept Hezbollah's defeat.
I suppose at least we’ll get good pistachios and saffron now? I’d love to see sanctions relief on a personal level, and I think sanctions are a wildly ineffective method of international relations, but on a geopolitical level this seems like the US admitting defeat.
Yes, this war has not gone well for America, but that was hardly unexpected, there’s a reason no previous American president was dumb enough to do this, including HW and Jr. Disarming Hezbollah is equally flawed, Shias in Lebanon are loyal to it and will reform and rebuild it in whatever guise, whatever the case, and the country is too divided by sectarianism to stop them. I hesitate to say it’s over for Israel, it’s faced poor odds before, but the future certainly isn’t bright for it.
America has destroyed Iran's military and leadership and experienced a scant dozen casualties. In what sense has this war gone poorly?
Has it achieved any goals? At what cost?
I'd also score "we never really thought about what our goals are" as not achieving goals. Right now, the main goal seems to be an open Hormuz and stable markets... Which we had before the war started.
The war has definitely depleted Iranian munitions stockpiles (even if we assume that US efforts to strike those stockpiles were 0% effective, which they were not, and all of that depletion is from launching them at all and sundry.)
The US said that (besides self-defense) preventing Iran from projecting power and completing a nuclear weapon were its primary objectives on March 2.
Destroying their navy and missile inventory is a means of preventing Iran from projecting power.
Without inside knowledge of how effective US strikes are, what Iran's stockpiles look like, etc. I cannot tell exactly how effective this has been, but it definitely seems like Iran's ability to project power has been negatively impacted.
This is very true. But what do we do in 5 years when they.... make more?
There's a reason we are bombing their industrial defense production. And, from what I can tell, there's good reasons at this point to think that Israel will just keep bombing those production facilities, particularly if Iran does not agree to an arms control agreement.
But let's assume that "mowing the lawn" doesn't happen. Wanna see me do some really sloppy analysis?
Iran first started producing ballistic missiles in the mid-late 1980s, so completely destroying their production entirely sets them back by 35 years of infrastructure and production. However, that's a naive estimate, because part of what's difficult about ballistic missiles is accumulating the knowledge to build them. I think we can assume that the US and probably more especially Israeli are attacking that accumulated knowledge, but it's more difficult to do that than it is to blow up a bunch of static buildings.
One estimate I found guessed that Iran could build 300 ballistic missiles and an eye-watering 10,000 Shaheds per month in peacetime.
This works out, in a very, very simplistic evaluative way, of Iran having the capability to build the facilities to produce about, let's say, 10 ballistic missiles per month every year, building up from 0 in 1990 to 300/month today.
It's a bit harder to evaluate the Shahed, but let's just say that they started the program in 2016, since there is at least some evidence of it being used in 2019 (they may have acquired blueprints for a similar design around 2004 but I like 2016 since it gives us a nice round ten years). That suggests it takes a mere 1 year to build out the capability to produce 1000 Shaheds per month.
So if we assume for the sake of easy math that Iran has to rebuild their ballistic missile program entirely from scratch and progressively ramps up manufacturing, we find that their ballistic missile production ramps up like so:
720 sounds like a lot, but the US will have built 3000 Patriots in that time at 2026 production levels plus the excess Patriots manufactured as the US ramps up from 600 produced to 2000 produced per year between 2026 and 2033. It's unclear to me what the Israeli production rates are, but 200 annually of Stunner and Arrow-3 doesn't seem insane. So in 5 years it seems plausible that the Israeli or even a fraction of US interceptor capability will be able to handle the bulk of the Iranian ballistic missile threat.
Shahed numbers will be considerably higher, however, since our estimate is that they are 100 times as easy to produce. So in five years, we can expect 72,000 Shaheds, right around the 80,000 my source gives as an estimate of Iran's stockpiles at the start of this conflict. But, BAE is producing 25,000 APKWS guidance kits per year, and last year a new Iron Dome facility opened in Arkansas that is supposed to be able to produce 2,000 Iron Dome rockets per year. That works out to around 125,000 APKWS and 10,000 Iron Dome rockets to intercept the 72,000 Shaheds.
NOW, I don't think there's really any reason to think that the US will divert every single one of their APKWS to Israel, but there are a lot of cheap anti-drone systems coming online now, like the Martlet (which is expected, I think, to be sold to countries in the Gulf, although perhaps not Israel) and Iron Beam, and this doesn't take into account other defenses (like conventional air-to-air missiles or even the 30mm on Apaches). So it doesn't seem impossible that even against Shaheds, in 5 years there will be a lot of cheap defenses proliferated in the region.
Obviously, this is a VERY CRUDE TOY MODEL that is likely significantly off from what we will see in real life. It doesn't take into account cost, either, and from what I understand Iran in particular is under some financial strain at the moment, although they also are building relatively cheap offensive weapons. But the fun thing is that you can plug in whatever numbers you want (e.g. 500 baseline ballistic missiles and 2000 baseline Shaheds in stockpiles, or a residual production capability, or larger production numbers for the US+Israel to represent increasing Patriot and APKWS production, etc.) and see how the math works out.
While I don't think this is "realistic," I do think it suggests that Iran in 5 years will probably be less capable than they were at the start of this fight as regards ballistic missile stockpiles. Meanwhile we can anticipate advancements both technologically and in production from anti-missile systems over in the next 5 years. So there's actually at least some reason to think that the balance of power in the region will shift if Iran's production capabilities are significantly reduced.
I probably should have said 10 years given how hard Iran's ass is getting kicked.
They could speed things up given that Russia is now the premier Shaheed manufacturer. And Russia is no slouch on missile production either. I doubt China would sell them much offensive stuff.
Your analysis is largely sound, western production should have a nice edge on Iran in the near term, ideally. But yeah, only a fraction of it goes to ME. Everyone and their sister wants patriots/Interceptors right now.
I actually think your comment on the attack/defense power ratio is the most important point. No idea how that will go, but I think Iran's power in 10 years (assuming the current situation ends with a status quo except Iran's military-industrial complex is much flatter) is actually entirely out of their hands.
Either, 1) it remains much easier and cheaper to chuck drones at stuff than it is to blow them up, and Iran will inevitably regain an edge due to this dynamic
Or 2) it becomes quite cheap and easy to blow up cheap drones/missiles and then the only way to deliver warheads to foreheads is stealth cruise missiles or hypersonic ballistic missiles and then Iran is just fucked because they simply don't have the economy to do this and "mowing the lawn" becomes laughably easy as the "stealth cruise missile" supply chain is 100 to 1000x easier to break than a cottage industry making shaheeds in distributed basements.
I tend to agree with what you've said here. I will offer two notes: firstly, from what I can tell, Russia has historically been extremely leery of giving Iran anything that could actually hurt Israel). I am not sure, however, if this would rule out bulk Shaheds. Also, there is no reason Israel can't just build their own Shaheds. The US does it. So it's possible (if unlikely) that in 2036 the Gulf region is just "everyone has 500,000 Shaheds" which would be sort of funny in a dark way, I suppose.
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Lol. Dude. Anyone that's actively launching missiles in a war is effectively "depleting their stockpiles." That's not much of an accomplishment when you consider Iran still hasn't even begun launching it's most advanced ammunition, has the largest repository of missiles in the Middle East, and what it 'has' launched has inflicted a great deal of damage already, so it's not as if they used up their stockpile putting on a fruitless light show for everybody else.
Indeed, and as I said, the US depleting its own stockpiles is a big risk case in this war.
I'd be interested in how you can be certain of that, and which specific models you believe they are holding back.
Yes, I agree with this. But because Israel and the United States pulled the trigger, they have the first mover advantage, which means that most likely this arsenal was less effective than it otherwise would have been.
The Qassem Basir, for one.
Interesting, and thanks for the link, it was a good read.
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Okay. But "we got the Iranians to attack our allies with missiles" is not much of an achievement, or at least, it doesn't indicate on its own that the war is going particularly well.
You neglected eleven days ago to specify what kind of situation would make you say that the five week special operation is going poorly. Care to update that or do you feel that the war is basically already a success since our allies got bombed?
I think you have me confused with Shakes. I'm gonna have to get a real pfp or something!
You know, when you put it like that, you would sort of think the hostile-to-Israel types around here would favor the war more, wouldn't you...
Anyway: I think the operation so far has made progress in its goals: Iranian regional influence has been blunted. However, so far, I have not seen any evidence that the US has yet maximally degraded the Iranian strike complex. Today's CENTCOM briefing assessed that over 2/3rds of Iran's military production capabilities have been destroyed, for instance, so it seems clear that even US public-facing assessments are that Iran's capabilities are degraded but not destroyed. It seems possible to me that the US could reach something much closer to a systematic destruction of their capabilities the course of additional weeks or perhaps even days, although I think the Iranians are adopting a reasonably savvy defensive posture. As I said, without nonpublic information it is difficult to evaluate.
Sarker, Shrike, and Shakes sounds like a Victorian pharmaceuticals company to me. Or maybe a legal one.
I miss names like this. Now they'd be called "Gloob" or something equally nonsense.
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Our names are Sarker, Shrike, and Shakes,
We're experts in reasons and takes,
In opinions and argumention,
prognostication,
In effortposts, politeness, and make no mistakes.
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Okay, you got me, especially since Shakes wrote the grandparent comment.
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Wait, Sarker, Shrike, and Shakes are three different people?
All I can say for certain is that we are three different Motte accounts!
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By the literal definition of "they probably have fewer munitions than before the war" then obviously they're degraded, but that isn't a meaningful measure in any sense.
A better measure might be a few days ago, when Israel hit their gas field and they responded by issuing evacuation orders for multiple equivalent targets in neighboring countries and overcoming AD to hit all of them within hours. Personally, I'd call that a clear demonstration of "power projection" and until they are no longer able to reliably launch large, AD penetrating countervalue volleys any claim of victory on the basis of having degraded said capabilities is clearly hollow.
I tend to agree. But it's difficult to verify the current levels of Iranian munitions: smaller salvo sizes might indicate munitions destruction or merely conservation; larger salvo sizes might indicate healthy munitions levels or a use-it-or-lose it mentality.
So the war might end with the US claiming to have exhausted Iranian munitions stockpiles, when in reality the Iranians have thousands of missiles left. On the flipside, the war might end with the Iranians claiming to have barely felt it, when in fact the their final salvo in the war was their last gasp.
It's possible that the war will end in a way that makes it easy to determine the winner, but it also seems plausible to me that the war will end with both sides claiming victory and the real measure of that victory will be measured in subsequent behavior over years or decades.
Very much this, and it's the decision-making process of the the subsequent decades in particular that will... not vindicate, but provide context for whose expectations may have been better grounded.
There are two general parts of state-level decision making in geopolitics: you need the resources to do it, and the sort of political leadership to choose those resources. I am far from convinced that the Iranian system will be better positioned for either in the future, even if the desires to toll the straights of Hormuz becomes the post-war status quo.
For state resources, many things are not just a matter of money, but time and capital. The US and Israel claim to have gone after a lot of military industry, and that is neither cheap or quick to replace, nor are the outputs. The nature of losing years to decades of naval or missile investments is that they may take years to decades of reinvestment to rebuild. Until you build another Navy, I doubt even the most hardline Ayatollah will, say, send a blue water task force to escort Iranian oil tankers to China in a US-china war and dare the US to start another war to stop it, with all the implications that has (or could have had in the middle east).
But political leadership matters to. The Iranian political-economic system was already strained enough that there was a 'moderate' faction of pragmatists who were willing to disagree with IRGC-aligned hardliners not in goals, but in the need for reforms to get there. This war seems to have let the IRGC step in and leave the reformists out, and over the longer term states that don't reform can still be aggressive and dangerous, but become less capable over time. There is also a point to be made about the difference between animosity and the belief of personal distance from risk. Ayatollah Khamenei and most of the Iranian high-level leadership had over 30 years of lived experience of well-justified belief that they could wage asymmetric and not-so-asymmetric warfare against the US and Israel and that they wouldn't be retaliated against. Khamenei 2.0 and his core advisors may hate the US and Israel even more than his father, but somehow I doubt they will hold that sort of belief.
None of this is an argument for or defense of the American attack on Iran, but it seems clear to me that this is a war to try and shape the trajectory of the region, and there's more to the future of the region and relative Iranian or US power than the straits of hormuz or if the Iranian theocracy stands.
I realize you're just jawboning and not advocating for this position, but this would have to make the "Trump 8d Backgammon" hall of fame for copium right? "The war that we launched to bring down the hardline theocratic Iranian regime succeeded, because it empowered the hardline theocratic elements, which will lead to their downfall some years down the road!"
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