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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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If the US wants the war to end, and it should, those are the terms on which the Iranians will allow the war to end. All of the alternatives are worse.

As I've written before, the choice at this point is for the US are between defeat and catastrophic defeat or a vast escalation. The US doesn't have the will nor the political capital to accomplish a vast escalation at this point. The US doesn't have even 1/10th the soldiers which should be staged in order to take an island in the straight and it would take many months to attempt this, all the while they will be suffering casualties because the Iranians are not going to sit by and allow troops to be accumulated anywhere near the Persian Gulf. Opening the straight won't solve the crisis of the closed straight which was fully open on February 27th because if the US is able to open the Straight the Iranians will simply blow up all major oil infrastructure in the Persian Gulf. The existence of the straight to block it is far better than the alternative. It doesn't matter much if Hormuz is open if there is no oil being produced and refined to sail through it and this destruction will lock in global economic crisis which we will start to see a taste of in the next week.

The Trump administration is currently terrified of high casualties and rightly so because the moment the US suffers a large number of casualties will be the moment the political will to continue this idiotic farce completely evaporates. No, Americans are not going to respond to drone videos hunting down US soldiers and blowing them up with anger at the Iranians. This war is far too unpopular.

Killing IRGC leaders (and Iranian leadership generally) is a mistake because the younger the member the more likely they are to be radical, not to mention the IRGC is heavily decentralized. Killing one person or a dozen people will not stop all of the other IRGC groups from continuing the war. The reason why it's plainly stupid to kill the civilian leadership is because someone needs to be able to speak for the Iranians and have enough political capital to convince them to put their guns down and abide by any agreement. As leadership candidates dwindle, the remaining leadership will be harder and harder to kill so I seriously doubt the US/Israel will get to the point you're describing. But if IIRC, you also thought Hezbollah was destroyed so this is unsurprising.

It evidences just a total lack of understanding about this conflict or the Iranians to think the Iranians are winning and will also be the first to fire a nuclear weapon. It evidences just a total lack of understanding about this conflict. It is far more like Israel uses nuclear weapons first before the United States does and far more like Israel or the US uses nuclear weapons first before Iran does and not because the Iranians cannot field one.

It's hard to communicate just how stupid this war for Israel was and just how costly it is going to end up being for Americans generally. Declaring victory and pulling out of the Persian Gulf is where this is heading anyway absent vast escalation which risks totalizing conflict and war, it's far better to do that now than after when strategic defeat turns into catastrophic defeat.