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Notes -
No peace deal with Iran
Can I just point out that 21 hours seems too short for negotiations? I don't think the talks were done in earnest, at all. The 150-page JCPOA took almost 2 years of frivolous negotiations and lasted just as long. A 21 hour session in the middle of an active conflict is not very likely to reach a better equilibrium that both parties are happy with. Iran carried bloodstained schoolbags of kids killed in the Minab strike on the flight to Pakistan, they were certainly not there to surrender. I suspect the administration (or at least Vance) already knew this, and deliberately structured one-sided terms intended to be rejected so Trump can attempt building political scaffolding for escalation and blame Iran ("Look, we offered Iran a peace deal and they chose not to accept it"). Meanwhile, the Israelis have been busy!
Between accepting one of the greatest strategic defeats in decades, and trying to prosecute a horrific war amidst historic energy and food prices, we remain stuck with the latter.
Why? These things are usually drawn out because America and Iran don’t negotiate directly and pass everything through intermediaries. And by Trump’s account they agreed essentially on every point except for the nuclear question. I don’t see why it would take longer than 21 hours to realize that, the idea that negotiating is this special activity that takes lots of expertise is a myth from the Georgetown school of foreign policy to promote the need for bureaucrat-scholars to run everything.
The leading theory on this forum a week ago was that Trump was losing so badly he would accept any peace deal as long as it was face-saving and he could declare victory. Not so?
America totally destroyed Iran’s military in a stunning lopsided victory. I’ve been told this was only a tactical victory because Iran now controls the straits and is using that as leverage, but, weirdly, Trump is now announcing a blockade of the straits himself. Perhaps America isn’t defeated?
I fear that denying this will have me marked as some kind of rabid Trump fanboy who can’t deal with reality but I have to point out that oil was much higher during the 2008 crisis, back when the same dollars were worth more.
To believe in US defeat you have to believe the US is so squeamish that we'll beg Iran to re-open the SOH and in exchange offer to let them build nuclear weapons with impunity.
Stabilizing the strait may be costlier than we would like and somehow we'll do this public good alone, as usual, but not as costly as letting Iran have nukes.
I don't think Iran having nukes, in and of itself, would be costly for me. I estimate the chance of a nuclear-armed Iran using nuclear weapons against the US to be extremely low unless the US for some reason launches an existential war against the nuclear-armed Iran, which I also think would be very unlikely to happen.
As for a nuclear-armed Iran's ability to disrupt global shipping, I also do not care about that. A nuclear-armed Iran would likely prefer to be integrated with the global economy, just as it prefers that now over being sanctioned, and would not benefit from being heavily sanctioned if it tried to strong-arm itself into control of the Strait of Hormuz.
If Iran had nuclear weapons, it would be able to more successfully deter US and Israeli geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East, but I don't care about those ambitions.
The only thing that actually bothers me about the idea of a nuclear-armed Iran is that having nuclear weapons could help to stabilize the Iranian government and its authoritarian chuddism, with negative consequences for its population. But then, the current war has so far also been bad for the Iranian population. So far they are getting a really bad deal: getting bombed, their economy damaged, but without the government being replaced by a better one. And that seems unlikely to change barring a US ground invasion or a sudden collapse in the government's structural integrity. So it's not like the US is actually pursuing a policy that is focused on helping the Iranians to get a better government.
You know Iran's leadership is crazy, right?
Like they're not retarded. That's how they got so close to a nuclear weapon to begin with. But they're crazy. You know, like in the old joke about the mental patient telling the guy changing his tire about redistributing lugnuts. The real constraint on Iran nuking the US(the 'great satan') is their missile technology. Iran with the bomb would gamble, like Mao repeatedly threatened to, on being able to absorb casualties better than Israel. Islamo-posadist lunacy is something we can do without.
This is an interesting question because, once having the prestige of having a nuclear weapon; being respected as a nuclear armed state, Iran may moderate the "Death to America" stuff. Kind of like the loner when he gets a girlfriend.
Except Iran is a religious state for a religion that very intensely resists moderation, often in tremendously costly ways.
Compared to Israel, which is a territorially-ambitious religious state that condones the rape of prisoners and the incineration of the homes of minorities, and was literally founded on acts of terrorism to expel minorities, Iran comes across like a Sweden or Norway. Israel consciously starved the women and children in Gaza, causing 40% of the population to go days at a time without eating, which is quite costly and immoderate. Shouldn’t Iran be able to defend themselves from such a state?
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I would have to disagree with this. The leadership regularly chants "death to America" and has done so for some time. It's reasonable to believe that this means what it seems to mean. Iran has regularly attacked Israel even though Israel would gladly accept an uneasy peace with it just like Israel has with Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE.
Even if the US did absolutely nothing to harm Iran, Iran's leadership would still have strong incentive to harm the US if they thought they could get away with it. As a way of gaining clout in the Muslim world.
The Iranians chant death to America and the ayatollah has publicly gone to great length to explain that the slogan is not a direct wish for harm against American citizens, but a screed against their government and its belligerence and hostility towards Iran.
Which fits rather snugly as a contrast with the more Orwellian terminology of the west, like 'regime change', 'liberation' or other such verbiage. Which then translates to aerial bombing campaign with large amounts of civilians killed in practice.
Outside of drastic otherization and dehumanization, saying that Iran is exporting terrorism or spouting threatening rhetoric is functionally meaningless. In context their actions are a rational consequence to US and Israeli strategy in the region. Be that state sponsored invasions of Iran, the funding of terrorists in the region or other destabilizing actions such with Syria, Iraq and Libya.
And it's hard to pretend that Iran is hogging all the religious lunatics when Americans have decades of failed Zionist adjacent policies laying in their backyard. Along with theologians like Mike Huckabee, Pete Hegseth or Paula White.
This is silly. If you're buying this then I have a bridge to sell uou.
Realistically it's somewhere in between. You have to understand that the US is literally Hitler to theocratic Iran. Not just morally, but in its "founding legend" and historical sense of self. So America is not just some foreign country, it's emblematic of their very independence. As such, chants of "Death to America" are somewhat patriotically entwined. Of course, now that we have literally been at war, the tone will probably be a bit different for the next decade.
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If Americans say "Fuck Iran", are they expressing a literal desire to copulate with the mullahs?
"Death to America" is an idiom with a similar meaning in a different language and cultural context.
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I'm not really in the market for a bridge, but if you can sell me an alternative explanation for what Iranians truly mean and feel that doesn't rely on blank otherization of them being blood thirsty animals with no rationality or reason, I'm all ears.
The basic rule is that in assessing peoples' motivations, you pay more attention to their actions and less attention to their self-serving words. Iran's leadership has demonstrated -- through its actions -- what it means by its longstanding "Death to Israel" policy. It has been aggressively and chronically attacking Israel in general for many years now. Not just Israeli leadership or military facilities, but general attacks on everyone. The reasonable inference is that "Death to America" means something similar.
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It's amazing to keep seeing this from people who hear Trump's bombastic bullshit and turn into Amelia Bedelia.
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Sounds like a classic motte and bailey pivot to me.
For starters, please quote and link these explanations.
Do you agree that Iranian leadership also chants "death to Israel"?
Do you maintain that "Death to Israel" is similarly not a direct wish for harm against Israeli citizens?
Do you agree that Iranian leadership has directed attacks against Israeli civilians?
Given that they know how "death to America" is interpreted, why do you think they continue with "death to America"?
In your view, is the United States deliberately targeting Iranian civilians?
Do you deny that Iran has been directing and supporting Hezbollah?
Do you deny that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization?
By who? The Iranian leadership? Are we supposing that they go in public, make a definitive statement of what 'Death to America' means, and every Iranian citizen knows to not take that statement seriously, and instead chant what they really mean. Which is to wish death on every American man woman and child, because Iranians are just subhuman and beastial like that and revel in suffering and death?
But the again, why would I bother quote, answer or link anything? None of the anti-Iran hysteria does so. Post after post. Kind of crazy.
In fact nigh all of those posts are just a routine list of arbitrary accusations and arbitrary benchmarks. Why would Iran funding Hezbollah be a reason to not like Iran? Funding proxies that can be called terrorists is practically an American geopolitical hobby. Is it OK to cause suffering, chaos and death to achieve your political goals so long as you are not called Hezbollah?
No. But I think that US officials have shown a great lack of care towards civilian deaths. Including Hegseth defunding the division focused on reducing civilian harm. And how they handled the school bombing doesn't inspire confidence. So yeah, I think if we allow all parties in the conflict some wiggle room regarding collateral damage, I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be mad against.
Listen, I'm not on trial here 'denying' things and you're not an authority on facts and knowledge. I'm sure Iran funds them along with a host of other groups. Why is funding proxies invalid when Iran does it, but not America or Israel?
If we apply the label fairly then I think they look like incompetent amateurs compared to Israel. As demonstrated in the footage of Gaza.
Pretty much, yes.
I'm not sure about Iranians in general, but Iranian leadership has consistently, chronically, and aggressively attacked Israeli civilians over the years. They've demonstrated what they mean by "Death to Israel."
If all they want is a change of government in Israel, why have they consistently, chronically, and aggressively attacked Israeli civilians?
It depends what you mean by "civilians." Israel has specifically targeted Iranian nuclear scientists who were reasonably believed to be part of Iran's nuclear program but who were not actually members of the Iranian military. In Gaza, Israel has unavoidably killed various civilians, but of course that's what happens when militants hide in civilian areas. You don't get immunity by ducking into a hospital or a mosque.
That being said, it doesn't really matter. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Israel has been pursuing a "Death to Gaza" policy and, as you claim "they [Iran's leadership] wish for the same thing to happen to Israel as has happened to Gaza." That's a very reasonable basis to believe that there is a great deal of risk from Iran possessing nuclear weapons. (Note that "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" have been Iranian slogans almost since the very beginning of the current regime in the 1970s.)
I'm not sure what your point is here. You seem to be denying that Iran exports terrorism.
It doesn't require any expertise to demonstrate that you are wrong. You don't seem to deny that Iran supports and directs Hezbollah or that Hezbollah regularly engages in terrorist activity. All you do is attempt to deflect from this reality with whataboutism. You are wrong there as well, but it doesn't change the fact that you are wrong about Iran exporting terrorism.
The bottom line is that Iran's leadership has shown through their actions what its long-standing "Death to Israel" policy means in practice and it's reasonable to infer that Iran's leadership means basically the same thing with its "Death to America" policy.
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Yeah we all know what “Death to America” means but the second Iran wants to mobilize American sympathy there’s a complicated explanation about how those words don’t mean what they appear to mean.
One imagines I would not get such sympathy if I were to say, “Death to hanikrummihundursvin”
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I'm sure that Putin and Xi also say the Russian and Chinese equivalents of "death to America", but I don't worry about the possibility of a Russian or Chinese nuclear first strike on the US.
India and Pakistan have attacked each other through proxies before, yet neither has launched a nuclear first strike on the other despite extreme levels of mutual hatred and the fact that both have nuclear weapons.
This is like saying you've never had any issues picking up pennies in front of a road roller.
I wish people would stop pretending there's no difference between these egomaniac dictators or near-dictators. Putin is a cold war veteran, Xi is a lifelong bureaucrat. Neither of them are islamic extremists.
Mao, however, repeatedly talked about how awesome a nuclear war would be- because China could absorb casualties and the west wouldn't, it meant communism would triumph. Didn't happen.
Mao also did the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, which are a lot crazier than anything the Iranian mullahs have done.
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Actually not at all. It's not hard to find Chinese state broadcasts and nowhere does Xi say anything remotely close to death to America.
In fact the Chinese largely couldn't care less about America beyond the fact that we buy their shit and give them money for it.
I mean in private.
Of course claiming that a someone said something in private is completely unfalsifiable, but as a chinese, I can tell you that if you ask any chinese they would say you're out of your mind.
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What's your evidence for this? I mean, if you are "sure" that Xi says, in substance, "death to America" in private, there must be some evidence, right?
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I'm pretty skeptical of all this.
Please provide links and quotes showing:
(1) Three times in the last 25 years that Russian leadership has done the equivalent to chanting "death to America"
(2) Three times in the last 25 years that Chinese leadership has done the equivalent to chating "death to America"
(3) Three times in the last 25 years that India has attacked Pakistan through proxies in a manner equivalent to Hezbollah or Houthi attacks on Israel;
(4) Three times in the last 25 years that Pakistan has attacked India through proxies in a manner equivalent to Hezbollah or Houthi attacks on Israel.
Without even claiming any particular expertise in the conflict, doesn't Lashkar-e-Taiba claim a number of attacks that resemble those of Hamas or its associates? The 2008 Mumbai attacks killed 175 people and had a movie made about it I've heard of in the West (Hotel Mumbai, 2018), and the 2025 attack in Pahalgam was the trigger for the most recent direct India-Pakistan conflict. Those are probably the two most notable incidents, but there's not a shortage of others, or other proxies.
I'm less familiar with the details, but wouldn't be surprised if India has similar proxies, but I can't think of any offhand.
I don't know about the situation, but I would definitely say that:
(1) If Pakistan's leadership regularly chants "death to India" and attacks Indian civilians through proxies, India would be totally justified in perceiving a serious risk to India from Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons;
(2) Even without the "death to India" chants, the same holds.
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I consider it a revealed preference that Iran is willing to plunge themselves into darkness over pursuit of nuclear weapons. It's fairly clear that they can resist insurgency and invasion just fine without them and that they would be a lot less isolated if they weren't pursuing them, but they persist. They could have security just fine without them: they're not in Saddam's or Gaddafi's position, the IRGC survives despite decapitation. Their territory is huge and difficult to conquer.
They want nuclear weapons to service their global Islamic Chuddist revolution.
They had a growing nuclear medicine program, while facing sanctions which had the practical effect of limiting their medical imports:
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/12/iran-sanctions-medicine/
https://dw.com/en/iran-sanctions-mean-life-saving-medication-in-short-supply/a-74825554
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/iran-unveils-new-nuclear-medicine/
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I disagree. They cannot actually resist invasion without them. They are perpetually one hawkish US administration that has enough political capital away from being invaded and replaced.
If the US committed to a ground invasion of Iran, the US would easily and quickly topple Iran's government. It would be like a world heavyweight boxing champion fighting a scrawny 15 year old. US soldiers would be in Tehran within a few weeks of the start of the conflict. What would follow would, from the point of view of the current Iranian government, be horrible. They have seen what happened to Saddam and to Gaddafi. They would be turned over to their political opponents, put on trial, their lives as they knew it over, some possibly executed. They're in danger of assassination every day now, but at least they still have power and the emotional satisfaction of not having been defeated. A US invasion would be the end of everything for them.
Would they like to use nuclear weapons in support of their global Islamic revolution? Sure. Would they actually use nuclear weapons in a first strike? I doubt it. When I look at their actual foreign policy in the recent decades, they haven't been acting like ISIS-type fanatics. The most reckless thing they did was to support Hamas too much, and then Hamas massacred a bunch of Israeli civilians, which made Israel unite even more than before around the goal of destroying them by any means necessary. But that does not necessarily mean that they follow a fanatical foreign policy any more than the fact that the US supported an Indonesian government that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the 1960s means that the 1960s US was following a fanatical foreign policy.
What's interesting is that the Trump administration is the one administration that genuinely does not seem to care about if you are a "bad guy" or not – the Trump admin has been extremely functionalist.
However, the Trump administration can only do so much to bind the actions of a future administration, which creates a real risk for Iran.
I think on balance if they don't make the Trump admin a good offer (and they still can) they will come to regret it.
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Some times I forget how naive and anti American many of the posters are on this forum. This take hugely discounts the tail risks of having an unstable country with a history of exporting terrorism having these things. What if the leadership changes in the future or some part of their government, or if it results in other middle eastern countries proliferating as well.
Iran exports less terrorism than the USA (probably) or the USSR (definitely) did during the Cold War. Unless you think that Israelis count for more than, say, Londoners, which I suppose the American establishment does. Both superpowers funded the IRA, although I suppose the involvement of Rep Peter King (IRA-NY) doesn't technically make the IRA an official US client group. Empirically, being a state sponsor of terrorism is not strongly correlated with being a country that can't be trusted with nuclear weapons under MAD.
Not for a lack of trying. If Iran had the resources of a peer-level superpower during the Cold War they'd definitely have tried to export their proxy model worldwide, not just in their local neighborhood.
It isn't Iran's model. It was first set out a written policy by the Kennedy-era CIA (the "plausible deniability" memo which would later be made public by the Church Committee) and had already been in use by the USSR since the late 1950's.
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I'm pretty sure it's not naivete or anti-American sentiment but rather an intense burning hatred for Jewish people and the resulting desire to support just about any country which is anti-Israel, even if (especially if) it increases the likelihood of nuclear war. Edit: My evidence for this is that there seems to be a big overlap between (1) posters who consistently side against Israel no matter what; and (2) posters who argue that a nuclear-armed Iran isn't a serious threat.
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Yeah it's absurd. One of the greatest threats to the entire planet is Pakistan losing a war to India. Or winning a war to India. Or tripping over its own feet and having an economic crisis.
As soon as nukes are in play the country becomes an existential threat to civilization, even if the more likely outcome is hundreds of thousands to millions dead...that is not good.
North Korea does not represent the full range of nuclear countries, and we haven't even played that one all the way out.
Iran is far more likely to use it, sell it, or cause problems than any current nuclear actor and the inability to recognize this is simply horrifying.
Or having another member of technical staff go rogue like this guy did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan
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This is called 'tuesday' and so far, no nuclear war. Seriously, Pakistan has a military coup every few years. It has subsaharan Africa level stability.
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I don't think this is true - ever heard of the Samson option? I'd trust the Iranians with a nuke far more than Israel.
Samson is a defensive stance, Iran is an aggressive nation with offensive interests that present existential threats to its neighbor as well as more mundane severe threats.
Fundamentally Iran is a nation that is running around punching people in the face. Who is more problematic, the guy who can punch back hard, or the guy punching people in the face?
lol, lmao
I'm surprised, I thought you would have kept up with news from the Middle East if you're going to talk about it with that level of confidence. This may come as a shock, but Israel is currently invading Lebanon, deploying white phosphorus on civilians, demolishing homes, blowing up hospitals and now moving settlers in to build houses on their newly acquired living space. They are in fact punching people in the face, right now! They have been punching people in the face for several years, and they launched the first strike on Iran.
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It’s worth noting the extent to which America has exported terrorism:
We pressured Saudi Arabia to fund Wahhabi mosques globally as part of our fight against the Soviet Union
We supported the Mujahideens to the tune of 4 billion USD
We produced millions of violent jihadi textbooks for the youth in Afghanistan (lmao)
Of the ~100 Islamic terror attacks in America since the 90s, virtually all of them have been Salafi-Wahhabi and none of them have been Shia (Iranian).
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Agreed. Even if we accepted for the sake of argument that the Supreme Leader himself would not order a first strike, how confident are we in the rest of the Iranian regime's command and control infrastructure?
Even after you've decapitated half of their leadership, they're still acting more rationally than either the US or Israel, so quite a lot, actually.
Please define "acting more rationally"
What have they done that you think marks them as "more rational"? What specifically is it about of the US, Israel, and the Gulf States recent dealings with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IRGC that you view as "irrational"?
"Acting proportionally to an aggression" for a start.
The bombing campaign in itself far exceeds anything Iran has done against US or Israel, and threatening to bomb their civilian infrastructure was psychotic.
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Why can China be the biggest trading partner with most middle eastern countries without wasting trillions on wars? What has the US gained from all these wars? Supporting wars that flood Europe with migrants is anti war.
Iran wouldn't want nukes if the US wasn't meddling in the middle east.
The terrorists that bomb the west are Sunni groups that Iran is fighting. Iran helped defeat ISIS and fought all sorts of extremists in Syria.
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That doesn't worry me any more than I worry about the slight chance of getting hit by lightning when I walk outside while it's raining.
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