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What does the anti-war side in the US want in the Iran conflict? I'm woefully ignorant on this point of view, so I'm wondering if I can get some steelmans here.
The special military operation has not necessarily turned in the US's favor. And I understand why a majority of people were against getting into this absolute mess in the first place. But now that this mess has happened, it doesn't seem so easy to just pack up and go home. Assuming that the US passed a war powers vote, or otherwise just decided just to drop everything and go home, what next? It's a total capitulation, and to me it seems braindead obvious that Iran isn't going to stop harassing and extorting nearby shipping. I mean, what have they got to lose, meanwhile the more they extort the more money they get. So it seems like the only way that the shipment of oil can return to a normal state is if Iran is backed into a corner and is forced to stop what they are doing.
So I don't really understand the point of view of the anti-war side, such as the Democrat establishment
If their vote actually succeeded wouldn't this be pretty much the worst possible outcome? Iran commits piracy and extortion and the rest of the word twiddles their thumbs and just lets Iran do it? I can see a few hypotheses, but none of them seem to be a principled anti-war stance:
I'm sure I'm missing something here. What are the strongest ideas that make the anti-war side's case in terms of what should be done about the situation?
What does the pro-war side want?
Trump doesn't need to, and shouldn't, share operational and tactical level plans, but in a democracy the side who leads the country into war is traditionally expected to say what the political goals are, and why it thinks they are achievable (which in practice means sharing the big-picture strategy).
I would say Trump has not done so, but it would be fairer to say that he does share goals and strategies, but different ones every speech (and sometimes two different ones in the same speech). Given a choice between "allow Trump to do his thing" and "make him stop", the only argument currently being made in public for allowing Trump to do his thing is that his approach to complex negotiations (as documented in e.g. The Art of the Deal) depends on the enemy having no idea what he wants, and we should trust him on that basis. That argument is not persuasive to people who, based on decades of publicly-documented experience across four careers, consider Trump untrustworthy. (And The Art of the Deal also advocates routine dishonesty in negotiations - one thing Trump is honest about is being a liar).
People on Twitter might treat Trump like a liar who can’t be trusted. Interestingly this perspective is not shared by e.g., Iranian negotiators, the government of Indonesia, the government of Panama, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, UAE, Jordan, etc. etc.
However, Araghchi and Ghalibaf do routinely post on Twitter to the effect that he's a liar and can't be trusted. And given that they did not reopen the strait, nor surrender, after the "civilization will die" threat, and instead issued a pretty ludicrous list of demands (and we know now they did issue that list, since they refused to open the Strait until terms like Lebanon were honored, for one thing), I'd say they believe he's a liar who can't be trusted. So what are you talking about?
Iran’s negotiators believe Trump is a liar who can’t be negotiated with which is why they were… negotiating with him?
You see my point right? I don’t actually care what they’re saying on Twitter because their actions show that there is a faction within Iran ready to surrender. (Or was, let’s see how the rumors from this week shake out.)
Moreover, Trump says negotiations are proceeding. And he’s postponing Bridge and Power Plant Day. So I guess that means, again, that someone in Iran trusts Trump enough to sit down and talk. And if we want to make this a game of he-said-he-said between Donald Trump and the Iranian Regime, I’ll take Trump’s word over theirs. I know how polarizing Trump is for a lot of people, but if you want to argue that the Iranian regime is more reliable than Trump I’ll still call that TDS.
Well, they reportedly walked out in Islamabad, and they're saying they aren't interested in more bullshit.
What are they to do? Just maintain radio silence because Trump is fundamentally untrustworthy? You're grasping at straws. They are simply open to communication. Maybe they are waiting that you guys have a coup and surrender. Would make a lot of sense if Trump was pacified somehow by the cooler heads.
The reason he's postponing is that they are not surrendering, and they are not surrendering not because they still don't get that you can bomb them, but precisely because they do not consider him trustworthy, ie do not expect any viable terms of surrender to be honored (eg, among all else, they want to maintain their capability to use drones and missiles for deterrence, which the US and Israel can proceed to attack at any time). Until this changes, your hope for "a faction" amounts to hope that cretins and/or open traitors somehow prevail against rational actors who operate based on very recent and very raw evidence.
You can call it what you want, but I find it obvious that Iranians look and act like educated white professionals, whereas Trump has the credibility of a fent junkie, appoints inept alcoholics to positions of power, and seriously takes the counsel of Laura Loomer and FOX News. It is possible to negotiate with Iranians like with dignitaries of any normal Western nation, but it is not possible to "negotiate" with Trump unless you have some blunt coercive instrument on the table, such as a nuke or a gun to the stock market's temple, and even then he can convince himself it's a bluff. We have seen this in October, with China and rare earths.
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A trusted component can break the system's security commitments, a trustworthy one won't. I agree that Trump is widely trusted (mostly by countries which are too weak to have an alternative) despite his lack of trustworthiness.
Of the people on your list, Iran, Saudi, Qatar and the UAE have seen their security break as a result of trusting an untrustworthy component.
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