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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18755 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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We often see complaints and questions about the Iran War in regards to what the US's victory conditions and objectives there even are supposed to be. Despite the inconsistency on many given reasons, the US has stayed pretty consistent on one reason, Iran was working towards nukes and we gotta stop them.

But was Iran actually working towards nukes at the time? The "Former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent" (the guy who resigned in protest) has revealed that the intelligence community apparently believed otherwise.

One of the many tragedies of this war is that before the war began the U.S. Intel Community, including CIA, was in agreement that Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon & that Iran would target U.S. bases in the region & shut down the Strait of Hormuz if they were attacked by Israel & the U.S.," Kent wrote in a post on Thursday.

So this begs the question, what is the real reason? Kent says Israel, and everything seems to be pointing towards that as the true cause. Bibi has been pushing hard towards this goal of attacking Iran for at least three admins considering he's given the same pitch to Obama.

And as I've pointed out before, even the US's own official explanations are heavily pointing towards Israel as their main focus.

Literally, they say it themselves in this press release.

As the United States has explained in multiple letters to the U.N. Security Council, including most recently on March 10, the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally, as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defense.

Mike Johnson has said it. and Rubio has said it. Lindsey Graham is blatant about it. This war is for Israel. Rubio and Mike Johnson later denied their own words, and mayve it's true they both made a mistake. Interesting that two high ranking officials apparently both made the same mistake in saying Israel brought us into the war, and this same mistake was then repeated in the official press releases.

And they say it's not just Israel, and sure maybe it's not the only thing, but it is strange that it's both their first listed reason and most of the release is focused specifically on Israel and Israeli interests. And Israel being listed first happens quite a bit here.

Third, Iran’s extensive, long-term support of Hizballah, Hamas, the Houthis, and various Iran‑aligned militia groups in Iraq and Syria has enabled those terrorist organizations to carry out destabilizing attacks against Israel, the United States, Argentina, and others, including countries seeking to freely exercise transit rights through the Strait of Hormuz.

It's not in alphabetical order, so can't be that. Why is the focus quite consistently putting Israel before the US like this in the USG's own official justification press release?

So if we didn't actually get into this war over Iran building nukes, is there any other explanations actually left? That's the only thing the Admin seems to be actually consistent about, and it's apparently completely fabricated.

And the White House's response to Fox News about this seems to be really interesting in how they worded it. For example

"Joe Kent’s self-aggrandizing resignation letter and recent comments are riddled with lies. Most egregious are Kent’s false claims that the largest state sponsor of terrorism somehow did not pose a threat to the United States and that Israel forced the President into launching Operation Epic Fury.

You see, it didn't actually address what Kent said.

They took "Iran building nukes" and made it into "Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism and could pose a threat to the US". They took "Israel was the main reason for the operation" and made it into "Israel forced the president". Why did they dodge it like this?

As Commander-in-Chief, President Trump took decisive action based on strong evidence which showed that the terrorist Iranian regime posed an imminent threat and was preparing to strike Americans first. President Trump’s number one priority has always been ensuring the safety and security of the American people."

Likewise again, this doesn't address the claims about US intelligence! In fact, this statement is also perfectly in line with the "Israel was going to attack Iran and Trump felt they had to also do strikes beforehand then because of retaliation" story given before. But at least it wasn't literally forced so that's good news, despite no one claiming that.

Joe Kent is a clown who was grossly unqualified for his position and only obtained it because of an unsuccessful political career based on undying loyalty to Trump. In the time since his resignation he's latched on to the Tucker Carlson/Candice Owens/Alex Jones cadre of wackaloons to cash in on his brief fame and maybe prime himself for another failed crack at a congressional seat. His statements on Iran's nuclear program are indicative of this schtick in general where it's not enough to suggest that going to war with Iran was a bad policy decision, or that the threat of an Iranian nuclear program is overblown; no everything has to be a huge conspiracy knows that there is and never was an Iranian nuclear program and the whole thing was some kind of manufactured consent for a war that nobody is in favor of anyway, apart from the roughly 30% of Americans who comprise the Bush/Mendoza line, for whom if Trump shot their child they'd assume he had a good reason to do so.

This is all part of a larger storyline where Carlson et al. have to account for why they spent so many years singing the praises of Our Lord and Savior Donald J. Trump under the delusion that he was some kind of swamp-draining peacenik when anyone with half a brain could tell you that the only thing that ever concerned him was having the biggest dick in the room and that if anyone who didn't have nukes pissed him off he wouldn't pass up the opportunity to use the full force of the United States Military to make you bend to his whims. And that the cadre of morons who put poster board signs in their yard about how they shouldn't have to pay school taxes since they don't have kids and who regularly attend township supervisor meetings to complain about how their neighbor's retaining wall violates setback requirements actually gave a shit about the anti-war stuff even though they'll still tell you that Obama pulled out of Iraq too early.

Electing Trump was a roll of the dice on whether we'd actually escape from the middle east. Electing establishment GOP or Dem would have basically been asking for even more adventures in the Middle East. I rolled the dice and lost. I'd rather have voted for Vance or someone even more vehemently anti-interventionists, but those choices weren't on offer. Instead my choices were "uniparty interventionist stooge #73829" and "Trump.". I don't think I'm alone in this calculation.

Surely you are not suggesting a run-of-the-mill president or "uniparty interventionist stooge" would have had Middle Eastern adventures on the scale of Trump?

Iran happening and going how it has gone was not in my worst-case Trump scenario either so I don't blame you for rolling those dice, but you very much lost a lot more money than you would have lost betting on a "uniparty" candidate.

One of the many tragedies of this war is that before the war began the U.S. Intel Community, including CIA, was in agreement that Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon

I just would need to see a lot of evidence to believe this. Why is 2025-26 the only time in the last 40 years Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon? Is Trump's aura just that legendary that even the suicidal Ayatollah would give up his primary ambition of the last half century just because of the orange man mogging him?

Why is 2025-26 the only time in the last 40 years Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon?

Maybe this implies they spent the last 40 years also not developing a nuclear weapon? Given that 1940s tech was sufficient to make a nuke, maybe they thought "almost having a nuke" was valuable enough and stopped enriching roughly around there and then just made lots of noise about how "they were totally gonna finish enriching any day now"

I think you're responding to the wrong comment

This is all part of a larger storyline where Carlson et al. have to account for why they spent so many years singing the praises of Our Lord and Savior Donald J. Trump under the delusion that he was some kind of swamp-draining peacenik

Trump kept saying he was! He even continued to claim it after the campaign where it didn't matter anymore, like he said this during the literal victory speech

“I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars”

And Vance was (and in some ways still is given that he seems to be dodging having to comment on the war now) anti interventionism so he kept saying he was against war and had people around him with known anti war track records.

Maybe people were stupid for trusting Trump and not thinking he doesn't change on a dime for personal benefits or whatever, but I don't think it's as delusional as you think to have expected us to fuck out of the middle east.

And you're just figuring out now that he's full of shit? Sure, he has Vance, but he also has Rubio and Hegseth, neither of whom have reputations for peacefulness. I can't say I would have predicted the war, but I'm not surprised by it, and I'm not surprised that most of his supporters are in favor of it.

He had John Bolton in his first term, and made him cry with edging and constant refusal to actually start any new wars.

And you're just figuring out now that he's full of shit? Sure, he has Vance, but he also has Rubio and Hegseth, neither of whom have reputations for peacefulness

Oh yeah certainly I'm not that surprised but I get why some people would be.

and I'm not surprised that most of his supporters are in favor of it.

This is the least surprising thing of all. Political parties have always had a bit of cult of personality going on where people shift their claimed views to the person they like but Trump is definitely next level. Either by changing their views themselves or just somehow being blind to it.

Like I remember all the comments expecting some sort of epic showdown between Mamdani and Trump, Capitalism vs Socialism and it's like you do realize that Trump is also an explicit anti market statist right?? Like wtf you mean capitalism vs socialism when he's literally having government take stocks in private enterprise, implementing tariffs, and doing the same "greedflation" rhetoric right down to price controls and blaming corporations for home prices being high instead of government meddling. No wonder they're buddies there.

Just because they have a lot of different views on other topics doesn't change their deep similarities on the market and economics.

I think looking at this from a meta perspective is interesting. It seems that to evaluate the wisdom Iran war comprehensively, we need three things:

  • What are the overall costs of the war.
  • What are the eventual benefits of the war.
  • What is the truth of the justificiations for the war that were initially given.

The first two are by definition not known not right now. The last one seems to be only factually resolvable by classified information, but since we don't have that we have to rely on the dual heuristics of 'What figures do we trust?' and 'Do we trust the structure of the arguments made for/against the war?'. The answers to the indirect questions seem to rely on tribalism, especially the first. You have officials with similar arguing for both sides of this war, and for other security issues like everything surrounding Russia, and which officials general you give credence too tends to rely on which officials either match general your 'tribe' or best match/flatter general your personal ideology.

I bet if you took each personal who isn't directly involved in this conflict, and you had a list of that person's ideology and personal 'tribal' affiliation, you could 99% guess what their take on this war is and who they consider credible. Once everyone states their priors, there really isn't that much discussion to be had about Iran right now.

What even is going on around Iran? Haven't seen anything crop up in my feed for the past 2-3 weeks, which I'm taking as a sign that things have died down even though there's no official end to the hostilities. Is it just a double blockade now, with both sides playing chicken?

There's a cycle where oil prices go up, Trump makes an announcement that they're "very close" to a deal and that there's a 10/14/9/12/23/746-point plan that's on the table, the details of which are never disclosed, oil prices go back down slightly, then something happens that makes it clear Iran is nowhere near ready to sign a deal, people start firing and blaming the other side, and oil prices start to go back up. Unfortunately for Trump, oil prices and gas prices are directly correlated, since the former are based on speculation about the supply in a month's time, and the latter are based on current supply and demand. So while oil prices have fluctuated gas prices have been steadily going up. In my neck of the woods, within the course of a week they jumped from $4.19/gallon to $4.99/gallon; they were a little over $3/gallon at the time the war started. Some of this may be a switch to the more expensive summer blend, but that happens every year and the price doesn't jump that much.

The only time Trump's actions had any effect on the actual price of gas was when the initial ceasefire was announced, when they dropped by about a dime before continuing their march upward. The reason I'm focused on gas prices here is because this is the only reason the war has any political salience. If gas prices stayed the same most people wouldn't give a shit about the war because it was something happening halfway around the world that didn't have any immediate effect on their lives. But keeping gas prices low is important here, because not only does everyone have to buy a lot of it but it's the only such product where there one is constantly bombarded with signs advertising the price.

The short version is that the US has announced and then called off a program to send vessels through the strait, during which brief window they successfully transited both warships and civilian vessels through the strait. (There were rumors that at least one Gulf State was not a fan of the escorted transit plan and pulled or threatened to pull basing access, and that's why the US flip-flopped). The US also blew up a bunch of Iranian military assets that tried to attack them or were otherwise deemed a threat, and interdicted several Iranian tankers that were trying to run the blockade with Super Hornets. Despite this of course the ceasefire is still on, we're assured!

The cynical part of me wonders if all of this hasn't been a bigger part of the news cycle because despite the embarrassing rumors that the USA and its allies got crosswise on how to approach the situation, or the humorous claims that the US attacking a bunch of Iranian assets was "just a love tap" and not a resumption of the conflict it is more or less good news for the Trump administration militarily; it suggests that Iran actually does not have a good grip on Hormuz if the US can escort civilian shipping and handily fend off attacks.

I wouldn't call 2 ships in 2 days evidence that Iran doesn't have a good grip on Hormuz. The problem for Trump is that Iran's actual ability to block the strait doesn't matter because commercial ships won't transit it so long as they say it's closed. All Operation Project Freedom proved is that they won't be able to get the 1600 ships that remain stuck in the gulf out before Trump's term ends at this pace, which requires a non-negligible amount of mobilization, let alone get the strait open to normal commercial traffic. In other words, the only thing likely to get the strait open is an end to the war.

they successfully transited both warships and civilian vessels through the strait.

Apparently a South Korean owned ship had gotten hit.

Which highlights an issue here for any long term plan, the US basically has to succeed every single time they want to escort any ships in and they have to spend tons of resources for a relatively small amount of traffic. Iran would just have to get a good strike in once to up the danger again and make people skittish to cross even under escort.

Worth noting that the Namu, as I understand it, had been in the Gulf since the start of the war and was not attempting to transit the straight under US protection when it was hit. Apparently was instead anchored offshore when it was struck. It also doesn't seem clear that Iran actually hit it (at least intentionally – apparently they denied the claim they had attacked it.)

As far as I can tell from various third worldist twitter accounts who post about the conflict 24/7, the US has allegedly sent Iran a proposal to end the war, and Iran is yet to respond. I feel like I've read similar things 5 times in the past few weeks.

If someone has similar pro USA or pro Israel accounts, please link for comparison. I'm not engaged enough with the topic to see fact from cope anymore.

This is a fairly pro-Israel and USA account: https://x.com/Osint613

This is a summary from a Fox news person of this week: https://x.com/LucasFoxNews/status/2052661509642432875

I feel like I've read similar things 5 times in the past few weeks.

Most of the fake scoops have been from Barak Ravid of Axios. He is Israeli so one would expect his "scoops" to be for the purpose of advancing Israel's interests, but from my POV it looks like he's the Trump administration's mouthpiece for market manipulation leaks.

Which is odd, because his previous credibility with scoops has been impressive. Either one of his reputable sources is playing him, or he chose to cash in his credibility now for some reason.

Do you actually believe in anything? In the space of a couple posts we've gone from "trust Principled Conservative Erick Erickson" to "trust America First Joe Kent." The only common throughline in all your top-levels is that you want to pick an internet fight with themotte's Trump contingent, and are happy to dance between positions, arguments, and sets of facts in order to do so. Kudos to the guys who have the patience to fisk your posts, I guess.

If that's what he's doing, what's the problem? If anything I think it has been to the detriment of this place that arguments have come to be dominated by true believers of some cause, whose local feeling of success, identity and tribal interests are all tied up in "winning the argument" and not ceding any ground.

I can't help but notice that it's never people on the receiving end of these tactics that make these sort of arguments, only people like watching it being done to others. For the good of the forum, of course.

If that's what he's doing, what's the problem?

Tolerating bad faith actors inevitably ends in an equilibrium where bad faith is the norm.

That's also the case with people who are arguing in purely negative bad-faith, except that their local sense of identity is even more purely tied up in winning the argument. Darwin2500 arguing with MAGApede2016 is a failure mode, certainly, but so is this - the non-failure mode is when people bring sincere theses to their top-levels, after exploring and considering the evidence on their own, and then debate things with other users as individuals. Some people are too tribal to be psychologically capable of doing that, and some just don't find it fun enough, but it's possible.

That's also the case with people who are arguing in purely negative bad-faith, except that their local sense of identity is even more purely tied up in winning the argument.

It seems like youre defining this though through "person making arguments and points I don't like to see".

Like hell look at your actual complaint here

Do you actually believe in anything? In the space of a couple posts we've gone from "trust Principled Conservative Erick Erickson" to "trust America First Joe Kent.

What is bad faith exactly here? That I'm not blindly partisan and don't consider Erickson (who I disagree with on a lot of topics) as trash whose opinions and views are unusable? I think he can be a very stupid man sometimes, but I also recognize he is a guy who is rather principled and has interesting input sometimes. This is exactly what good faith should be like!

Likewise I think Joe Kent has a number of idiot views. I also recognize that he is a former top official who left his influential and powerful position over his principles, and acknowledge that he has some value when he talks about stuff he personally dealt with in his role. I do not dismiss Kent's input on counterterrorism and US intelligence because he's for example, an anti vaxxer. A stance I literally think is hurting and killing children!

You're complaining about tribalism, and yet seemingly mad that I'm not tribal enough.

And also what tribe am I supposedly loyal to anyway? I'm a Reagan stan who advocates for individualism, laissez-faire capitalism, small government. Does this sound like a "blue tribe"? No. But it's also not the "red tribe" either, at least not anymore.

To a partisan who can't comprehend the world beyond tribalism, of course I look bad faith, because they can't grasp a person who doesn't participate in tribal partisanship and doesn't radically change their views based off what Current Party Leader decides.

How do you define "bad faith"? If it's merely "doesn't truly believe the point he/she is arguing", then I think the term is loaded and the case that it's a bad thing has not been made, because trying to make the most convincing argument for something you don't actually believe is an interesting exercise, both for the person making the argument and for any bystanders. If it is more about the "bad-faith" arguer experiencing personal disdain for their interlocutors in the process of the exchange, I think it would capture a lot more posters here than just those who try on different positions for sport.

"Bad faith" covers a broad spectrum, from straw men and weak men to gish gallops and gotcha questions to outright trolling.

Since we're not mind readers, it's necessarily a judgment call and if we don't mod someone who people think is obviously posting in bad faith, it's because our threshold for pulling the trigger is higher than the threshold of people being triggered.

Defining bad faith is something like defining pornography, but when you spend enough time here you get a sense of what motivates whom. We've had an influx of low-quality, trollish posters doing the exact same schtick as MKC (AlexanderTurok is the last one I recall), though he's certainly the most literate of them so far. I suspect largely a meta-contrarian reaction to the 2024 Vibe Shift, as exemplified by Hanania/Karlin/Spencer/etc.; it'll pass like all the other motte fads ('member the civil war we were going to have in 2020? I 'member!)

because trying to make the most convincing argument for something you don't actually believe is an interesting exercise

When done as an exercise, that's entirely good-faith, and rationalists do that all the time. You should be able to do that! The key is as an exercise.

If it is more about the "bad-faith" arguer experiencing personal disdain for their interlocutors in the process of the exchange, I think it would capture a lot more posters here than just those who try on different positions for sport.

I think you're almost there. The key is that bad-faith posters are, psychologically, not posting to make arguments with some sneers attached. They're typing up arguments so that they are able to sneer. It's like the difference between someone who goes out to a bar and has a drink, and someone who goes out to a bar so that they can have a drink. Tribally-motivated sneering is pretty easy to spot because it's usually so ham-fisted, compared to a poster who puts real effort into his sneers.

I suspect largely a meta-contrarian reaction to the 2024 Vibe Shift, as exemplified by Hanania/Karlin/Spencer/etc.;

Yeah, this seems like confirmation your usage of bad faith is along the lines of "when they disagree with me". Why do you think these writers aren't being serious when they say things that are unpopular? They could be way more financially successful grifting the populist vibes only saying a bunch of low quality stuff that everyone wants.

When done as an exercise, that's entirely good-faith, and rationalists do that all the time. You should be able to do that! The key is as an exercise.

Or is it that possible perhaps that when people say things you don't like and don't agree with, maybe sometimes they believe those things? Maybe the world isn't filled with everyone secretly knowing that you're right and the only reason why someone like me or Hanania would have a different view is because we want to be contrarian.

You are welcome to pattern-match me to as many caricatures as you like. Apologies if I'm impugning any of your actual heroes, as opposed to Erick Erickson.

You are welcome to pattern-match me to as many caricatures as you like.

Ok for real, is this intentional trolling? This is a pretty big case of pot calling the kettle black if not, your whole thing here has been making up caricatures to assume about me.

Apologies if I'm impugning any of your actual heroes, as opposed to Erick Erickson.

Really, it's hard to see this as anything but trolling. You either don't grasp the concept of being able to take someone's ideas seriously without looking down on them or you're being intentionally daft. This is like Rationalist 101 shit. Scott Alexander, basically the guy of rationalist discourse illustrates this all the time and constantly references people who he disagrees with constantly like Freddie Deboer, Hanania or Tyler Cowen. That doesn't mean you view them as "heroes".

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What part of magicalkitty's posting history makes you think they are trying to make the most convincing argument they can as an exercise, as opposed to the best arguments-as-soldiers for their latest culture war stand or poke at others, to be abandoned as irrelevant when the topic passes?

I love me a good jawboning and devil's advocacy, but there is a difference between treating debate as a sport and using debate to make sport of others. Faith is as good a distinction as others- after all, if the other person has no faith to believe you're interested in the sport as opposed to making sport of them, there's not going to be a sport with them because it takes two to debate in good faith.

One of the ways to demonstrate good faith, in turn, is to hold to present and maintain sincere positions. Sincerity in turn can be demonstrated not just by elaboration upon request- as in someone who sincerely wants to be understood as opposed to someone deliberately trying to instigate misunderstandings and conflict- but also by maintaining consistency across iterations. You can absolutely provide devil's advocate / steelman positions distinct from your own position, but only if you actually have a position of your own.

To my knowledge, magicalkitty has denied being darwin / guesswho/ whatever other alts that person had. But Darwin was a bad faith interlocuter par excellence, and he had his own history of defending or deflecting accusations of his bad faith arguments on the grounds of 'just trying to adopt a position he didn't believe.' That was the demonstration, not defense, of his sort of bad faith.

The counter to that Darwin-esque behavior, in turn, is pressing the person to make clear their sincere position, and seeing if / how they either directly answer it or try to wiggle out of that challenge.

I don't see a lot of object-level opinion overlap between darwin and magicalkittycat. One example: Darwin was constantly pushing idpol and I haven't seen that from magicalkittycat.

Hence the Darwin-esuqe, as opposed to Darwin-specific. It was always the style of argument, not merely the position, that made Darwin bad faith.

You can make whatever vague accusations you want, they're practically unable to be disputed because they're vague and meaningless.

But if you're going to claim I'm unreasonably inconsistent in my values, maybe you can show it. Should be easy to provide obvious and nondebateable examples if you aren't just making things in your head. There's plenty of deep principles I've said I support that you could look for me being hypocritical on too!

I say I believe in free trade, laissez-faire capitalism, individualism > collectivism, that people who complain about the modern world are typically just historically illiterate, that government should generally be small and stay out of people's lives (and that government oppression differs significantly in severity from "social oppression" which I don't care about as much because government claims the monopoly on violence), and that people should generally have near maximal freedom including doing things to themselves that others think is bad or unhealthy like drugs. Or whatever else.

Your choice, should be easy after all.

But Darwin was a bad faith interlocuter par excellence, and he had his own history of defending or deflecting accusations of his bad faith arguments on the grounds of 'just trying to adopt a position he didn't believe.' That was the demonstration, not defense, of his sort of bad faith.

Given the phrase "he had his own history", it seems you are implying that I also have some big history of "just trying to adopt a position I didn't believe". So again, a specific allegation against me that you should be easily able to show right?

Right??! It should super easy to show all the times I've said I don't have any belief in the things I've said and are just being a devil's advocate on things I don't think at all or see logic in.

Cause certainly I've done that, you wouldn't just make things up I hope. Would be really bad faith to just make shit up about someone like that.

There's nothing particularly vague about my view of you. I think you regularly exhibit many of the not-late Darwin's worse tropes in your posting style, regardless of whether you are another sockpuppet of his or not.

This includes his propensity to fight the culture war by fronting a position only to drop or even deny it when inconvenient for the current culture war. Darwin also had a habit to quibble that he never did such a change even when provided past evidence, invite people to engage on his framing of the issue, and then ignore their actual position (and, routinely, follow-up posts' positions).

Like, say, taking a post on ways to counter Darwin-esque evasiveness and demonstrating a difference from Darwin-esque tactics, and then claiming that it is a personal accusation. And then challenging that the reasonableness of such a personal accusation should be demonstrated reasonable through past history to be pulled and cited. A history review which has nothing to do with demonstrating the good faith in arguments provided as a way to distinguish good and bad.

That is very much the sort of implicit accusation and argument deflection Darwin liked to pull.

I'm not gonna lie dawg, I've read this entire exchange and I'm 1) incredibly confused and 2) completely unconvinced Magical here (who I thought was a a pro-DEI lib) is Darwin or adjacent to Darwin

You've accused them of being a bad faith argument shifter here to troll but produced 0 evidence of this despite claiming it exists...

This includes his propensity to fight the culture war by fronting a position only to drop or even deny it when inconvenient for the current culture war

I invited you to provide some of this unexplainable hypocrisy I apparently do if it's so common. I invite you to do it again. Should be easy.

Like, say, taking a post on ways to counter Darwin-esque evasiveness and demonstrating a difference from Darwin-esque tactics, and then claiming that it is a personal accusation.

Wait was it not about me?

Then why did you say

What part of magicalkitty's posting history

Is there another person with a name like this you were actually referring to? It sure seems like your comment was about me first and foremost!

And then challenging that the reasonableness of such a personal accusation should be demonstrated reasonable through past history to be pulled and cited.

Now I don't know who you're talking about still, but you do realize "we couldn't provide any actual proof with this other guy either" is a very unconvincing argument to be making. But hey, I realize I'm actually just the completely unrelated third person because the "magical kitty" you were referring to was apparently someone else.

I don't normally report comments but I'm definitely going it here. This "I'm not talking about you, I just said your name multiple times" gimmick doesn't have a good explanation beyond actual bad faith. Extremely childish, reflect on yourself.

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My increasingly regular agreement with you on forum culture is starting to feel like the Franco-Ottoman Alliance of themotte. Allah Allah!

I'm not sure how I resemble that remark, but I feel like I should be offended by the comparison!

The joke was, specifically, that you and I have very different styles of thought but agree on something strategically key. I like the Turks and have been known, in unguarded moments, to give grudging praise to the French.

I trust different people in different contexts.

Believing that Erick Erickson is a principled guy is not the same as believing he is right about everything. I think he truly believes that it is for the best if the US meddles with Iran and follows Israel's lead into war. He probably truly believes the claims by the Israeli and US governments that Iran was building nukes any day now and we had to strike them. Erickson is not sitting in these classified intelligence meetings getting the details like Kent was, he just trusts the propaganda.

Same thing, do I trust Joe Kent on every single topic ever? Probably not, I don't think he would have say, great information on whether or not some local restaurant chain plans on expanding into North Dakota next month. But Joe Kent does (or at least did) have access to all classified information and discussions during his role as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. When he says something there, it's a lot more meaningful.

I have reason to believe the CEO of local restaurant chain on their expansion plans, but not on info regarding the Iran War. I have reason to believe the former head of counterterrorism on the Iran War, but not on the expansion plans of a local restaurant chain.

The direct impetus for the air strikes was obviously the Iranian protests and the slaughter of thousands of protestors weeks before. Having the government of Iran be replaced by protestors who owe the success of their revolution to U.S. airstrikes is presumably a best-case outcome for the U.S. (and for Iranians), but Trump has varied between explicitly calling for regime change and minimalist goals regarding further destroying their nuclear program, probably in large part so that he can declare victory regardless of how things turn out.

When the protests were still ongoing Trump was supposedly hours from ordering air strikes against Iranian police/etc. to support the protestors but was talked down, supposedly in part by Netanyahu fearing retaliation before Israel was prepared for it. There was a lot of talk at the time about how this was a betrayal of the protestors, who he urged to take over the institutions and implied U.S. support but then didn't deliver while they were slaughtered. Meanwhile U.S. assets were moved into the region to support a better-prepared attack. By the time U.S. assets were in place the protests had been suppressed but Trump went ahead with the attack anyway. Since the attack both Trump and Reza Pahlavi have been explicitly urging the protestors to wait and it is unclear if Trump believes revolution is now futile, if he wants to do more work to weaken the regime before calling for protests to resume, or if he wants to keep his options open between some sort of agreement and attempting regime change.

These protestors were armed by the US and Israel. It was an armed insurrection backed by an enemy state. Iran had every reason to shut if down and it is far better to shut it down than turn into Syria. The casualty numbers are sold to us by the same people who lied about every other regime change war.

Is there an example of an acceptable insurrection that a host country wouldn't have every reason to shut down?

What about the one in Korea recently?

My understanding is the US tried to arm the protestors, but the Kurds kept the weapons. The protestors were not armed.

It was an armed insurrection backed by an enemy state.

And Americans will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of their own this year.

These protestors were armed by the US and Israel. It was an armed insurrection backed by an enemy state.

I'm skeptical of this. Is there any source for this claim?

Iran had every reason to shut if down

From the perspective of regime survival, I would agree -- regardless of whether the protestors were backed by an enemy state. If you are trying to argue that Iran's actions -- gunning down and executing protestors -- were morally justified, then I would have to disagree.

As much as you would like to ignore the context, the reality is that Iran has been relentlessly and aggressively making proxy war on Israel, and to a lesser extent the US, for decades now. For example by bombing a Jewish community center in Argentina. I'm skeptical that the US and Israel have been arming protestors, but even if they had, it would certainly be morally justified based on Iran's behavior. And Iran's leadership has no moral basis to oppose it.

Probably the most important piece of context is that Iran has always had -- and still has -- the option of an uneasy peace, such as what exists between Israel and Egypt.

The US attacked Iran in 1941 and then overthrew the government in 1953. In the 1980s it paid Iraq to invade Iran which killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians. Since then the US has invaded a neighbouring country three times and launched to more wars in the past year against Iran. Israel helped jihadists take over Syria, a country that has friendly relations with Iran. The US and Israel has bombed Iranian embassies, flooded Iran with migrants and heroin, sanctioned Iran, shot down an Iranian airliner, assassinated plenty of Iranians and openly called for overthrowing the Iranian government.

This isn't Iran fighting a proxy war, this is Iran helping its neighbours in a justified way.

Iran wanted peace in 2001. The US refused it. The Iranians have tried to negotiate, and the US has murdered negotiators.

The US attacked Iran in 1941

TIL Britain and the USSR are the US

Always has been.meme.jpeg

Only the Americans have agency. Anything done by the allies was because the Americans enabled them.

Based and america-pilled

Anything done by the allies was because the Americans enabled them.

And anything done by enemies was because the Americans provoked them.

This man Americanas.

Though not as hard as those bold Americans who invaded Iran before Pearl Harbor.

I'm skeptical of this. Is there any source for this claim?

You didn't address this question. It was their main point.

Can you support that claim?

Those protestors were not armed by the US, Israel, or anyone else.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/6/has-trump-confirmed-irans-claim-that-protesters-were-us-armed

Mossad and CIA have been backing all sorts of groups to create chaos in Iran.

Replace "Iran" with "North Korea," "China," or "Russia," and "Israel" with "South Korea," "Japan," and "Ukraine" and no-one (well, almost no-one; Ukraine is a bit more controversial) gets all that upset. Still leads me to believe the concern with Israel is overblown.

I think that Americans would absolutely lose their shit if we started bombing China at Japan's urging or North Korea at South Korea's urging.

I think Americans would also lose their shit and demand bombing if China did half the shit to Japan that Iran and the broader "Axis of Resistance" pulls in the Middle East. Moreso, if China was vaguely associated with significant local ethno-religious tensions and terrorism the way that Iran is associated with islamism (despite being Shia, rather than Sunni like the vast majority of the problematic refugees/terrorists).

Why do you think Americans care about the Middle East? Didn't Trump explicitly campaign on getting the fuck out of that region, or at least 'no further entanglements'?

They have a lot of oil and there's this thing that happened in early September of 2001.

9/11 bought ~20 years of middle eastern misadventures before Americans got bored and/or jaded. Soldiers dying, bases getting bombed, allies getting blown up? Americans shrug. All Iran has to do to preserve American apathy is not attack American soil.

Despite the inconsistency on many given reasons, the US has stayed pretty consistent on one reason, Iran was working towards nukes and we gotta stop them.

Has it? I thought it was WMDs in general, rather than specifically nukes, and specifically that they hadn't fully thought through the possibility that Iran would be more concerned with maintaining regional status/deterrence via ambiguity about their programs/stockpiles than that they'd be concerned about foreign intervention.

What other WMDs could they be worried about? Did Iran make hantavirus?

Not hantavirus per se but biological weapons do exist, yes, along with chemical and radiological (the latter being distinct from a nuclear weapon). I believe Iraq had previously used chemical weapons during wars, at the very least.

There's some evidence that Iran developed a small chemical weapons program during the latter years of Iran-Iraq but found it ineffective. The US government, as part of its support for Iraq, blamed Iran when Saddam gassed the Kurds. Anyways, chemical weapons are a meme; the US wouldn't have destroyed its stockpiles if they were worth using for a serious military. And unless you think Iran has mega biolabs capable of creating another pandemic, biological weapons are no real threat either.

Because this is Israel's possible last chance to use America as a beatstick on Iran for at least a generation or two. I think Israelis call it mowing the lawn with Palestinians, this must be like getting a contractor to trim the trees. I also try to finish eating the old food in the fridge as it gets closer to the expiration date, Netanyahu's reasoning may be similar.

Democrats and younger Republicans are turning neutral to anti-Israel. Since pro-Israel US politics is increasingly associated with older Republicans, a Republican president right now is the best chance to cash in on all the AIPAC lobbying investments while there are still pro-Israel democrats in office. Now or never.

Netanyahu may have hoped for the IRGC to be fully wiped out and for Iran to be occupied by the US, but this is probably the minimum expected result. At least Israel will be relatively safer for a few years, at which point they will be stronger and possibly able to deal with Iran by themselves.

Always keep the expendable chaff on the front line to soften up the enemy before the real battle starts.

Always keep the expendable chaff on the front line to soften up the enemy before the real battle starts.

In Chess the pawns go first.

I feel like this is more like a wild queen's gambit, if you were told by the referee at the start of the match your queen would be removed from the board after 20 total moves played. Might as well damage your opponent as much possible.

Got me missing the xmen movies though, might have to do a full rewatch.

Opening repertoire’s were always my weakness originally and it was where my deficiencies showed, but in end games I was always rock solid and had near machine optimal moves. I always preferred the Ruy-Lopez.

I was hoping to see Yagiz Kaan defeat Magnus or at least draw him, since he’s now the youngest 2700 ever to play the game; but Magnus never loses endgames. It took balls to see such a young kid so eager to swim out to the deep end of the pool. You could tell he realized the single blunder he made where it was lost for him, but I’m proud of him. Kid’s got a bright future.

Ruy Lopez is the way my dad taught me to play. It's my opening as white far too much, to the point it's a crutch and probably weakens me severely playing black.

Never heard about Yagiz until now, but being so young there's no way he doesn't get better unless he has a mental breakdown or something.

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