site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   23943 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.

“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 find this type of claim infuriating, not just because I believe they're lying, but they don't even make an attempt to reconcile their claim with known facts, such as:

  • Iran has stockpiled around 440 kg of 60% enriched uranium.
  • It is extremely expensive to create such a stockpile (especially for a country with a developing economy like Iran).
  • Highly enriched urinanium (HEU) is useless for power plants, which need enrichment around 3% to 5%
  • Academic research, if it relies on HEU at all, certainly doesn't need large quantities of it.
  • The only known use for a large stockpile of HEU is to create nuclear weapons.

So we know that creating a HEU stockpile is expensive, and that literally the only use for such a stockpile is to create a nuclear weapon. Then the obvious conclusion is: Iran created the stockpile with the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon. Why else would they do it?

I would like to know how Joe Kent explain this away. Why did Iran invest so much into building a uranium stockpile, if not to ultimately build a nuclear weapon?

The most charitable explanation I can come up with is that Iran hopes to use it as a bargaining chip: it will give up its stockpile in exchange for America lifting sanctions against Iran. Maybe that's even the preferred outcome, over actually going through with building a nuclear warhead. But it only works as a bargaining chip if Iran is willing to go through with the threat, so that means they cannot be committed to not creating a nuclear weapon.

So this begs the question, what is the real reason?

No it doesn't. You're jumping the gun by assuming Joe Kent is speaking the truth, when there is plenty reason to assume he's in fact lying. Nothing we know is inconsistent with the following statements:

  • Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, as evidenced by their weapons grade uranium stockpiles.
  • Joe Kent is lying for political reasons (which happens all the time).
  • Stopping/delaying the development of nuclear weapons was one of the reasons for the Iran war.

The nukes might not be the only reason for the Iran war, or even the primary reason, but there is absolutely no reason to assume they weren't a reason for the war.

If they are going for bomb, why they aren't going plutonium route which is cheaper?

Somehow they misplayed the nuclear card. It was obviously to be a deterrent and some reason they thought it was always going to be better to be close than actually have them. The point of being close is to be able to finish them when you think American leader decides to significantly bomb you. But they didn’t get that done.

Iran had multiple contingencies to deal with a Bush or Trump invading. One was unleash Palestinian, militia, hezbollah hell on Israel and the region. The next was to close the Straight. And then you would have the bomb.

Oct 7 was dumb. It just United Israel to deal with shit. And then they actually did a really good job neutralizing various groups Iran was funding. Then shutting the straights ended up not being that big of deal for the economy. Especially the US. And then they didn’t build a lot of bombs before Israel and US started bombing them. I assume at this point they don’t have the equipment to finish them.

The real answer is, of course, that there's a coalition of groups inside Iran who for various differing reasons* want nuclear weapons, or the appearance of nuclear weapons, or just conflict with the west generally and Israel specifically. Allied to all sorts of social, class, scientific and business interests. What this has produced is a kabuki theater of nuclear escalation and leveraging of the nuclear program as a diplomatic/political tool, which everyone is pretty sick of at this point. Which is why the nations in the region aren't raising much of a fuss, and why Iran is bombing them all. There's not even a single Iranian military, they have parallel organizations which are so heavily partitioned and currently attrited all to shit.

*nationalists who for obvious reasons see nuclear weapons as the basic requirement for big-boy international status and realpolitik military clout, which they do not currently possess, for an example. Millenarian suicidal religious nutters for another.

The precedent is Saddams pugnacious ambiguity about WMD, where signaling WMD potential was meant to keep other actors off his back while he, I dunno, tried to beat brain cells into Uday. The utility of having a WMD program in the pocket seems to be too tempting an ace to keep from developing, even if it meaningfully changes the strategy of the table if people have to consider hidden cards.

The precedent is also that if you don't actually have the goods, the US will eventually get sick of your shit, and right or wrong, is going to end your tenure.

Yes, that did end up being the find out phase after fucking around. Maybe Iran believes it was either hiding its fucking around better by pretending to cooperate with the JCPOA and 'new number who dis' to their proxies when they themselves were finding out, but its certainly decided that riding out the finding out phase is relatively painless compared to what Saddam encountered.

60% uranium is basically weapons grade, it only takes a little further enrichment to reach 90%. Iran easily has the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles are a lot harder technically. This is 1950s technology.

So why haven't they? If they wanted nuclear weapons, with that stockpile of 60% uranium, they could simply acquire them.

Iran seems to want flexibility, they want some kind of deterrent capability without starting an arms race with Saudi Arabia or a disarming strike from Israel or America. But clearly the deterrent capacity of Iran's latent nuclear capability is insufficient to prevent a disarming strike.

This war is a massive own goal even in its backers own terms. It spurs nuclearization.

Iran has the capacity to complete nuclear weapons if they want to, and this has been true since the '90s at the very latest. What the Iranians want to do is sell their nuclear program multiple times, while maintaining the ability to quickly fabricate one if needed. Trump is trying to stop that cycle, which no other president has been able to do. Only time will tell if any of these projects will hold in the long term. It may have to be enough to set them back some period of time.

Either way, there's multiple win/loss conditions.

'sell' their nuclear weapons program?

Countries don't develop nuclear weapons (or latent nuclear capacity) as part of a commercial strategy, they develop them because they feel threatened or face some kind of strategic challenge.

Some Americans seem to have this idea that Iran was getting free money from Obama or various 'weak' administrations or that there's some kind of tension-raising economic routine going on. Not so! Obama returned some frozen Iranian funds, a pittance compared to past and future sanctions and the active subversion of the country by US and Israeli intelligence. Iran had to develop their own weapons industry, oil production facilities, car industry... they chose the hard road of sovereignty rather than beg for sanctions relief by capitulating to the US/Israeli camp. They didn't do those things because they were cheap or easy but because they felt they had no choice.

If Iran was principally motivated by avarice, they would act a lot more like the UAE or Saudi Arabia.

If the US is worried about money being taken for a ride by greedy and unscrupulous foreigners, look to sub-Saharan Africa, not Iran. Iran isn't a 'tricky negotiating' power but a 'directly extracts wealth forcefully' power, that's what they're doing in the straits of Hormuz and with the cables there.

The only known use for a large stockpile of HEU is to create nuclear weapons.

No, it is also needed for naval reactors. They have to use highly enriched uranium in order to be small enough to fit on a boat.

Sort of absurd to think about, but it sure would be a pain in the ass if the US navy had to worry about fast attack submarines sneaking up on their carrier groups.

The French have been operating nuclear submarines with LEU for decades, so it's not exactly a hard requirement

They don't have to, but the US submarines do. I believe the Russians and UK do, and therefore India as well. Not sure about France and China, though.

They'd be pretty useless to Iran, though, as they don't need boomers (sonce they don't have nuclear weapons, natch), and they don't need to transit significant distances at high speed. See also: why the Baltic/Nordic powers don't bother with nuclear.

That's all pretty much a moot point, though, since Iran hasn't even pretended that they were ever going to consider a nuclear propulsion program, so they can hardly use it as a fig leaf justification for enrichment.

Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon

Start with two simple facts:

  • Iran has some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves. Easily extracted, light crude, no fracking, no complex processes or tech required, almost (but not quite) Saudi level cheap to extract at well below $15 /bbl

  • Iran also has the world’s second largest natural gas reserves, huge solar capability which has been successfully tested, and plentiful hydroelectric power which also provides ~15% of supply.

So why is this a country that needs “peaceful nuclear power”? Even if you disregard all the extensive reporting, everything said by every western government or Israel, every leak, all of the scientific resources poured in, the underlying hostility of the Islamic Revolution towards Israel and some other countries and so on - Iran needs peaceful nuclear power less than almost any other country on earth. There is no domestic / energy supply problem in Iran that nuclear power could possibly solve. Even if Iran wanted a nuclear power station, they could import fuel rods wholesale rather than enrich themselves (like many nations with nuclear power but no nuclear programs).

You would have to be unfathomably credulous to believe that Iran has any reason to spend (waste) large amounts of money on enrichment for civilian nuclear power generation for no reason. It is obvious that the program is for weapons, and Joe Kent is a liar. There is no logical counterargument and there cannot be, the only reason for Iran to have a nuclear program is for weapon purposes.

I think that most civilian nuclear programs were subsidized by their government sponsors with more than a passing thought about the military implications. I am not a nuclear engineer, and it might be an urban legend, but I have heard the claim that nobody uses thorium reactors because they are less useful for weapon manufacturing.

It seems obvious that Iran wants to be in a situation where they can quickly switch from a civilian program to a weapons program.

And quite frankly, the Iranian regime would have to be foolish not to seek a nuclear weapon. At the moment, they are in a situation where Israel and the US bomb them whenever they feel like it, and they have little ability to retaliate and cause similar damage in Israel (though interdicting Hormuz is working very well for them). They would fare much better under cold war rules, where both sides will use proxy forces to fight the other and avoid a direct confrontation.

I think that for the most part, civilian nuclear programs are mostly unrelated to weapons programs.

I will say that the US order of things was kind of insane: nuclear bomb -> nuclear submarine reactor -> civilian reactor.

Like a lot of infrastructure, it's dual use. Iran is a sovereign nation and can spend money on whatever it believes is in its strategic interest, as long as it abides by its international commitments.

That begs the question though, if Iran has been trying to develop nuclear weapons for decades, why don't they have them already?

From Iran's perspective, they are next door to a hostile nuclear power with illegal nuclear weapons. Iran knows that they won't get the same special dispensation from the international community, so they have to try to ride the line of maintaining some form of deterrent without ending up as an international pariah like North Korea. Historically that has meant having a robust civilian nuclear program, and then using their degree of further enrichment as a bargaining chip. That was the whole point of JCPOA - Iran's breakout time would be regulated through limits on enriched uranium stockpiles and centrifuges in exchange for diplomatic normalization and sanctions relief. These sorts of negotiations have been going on for decades with no prospect of Iran actually producing nukes, despite Israel's constant claims to the contrary. That's my understanding of Joe Kent's statement about IC reporting - he was saying that there was no indication that Iran was planning to break this holding pattern and try to actually produce a nuclear weapon.

From a game theory perspective a way to think about this I suppose is that they are deliberately giving away the information that they are incapable of performing a first strike, but maintaining the potential capability for a delayed second strike. That adds significantly more risk to an Israeli first strike without incurring the full diplomatic consequences of having nuclear weapons. The issue is that the potential for nukes in weeks/months is not the same as having nukes ready to launch - I highly doubt they would have risked a decapitation strike on Iran's top leadership if there was the prospect of immediate nuclear retaliation.

From America's perspective the old status quo was fine - or arguably even beneficial because it discouraged Israel from doing anything too disruptive. The American interest here is essentially just "don't fuck with the oil supply" and by that metric, this conflict is a complete own-goal.

Like a lot of infrastructure, it's dual use. Iran is a sovereign nation and can spend money on whatever it believes is in its strategic interest, as long as it abides by its international commitments.

Sure, but everyone else can take notice and make their own reactions accordingly. America (current iteration) and Israel don't like the prospect of them having nukes, so bombing them into the stone age would be an equally valid exercise of those countries government power under the "strategic interest" theory of governance.

That was the whole point of JCPOA - Iran's breakout time would be regulated through limits on enriched uranium stockpiles and centrifuges in exchange for diplomatic normalization and sanctions relief. These sorts of negotiations have been going on for decades with no prospect of Iran actually producing nukes, despite Israel's constant claims to the contrary.

It wasn't and hasn't just been Israel. It was a consensus western position that they were seeking nukes until Europeans soured on GWB over Iraq. Was a consensus American position until the Obama bros decided Israel was a colonial state that needed to be eradicated, and remained a consensus opinion on the American right through Biden's presidency. It still largely is with only some super online folks deviating from it over the Israel question.

But like, objectively, they enrich uranium whenever they can, they have crazy leaders who are willing to, and have now been, blown up over enriching uranium. Iran having any uranium is objectively bad for the world, you only don't think that if you hate Israel or America more than you care about the prospect of a mushroom cloud in a major city sometime in the next 10 years.

Iran is a sovereign nation and can spend money on whatever it believes is in its strategic interest, as long as it abides by its international commitments.

From Iran's perspective, they are next door to a hostile nuclear power with illegal nuclear weapons.

Israel is also a sovereign nation, and NOT a member (unlike Iran) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Okay, I'll be more precise - Israel is not a recognized nuclear weapon state ratifier or acceder under the NPT, but still possesses nuclear weapons. That puts them in the same category as North Korea, which followed the agreed-upon withdrawal procedure and is also not bound by the NPT.

Counter - They had a very real need for nuclear weapons. As a non-western nation in a western world having the can’t fuck with me card was viable.

Maybe they should have given up some other geopolitical aims that put them at odds with Israel but actually gotten nukes a long time ago.

Sure, you can argue about why they might want them. But the idea they don’t want them is laughable.

Can confim - Having nukes is great!

You reidentifying with your ancestral homeland (since I don’t think nukes have done much good for Britain) somehow reminds me of the fact that, perhaps moreso than anyone else (even the English! Even the Indians!) Pakistani elites really do have a deep, abiding contempt for their own domestic poor. I think the only time I encountered more was during a long conversation with an elderly Jamaican academic.

They have one negative. In Armageddon your country is basically guaranteed to get nuked.

Chile might get ignored.

Yeah, there's no way that strike on Iran's top leadership would have been approved if they had nuclear weapons. Blowing up the top layers of the chain of command is too risky when you don't know who's going to end up with the launch codes, and what they are going to do with them. Just the existence of nuclear weapons alone is a powerful deterrent to regime change attempts.

They could have done one or the other. Build the nuke to back off foreign intervention or play regional hegemon games. Doing both brings the US into the game.

Sure, but that's a concession that they're working on nuclear weapons, or at least breakout capacity, and this is a country with a hyper-antagonistic foreign policy, that meddles in neighbors constantly, funds terrorism, etc. It's very reasonable to be opposed to their nuclear ambitions.

This seems like it's not so much a counter as a concession?

Sure. But I also think a little different in implying that their nuke plans had valid reasons. The issue is they played regional hegemon games and always floated nukes. If they had not played games but had nukes for security while geopolitically playing more like N Korea it would be fine. The combo is very bad for other players.

But Iran had a promising nuclear medicine program that required enrichment. It exported radiopharmaceuticals to neighboring states. They need Mo-99/Tc-99m for cancer imagining. It is a top 3 producer of Tc-99m. They need to produce 90% of their domestic medicine because sanctions. They’ve been shouting about this since 2019 and the answer “sorry, all those kids with cancer have to die without treatment” is obviously not satisfactory.

Why did sanctions get put on Iran in the first place?

Succinctly: wealthy and disloyal pro-Israel Americans lobbied Trump to get rid of the Iran deal, because spending the blood and treasure of Americans for the safety of Israel is desirable to them, motivated by a mix of nationalism, racism, and religion. And you can hardly fault them! If I could pressure loads of Israelis to die and waste trillions of their own dollars to expand American hegemony, I would do the same. (Of course, they would respond to this by ensuring I have no influence.)

As a follow-up question when do you believe sanctions against Iran started to be imposed?

As I understand it, you can absolutely produce Tc-99m with LEU rather than HEU. Is it optimal? No. But any explanation for Iran's enrichment other than nuclear weapons requires them to be insanely unoptimal for zero reason, so at least this would be unoptimal for a good reason.

You're also introducing a weird chicken-and-egg situation. If the reason they have a sketchy nuclear program is for medicine production, which they ony need because they've been sanctioned for having a sketchy nuclear program...

Yeah, they went out of their way to signal their goodwill by keeping enrichment levels below 3.67% during the Iran Deal.

What is the point of having 60% enriched if not for weapons? I’m not arguing they don’t need them, or they shouldn’t be allowed to have them, or anything else, I’m just saying that they obviously want to retain the ability to create them very quickly if necessary at the least, and that counts as ‘wanting nuclear weapons’. Kent is saying they don’t want them, which is very different from admitting they do but justifying it. The unspoken ‘or else’ part of Obama’s Iran Deal (which I don’t think Trump should have broken) was implicitly an admission that the enrichment was ultimately for military purposes.

So you claim that they get to 60% in 10 years?

I think you can get to it in months from 3% if you have the capabilities of Iran, but this is a double moot point: DNI + five eyes says no desire to build one (no whistleblower has said otherwise), DNI says destroyed in Operation MC Hammer (sub-operation can’t touch this). Maybe even a triple moot point because of the fatwah, a quadruple moot point because it would be an irrational decision for them to ever aggressively launch a nuke, and a quintiple moot point because Israel is an aggressive power (increasingly religiously extremist at that) in the Middle East with nuclear weapons that aren’t inspected.

And when I buy couple of tonnes of peroxide and acetone it is because I really like to get my nails done and I am very clumsy and always have road rash on my knees.

I think the question could be delegated to the intelligence-gathering of the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK. They would make sure that the rumors of your nail-polishing habits aren’t being disseminated by a company that produces clip-on nails.

The number one fossil fuel producer in the world is the US which is also the number one nuclear producer.

Russia is the third largest fossil fuel producer in the world and has over the past decade been the number two country in building new nuclear.

UAE has fossil fuels as a main export yet has built a large nuclear power plant.

The number one fossil fuel producer in the world is the US which is also the number one nuclear producer.

Sure, and the US is also a nuclear weapons state. Anyway, the question is not the total fossil fuel production but rather what's produced versus what's needed.

I'm pretty sure that the argument being made is that (1) Iran has far far more fossil fuel reserves than what it needs for domestic energy consumption; and (2) Iran claims not to be developing nuclear weapons; therefore (3) Iran has no need to enrich Uranium.

Neither (1) nor (2) applies to the United States.

Both the US and Russia are nuclear powers.

The UAE is not enriching nuclear fuel domestically, but importing it from the US.

https://www.framatome.com/medias/framatome-and-enec-sign-nuclear-fuel-supply-agreement-to-diversify-and-strengthen-uae-clean-energy-security/

And why not refine it yourself if you can? Being dependent on imported fuel is a risk and a cost.

Both the US and Russia very much were initially developing nuclear weapons from the outset, so they kind of prove my point here (the civilian sector was in some ways a byproduct) and in any case in the early days of the atomic age there was a lot of uncertainty about capability and the US was much more reliant on imported oil and it was theorized that nuclear might become far cheaper than it did (see the “it won’t even be metered” quotes from the ‘60s). The UAE’s nuclear power is largely about domestic politics because they’re governed in many ways semi-independently and 5/7 Emirates actually have no oil (almost all of it is in Abu Dhabi).

Lastly, the key developmental measure here isn’t “owning a nuclear power station”, it’s “enriching uranium allegedly for civilian nuclear power purposes”. The UAE doesn’t enrich its own uranium. The whole fuel rods are shipped from South Korea and then installed. So the situation is very, very different. And again, Iran is very poor compared to the UAE; there is no reason for the huge investment in its enrichment program if not for weapons.

Lastly, the key developmental measure here isn’t “owning a nuclear power station”, it’s “enriching uranium allegedly for civilian nuclear power purposes”. The UAE doesn’t enrich its own uranium. The whole fuel rods are shipped from South Korea and then installed. So the situation is very, very different. And again, Iran is very poor compared to the UAE; there is no reason for the huge investment in its enrichment program if not for weapons.

Anyway, I am pretty confident that Iran could work out a deal where (1) it turns in all its enriched Uranium; (2) it destroys all of its enrichment facilities; (3) energy grade fuel rods are shipped in from South Korea or whatever; and (4) they are carefully monitored by international observers. If Iran has no interest in a weapons program, that would be a pretty good deal. But of course they wouldn't voluntarily agree to that, because they desperately want nuclear weapons.

As a side note, I'm also pretty confident that there is near 100% correlation between (1) people who deny that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons; and (2) people who hate Israel. Yes, this is bulverism, but I think it's worth keeping in mind the source of peoples' delusions.

I am pretty confident that Iran could work out a deal where (1) it turns in all its enriched Uranium; (2) it destroys all of its enrichment facilities; (3) energy grade fuel rods are shipped in from South Korea or whatever; and (4) they are carefully monitored by international observers. If Iran has no interest in a weapons program, that would be a pretty good deal.

I'd heard "however much free uranium you need to run your plants if you dismantle your enrichment facilities" was indeed an offer prior to the shooting (that was refused), but of course, it's nigh impossible to tell what anyone has actually put on the table, it seems.

I'd heard "however much free uranium you need to run your plants if you dismantle your enrichment facilities" was indeed an offer prior to the shooting (that was refused), but of course, it's nigh impossible to tell what anyone has actually put on the table, it seems.

I agree in the sense that in situations like this people have a tendency to lie about what was offered and what was refused. Each side wants to spin things so that it appears reasonable while the other side appears unreasonable.

That being said, Iran has a track record, as does Israel. For many years now, Israel has had uneasy peace with Egypt and Jordan and has refrained from military strikes against them even though Israel has more than enough military strength to do pretty much whatever it wants to either or both of those countries. At the same time, Iran has been aggressively and viciously attacking Israel (and Jewish people in general) by means of proxies for decades now. Its leadership regularly leads chants of "Death to Israel," etc. Even though it could easily have the same uneasy peace as is enjoyed by Egypt and Jordan.

With this context, I am reasonably confident that Iran was presented with reasonable offers and refused them. With "reasonable" meaning a deal along those lines.

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.

Joe Kent went on 11 combat tours in the Middle East, his wife died in combat there, how can you call him a clown for not wanting to lose another war in the Middle East?

Plus he actually studied strategy at university, he's 10x the leader of someone like Hegseth or Laura Loomer or whatever neocon idiot Trump takes advice from.

It doesn't take a great strategist to realize that attacking Iran is moronic, or that the Israelis are just lying when they shriek and whine about nuclear weapons. They've been shrieking and whining for decades, far longer than it takes to acquire nuclear weapons. The clowns are the people who still listen to Netanyahu when he only brings them lies, costs, war and ignominy by association.

for not wanting to lose another war in the Middle East?

Are you confident that's his main motivation? And do you have the same level of confidence that you had for your claim that Israel bombed a girl's school in Iran?

It doesn't take a great strategist to realize that attacking Iran is moronic [if you hate Jewish people and want to see Israel destroyed]

Agreed.

or that the Israelis are just lying when they shriek and whine about nuclear weapons.

Looks to me like you are the one who is shrieking and whining and lying. Meanwhile, the Israelis have been actively sabotaging the Iranian nuclear weapons program, thank goodness.

Anyway, I have a question: Do you still hate Jewish people as much as you did when you falsely claimed that Israel had bombed a girl's school in Iran?

You go on incessantly about me mischaracterizing a US bomb dropped in an Israeli war as being Israeli as some kind of terrible, unforgettable error that shows the blackness of my heart... when it didn't even affect the main point I was making in the slightest. In my naivete at the time, I assumed the only reason anybody would be interested in the bombs origin is because of the insane Israeli propaganda that 'actually the Iranians blew up their own school to make the West look bad' as mentioned upthread. That would be a meaningful distinction as compared to US vs Israeli bombing, that was what I was most interested in refuting, which I did. So I said it was an Israeli bomb. Damn!

Meanwhile, your main point, that bombing Iran would not affect their likeliness to nuclearize since they already maximally hated Israel and thus Iran should be bombed more aggressively, remains wrong and bizarre and is 10x more bloodthirsty than mine. It is also causing a massive global crisis whose main redeeming feature is that people are going to trust and favour Israel much less in future.

So in conclusion, these kinds of gotchas are neither intelligent nor charismatic, nor particularly likely to make me or anyone else love Jews more.

You go on incessantly about me mischaracterizing a US bomb dropped in an Israeli war as being Israeli as some kind of terrible, unforgettable error that shows the blackness of my heart...

It certainly undermines your credibility - dramatically.

Meanwhile, your main point, that bombing Iran would not affect their likeliness to nuclearize since they already maximally hated Israel and thus Iran should be bombed more aggressively,

Please show me where I said that Iran "should be bombed more aggressively." Please quote me. TIA.

What I am trying to say is that the Iranian government's hatred of Israel and desire for nuclear weapons was pretty maximal before the latest attack, so I doubt that this will provoke the reaction you predict. At this point, the main thing for Israel (and the US) to do, to paraphrase the Untouchables, is the Chicago Way.

t. you

t. you

By "the Chicago Way," what I meant was respond very aggressively to each act of aggression on the part of Iran. Which of course can include bombing, but it doesn't mean to escalate from out of nowhere.

They've been shrieking and whining for decades, far longer than it takes to acquire nuclear weapons.

I take it you don't believe in the concept of holding a breakout time or "screwdriver ready"?

The US intelligence services said there was no imminent threat from Iran, so apparently they believe it.

Attacking and killing the guy with a fatwa against nuclear weapons doesn't seem like a smart idea. If you don't want the Iranians to break out, why not simply refrain from attacking them and incentivizing a breakout?

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.

He’s still not made big mistakes of land wars. He’s kept his adventures limited. And Iran atleast has a fig leaf of geopolitically neutering China and not purely a let’s bring Democracy to the ME.

And still have hope that Trump pulls up a positive sum outcome with Iran that ends in diplomacy acceptable to both sides that benefits America by cutting China out of depending energy supplies.

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.

Trump 1 had very few Middle East adventures and started putting the kibosh on Afghanistan.

Biden helped Al Qaeda take over Syria.

Obama bombed Libya to the stone age, surged troops in Afghanistan, started the first Ukraine war and helped jihadists take half of Syria.

George Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump's first term was relatively peaceful and Trump was the first candidate in a long time to be outspoken in his criticism of previous wars.

started the first Ukraine war

Alright, I'll bite: you can criticize him for inaction concerning Crimea, but how did he start it?

John McCain and Victoria Nuland were on Maidan square together and the US was actively funding groups in Ukraine and pushing for regime change. There was clear Ambition to expand NATO east and to cross Russia's red lines even though they were fully aware this would lead to a major war.

He paid hundreds of thousands of crisis actors to fake colossal pro-EU protests in Ukraine, forcing Russia to invade eastern Ukraine to... do something.

"Obama/the US caused the Russo-Ukrainian War" rests on the claim that the Maidan protests were an American op.

I think the paid opposition narrative needs to end. It seems very genuine at this point Ukraine has a lot of pro-EU people. They have spilt a lot of blood for it so it seems reasonable to believe they are genuinely pro-EU. And I despise the EU but it’s still a better path for them.

They like the EU because they have watched Poland go from poor to rich. When you see Polish people returning from London as maids and now Ukrainians are the polish maids.

"Caused" is a bit strong, but "failed to deter" is a plausible view if you point to non-reactions to Georgia (in fact, pulling out a "reset" button accepting it) and that "The 1980s called and want their foreign policy back" line at the debate when Romney claimed Russia was a potential adversary merely 2 years before Crimea. Frankly, the flip from that to Russia-gate makes me take the left's positions on international relations as deeply un-serious.

Although the other side seems to have never met a proposed intervention they didn't like, which is its own failure mode.

The problem I have with failure-to-deter and other sins of inaction is that unless you're withdrawing some active intervention they're overdetermined. Obama could have done more to oppose Russia post-2013/4, but so could most of Europe. The sheer indifference of most European allies colored the US' own response.

Specifically regarding failures of deterrence, it is not clear to me what critics of Obama expected him to have done other than something really outside like cooperate in suppressing the Maidan protests.

Frankly, the flip from that to Russia-gate makes me take the left's positions on international relations as deeply un-serious.

I don't think this follows. Obama's dismissiveness of Russia as a source of problems in 2012 has certainly aged poorly, but at the time the US was trying to switch focus from Europe and the Middle East to Asia-Pacific and China (it is still trying to do this) and the broad consensus was that Russia was a gas station with nukes. The flip on Russia was a direct response to Russia doing things. You should expect people to update

Although the other side seems to have never met a proposed intervention they didn't like, which is its own failure mode.

The reason why right-wing anti-interventionism will never have any legs is that the right-wing elite is full of people who fundamentally believe in the crude application of force to achieve positive results and the right-wing base is full of people who think you have a moral obligation to support the team no matter what. The result is that right-wing elites constantly try to fix problems with violence and their supporters always back them because it is practically unthinkable not to.

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?

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?

I think there is a semi-coherent argument that the Iranian revolution's ability to "mog", as you say, the Carter administration is a large part of how the regional relationships worked out the way they did. From allowing the Shah to get deposed, to the return of the Ayatollah in a sealed train car Air France charter plane, to the embassy hostage crisis (and Eagle Claw), much of the regime's legitimacy plausibly comes from American own-goals.

I think there is a semi-coherent argument that the Iranian revolution's ability to "mog", as you say, the Carter administration is a large part of how the regional relationships worked out the way they did.

Well yeah, a bean sprout could mog the Carter administration.

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.

I think "he had John Bolton his first term" says it all right there.

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.

I think that this is giving in to epistemic helplessness.

Sure, the people in the intelligence community might have a better idea of what is going on, but they are not an alien superintelligence way beyond what an ordinary thoughtful person might notice.

If I go to the zoo and see a giant striped big cat in an enclosure, I will call it a tiger, instead of saying "that is probably some kind of animal, certainly a life form, but as a layman I should not have an opinion on its species when there are experts with PhD's in zoology who are much more qualified, and we should await the verdict of an expert panel and not make any assumptions about what kind of cat it is -- perhaps the zoo has painted stripes on a pony."

GWB's wars have certainly taught the world that a successful invasion can still be a disaster in terms of grand strategy. The reverse is not true, so we can certainly place upper bounds on the success of Trump's adventure from his lack of strategic success despite tactical dominance. As another analogy, if I observe a chef preparing a meal and it seems to go well, that does not mean that the meal will be tasty. But if I observe a chef yelling at the dough to rise already and threatening to pour a pound of salt into it while also setting off the fire alarm, that will very probably not result in a great meal.

I think as a general rule I agree with you; people without intelligence clearance could tell Iraq was a Quagmire after a year for instance. At the same time, I think it's so early in Iran that it's hard to tell the long term impact. Especially since, lacking the intelligence our leaders have, we don't know how real or fake their nuclear accusations are.

This is where I think we have to fall back to our priors. I don't trust Trump, Neocons, or the Israeli right on having a foreign policy that benefits the US or the world so I'm naturally predisposed to dislike this war. I also don't trust their truthfulness regarding foreign policy facts, such as how advanced the nuclear program is, so I'm skeptical that Iran was aiming for building a bomb right now rather than aiming for the ability to build a bomb quickly. I also don't buy 'seriously not literally' as a communication strategy, so how this war has been communicated makes me skeptical of the enterprise as well. As a result of the above, the war seems like a bad idea to me and I don't trust any promises of victory. The epistemic uncertainty for me comes in that I don't know a lot of the relevant data, and I suppose it's possible in a year data could come out that shows this war was necessary and/or it actually worked out well for the world. I wouldn't bet on it though.,

Above sums of my opinion of the war. If you look at it, almost all of it is just flowing from my priors. It hasn't been updated in the past month; I don't think the events could've moved it. The flip side is if someone was predisposed to trusting the authorities I mentioned above, then their priors would make them like the war. My main point is that one's opinion of the war is more based on priors than anything else, so I think discussing priors is actually more fruitful than discussing the facts in this case.

The chef's spraying spittle could be flavoring the dough! Let him cook, he has a process, we don't have insight into his secret recipe as outsiders. The fire alarm gets the line chefs motivated, he has an unorthodox management style. I have every confidence that his pizza will be delicious and that he will be remembered as one of the greatest chefs of our country, up there with Guy Fieri and Bobby Flay. He took a long piss in the last pepperoni pizza I ordered and let me tell you, my extended family thought it elevated the whole experience.

In fact, I got together with some other enthusiasts and we booked a reservation to have him defecate directly into our mouths. It's a bit pricey but I'm pretty sure it's going to be worth it. My wife had some unkind words about it, paraphrased "emasculating", but I think it's actually very manly to receive man stuff from another man.

What is this contributing to the discussion?

Make your point without the performative snark.

Apologies.

The US is probably in a state of strategic failure on oil flow through Hormuz unless one of two undesirable options is chosen.

First is the complete surrender of the IRGC. Trump attempted this, but was not as successful as in Venezuela with the capture of Maduro. The Iranian state was more resilient and decentralized than anticipated. Iran is effectively 99% militarly crushed, but the threat of the 1% coming out of hiding is what keeps insurance rates high for oil tankers. These insurance rates and possible risk of loss of a tanker keep oil prices high, so Hormuz is de facto closed. If Iran can be 100% crushed, this is desirable, but unlikely without ground troop intervention.

The second option is massive concessions to Iran in return for peace. Allowing them to develop nuclear weapons and monetary reparations of some sort, like a toll. Trump is probably headed this way, unless he wants to preside over a defeat in midterms and a new oil price shock. The oil shock may be unavoidable, but the duration and severity can be mitigated if the oil starts flowing sooner rather than later.

Some of Trump's supporters believe that he has a plan for this situation, which cannot be disclosed to the public due to national security concerns. It is true that Trump has usually managed to extricate himself out of politically difficult situations. Other critics, like @quiet_NaN and myself, are a bit more skeptical that there is a good offramp with Hormuz that both prevents Iran from having further nuclear development, and also manages to open Hormuz in a way that shipping is mostly back to normal. Trump also has a time limit to resolve this situation - midterms and the end of his presidency. In less than 6 months, if gas prices stay elevated or push even higher, the republican party is likely going to suffer higher than expected congressional losses from typical midterm reversals. In 2.5 years at the end of Trump's term, if Hormuz is still closed, we might see the democratic socialists take power in the US.

The spice must flow!

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.

Near me they dropped by $0.20/gallon over the past couple of days.

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.

It was more like 4 or 5, wasn't it? 2 tankers, 2 or 3 destroyers?

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

This does seem unlikely, but the incentive structure that seems to be forming (ships not participating in the scheme get hit) would work to Trump's favor, if Operation Project Freedom was something we were doing, which it isn't, unless of course it is (I dunno I haven't checked the news this afternoon).

In other words, the only thing likely to get the strait open is an end to the war.

Fundamentally I think this is correct. But it does appear that the US has a substantial military ability to protect tankers going through the strait. And there were, as I seem to recall on earlier Iran threads, strong suggestions otherwise. So I think it's interesting, both militarily and from the perspective that it theoretically allows the US to, however marginally, ease the constraints on them, while maintaining the constraints placed on Iran.

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.

Of course it would look that way, because people who are "on the receiving end of these tactics" and don't mind it will not complain about it, and it is seemingly by design a type of "tactics" that is not apparent if nobody complains.

I guess you could counter that you would expect at least some scenarios where a "bad-faith" arguer argues against multiple people, one of them complains, and another says he is actually ok with it. There is a less universalist/more provocative explanation I could have reached for right away: the accusation is only ever levelled by our right-wing majority against presumed left-wing posters, and the right-wing majority broadly agrees that uppity left-wingers should not be welcome. There are right-wing posts that would seem to meet the same criteria of "bad faith" being applied here (switching allegiance between seemingly incompatible authorities, such as TERFs/Christians/old-school atheists, based on fit for a particular argument + an apparent expectation that the poster will look down on anyone who disagrees); it's just that nobody complains about them, so it never registers.

Maybe you think it makes a big difference that the left-wing "agitator" expects to see the people he will look down on in the responses, while the right-wing "agitator" expects responses of agreement and camaraderie and will only look down on abstract people far away and maybe one or two black sheep commenters. Making a criterion that essentially says the same sort of thing is only bad if people here disagree is a way to circlejerk reinforcement, though.

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".

More comments

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 is Darwin or adjacent to Darwin (also confused who that is, but assuming a troll)

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

More comments

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.

More comments

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.

  • -11

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.

Iran wanted peace in 2001. The US refused it.

I'm skeptical of these claims as well.

Please provide backup for your claims that (1) the protestors in Iran were armed by the US and Israel; (2) the US attacked Iran in 1941 and overthrew the government in 1953; (3) the US paid Iraq to invade Iran; and (4) Iran wanted peace in 2001 and the US refused it.

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

Ok, so in your view, when Iran bombed a Jewish community center in Argentina, killing and injuring hundreds of people that was "Iran helping its neighbors in a justified way." Do I understand you correctly?

  1. Israel sold the plan of instigating a revolution in Iran:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/us/politics/iran-israel-trump-netanyahu-mossad.html

Trump admitted he gave weapons to protestors:

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

the US attacked Iran in 1941 and overthrew the government in 1953

Admittedly the war was more of a British thing at first but the US was clearly involved in the subsequent occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Soviet_invasion_of_Iran

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

The US overthrew a democratically elected leader and installed a brutal dictator.

the US paid Iraq to invade Iran;

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/9/22/us-plans-to-attack-seven-muslim-states

Netanyahu and the neocons have been pushing hard for war against Iran. US politicians talk openly about overthrowing Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_States_relations_during_the_George_W._Bush_administration#State_of_Iran-U.S._relations_in_January_2001

Iran was warming up to the west after 9/11

One bombing in the 80s fundamentally doesn't matter that much when millions have died in the middle east.

Trump admitted he gave weapons to protestors:

Assuming this is correct, I take it you are unable to support your claim that Israel armed the protestors?

Admittedly the war was more of a British thing at first

Ok, so you admit that you are unable to support your claim that the US attacked Iran in 1941?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/9/22/us-plans-to-attack-seven-muslim-states

Umm, what's your evidence that the US paid Iraq to attack Iran? I don't even see any hearsay on that subject in the article you link to.

Iran was warming up to the west after 9/11

Ok, just to be clear, your evidence that "Iran wanted peace in 2001. The US refused it." is your own (unsupported) claim that "Iran was warming up to the west after 9/11"?

One bombing in the 80s fundamentally doesn't matter that much when millions have died in the middle east.

Maybe it matters a little, maybe it matters a lot. But part of your Gish Gallop included this claim:

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

I'm just asking if this includes Iran's attack on the Jewish community center in Argentina. It's a very simple yes or no question. Why won't you answer it?

Ok, so you admit that you are unable to support your claim that the US attacked Iran in 1941?

I like how you completely glaze over the definitive evidence for the '53 coup, which is what actually matters here.

Ok, just to be clear, your evidence that "Iran wanted peace in 2001. The US refused it." is your own (unsupported) claim that "Iran was warming up to the west after 9/11"?

No, he posted the evidence right below. Are you blind?

Maybe it matters a little, maybe it matters a lot. But part of your Gish Gallop included this claim:

You're the one Gish Galloping by demanding infinite evidence and then refusing to budge an inch when said evidence is provided.

I'm just asking if this includes Iran's attack on the Jewish community center in Argentina. It's a very simple yes or no question. Why won't you answer it?

You need to prove that Iran did it, to start. But once again, he did answer it:

One bombing in the 80s fundamentally doesn't matter that much when millions have died in the middle east.

Again, do you have faulty vision? Do you suffer from severe brain damage? Is your IQ below the level of legal retardation? Are you suffering from severe inbreeding? Are you just trolling?

More comments

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.

A rogue Saudi aristocrat living among hill tribes in a failed state sent a terror attack under the aegis of Iran's greatest religious enemy that exploited fixable security issues in America?

That happened on 9/11. What was exposed is that there are about half a billion people who hold a sincere religious belief that killing Americans is good, and that they hold supermajorities in basically every country in this particular region. And that the only think preventing them from performing on said sincere religious belief is their own total incompetence.

this thing that happened in early September of 2001

"Sunni terrorists under the guidance of a rogue Saudi noble (and likely backed by Saudi money) murdered a couple of thousand Americans, so obviously 25 years later we have to support Saudi Arabia against their Shiite enemies, otherwise how would we ever learn if Shiites are better at killing Americans on their own soil than Sunnis?"

The minor liturgical spats between the various folks in the region chanting death to America are of less interest to us than the chanting and bonafide sincere desire they possess to enact that feeling.

Middle Easterners are much more interested in killing each other (and Israelis) than killing Americans, popular slogans notwithstanding. Just like Americans hate other Americans more than they do any foreigners: proximity breeds contempt.

More comments

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.

I think that you are oversimplifying things. The utility of chemical weapons depends a lot specific conditions. For example, they were used a lot on the Western Front in WW1 (though they did not lead to a military breakthrough), while they saw little to no combat use in WW2, not because Hitler was a nice guy who would never stoop so low, but because his blitzkrieg tactics did not require area denial.

So CW depend on doctrine, and doctrine is not something which you can just pick. The Reichswehr could not simply have invented the blitzkrieg, they lacked the vehicles to pull that off. The US military is very long on equipment and rather short on atrocities. They are highly mechanized (which means that CW for area denial are less useful to them), but any war they join is likely to be a voluntary overseas engagement, and they have an electorate back home which tends to get upset over atrocities. For Assad and his ilk, the calculation is different. He did not have the mobility to do blitzkrieg, but he also did not have to consider what his electorate could stomach.

If you are not trying to achieve a tactical objective, but the goal is to spread terror, then chemical weapons are probably 10x as effective per death than bombs are, and radiological weapons might be 100x as effective as plain old explosives. That Japanese cult could have achieved the same death toll of their infamous Sarin attack by throwing a few pipe bombs into a crowded subway car at a fraction of the operational complexity of synthesizing a nerve agent. But if they had done that, their attack might not even have made the top spot in international news, and would long have been forgotten outside Japan.

Chemical weapons are ineffective against actual militaries, the Reichswehr spent the latter half of the great war figuring that out. They're effective against mobs of unarmed protestors, which is who Assad actually gassed- but they're less effective than munitions(which Assad did not have enough of, he was filling barrels with oil and lighting fuses before pushing them out of helicopters). They're not great for targeting villagers, but Saddam didn't run a militarily optimal regime. People who can afford better(chemical weapons are cheap), do.

If you are not trying to achieve a tactical objective, but the goal is to spread terror, then chemical weapons are probably 10x as effective per death than bombs are, and radiological weapons might be 100x as effective as plain old explosives. That Japanese cult could have achieved the same death toll of their infamous Sarin attack by throwing a few pipe bombs into a crowded subway car at a fraction of the operational complexity of synthesizing a nerve agent. But if they had done that, their attack might not even have made the top spot in international news, and would long have been forgotten outside Japan.

It's the same as dirty bombs. The radioactivity from a dirty bomb will not, realistically, cause particularly many cancer cases. It will, however, cause an absolutely absurd amount of panic, and I mean that both in the literal sense and as an intensifier.

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.

Democrats and younger Republicans are turning neutral to anti-Israel.

I can not speak for the Republicans (or for the Americans at all, really), but while I was never a fan of Netanyahu, I was willing to give Israel a bit of slack to crush Hamas after Oct 7. Unfortunately, Netanyahu displayed a total indifference towards civilian lives. Personally, my attitude these days is that it is sad that the religious nutjobs in the ME want to murder each other, but we can't really prevent them from doing so and should just stay the hell away from them.

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.

I think this is going to backfire badly for him. I would claim that the natural attitude of most Americans towards Israel and the ME in general is one of indifference. Sure, some might prefer Israel holding Jerusalem for end-time prophecy reasons, and others might really prefer a two-state solution (and even be in denial about what kind of murderous thugs Hamas are), but Israel has not been a dominant topic in US politics. This was a great environment for AIPAC to work in -- their support could certainly buy a candidate more votes than it cost him in die-hard Palestine supporters.

Trying to starve Gaza made a lot of people care more about Israel, but still not to the point of being unsalvagable. Trump's war on behalf of Israel will make Israel support a prime CW hotspot for the coming years.

Israel's strategic situation without Western support is not all that great. Sure, it is somewhat tolerated by the Sunni's because they have a common enemy, which is Shiite Iran, but my take is that most of the Sunni population does not like Israel very much, which for now does not matter because they can't really vote in another king. They have a population of 10M, e.g. roughly that of Cairo alone. Sure, they have by far the best tech in the ME, but even that depends on Western pipelines, they can hardly maintain a cutting edge weapons platform for anything from submarines to stealth bombers by themselves.

Sure, some might prefer Israel holding Jerusalem for end-time prophecy reasons

Ok, minor correction. The 'We need to support Israel to bring on the end times because the prophecy requires Israel hold Jerusalem' is not very common in the red tribe. These guys are seen as weirdos sorta like mormons, seventh day adventists, Christian scientists, etc.

The typical zionist church in the US- and this attitude is legitimately very common in the red tribe- teaches that God will carry out retribution against those who do not protect the Jews from persecution. This is a different position, one which doesn't care very much about Israeli territorial expansion and may even have sympathy for Gazan civilians- but also isn't willing to see Israel fall.

Hey, that's a interesting nuance I wasn't aware of, about protecting the Jews from persecution. What branch of Christianity did this develop from? Was it promoted by Zionists after WW2, or was it something older? Did it exist in Germany during Hitler's rise?

Knowing this, I'm mystified why Israel even attempts to court red tribe support if it's already a common attitude and religiously ordained. Israel should be courting the blue tribe to make sure they control both parties..

I feel like Israel has really squandered their position. They've had total dominance and Western support for 50 years and been unable to forge a lasting peace. Mostly based on the idea they could keep a subjected Palestinian population indefinitely.

Oct 7th must have triggered the policy of "never let a good crisis go to waste".

I think the worst that happens to Israel from the US is that some aid gets cut, so they have buy more weapons out of pocket. I don't think an arms embargo is on the table because there are too many senators still beholden to AIPAC, for now.

American public can still change their mind and become indifferent over Palestinians, especially if Islamic terrorism gets newsworthy again. In fact, I expect at least one sizable left-leaning media outlet to be bought to support Israel, like how Politico was purchased by Axel Springer. It would emphasize shared struggle against terrorism to try to divide the left flank of democrats.

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.

The worst portrayal of magneto was in X-men 2,3. Just dreadful.

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 also liked to emulate Dubov playing the Tarrasch but my calculation was never as complete or precise as his. Watching him play is beautiful, despite my style being wholly antithetical to his own.

I was curious to see if Yagiz Kaan could steal one from 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. My boy’s been taking our people to the Promised Land for nearly 20 years, #VikingPower. Chess belongs to the North, 💪 👊 ⛪️ 🇳🇴 🇸🇪.

But I’m proud of Yagiz. Kid’s got a bright future and I look forward to watching his games.

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.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats