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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

Literally, they say it themselves in this press release.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.