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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4058 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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Deal reached to end Iran war

Details of the deal are not publicly available right now. However, Trump has authorised an end to the US naval blockade, and Iran has agreed to reopen the Strait.

Not surprisingly though, Israel continues to bomb Lebanon and refuses to cede lands seized in southern Lebanon.

But MORE surprisingly, Trump actually reprimanded Bibi.

Trump has pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop hitting Lebanon hard while a deal is near, but the prime minister has defied him. Trump told Fox News he had asked Netanyahu what he was doing, using an expletive. "What the f*** are you doing?" Trump says he told Netanyahu. Trump described the attack on northern Israel as "very small and meaningless, nobody was hurt, injured, or killed, and should not disrupt this important process".

Iran wants a ceasefire deal to include the fighting in Lebanon. It’s unclear whether that would mean Israeli forces' withdrawal and when. Most of Hezbollah's attacks in recent weeks have targeted Israeli troops inside Lebanon.

"A strong response is coming," said Ebrahim Azizi, who heads the Iranian parliament’s national security commission and is close to top leaders.

And Iran’s parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a lead negotiator for Tehran, warned the US on X after Israel's strikes that "if you lack the will and ability to fulfill your commitments, speaking of continuing the path is not possible".

The deal does not solve the thorniest issues between the US and Iran, including Iran’s nuclear program or its billions of dollars in frozen funds, but offers a 60-day framework for technical discussions on those issues, according to Pakistani and regional officials familiar with the ongoing negotiations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Under the deal being discussed, US and Israel appear to have fallen short of their original goals of destroying Iran’s missile and nuclear programs and ending its support for armed proxies in the region. It is not clear how the deal will address these issues, or if they will be part of the final agreement.

Critics in Trump’s Republican Party, struggling with an unpopular war ahead of the midterm elections, have criticised the emerging deal. Some said it did not improve on the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew the US from during his first term and which he still describes as "bad".

So it seems we were lucky to return to the pre-war status quo, even Trump had to tepidly admit that he bit off more than he can chew and Iran's regional dominance is not going anywhere.

Basic terms I’m seeing is like 20-25B in released frozen assets. On net I feel like this is a win for US. I think we degraded enough military etc to make it worthwhile.

That is some serious cope. We are releasing 20-25 billion to get rid of Iran's outdated military assets. If sanctions come off, they can reequip better than they had before with full access to raw materials from the world market.

Once they feel they have rebuilt enough they are free to close the strait again, this time with military assets better optimized to do so since they know it's effective leverage rather than theoretical leverage. By then Trump will no longer be president and it will be someone else's problem.

Iran will have to spend years rebuilding assets America destroyed in a few weeks. Therefore, Iran is stronger than ever.

Literally this.

Outside of Germany post WWI, I can't think of any national military in the past few centuries that got trounced thoroughly and then somehow this made them a BIGGER threat in the short term.

Because they've proven the concept that they can effectively close the strait of Hormuz and cripple gulf oil production with a collection of low-end weapon systems that can't be intercepted reliably enough to counter, and which they can keep producing and deploying despite significant efforts to stop them. KDR is basically irrelevant next to the vastly larger problem of massively asymmetrical requirements for achieving strategic success.

any national military in the past few centuries that got trounced thoroughly and then somehow this made them a BIGGER threat in the short term

The USA post-Vietnam

Near as I can figure, the total cost of materiel lost to the Vietnamese was roughly <5% of the total defense budget at the time.

Even if we grant the U.S. being fully defeated in the war itself, I dunno if 'trounced' is the right way to describe it in that context.

I mean, Afghanistan was also a loss for the U.S. in the end but again, not really a trouncing.

Genuinely, Germany's example is the surprising one because they took massive casualties and material loss, then 20 years later had a fully industrialized, cutting edge military force which outperformed all their immediate neighbors'.

Because they've proven the concept that they can effectively close the strait of Hormuz and cripple gulf oil production with a collection of low-end weapon systems that can't be intercepted reliably enough to counter

And the U.S. has shown that they can shrug this off far, far easier than pretty much all of Europe.

And can enforce its own blockade as a retaliatory step too.

and, as mentioned, can pop their leadership structure at will.

Iran has no winning hand here. Maybe they have a hand that forestalls an actual invasion indefinitely. But they also seem to be constitutionally incapable of 'surrendering' so I have little doubt they're happy to posture and claim whatever victories they can.

Near as I can figure, the total cost of materiel lost to the Vietnamese was roughly <5% of the total defense budget at the time.

Post-Vietnam, the US was in the humiliating position of having lost what was essentially a conventional war against a much weaker, smaller adversary. This prompted a number of reforms to how the US military organized and operated, leading into the absolutely crushing dominance of the Gulf War (though, ironically, most of what the US did wouldn't have helped in Vietnam).

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