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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17213 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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The MOU Homesick Blues

Over the last two days, Donald Trump and JD Vance have been selling their embryonic Iran Deal to the American public and to the world. Trump has said, among other things:

  • Hamas is behaving very well these days.
  • Iran should have missiles. Why not?
  • We're going to unfreeze Iran's money. It's their money. Why should we steal their money?
  • If the war kept going there would have been an economic catastrophe. So we had to end it.
  • Some of the guys in the Islamic regime are really nice.
  • If Iran didn't open the Strait of Hormuz our oil reserves would have run out in 4 weeks. We had to make a deal.
  • Netanyahu is crazy. They keep killing innocent civilians. He needs to be more responsible.
  • Without me and America, Israel wouldn't exist.

Directly he states:

“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people. The Strait of Hormuz would never have been opened."

Along with this banger

“I think [Israel] could do better … I'm not saying they shouldn't protect themselves. I'm saying when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don't have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better…”

JD has said:

“If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have left. 2/3 of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars. The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in”

"Do I think there are people within Israeli society who would like to turn Iran into Libya, basically a failed state with 90 million people? Probably."

"What is your exact proposal? You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have."

Israeli ministers have been striking out against the deal

For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn! With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit. All of Lebanon must burn. Our supreme duty is to protect the citizens of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF, and this commitment takes precedence over every other consideration. I told the Prime Minister, even in our private meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don’t win with measured responses and restraint—you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror.

The entire first line of Lebanese villages has been destroyed. We are destroying all the houses. The residents will never see them standing before their eyes again.

Now reports are coming in that Israel does not consider itself bound by the MOU, and intends to keep bombing Lebanon without reference to it.

The IRGC has stated today:

“Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the complete lifting of the naval blockade, and the withdrawal of American terrorist forces from the Persian Gulf and the region are among the main conditions of the agreement between Iran and the United States. The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until these conditions are met. All ships are requested, for the sake of their security and safety, not to approach the Strait of Hormuz. Any vessel that defies this directive will be targeted.”

With the United States executive committed to the MOU, and Israel committed to the opposite policy, Yeshiva World News reports:

Israeli officials told Maariv that Trump’s demands are not merely theoretical and that issues concerning Lebanon, Syria, and the Syrian Hermon were raised in recent discussions with Netanyahu, adding that the prime minister made it clear that Israel will not agree to withdrawing from its security positions in the north. A senior Israeli official told Reuters that Israel is carrying out “stubborn negotiations” with the US on maintaining its military presence in southern Lebanon and has no intention of backing down. The officials warned that the messages coming from Washington are no longer limited to difficult discussions. The US is signaling that if Israel continues to insist on its position, it will consider practical measures, ranging from delays in weapons shipments to restrictions on operational assistance, and even more severe steps that could potentially amount to a de facto arms embargo.

So, what now?

How does the USA navigate this problem with its erstwhile ally?

Part of me feels very strongly, the patriotic Toby Keith, regardless of your feelings about US policy or about this administration, that we can't have our president get cucked like that on the world stage. Trump has publicly signed, endorsed, justified, sold the MOU. He's stated clearly that it is necessary to the interests of the United States in maintaining the global economy. If Israel is our ally, our greatest ally, then they can't be allowed to do this to us. They can't insult and undermine the clear foreign policy of the POTUS and be allowed to do so. From the beginning I've said that Israeli forces, inasmuch as they are allied to the USA, should be under the command of an American general, Spartan style. They can't be allowed to go against us and continue to suck off the teat of the American taxpayer.

So plan trusters, antisemities, pro-Palestinians, shitlibs, anyone. Where do we go from here with Israel? What happens next? How can you, as the American President, allow your ally to undermine your own clearly stated foreign policy goals and, in your own opinion, wreck the world economy? At this point in the process what pressure can even be put on Iran?

This feels bad.

tl;dr: Trump was told to jump higher than he could. His knees buckled on the landing and now he's crawling around telling the zionists that he's sorry he can't stand up to Iran. The zionist response when he asks for a hand is to spit on him for being weak. Genuinely, even the antisemites are shocked.

I feel like there was an old white nationalist 2.0 cope around the time where ISIS was at its peak about AIPAC and Israel that ran somewhere along the lines of: AIPAC has a better grip on America than America has a grip on the middle east.

I think the truth of that observation is unfolding in front of us to a certain extent. The weakest link in the Israel/AIPAC dynamic is Israel. AIPAC can still unseat elected representatives at will. Most recently demonstrated with Massie. American politicians still dance to their tune. It's Israel, whose actions became incoherent after Oct.7, culminating with this Iran ordeal, that's the problem in this dynamic.

I think the only interesting answer to the question can come from zionists and adjacent folk. Nigh every other group that's not zionist, from progressives to regressives, wants to dump the Israelis tomorrow. The entire world is getting sick of Israel and its behavior. So from a zionist perspective: What ever was the plan here?

Like, zionists have this iron grip on US foreign policy. What did they want the US to do? Unless the plan is to literally genocide every single Arab via US military might so that Israel can do whatever it wants in the region, then US involvement stops making sense very quickly. The US can bomb things. They can do economic coercions, they can occupy big buildings in cities, build FOBs in valleys and patrol roads in Humvees. But they can't do much else. As Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated.

Americans have thousands of their soldiers dead, tens of thousands if you count the suicides, trillions spent, and nothing to show for it. And now we are reading that Israel, not just the 'Netanyahu government' but a sizeable portion of the Israeli public and America based zionists, wanted America to commit to another middle East war effort with no explicit end goal, no theory for victory, and no discernable US gain outside of rank delusions that Iran intends to nuke Huston and Vienna if ever given the chance. We don't even have the pretense of regime change anymore.

The cost of this war, however, would be enormous. Not just in direct military spending, but with every economist (spit) sounding the alarm bells that this would prove catastrophic for global markets. Countries most affected, including some US allies, have already started rationing programs. Meanwhile Russia, US's geopolitical enemy, has been making bank month over month due to this war and the oil/gas market disruptions.

This comes across as incoherent lunacy. Destabilizing the middle east? Eh, on some level that makes sense, even if I oppose and abhor it and the negative consequences it has had for not just the middle east but Europe. But if this is the continuation... What's the plan, where's the big picture everyone's missing? I can't even put together how zionists are pretending to be allies with the US at this point. That they even attribute a theory of mind to Americans.

In defense of the zionists, AIPAC is still so strong they can be forgiven for thinking less of Americans. So if there is any weight behind these events, it will come down on Netanyahu first, Israel second, AIPAC a distant third. So long as the Israeli lobby holds the keys to a plurality of public offices in the US, they will remain strong. But Israel needs to find some stability fast. Maybe Netanyahu is playing the role of a future sacrificial chicken perfectly. Sin as much as you can before the head goes off.

To that extent the answer to the question is clear. Let Netanyahu take as much as he can before we give the Western cattle a new shepherd.

There is no plan. To understand the Iran War from Israel’s perspective you have to understand that it was a Hail Mary move.

Since the JCPOA it was clear to Mossad that Iranian nuclear weapons development continued largely unabated. Inspections were limited and easily misdirected. Iran had no need for a large domestic nuclear power program. The founding mission of the Islamic Revolution was the destruction of Israel. Iran was funding proxies. The IRGC controls much of the export economy and therefore foreign currency.

The risk for Israel is not necessarily being overrun. This remains the ultimate risk, but there are others. The risk is that regular attacks from Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis perhaps, make life in Israel unliveable for those who want first world conditions, and they leave. The economy collapses, leaving a mass of zero skill ultra orthodox who don’t work, some Arabs and various Mizrachim who have no foreign passports or the skills to get a visa. At that point, the country ceases to exist in a defensible state. That is why they felt Iran had to be defeated.

They gambled and they lost. They’re not that smart.

Now I'm wondering if the real hail mary move is if Israel nukes Tehran in a preemptive strike

Nuking Tehran wouldn’t destroy the regime. Tehran is actually a comparative hotbed of opposition compared to other cities. Power and the IRGC are highly distributed, as are weapons stockpiles, missiles, the conventional military, and the nuclear program. Iran is too big to defeat militarily with anything other than a ground invasion, a spontaneous revolution, or both. Even the Japanese only surrendered because they knew the alternative was full invasion. Israel can never invade Iran.

Iran is actually more vulnerable to nuclear weapons than the US or Russia because a larger portion of its military and economy is concentrated in its capital compared to Moscow or Washington, D.C.: nearly 20% of Iran's population and more of their economy is in the metropolitan area of Tehran. And speaking of power, the list of targets is, as I understand it, a target set of less than 150 to take out 90% of the country's power.

I suppose Israel emptying the silos to kill or mutilate the wealthiest and smartest fifth of Iran and turning off the power for the survivors might not "destroy the regime" but I do think it would count as a military defeat for Iran.

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