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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Donald Trump Won the Iran War
From an essay endorsed by Pete Hegseth on twitter:
Critics say that Iran is winning because they now control the Straits of Hormuz. In reality it appears that trade in the Gulf is returning to pre-war levels as it risks the Straits or bypasses them entirely:
Critics say that the Iran War has driven America's allies to shake off American leadership. In fact we see the opposite:
America recently carried out strikes in Iraq, working with the Saudi military, to push out Iranian militias, and is now concluding multi-billion dollar business deals:
Meanwhile, how's America's blockade going?
Iran’s oil exports stall and Kharg Island idles under US blockade
It's possible that Iran has been unable to successfully sell it's oil for even longer:
Iran is still able to make money from oil tankers that left the Gulf during the last ceasefire and are currently in Asia, but that crude will all be sold soon and Iran will start to be squeezed even more, unless they come to a deal with the US or somehow engineer a military miracle.
Iran is facing inflation of ~87.9%, which is to say, the average Iranian has lost almost half of their wealth compared to this point last year:
How's Iran's Nuclear Program doing? The New York Times put out this report today concluding that Iran's program is "slowed but not stopped":
[https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/07/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-program.html](Trump Vowed to Thwart Iran’s Nuclear Program. Here’s Where That Stands.)
However, under the headline, here's where things stand:
Iran has enough nuclear material to manufacture 10 nuclear bombs? Wow, what are they going to do with it?
America destroyed Iran's capability to "convert or enrich" that uranium, and then locked the uranium that remains deep under collapsed tunnels that can be bombed again as soon as Iran tries to retrieve it.
The sites that were bombed last year appear to remain inoperable, which is to say that, after America bombed them, they have not been used.
(The New York Times then concludes that this is both a significant setback and also doesn't actually matter at all. Well, that's what I heard three months ago. I'm sure that three months from now, people will still be saying that Iran can build a nuke anytime it wants to, it just doesn't want to.)
So here's where we're at now:
Trump, Iran, and Oman are apparently on the cusp of announcing another deal to reopen the Strait. But it increasingly doesn't matter: Iran needs to make a deal because their economic crisis is so acute, while America and the rest of the Gulf can shrug it all off as increasingly a minor inconvenience.
Trump won. Trump was right from the beginning. The Iran war is below-the-fold news now.
Iran will never toll the strait, Iran will never bring the global economy to its knees, Iran will never have nuclear weapons. Iran cannot defeat America militarily or overcome the blockade. The Iranian regime will eventually fall, or make significant concessions, or surrender, or continue to limp along losing strength and relevance -- it doesn't matter which. Either way, Iran loses, America wins, the writing is on the wall.
Trump won. Iran lost.
The UAE paid Iran $10-20bil to stop its attacks, according to Reuters, which probably accounts for their 85% return to oil shipping prior to the signing of the MOU, if that figure is accurate. As this is very embarrassing to everyone but Iran, I doubt we will be hearing much about it. Just this week, Iran struck three UAE oil vessels, and UAE (along with Qatar and KSA) petitioned Trump to stay his attack on Iran because they can’t afford the blowback on their infrastructure. This reads to me like Iran retains a robust ability to influence the region. If Trump flees from the war, then Iran will have more regional influence than it started with, as Iran would have proof that they can sustain attacks from a hawkish American military (imagine if it’s a Dem!) and continue pressuring the region for their own purposes.
Iran is only 9mo away from nukes, per a May Reuters report, whereas before the war they were six months away from nukes. This doesn’t seem like a big deal. I imagine the killing of Khamenei and his family will persuade the Iranians that a nuke is more desirable, and they now have information about what American buster bunkers are actually able to accomplish. It’s quite possible that Iran is now closer to a nuke than ever before, given the aforementioned, because the limiting factor on a nuke was the fatwah of the ayatollah whose family was killed during negotiations by Israel. Oops.
Are the other points you mention serious? You don’t mention the Houthis closing Bab al-Mandab Strait, but you mention random strikes on Shia militants in Iraq. But those strikes didn’t actually succeed in “pushing out” Iranian-backed forces, right? Isn’t the fact that there are still Iranian militias in Iraq embarrassing to us? And Iran’s economy is hurting, but we’re not at war with the Iranian people, so this doesn’t really matter. Their leverage over the strait remains. Trade is interrupted and tankers are being struck. Trump causing America to lose the Iran war — succeeding in none of the original mission objectives while cementing Iran’s influence over the strait — will certainly have repurcussions for Republicans in elections. Americans are worse off, in every way, and the legacy of the children we killed may inspire attacks on us decades hence, making us all less safe. Our international reputation is worse off, we have less money, our soldiers were wounded and killed, and we may lose Arab partners in the future.
So this idea that UAE is paying massive bribes to escape Iranian attacks is flatly not true, or at least not verified in anything you have shown here.
The argument here is that Iran can still produce a nuclear weapon because the unfinished nuclear material is sitting buried underneath the rubble American bombs entombed it in.
This is a silly precis. If the Iranians dig up those tunnels, we can bomb them again. They are at our mercy. "He might have broken my arm, but he didn't really hurt me at all because bones heal."
Traffic is still passing Bab al-Mandab, although at reduced levels because of the threats. We will see what the US does.
"random strikes"
The Iraqi government is disarming Iranian-backed militias in its territory in concert with Saudi and American forces. What is "random" about that? Do I need to explain why this implies that Iran's influence is shrinking, not growing?
Your position is that Iran's ability to wage war doesn't depend on its economy?
What are we even doing here?
The article says that we don’t know whether the 10-20bil were frozen assets: “Reuters could not establish whether the funds earmarked for the transfers belong to the UAE or originate in long-blocked Iranian accounts in the UAE banking system”. Actually, there’s no confirmation afaik that the UAE ever froze Iranian assets during the war. There are some articles claiming they were exploring this, but they never actually announced or confirmed that they had done this. You would expect that there would be some journalistic confirmation floating around if UAE actually froze 10-20bil in Iranian assets. This is probably why Reuters mentions “long-blocked Iranian accounts”, because the funds could be coming from accounts blocked years ago (assets were frozen in 2010, 2018, 2019), whereas recent blocks would not be called long-blocked (not by Reuters).
Reuters is a serious organization; the UAE is an absolute monarchy trying not to have their industry destroyed or lose their American partner. If there are four sources telling Reuters about this, I would trust them. I wouldn’t trust what UAE says, because they have every reason to lie about this.
It’s more verified than it is unverified, if you trust Reuters more than an absolute monarch in a precarious geopolitical situation.
I’m not the expert on their missile cities so I’m deferring to the Intel guys on this. How would we know? It would require a pretty serious understanding of how their tunnels work. I would assume that they could tunnel underground to the tunnel, to take the uranium, which would be out of our sight. But of course it’s definitely more complicated than that.
Because the disarmament push is the follow-up of a 2024 decision, it has a September 30th deadline and there are a number of articles speculating that the Iraqi government will not succeed in disarming the major Iran-backed groups. It’s possible that we get a situation where America leaves Iraq entirely and the Iran-backed groups stay.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link