Big favor to Europe: Blowing up the Middle East/global oil markets & then telling them they have to clean it up. Right. I’m sure they’ll be thanking us profusely any day now.

plot twist…Europe IS the Middle East now.

Sad, but true. Half of what is a significant and growing population of Muslims in Europe hold fundamentalist views.

You’d think we would’ve figured this out after Korea, Vietnam, and GWOT/Afghanistan. You can clean sweep the battlefield & still lose the war. These kinds of operations always, always, always take on a life of their own & result in all kinds of unintended consequences. Mil leadership after Vietnam said never again will we get involved in combat overseas with vaguely defined, impossible to achieve objectives. We all nodded in agreement and then promptly ram dumped that very sage advice.

We’re now uncomfortably positioned between a rock and a very hard place. If we walk away, Iran will control the straight, take in billions in tolls and oil revenue, and undoubtedly restart its nuclear program and rebuild and improve their stocks of drones and missiles. They will have learned valuable lessons in how to hide and protect their people and equipment & ferreting them out will be twice as hard the next time around. Bad option.

If we stay & finish the job, it will undoubtedly take more blood, treasure, and time than the already war weary American people are willing to bear. Securing Iran’s nuclear material will be no small operation, nor will finishing off the Iranian regime. Maintaining a presence capable of of striking anytime the enrichment program starts back up or Iranian drones and missiles menace the straight or their neighbors will be a multi decade expedition. All bad options.

Seems there is a reason previous administrations were loathe to undertake similar actions against Iran & instead found themselves seeking admittedly imperfect solutions that involved more statecraft than bombs.

Half of this country hold fundamentalist views, which is what got us tossed out of Europe in the first place

Excellent synopsis. 100 % agree.

no, that was two weeks away. Now we are safe at 3 weeks

Don’t forget to replace Muslims with Christians and Europe with America. Should be a fun decade, but at least we have funny memes and AI slop to keep us laughing. If your feeling overwhelmed you can also send more money to the Paula White Ministry.

Except those fundamentalist views generally don’t involve strapping c-4 to your chest in crowded areas.

let israel and iran fight that holy war.

Our fundamentalists just use a Ryder rental truck filled with ammonium nitrate or walk around the Michigan Capitol with locked and loaded AR15’s over a blue mask. Some are still preparing for civil war over it.

That’s not Christian fundamentalism. You can whataboutism all you’d like, it doesn’t change the fact that globally most terrorists are Islamic extremists by a wide margin. And all of those are fundamentalists.

Sure. I'll generally agree with you on that.

But that doesn't change the reality on the ground in regards to this war. Clearly the White House believed that a few weeks of intense bombing would drive the Iranian regime to collapse. Equally clear is the undeniable fact that Iran 1) currently controls the SoH, and 2) still possesses the capability to do serious damage to the energy infrastructure of the Middle East.

The regime cares about one thing only: its survival. This is a regime that sacrificed countless child soldiers in a decade-long war with Iraq. A regime that happily murdered tens of thousands of protesters just a few months ago. They have nothing to lose. They have no reason to back down. We could indeed destroy their power grid and desalinization plants, and they'd still hunker down, while escalating their own attacks on the Gulf energy infrastructure.

Never in human history has an aerial war alone resulted in the destruction of a regime. The only ways to actually destroy the current Iranian government would be a full scale ground invasion (and a quagmire that would make Iraq look pleasant), or we launch a nuclear first strike, with the very real possibility of igniting World War 3.

Every American president since 1979 has understood this. Except, it would appear, for the current one.

Little problem there.

They have actually offered/threatened to deal with IR in the past. The US prefers that, as hot it as it is over there, that the temperature remains below Five Million Celsius.

I don't know what trumps motive to do this was, and my guesses would not be charitable, but it is at least possible that IL felt existentially froggy and was threatening to take matters into their own hands. If that turns out to be the case, then trump did the right thing. Better some prime-time CSAR drama and an oil price spike, than nukes popping off.

The nuclear genie isn't sealed in his bottle, but he's kind of hiding in the neck. Once he gets out again, we'll probably be in a new era for geopolitics and security. There many different ways that could go down, but I suspect most of them are bad (compared to the current status quo).

My comments have nothing to do with the war, per se.

But I also think that it is naive to think that this wasn’t going to happen eventually. About all you can do is make them Gaza every few decades to slow their progress. The regime has too iron of a grip on their country for a popular uprising and the mullahs would never give up their nuclear ambitions.

Which is why TLV drags us into the Middle East to do their dirty work. They have the entire US population of 300+ million people to fight for their goals in the middle east. When their enemies are weakened, the US will be much weaker, out of cash, in serious debt, no more global political clout -- nobody will be able to stand in the way of TLV taking what they want. They may not be crazy, but they certainly don't have any reservations about using the US as an expendable weapon against their enemies.

Besides the protestor deaths that were likely caused by Mossad/CIA, what gaslighting is there?

You basically just admitted that the US is getting blackmailed into fighting this war against Iran. Seems like the right thing to do would be to disarm the country that is doing the blackmailing.

It's because we didn't drink margaritas and take kickboxing classes like Jen Psaki told us to. If all of us had followed her advice the cost of living wouldn't be so painful.

Zip. We’re not getting played. Commercial traffic on the high seas, in the sky, over land routes must flow. Israel’s bond to the US is non-negotiable and any dope from head of state to donkey cart driver knows it.

Wow, take off the tin foil hat dude.

Brother, he took the time to write out a thoughtful and eloquent analysis with lots of good examples and you called it a wall of text and then him a name. Now straw man stuff. There will be disagreements, but we can debate better than that.

How can I "admit" to something I have nothing to do with?

It's not "blackmail" (unless they have really compromising pics of somebody). It would simply be IL stating that they have reached the point where they need to do XYZ. While offering an alternative to XYZ, if the US helps out. That's communication and negotiation, not blackmail.

The area where “communication and negotiation” leaves off and “blackmail” begins is both very broad and very gray. Nonetheless, a nation emerging from theocracy is likely a better fit for us than one embracing an apocalyptic form of theocracy - especially if they are nuke capable.

One can never really know what goes on in the mind of the other guy. Is Iran touting a non existent capability to rapidly develop a nuclear warhead to fit on a burgeoning ballistic missile capability? Did they learn nothing from Saddam’s desire for strategic ambiguity as to whether or not he actually had WMDs? Nonetheless, when you spend almost half a century getting the mob to shout “Death to America” and you couple that with statements that you can have nukes in a few weeks the conservative (as in cautious, not left-right) course becomes one of keeping that from happening. It’s the kind of implied threat that raises the ante considerably in any conflict. Preemption becomes a very reasonable choice.

Due to the deep integration of the IRGC into basically everything in Iran, it will be hard to get a new regime that's not similar to the old one without invasion/occupation.

Best we can likely hope for is regime 2.0 with an enlightened sense of self-interest/preservation which chooses to be more cooperative.

But with that said it's by no means an absolute that you can't force a regime change with air power, that would be situationally dependent. What you clearly can't do without major BoG is take over a country, install your own government, and attempt nation-building. Curt Lemay was mostly wrong, but that's not an absolute.

1. That's not happening (if it did happen, it would be IL not us).

2. It would not start WW-III. RU isn't going to commit national MAD suicide just to lash out in support of IR. RU knows they would absolutely lose MAD, and given the state of their military there's no assurance that the US would also lose to anywhere near the same degree. MAD itself is in serious doubt right now, looking kind of one-sided. Which isn't a big deal because neither party has any need to go there.

3. PRC is not a nuclear super-power. They also would not commit national suicide just to lash out in defense of IR.


Nukes used against IR is actually a real possibility at some point given IL's situation (unless the IR nuclear program goes away for good). But everybody knows that and is prepared for the possibility (while also hoping it doesn't come to that). If it happens it will have a chilling effect on geopolitics and likely global economies... we'll be living in a new reality, and nobody is certain what that looks like.

But IR isn't rushing head-long into nuclear oblivion... there's a reason they slow-roll their nuclear program, it's because they don't want to spook IL by getting to close, or progressing too fast. They might of course miscalculate though. It is also unfortunately possible given their fundamentalism and certain specific tenants of Shia Islam (return of the 12th Imam) that a sufficiently fundamental leader, given sufficient authority, might willingly embrace armageddon to facilitate the projected end of days. Or at least willing take the chance. Inshallah.

IL doesn't believe anything IR says.

IL's decision will be based entirely on their own (and maybe US) intel and their own assessments. It certainly doesn't help when IR leaders threaten to nuke TLV... for that reason the IL red-line will be based on capability, not assessed intent.

As you know but for the benefit of others, there's a very old military axiom that you must plan for what the enemy is *capable* of doing, not what you *expect* him to do. Otherwise you're subject to a rude awakening.

why do we have to give a **** about IL? Why are we in a non-negotiable bond with them? I wish we would renegotiate.

Beacuse...

1) Oil
2) IL has been the only consistently reliable partner we have in the region.

Yes there's holocaust PTSD and voter sympathy at home (more so in the past) but the real reason is and always has been the need to ensure stability of the oil supply. No, it's not about making a few oil company execs rich, it's about preserving the US and global economies. There's no alternate reality where oil is not a fundamental underpinning of that.

With that said, in 2026 several ME states are actually now quite stable and relatively reliable. So it might be possible to disengage from IL and rely on other regional partners. Which would be worse than useless if IL then gets backed into a corner and resorts to nukes....

We also benefit from having IL close because then we have some insight and influence on *their* behavior.

Fall out from the holocaust for one thing. Touchy topic. 2nd only to the history of civil rights measures enacted since Lee’s surrender at Appomattox court house, 1865. Iran’s unwavering pledge to end Israel’s existence as a sovereign ME flag by whatever means possible another. This in an age where one or two H bomb strikes might do the job.

Non-negotiable, maybe only because the bond is a slavery bond, and the US is not the master.

Commercial traffic on the high seas was doing great until the US did the master's bidding this year.

You really think that Bibi or Donald are crazy enough to want to want skip the cheaper, easier step and go straight into the bombing? Brother, that's even more tinfoil.

Blackmail doesn't need to be pictures of a certain person (Epstein style). There is nuclear blackmail/extortion (Samson option) too. Then there's also just the inappropriate leverage that they wield over their benefactor - "We're gonna bomb them unless you bomb them first, and you have to do it by this day" and who knows what other threats they've made or insinuated privately. Donald is definitely terrified of getting JFK'ed or having his family killed for calling them on their BS.

IL fed the US all the lies about Iraq, claiming that they were capable of nukes, etc. The amount of human lives lost in Iraq because of that is over one million counting excess deaths. The US taxpayers also lost over trillion dollars, who knows how many lives in the US could have been saved by using that money domestically to solve issues at home.

There is little doubt that the intel they feed the US now may be hyperbole or completely untrue. Would it really be shocking if IL fed the US incorrect intel that led to the school in IR being bombed? The more Iranian civilians that die, the less likely the US is able to pull out of doing IL's dirty work, that's a huge motivator for IL to make sure that collateral damage is maximized.

Blackmail, extortion, politicians thinking that a million or two in AIPAC donations is worth squandering their children's future away? who knows exactly why.

The only consistently reliable things that IL does for the US seem to be cashing the checks that the US sends, accepting the delivery of the weapons, and dragging the US into conflicts that do not benefit regional stability.

There was a pretty damn stable oil supply coming from the gulf states until the US and IL decided to put an end to that.

How is it the US's responsibility? The US already did them the favor and put an end to Holocaust. Shouldn't IL being doing favors for the US instead of the US now being constantly dragged into doing unethical favors for them?

AIPAC money.

War crimes are only war crimes if you lose.

Very true, along with "history is written by the victors".

None of that is "blackmail".

What you describe is more akin to influence, pressure, or even extortion. Blackmail has a very specific meaning, and yes it usually involves pics, video, or documents.

None of that is the fault of IL. If they fed us bad intel, yes that would be their fault.

But Junior was pizzed that sadam tried to off his pops, US intel told him what he wanted to hear, and then congress went for it. Of course everybody was still very angry about 9/11 (if you were to young to remember).

The fact that we stayed long after the job was done was also our fault... that's where 99.9% of the casualties came from. And guess who was responsible for a lot of those? Iran...

Also Iraq violated the terms of their previous surrender by not allowing inspections. If they had simply complied, none of that would have even happened.

That's some cool fan fiction. But not a shred of evidence. You can make up all manner of tall tales about the Evil Jewish Illuminati but for our purposes here you need evidence.

Yes APAIC is a thing. They clearly try to influence us, and I don't trust the IL government but they're not blame for everything bad that happens. Did you hear the one about the mossad office in Wuhan :rolleyes:

Wouldn't bet on it, if Trump wins the war but loses the 2028 election. The opposition party is already talking about extraditing trump and family members to some international kangaroo court of political justice.

Trump loses the 2028 election? How can he lose an election race that he can’t enter?

The Emperor of Japan got away with it after WW2.

WTF does this even mean? Please explain how he could even be (legally) on the ballot in 2028.

He’s obviously talking about Republicans, not the man himself.

I dunno. Lawfare is a dangerous game. Like tracers, it works both ways.

lol, what? I’m totally not following you.

The other team wins, and can facilitate or stand idle while extraditions occur.

Frankly he was in jeopardy of going to domestic prison if he hadn't won in 2024. So there's precedent.