I have friends from all walks of life, and trust me when I tell you, the GOP isn't all in on Israel. Which is weirder to me, because I'll hear about how antisemitic the right is, and then in the same breath hear people blame them for Israel's support? When you factor in that roughly half of evangelicals (which can be Democrats too mind you) support Israel, I guess that kind of pans out with why you hear both angles? It's just bizarre to me either way.
I know we benefit militarily from Israel when you factor in all the technology we've designed for them, that we can use for ourselves (Iron dome comes to mind), there's also special ops we otherwise might have never heard of like Stuxnet, which is the coolest thing I ever heard about (I mean really, it was impressive). I'm never blindly a supporter of any nation, because all nations can mess up, but I don't like blindly hating people or nations either. Not everyone is so black and white as everyone seems to believe nowadays, often it feels like the truth is somewhere in between.
The proto-typical versions of this are (1) supersessionism in more traditional Christian thought, and (2) more modern "dual-covenant" thought. The latter is not always explicitly antisemitic, but can be implicitly so if it sees Jews as primarily fulfilling a Christian eschatological purpose (undergoing mass conversion as part of the rapture).
I'm not sure where you're getting the info on evangelicals but from what I can find, support is closer to 82% [1]. Zionism in the US isn't actually a Jewish issue. It's a Christian issue. For every Jewish Zionist there are ~30 Christian Zionists. Why? It's theological. I'm referring to dispensational premillenialism [2]. To summarize, in this theology Israel is the key to bringing on the End Times and the return of Jesus Christ.
> I've never even heard of any of my local reps mentioning Israel when running
So this is intentional. Israel realizes how unpopular Israel is or just that people don't care so there extensive spending is hidden behind PACs that none of the messaging is ever about Israel. $35 million was spent to oust Thomas Massie in his recent primary. How much of it was about Israel? None. You only find out after the election who AIPAC funded when the intermediary PACs have to reveal their financing.
> have friends from all walks of life, and trust me when I tell you, the GOP isn't all in on Israel.
It's pretty close [3][4]. More importantly, anti-Israel Republican politicians are few and far between. It just isn't a popular stance to take in Republican primaries.
[1]: https://globalaffairs.org/commentary/blogs/american-evangeli...
[2]: https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/dispe...
[3]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/07/negative-...
[4]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead...
I do wonder how long this can continue. American people should have the final say on which relationships are beneficial to them not special interest groups. The fatigue is very real and palpable and its growing to be an ugly force that is also being exploited by extremists.
This trend change in how American youth view Israel is also a big reason why so many social media platforms are exchanging hands, ex. TikTok by blaming some other scary foe like Russia or China. These are mere attempts to buy time at the inevitable in that America is going their own way and it will be ultimately the American people that will decide.
Look at what's happening in South Korea right now. Election fraud has triggered both the left and the right. The usual opportunists and politicians tried to exploit the situation and they were rejected. The fatigue from the people and the current arrangement is turning into visible anger in countries which face serious structural problems due to the huge wealth gap parity and falling birth rates.
One need not look far at places like Quebec or Paris or Belgium to see exactly where this is headed for people who have nothing to do with Israel but are associated by guilt.
The risks they are taking are stunning, and the payoffs highly questionable. I don't think this can be said to be in their own interests. Nuclear deterrents go a long way, but at some point they're not enough to defend a group as crazy as the Israeli government if they keep stirring up trouble.
The John Mearsheimer view is that "The Lobby" [1] has effective control over US foreign policy. There's a lot of evidence for this such as AIPAC indirectly unseating anti-Israel candidates. The Thomas Massie primary was the most expensive in history. $35 million. For a primary.
Noam Chomsky on the other hand rejects the notion of "the lobby" [2], instead arguing that Israel is an tool of American imperialism. Then-US Secretary of STate of Alexander Haig is widely believed to have described Israel as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" [3] in a resource-rich region even though that term originated in the Pacific in WW2. The US has had an interest in disrupting Pan-Arab Nationalism [4], preferring a divided Middle East to guarantee access to oil.
The truth lies somewhere in between. There are clearly material interests and the US could shut down Israel in a day if it so chose. But the US has taken actions that clearly aren't in its national interest and the perfect example is the current Iran war.
Under no circumstances was this ever going to end well. The military knew it. General Caine tried to stop it when Trump didn't heed his warnings [5]. The US intelligence community was against it. also saying Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon [6]. Trump instead listened to Miriam Adelson, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad, who collectively (allegedly) convinced him it would be a Venezuela-like regime change operation.
This move will (IMHO) go down as the largest strategic blunder in US history and it will reshape geopolitics in the Gulf, Europe and Asia for decades. Even other wars that were lost (eg Vietnam, Korea) didn't have this kind of impact. The US could essentially walk away from those at little cost.
My point is that you can't take the Chomsky view as this being purely materialist. It just doesn't fit the evidence.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...
[2]: https://mondoweiss.net/2011/02/chomsky-materialism-and-the-i...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsinkable_aircraft_carrier
[4]: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12...
[5]: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/25/politics/caine-iran-hegse...
[6]: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-intel-community-agreed-b...
He's there right at the Lobby. We have no way at all of knowing he's saying it doesn't matter because he saw it doesn't matter, or because it dictates what he says.
Not to mention, it often comes down to primary voters, to say nothing of Hollywood/media blacklists
> the Democrats are necessarily adversarial, but they clearly aren't as agreeable as a whole).
Democrats only changed recently. For some decades before that, the Israel lobby had significant sway over them (including allowing dems to publicly admit certain things).
I'll look at Serbia, thank you.
What they seem to be most unique in is the impunity of their operations, like when they assassinated a completely innocent guy in Norway, of all places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair
Anyone who's been to and seen the Gaza border knows how impossible it is to cross - unless of course there was some inside permittance.
To me it’s obvious where blame lies. Gaza residents voted Hamas into power, despite Hamas’s vile charter pledging erasure of Israel and Jews and so on. Hamas then spent more than a decade launching tens of thousands of rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel.
The mass murder and rape of October 7 was completely in character for Hamas. And for people saying Hamas isn’t the same as the residents of Gaza - look at footage from October 7 where the streets were full of Gazans cheering as the dead naked bodies of women, with blood on their genitalia, were paraded through Gaza city.
All of this speaks to October 7 being exactly an attack launched by Hamas of its own volition, with the support of Gazans.
As for this:
> Anyone who's been to and seen the Gaza border knows how impossible it is to cross - unless of course there was some inside permittance.
They used paragliders. This is well known. They don’t have to climb walls with barbed wire if they fly over them.
And America, as well as the rest of the free world, have plenty of reason to contain Islamic fundamentalism and terrorist groups, independent of Israel.
Sure, the Iran conflict is inconvenient economically. But let’s not be under any illusion as to what the Iran regime was and still is - an authoritarian theocracy that backs numerous proxy terrorist groups across Asia. Not just Hamas but many others:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro...
And let’s not be under any illusion as to what the Isaeli regime was and still is - an authoritarian theocracy that has slaughtered more women and children in the last year than all of the terrorist groups in the world combined.
Israel is a democracy and not a theocracy and not authoritarian either. You’re simply making up things randomly. It is literally a parliamentary democracy with secular law. And remember, Israel has a 20% Arab population (almost fully Muslims) that thrives in Israel.
> slaughtered more women and children in the last year than all of the terrorist groups in the world combined
It’s a war of self defense against a terroristic government and groups that are using civilians as human shields. The collateral damage is clearly the fault of the terrorists. But also let’s not forget, Gazans voted for Hamas, still supported Hamas after October 7 per polls, and therefore share in the responsibility for Hamas’s actions.
With a big honking caveat-asterisk that it only applies if you're on the right side of the apartheid.
The "apartheid" part is the people in the West Bank and Gaza, who are not Israeli but also not their own country.
Which border? The Israelis don't recognize a border, which is why they have illegally annexed the Golan Heights in Syria, are currently attempting to colonize Southern Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.
Unless you're a Palestinian in illegally annexed Jerusalem... Then you don't have citizenship and have to keep proving that you live and work in Jerusalem to avoid losing the residency rights.
The whole premise/approach of "here first" is deeply flawed, and I think this blackly humorous cartoon [0] is a relevant critique of it.
Tying things back to earlier discussion, here's the thing: One can either say a place is a "liberal democracy" or it can disenfranchise people due to events thousands of years ago, but you cannot do both.
Democratically speaking, people whose lives are principally controlled by a government today deserve (for their hardship) a say in its operation today. What happened even a single generation ago is irrelevant to that relationship of duty and obligation.
If you operate with a lens that forces you to ask "how is this Israel's fault?" without ever asking any other question, you're going to end up mostly with answers that are only for entertainment value the same way you would if you asked any LLM a leading question that already assumed a desired answer.
You are bombarded with so many things that tell you everything is bad and going wrong in the world, it's easy to get pulled into the gravity of it without ever asking what is going right? So much so, people deny anything is going right, emotionally.
There is a large gap between what the general populace understands about the world and how it works, versus the actual logic that causes the world events. When the gap is large like that it takes more effort to understand and so fewer people in the world will. The harder it is to understand, the easier it is for people to spread lies about. Does consensus alone make something true? No.
Is walking down the street, slugging everyone that gets in your way, "putting yourself first?" Is moving your fence into your neighbor's lawn and then pulling a gun on them when they come to talk about it "putting yourself first?"
At some point Israel needs to reckon with the fact that its behavior is beyond selfish, it's suicidal.
This is propaganda as well, only more agreeable to you.
https://www.aipac.org/memos/america-israel-defense-ndaa-224
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/06...
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-israel-military-congres...
Why is this news now?
Us gives Israel money, Israel uses that money to buy people in power in the US, those bought people then ensure US taxpayewr money flows to israel to...and so the cycle continues.
Nothing explains the US being subservient to Israel than this.
...but in general, the conflation of Israel with Jewishness, and the conflation of anti-zionism with anti-semitism, has allowed the entrenchment of Israel's interests in broad daylight against our best interests.
> Israel has “a hyper-aggressive intelligence service,” said Emily Harding, vice president of the Defense and Security Department and director of the intelligence, national security and technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “They are exceedingly interested in what we are up to,” Harding said of the Israelis.
And these are considered their closest allies.
What do they do with others.
The lesson Israel has learned from the Holocaust is “we can do better”, and they’re being empowered to see that through.
Not even a teeny weeny bit of spying on your allies?
So Israel wants to know what Trump is going to do next.
I could understand why anyone who starts a joint venture with trump would be nervous about trump selling them out. It is trump after all. Probably is a logical thing to be concerned about.
Sure he does. They did it today!
Trump is sitting in a chair in the corner of the room of any negotiation he's in. He's weak at best.
More like sleeping in the chair
situational awareness is best when first hand, as someone may be lying to you, or may not even know what they are doing in the first place.
The plan was fucked from conception. Not having a strategy for safeguarding the Strait made virtually any strategy that required persisting after decapitation half baked.
If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes then they have to commit harder militarily than they are now, which neither the president nor the public seems to have an appetite for and Iran knows that. So now it's mostly deadlocked on both the US demanding Iran lose face by giving up Uranium immediately, while Israel wants to keep up an air campaign to further neuter Irans combat capabilities to free up their own strategic goals against Hezbollah and Hamas. But neither options are properly aligned, especially with fanatics in IRGC taking over.
It's either a short air campaign or a war, but they can't seem to decide so we are left with an blockade.
then they never should have torn up the agreement that saw multiple third party inspectors having feet on the ground and leaving in place tamper resistant / tamper revealing air filters and spectrometer instrumentation.
Instead a path has been taken that has upped the HEU game and hardened the core guard and fanatics.
When did Iran offer this? (One problem with a decapitation strike is you no longer have a single party to negotiate with.)
> If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes then they have to commit harder militarily than they are now
It's genuinely unclear if America has the military power to project into Iran to the degree a ground invasion would require. (Like, short of carpet bombing the country's infrastructure and industry out of existence.)
Missiles, drones and space-based surveillance have tilted the balance in favour of defenders, at least on the ground. American firepower can constrain Iran to within its airspace and maritime borders. But even if it made sense to, it's questionable whether we can influence much within them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/world/middleeast/iran-tru...
Trump complicated things by demanding the uranium immediately and Israel much more complicated things by overreacting to Lebanon striking Israel when the blockade started (Iran likely told Hezbollah to hit Israel as a negotiation gambit). This means to sign a deal Iran now had to both embarrass themselves by giving up uranium and also show that IRGC abandons their partners (Hezbollah, Hamas) which will ruin their whole militia proxy war ambitions they’ve been spending millions on since the Lebanon civil war.
I personally believe Iran was willing to compromise on the uranium in exchange for the US totally dropping sanctions. It is Israel being hyper aggressive that is ruining things by trying to retake southern Lebanon (which they controlled until 2000) and pushing US to resume the air campaign… while now also spying on US negotiators.
Israel is definitely showing they are a bad partner to the US and should be the more responsible one (nobody expects much from Hezbollah which Iran just selfishly exploits). But Netanyahu seems to want to burn everything to the ground while he still can since he knows his career is already over.
It has literally been simmering for a long time and now it finally comes out. Taking it out on Israel is not wrong and that's not to say that they (the Israeli government) hold the sole responsibility for this. The US had a say in this as well. But now the US is questioning the benefits of this complete and total asshattery and rightly so. Better late than never I suppose.
(The irony being that this is Iran's strategy w/r/t Hormuz as well.)
Yeah, but the rest of the world is now going to pay for that, and more, with the $2million toll on oil through the Straight of Hormuz.
Netanyahu is Trump like - his core constituency is whack job Americans and the Israelis whom they firehose money at.
The commentators and idiots running the government miss the forest for the trees. Iran is radically stronger than they were, even with the destruction rained down. The entire American military supremacy story is toast. The strategy of them and North Korea with respect to ballistic missiles and drones works.
It’s Vietnam with missiles and drone. The US slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, “never lost a battle”, yet got whooped.
One could argue a junta makes for a stronger Iran than the previous gerontocratic autocracy. Of course, we don't know. And I think it's silly to say Iran is stronger today than it was at the start of the war. But relative to America? At least in the region, I'd say one could argue that sensibly.
I guess I will just point out that 'weaker than ever' is doing a lot of work here without being specific on what strength means here. I don't want to put words in your mouth.
It is quite ridiculous to watch though. There are ( well, were ) reasons as to why IC was very vocal about not doing what Trump admin's decided to do. And now they are looking to find a reason, any reason that can deflect the blame..
Why? No one likes a loser politician.. not even Trump's electorate. And it is hard to spin lost war AND higher gas prices AND higher inflation.
now, why the regime didn't collapse? 2 things, 1. mesh network so they don't need to have a central command 2. they know they will be executed if they lose the grip on power.
it's actually weaker but more brutal now than ever, against their own people and against the outsider threats. like a cornered rats with no escape so they decided a fight to death.
So... they now have distributed command and are more willing to employ force. Note that all of that was known before the attack so the attack on Iran was a spectacular gamble, which failed. Worse, it undermined strategic interests of US.
Does that actually strike as weaker? It does not sound that way to me.
edit: Oh, somehow I forgot: Iran did not actually carry out some of their bigger threats ( internet cables and so on ). So, yeah, Iran may be weaker in terms of -- hmm, whats the proper phrase here -- conventional war units, but it now has outsized leverage compared to what it had before the attack AND, which it makes it worse even from pure propaganda perspective, a moral claim for self-defense.
Yeah, so much weaker.
So Iran doesn't have a central command, they've developed a mosaic system where the 30+ chains operate autonomously. It is also multi-layered (IRGC, Artesh, Basij, etc).
The multi-layered design was developed after the revolution, when they realized that the regime should be protected in case of internal mutiny.
IRGC specifically was put in place to protect the regime and it only responds to the Supreme Leader. Neither the president or the parliament control it.
The mosaic system was started few years back after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani (though it possibly dates further, I can't confirm this).
The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.
What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war. Their motto is "Every day in Ashura, every land is Karbala".
Anyway, I'll land it here for now.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karbala
Is there an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran? Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?
It's more of a Jihad/Martyrdom ideology that's driving them.
> Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?
That's a rather different issue, and luckily one that at least causes a lot less problems in practice. Sam Harris has some decent material on why this is(a lot of it comes down to important differences in doctrine).
Iran would be highly unlikely to be able to prevent a ground invasion from the US since Iran's convention military capabilities are not particularly strong(hence why Iran often fights through proxies or other non-convention means). They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
> What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The problem is more that those with the ideology have all the weapons in Iran, so even though the regime and their ideology may be extremely unpopular it's still quite difficult to change things when the fanatics are the ones in power.
> The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war.
Yeah, unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point as Iran seems to be unwilling to abandon their goal of destroying Israel and nuclear weapons program.
That is far from obvious. A command structure scattered around a huge country should be able to outlast U.S. willingness to throw bodies into a shredder.
The Americans learnt from that and went to Iraq claiming to have hearts and minds on their side - but quickly discovered that, in fact, they did not (and still do not).
The Americans need to take stock of their own actions in this conflict - they put Trump in the white house, they allowed him to be influenced by other governments, they gave him the power to get involved in the conflict.
I'm genuinely sceptical of this. If America literally invaded Iran, there is a good chance Chinese production comes to back them up. At that point we're fighting with a long logistics chain on someone else's territory (giving them advantages of knowing the land, having local sympathies and having a greater reason to fight) while getting pelted by asymmetric-warfare tactics we can't meaningfully reciprocate.
> unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point
Why? Just remove their ability to destroy Israel. Keep taking out their nuclear programme from time to time and have the Congress ratify the JCPOA in case they come back to the table.
Logistics. You can mosaic your heart out but you need to provide arms, food, water, electricity, medicines, parts, fuels ... for each of these high level cells. None of that is "distributed" or "independent" or quite frankly given the kleptocracy that is IRI is even given. All that the so called mosaic has achieved is that when the leadership cadre was killed this did not affect a loss of operational readiness as each high level cell had independent command authority. Read that again: operational readiness.
US military could trivially end this shit show. The question is why is this strange war being dragged on like this. For example, we are told "they have dug out the entrances to the missile cities". Now besides the fact that most of those videos of the missile cities scream CGI, even assuming they do exists, this nation is supposed to have a fucking "space force" and was reading license plates back during cold war from outer space. Are we to believe Centcom is incapable of burying those entraces yet again?
The "who would have thunk it!" b.s. about the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, everybody and their mommy knew this was a strong possibility. Equally, most knew if US used its bases in the area the host nations would be targeted. I am convinced part of this shit show is to make Arabs sweat. US "provokes" IRGC and some parts of Arab infrastructure is smoked. "They need to all agree to be on board with Abraham Accords" said the Orange front man, the other day.
The "we now toll Strait of Hormuz". Aha. Let's see: we live in a planet where great powers started and fought world wars to decide exactly this sort of matter: who controls what parts. Are we to assume that the funky IRI regime and the IRGC have now achieved what world powers achieved after sacrificing tens of millions of casualties with just some stupid surface to surface missile batteries in northern shores of the Persian Gulf? Bullocks, as they say in the isle of perfidy.
From where I sit, US removed all obstacles for the succession of Khamenei's "gay" son. The other day one of these cheeky IRI embassy twitter accounts (who have a pretty good propaganda chops these days) were self congratulating since the Orange frontman who used to m.c. "pro wrestling matches" said "I'd be honored to meet him!". Will he bring a cake in the shape of a 'Pink' Dildo? One wonders.
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/11/us/mcfarlane-took-cake-an...
If the United States permits IRI to actually have a control over the well being of the entire global economy, then folks, you must realize this is all a plan that we are not privy to. There is no way, none whatsoever, in any reasonable reality, where a middle tier nearly bankrupt, socialy unstable, and isolated theocracy can have the lever to dictate terms to Superpowers armed with atomic weapons.
IRI dictating terms to whoever needs the spice to flow from the Persian Gulf -- and that includes China, India, Japan, S. Korea, EU ... -- without the great powers saying 'no you dont' simply does not compute in any rational universe.
As to Karbala and Ashura. Well, 2023 came by and then "ready to die" martyrs of the fabled "Shia" weren't exactly lining up to fight Israel. Also, I can not think of any slogan that does more to cheapen the martyrdom of Hussein son of 'Ali than to claim that anywhere, anytime and anyone is equivalent to where, when, and who of the actual Karbala.
p.s. US was already worried in 70s about the Shah of Iran controlling the Persian Gulf. One of the reasons they got rid of him, as a matter of fact.
Read this short story that was published in 1976 in New York magazine. This was the psyops back then ! that was used to scare the Gulf Arabs to accept US bases. It's a fun read. The Shah takes over the Persian Gulf and controls the Strait of Hormuz. Atom bombs are involved ...
Far from akin to. It's a good deterrent. Tehran still isn't Pyongyang.
you mentioned what Netanyahu gained from this but what about trump?
But that's at the price of not being in control. I don't know if he thinks that's a win...
Now that it is shitshow, the same people want to put blame on Israel only.
Did this announcement come from the military side of things, or the MAGA side of things?
This vastly oversimplifies even that field.
It's premature to say it has split. MAGA always had multiple factions, and Trump has historically been excellent at keeping them in line. (See: Arab Americans in Michigan voting for Trump.)
To the extent we're seeing any meanginful splits, it's in independents splitting from the GOP. Not MAGA splitting in any meangingful way. (Trump's recent primary wins show this.)
Israel definitely wanted us to do this, but they've been trying to sell US presidents on this for decades without success. MBS and the Saudis also want this, but you rarely read about that in the news; likewise with the UAE and quite a few others who have even been running their own direct strikes on Iran.
The thing is, and I realize this is a rough climate to say this into: Jews have been the official scapegoats for the Middle East and Europe for what... 1500 years now? That doesn't just go away, and the political expediency of Trump covering his ass and the ass of his Saudi/UAE sources of billions (through Jared, Ivanka, Eric, etc) can't be thrown under the bus to do it.
Meanwhile Israel is being run by a universally loathed man who can't shut up, so it's just easier to pretend that's it all their fault.
While it is true that the Saudis are hostile to Iran and do want Iran's power to be curtailed, they were never in favour of the current war because they knew the plan was ill-thought and suicidal for it, as they knew how Iran would respond (and how ill-prepared they and the American military was to defend them). Iran's foreign policy with its Arab neighbours is based on the blunt but simple principle - "Peace for all. Prosperity for all." Implied in it is that if any of the Arab neighbours upset the public peace in Iran and / or attacked its economy, it would retaliate to ensure they too wouldn't have any peace or prosperity. And that's exactly how it played out ...
I.E. https://apnews.com/article/trump-iran-saudi-arabia-mbs-gulf-...
Seems like MSB has pushed for it together with kushner and netanyahu. As we know, kushner received billions of Saudi money for a fund, netanyahu literally stayed at in his house when visiting the US and slept in his bed, yet he somehow is the negotiator the US sends to negotiate with Iran?
That and the Saud's, despite an appalling human rights record, are politically difficult to blame for anything (including Bin Laden), because of their (brilliant) petro politics - playing the Eastern bloc off against the West incredibly well.
I’m curious what the Lindy Effect would mean in this case
No, forcing the existence of a new aggressively expansionist jewish state did that.
Well, it is clear to see that this is Netanyahu's ploy, but the thing is that Trump constantly lies about this. "There are negotiations", but then the US bombs again. To me it seems as if Trump operates in a way that makes it impossible to have anything else but drop bombs onto Iran. In this way he resembles Putin, who tries to occupy more and more land belonging to Ukraine. Putin has no alternative to this either, similar to Trump. (Yes, Putin could in theory stop his war, but he tied his identity to it. I don't see how he can stop it, without having achieved officially stated goals of his genocidal invasion.)
More like his life. He will not survive the end of this war.
If the war ended tomorrow, and Russia withdrew from Ukraine, Putin would still be enjoying ~50% organic support among Russians.
Just like Trump has a ~35% approval floor of complete idiots standing behind him as he sends inflation and gas prices and cost of living through the roof...
Putin enjoys fairly wide actual support for generally developing the country over his tenure. Whether someone else would have done better is not the hypothetical people are engaging with.
A lot of people died in suspicious circumstances.
I mean, someone has to be held accountable for that, don't they?
Makes the MAGA military look incompetent. The US has a history of botched wars around the globe, most of which have little to do with Israel. If I'm drawing from data, then the Iran conflict is consistent with the post-war military movements of the US.
Now that the communists are no more, Israel is the next best scapegoat. The way I see it, Israel's current leaders are happy to be scapegoats because the war benefits Ben Gvir and a radicalized Likud. It allows them to consolidate domestic power and pursue aggressive foreign objectives under shadow of the Iran conflict.
I hope Netanyahu has thought this through. He has burned through 100 years of western guilt in the span of 3 years. To break even, Israel's military excursions must secure outsized outcomes, to the tune of decades of security. Because, I believe we are entering a couple of decades of bipartisan & unprecedented* anti-semitism.
* Figuratively speaking. Historically ofc, anti-semitism is pretty precedented.
You don’t need to influence a nation, you only need to get one guy on board.
When you have ready access to the ego-driven and cognitively limited man in charge, either directly or through his sycophants, and that man has enormous executive authority to do mostly whatever he wants, this becomes very straightforward.
Israel has been looking for a sucker in the White House for 40 years, and they finally found one.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the US has launched an unprovoked war on Iran because the Iranians were threatening the Israeli (and US for that matter) sphere of influence over the region, which obviously they are entitled to because god said so. The US is being entirely reasonable here and all serious people in the US establishment support or at most disagree with whether the mad scheme is a good idea.
Just saying, if the Russians are the ones who are running the influence operations in Washington they really should consider ... I dunno, sending younger girls, or whatever. Their money is doing unusually poorly for lobbying efforts.
And I want to add I don't even mind the hypocrisy or the evil all that much, I just wish I could find someone with a serious argument for how provoking the Russians makes long-term strategic sense. These policies are stupid, liable to get someone nuked sooner or later and just setting China up to have an easy time.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...
And being so irate about such things, it's not unreasonable to think "Fuck my handlers (whoever they are, if they exist, Mossad or otherwise), they didn't protect me, so screw it".
Occam's razor and such, but it's also entirely possible that he could have been being blackmailed by the Russians while "working for" Israel - or for that matter, vice versa.
It was a good idea if it was also timed during the popular uprisings. But the 20,000+ die-hard citizens that would have effected regime change were slaughtered months ago. So now it's just a scared populace hunkering in place while USA warships and jets dominate their country.
And the Iranians fire off the occasional drone swarm on UAE.
There was never a world where this was a good idea. We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran.
Diplomacy can’t function again because they don’t trust the US (fair, correct.)
The IRGC cannot be replaced without a ground invasion, which the US won’t do (fair, correct.)
The US can’t unilaterally remove one ton of buried nuclear material from the middle of a hostile state.
This was always stupid.
They could have if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure. The IRGC is heavily dependent on oil revenue for funding its oppressive apparatus; without it hundreds of thousands of militia would go without pay and eventually desert. For whatever reason Trump didn't want to do this; likely not for humanitarian reasons given his nature, but for some reason he seemed to really care what Turkey and Pakistan think, both of whom don't want to be flooded with refugees.
That would have worked. But it is still a stupid idea if you don't cripple and destroy Iran's military capability first as Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too, plunging the world into an economic depression because of the energy crisis it would cause - The Iran War Is Destroying Something More Valuable Than Oil - https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-refinery-crisis-saudi-aramc...
Iran probably couldn't have, not without being intercepted and having its launchers neutralised every time it fired. But Tehran would have kept on credibly threatening to, which would have meant America essentially taking on air defence responsibility for the entire Gulf.
I see this repeateded a lot but it doesn't follow to me that the facility that was bombed in midnight hammer was created and begun operating after that agreement was cancelled. It seems clear to me that Iran never stopped using that facility.
It seems to me that Iran's goal is to develop a nuclear weapon and there isn't a piece of paper that will stop them. I don't really fault them, it's a very sane thing to do to secure your border a la North Korea.
I'm not sure there is a non-military way to influence Iran to not develop a nuclear weapon.
But anybody saying Iran was working on a bomb is probably misinformed or lying imho.
All the things that you talked about do not require doing what Iran was doing. Meaning that... the only motivation left would be the 1 single thing that does require that much enrichment to those levels.
Hitting this from another angle, it doesn't make any strategic sense as for why Iran would sacrifice all that it is throwing away, just to get some medical research benefits. That would be a poor deal, and Iran isn't stupid.
Where you're definitely wrong is on the "diplomatic agreement that worked". Iran continued to enrich violating the agreement, the agreement was time bound and not indefinite (and would have already expired anyways), and it enabled them to sell oil and raise a lot of money to fuel their wars, missile programs, nuclear programs and other ambitions.
No, actually it is you who is wrong. Iran absolutely complied with the JCPOA. It is after US withdrew from the agreement that they pursued enrichment further.
Yup. "The U.S. certified in April 2017 and in July 2017 that Iran was complying with the deal. On 13 October 2017, President Trump announced that he would not make the certification required under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, accusing Iran of violating the spirit of the deal..." [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal#Trump_admini...
- Technically Iran was considered to be meeting the requirements of the JCPOA during the 2016-2018 period in reports issued at the time.
- Iran failed to declare all its sites and programs before entering the JCPOA. This is known now, after the fact.
- Technically some argue that because Iran participated in meetings and filed papers they met the PMD requirements which were the preliminary requirement for the JCPOA to take effect. The nuance here is whether they technically fulfilled the requirements despite lying and hiding and then "only" violated the NPT or whether they violated the PMD.
- That Iran hid sites, material and equipment came into light after the Mossad stole Iran's nuclear archive. This is fact and was confirmed by IAEA inspections despite Iran's attempts to prevent that.
- When the IAEA asked to inspect those sites Iran engaged in a cover up operation and delayed access. After the sites were inspected there was evidence of nuclear material made by human activities.
- That material discovered by IAEA was not farther enriched which the supporters of the agreement claim is evidence that Iran didn't enrich more material. In reality Iran lied and hid facilities and so despite the samples taken by the IAEA not finding evidence of more enrichment the basic fact is that Iran acted in bad faith and so we just don't know. Maybe they only hid sites, equipment, and nuclear material but did not pursue further enrichment during this period. Maybe they did in other sites.
- Officially Iran was never found to be in violation of the JCPOA.
- The JCPOA was set to expire in October 18, 2025 after which there would have been no restriction on Iran anyways. That's another part of the argument that this was a bad agreement.
While it’s difficult to say to what extent they were going beyond there agreement, it’s clear that they were. I’m not aware of any evidence that it was to the level of, “they’re continuing to make quick progress towards a bomb.” Which is what happened when the US decided to reneg.
There were another seven years to negotiate what’s next and real progress made from both sides trusting each other. That’s the type of momentum needed for further diplomacy (e.g. counteracting more bellicose members of the IRGC.) Instead, we got the opposite. And for what?
You would think the traffic and surveillance cams hacked by the Israelis would’ve shown the extent of this bloodbath.
https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-security-cameras-surveil...
> As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME—indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll.
https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...
Imagine infiltrating the Iranian surveillance camera network and being unable to produce footage of 30k people massacred across two days.
I do not like Iran because of its actions in Syria and Yemen, but even with my bias, I could hear the bullshit Western elitist consent manufacturing engine starting up from miles away.
I personally trust OSINT sources more than NGOs these days. I would wager that the security forces numbers are higher. I would also wager that the majority of the deaths were CIA and Mossad backed insurgents operating in the context of a wider, legitimate, civilian-led protest movement.
This seems far less likely than the most plausible scenarios, which is that most deaths were the result of IRGC terrorists opening fire into crowds of protesters for the purposes of ensuring they remain in power.
30k is one estimate of actual deaths, it's expected to be higher than any verified number of deaths.
Most estimates fall into the range of 20k to 40k from my understanding so 30k is certainly plausible.
Was it 100% peaceful prior to the Crusades? Of course not. But not anymore so than anywhere else in the world. Did it become a mess once they arrived? Yes, and they slaughtered everyone, including Christians, when they came, let alone Jews and Muslims and everyone else that wasn't them.
So, we need to stop pretending like the US and European colonizing entities do any kind of good wherever they go. It's just about enriching the elites through military contracts while subverting any peoples' attempts to have autonomy for themselves.
What. Like actually, what? Bronze Age geopolitics weren't peaceful. The Romans and Parthians made going after each other, including through proxy wars, a sport. We even get a Jewish client state to the Romans in Judea [1].
The Levant is a fertile stretch with maritime access directly to the west of where human civilisation was born; one could argue it's one of the first pieces of land that's been constantly fought over over the entirety of human history.
Are you talking about the Ottoman Empire? Pretty violent.
Anyways, I can't cover the history of the region in an HN comment...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
in particular state formation in late medieval and early modern europe saw immense bloodshed and turmoil.
middle east was comparatively peaceful in contrast, especially post mongol conquest.
e.g. compare 1700s and 1800s europe to middle east
This history is so vast I can't even begin to think about how to compare. But one thing that feels odd to me is how people think of the middle east as somehow separate/far from Europe when in fact it's basically the same neighborhood. The Greek and the Romans were there. Under the Ottoman Empire, Muslims from present day Bosnia moved to present day Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushnak
Don't forget that Christianity came from the middle east and ofcourse Islam.
The Ottoman Empire ruled vast swaths of present day Europe. Spain was under Muslim rule until 1492.
It's all one big mesh. Just yesterday I learnt that many present day Yemeni trace their roots to the Levant. Very different than farther regions like Afria, China, India and ofcourse the Americas, Australia etc.
That's an extremely historically ignorant take. Turkey alone genocided 2-3 million Christians in the 20th century (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks), well before Israel existed.
isn't it obvious that the "popular uprisings" were part of a scheme to overthrow the government to install some US-friendly puppet (or better: Israel-friendly, since that's the only thing that counts), and that the supposedly slaughtered protesters are exactly the reason that is normally put forward to justify an attack on an enemy country?
> The Times reported that Barnea’s predecessor, Yossi Cohen, viewed regime change in Iran as unlikely and deemphasized the Mossad’s work on that project, instead working on ways to weaken the regime through sanctions and targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists.
> But Barnea has adopted the opposite approach, directing the agency’s energies toward regime change over the past year
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-said-frustrated-that...
I would not classify myself as anti-Israeli, fwiw. I just think wearing the military uniform of a foreign nation to your job governing our nation is despicable and borderline treasonous.
Elections. The Trump administration joined the war hoping that any positive outcome in the Iran war would boost its mid-term prospects. Netanyahu attacked Iran and Lebanon because he faces elections in a few months and he wants to prolong all his wars till the election is over - apparently Israeli electorate don't tend to vote out a PM during a war. Trump has now realised the Iran war has been a political disaster and is looking to extricate out of it, through temporary ceasefires (which means he can resume the war later - which is standard US policy with a weaker foe). That doesn't work for Netanyahu because if he loses this election, he could also find himself behind bars due to some corruption conviction. Thus, he is working to sabotage Trump's ceasefire deals as he needs the wars to go on till October, when the elections will presumably be held ...
> Why now all of a sudden?
What changed is geopolitics. Official and publicly calling them a threat.
What this also changes is how gov works with companies. How these companies can subcontract and to who. Which, let's be honest, most companies don't give a rats ass if they are hacked. Sure, they lose money, but it's almost always a slap on the wrist and since every company works this way there's no market signal to express that you care even if you do. (I'd still encourage people to install apps like Signal, degoogle, and all that. Your individual choices still do matter, even if it's only us nerds)
Do you have an example?
Or when you said “they sure do” did you mean “they possibly do,” since no example is available but you can’t rule it out?
John Kiriakou [1] will spend 3 hours talking about the CIA's torture program (illegal) and NSA spying on Americans (illegal). In the same conversation, he will insist that the US would never spy on Israel because it is illegal.
Who is this fooling ?
[1] Senior ex-CIA official, whistleblower & internet meme phenomenon.
But no one without at least a TS really knows
I think at most we get a indirect "confession" like Andrew Bustamante gave in some podcasts like here, where he answers to the question if the US spies on the Mossad that everybody spies on everybody and than distract to the case were the US was caught spying on (it's ally) Germany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZklvHVsaT4
PS: I guess at the end you didn't spy until you were caught spying.
And it sounds like you are setting up an untestable claim. Can’t help you there. Believe what you want.
Guess what happens anyways?
That said, he probably isn't wrong at all about this particular thing.
In this case the writing part is not important.
Same reason that CISA (2015) was passed less than two years after the Snowden revelations.
Once the secrets are open, the feds can codify them into law. They were never going to change their behavior.
I've worked for a couple Israeli startups and what I will say is: never again. I've experienced all of the stereotypes and more, firsthand.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the talking points start being ‘Israel caused high gas prices!’ soon.
The right wing pundits are already working overtime on X and elsewhere to blame Israel and concoct all sorts of explanations why Trump authorized the strike (the most amusing is that he "was possessed by demons").
Blaming Israel may have been coordinated with Netanyahu, who has nothing to lose and is probably perfectly fine with the blame as long as he gets his war and parts of Lebanon.
Blaming Israel has many historic precedents from Clinton to Trump, often through planted leaks or deliberate hot mics.
Polling shows support for Israel is far greater among Trump loyalist voters than non-loyalist Republicans, so this is surely false.
Perhaps you're confusing "MAGA" with actual American nationalists, who are statistically irrelevant.
A lot of them think support for Israel leads to the apocalypse and Jesus’s return. It doesn’t end well for the Jews in that story.
Trump had to cater to them in his first term but, since he's taken over the party, they're in the backseat.
This admin is special in that it blames proxies for wars that it started or provoked. Biden owned the Ukraine war, Trump blames the EU for wanting to continue the Ukraine war while Anduril and Eric Schmidt (https://www.techradar.com/pro/ex-google-ceo-is-key-to-ukrain...) are selling and testing their new drone tech.
In the case of Israel, you can say that there is direct influence from Kushner, Witkoff and Mark Levin. We'll see if Congress and Senate will get a 2/3rd majority to stop the war agaist a potential Trump veto. I don't think so. Until they do, I consider all resolutions with a simple majority to be theater for the midterm elections.
I would assume simple
The fact that there is tensions in the government regarding Israel means that the entities that found value in Israel are losing out to those that don't. So-called America-first powers no longer see 1st-tier support of Israel as in the interests of the US.
This will not go well with Zionists, who are still supported by massive backing and financial interests. They will spend a LOT of money to keep Israel the US's "top ally" despite it being no such thing in any meaningful way. Israel is a tool of the Western imperial forces.
The fact that this story is breaking means that Zionism is getting more-and-more toxic to people in power.
[0] https://michael-hudson.com/2023/11/israel-as-a-landed-aircra...
Or at least starting with ceasing financial aid to Israel. If they want our weapons, they should have to pay for them. This has broad, bipartisan support in a way sanctioning Israel doesn't yet.
I don’t get this blanket rejection of “conspiracy theories”, it’s like the moment you describe something as a conspiracy theory a large group of self identified intellectuals just dismiss it offhand. It doesn’t make sense as a category, of course people conspire.
If I could propose a lesson to be learned, maybe stop categorizing things as “conspiracy theories” and take each theory on the merit of its evidence and how it fits the facts.
What is effective, isn't blackmail, but complicity. Doing bad things together. Then you get a shared interest. The people Epstein had blackmail on, knew that he wouldn't use it casually, because after all there would be no way to use it without implicating himself. But if he were desperate, he might. So the victims had an interest in keeping Epstein not desperate.
So it's the bad things they do together which is dangerous. Even things they do in full view of the public can work, because the threat isn't necessarily that the public finds out, it's that if one is held accountable, then all are at risk.
Also, please don't use quotes to make it look like you're quoting someone when you aren't. That's an internet snark trope, and thus breaks the "Don't be snarky" guideline too.
It’s like how Israeli lobbying orgs state that “claiming Zionist orgs control the media is antisemitism”, and then the solution is literally “we should use our contacts & supporters in the media to stop this kind of rhetoric”. Beautiful.
Keep in mind that the elite class couldn’t give two shits what the peasant class thinks. In fact, having us believe in false conspiracies helps distract the masses from the true conspiracies :)
One can only imagine that many of these countries were also spying on us in various capacities, albeit with fewer resources. Israel is a bigger concern because they're extremely good at it, but I'm sure it's nothing new.
>While it is commonplace for allies and adversaries across the globe to spy on each other, the current and former U.S. officials said Israel’s recent efforts have gone well beyond what is typical and expected espionage.
Yes, it's why we require foreign agents to register [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...
Why would it? We have lots of friends of X groups that don’t need to.
The strongest own goal Israel’s political opponents in America play against themselves is in pretending this is entirely a conspiracy. It’s not. Until recently, Israel was popular. Against the background of few voters caring about foreign policy at all, that meant small margins were foreign-policywise meaningful while continuing to be electorally irrelevant.
They used to for their warcrimes, genocide, apartheid, and literally every other thing they are guilty of.
https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/aipac-says-it-was-pro...
https://www.reddit.com/r/illinois/comments/1ry8tha/aipac_ope...
I wish I was joking.
Funds for Israel flow. Trump was yelling expletives down the phone at Netanyahu this week. Trump has been leading an Israeli war.
It’s dizzying, and it’s almost as though there is a lack of sound minds involved.
Has the US ever been easier to manipulate or spy on?
I'll go recalibrate my detector!
For ~50 years America has subcontracted to Israel a portion of its intelligence operations and sometimes largely for plausible deniability, other times because we cannot spy on our own citizens - the last part wasn't said explicitly - but what I could grok.
IMHO, the Israeli apparatus has gone far off the reservation in their operations and have lost favor in the past 5 years, especially in DC.
Israel's intelligence apparatus has historically participated in cleaning dirty narco cash via affiliates to finance intelligence operations back home (mostly thorugh hapoalim, safra, leumi, and signature bank), sold hacking tools to narcos, running guns, cleaning blood diamonds, and running kompromat where they deemed it is needed.
Rwandan and Guatemalan genocides probably wouldn't have happened to the stunning degree if the Israelis weren't illegally selling munitions into both. Also hard to get clarity if they were doing this as our subcontractors or going off the reservation.
Signature Bank's collapse was a sign that your local Israeli-intelligence agency linkedin money laundering apparatus was going to have volatility that there would be volatiliy in the middle east.
There was a time in the 90's onwards where one could wlak into signature, hapoalim, leumi, or safra with 10M in narco cash and get it cleaned, or so I'm told. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/19/finally-the-us-is-busting-is...
2023: 500k Israelis protesting against Netanyahu, blood diamonds going down in value b/c of lab grown diamonds, and the implosion of their money laundering apparatus cornerstone (Signature bank) probably was a positive signal for disruption in the Israeli way of life in mid 2023.
The large question at play amongst the GS15s that I've heard murmured in DC is if America should subcontract security operations to a non-AUKUS passport holders, and Israel is the vendor in question.
A lot of CIA seems bifurcated on their viewpoint of Israel. No idea when that happened.
Our relationship with Israel costs us $10-$20/barrel in increased fees and 50B-100B/yr to have our military in the region.
One thing that is fascinating - the Israelis are getting blamed for Iran right now - but the Hormuz volatility greatly increases their cost of living - and we are the greatest beneficiary.
We are the largest producer of nat gas, helium, methanol, LNG, and Oil.
I think the "hormuz volatility" has a terminating condition - APAC buying these US products in larger sizes. As it was explained to me, the reason the prices aren't 150 is because while maritime stuff is problematic - the surrounding 5 countries to Iran have ways to get the energy via pipeline and power line.
World is a complex place, they're our subcontractor for now....no clue if they will be in the future but the trend is no.
Mazel Tov!
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/sean-strickland-says-hes-b...
Trump is like the ultimate tool of corruption - whether it is Russia or Israel or whoever, you name it. Dude flops to the highest bidder. No wonder US oligarchs are currently controlling the USA.
Like geez, we can't even get rid of North Korea, how are people expecting to successfully destroy a nuclear armed power without getting everyone else in that area killed? Its delusional.
None of which matters if the demand that you are making on them would amount to (in their opinion, not yours) their own destruction. There is no threats that you can enact on them that would ever cause them to voluntarily do what they believe would destroy their own country and the people/military living their would rather go out fighting. Of which they are capable of doing so, with that modern military and 200+ nuclear weapons.
Thats the thing about those strategies. If the other party just refuses to budge, it doesn't really matter how much diplomatic or economic pressure that you put on the nuclear armed power. They can just refuse the demands and you are out of luck.
The mental gymnastics of the Israeli "splainers" will never fail to amaze me. Israelsplainers perhaps.
I want to say that it's just Netanyahu who needs to go away but it's actually much, much more than just him. The tide is shifting methinks and rightly so (and finally).
The Israeli wumao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasbara
Hasbara has no direct English translation, but roughly means "explaining". It is a communicative strategy that "seeks to explain actions, whether or not they are justified".
[...]
In its 2025 budget, Israel planned to spend $150 million on hasbara, a 20-fold increase.
In the 2026 budget, NIS 2.35 billion (about $730 million) has been allocated to hasbara.I just find this really depressing and I hope that there will be an end in sight. The happenings of right now is the stuff of horror novels.
But still, it is fucking disturbing shit which somehow has a place in the world.