Non-Essential French Embassy Staff Have Left Iran

44 pointsposted 12 hours ago
by mhb
(barrons.com)

30 Comments

thinkindie

11 hours ago

How busy are pizzerie around the Pentagon?

tptacek

11 hours ago

For what it's worth, that whole thing is apparently bullshit.

TrainedMonkey

11 hours ago

Can you cite your sources? My understanding is that based on past data there is strong correlation between special military operations, people working late in pentagon, and takeout places in the vicinity having a spike of orders.

tptacek

10 hours ago

From what I understand, which squares with the times I've been to the Pentagon:

* People working late at the Pentagon don't order pizza to the building

* The Pentagon has pizza options, including late-night ones

* The Pentagon is in fact chock-full of restaurants

* There is in reality no such thing as real telemetry about pizza orders near the Pentagon.

I have the opinion that this pizza thing is mostly just a story people tell because it makes them feel clever. Not high-horsing it; I have those too.

crazygringo

10 hours ago

Not to mention, there's something like 25,000 people working at the Pentagon.

There are so many potential late-night work things happening that would need food, the idea that pizza orders can be used to identify high-profile military missions specifically doesn't make a lot of sense...

pella

10 hours ago

"Between the late hours of January 2 and the early morning of January 3, 2026, unusually high activity was again observed at a Papa John's near the Pentagon. This coincided with the lead-up to the United States strikes in Venezuela.[15][16] Following the strikes, President Donald Trump announced the capture of Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, who were subsequently flown out of the country to face narcoterrorism charges. The surge in pizza orders preceded the official confirmation of the operation by several hours, during which Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez reported the couple as missing.[17]"

+

"In a statement to Newsweek in 2025, the Department of Defense denied the theory, claiming that the Pentagon has numerous internal food vendors that are available to late-night workers. It criticized the accuracy of the timeline provided by the Pentagon Pizza Report.[18][19]"

--> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_pizza_theory

crazygringo

10 hours ago

And where's the control?

What about the other thousands of surges in pizza orders that had nothing to do with military missions abroad?

That's why Wikipedia calls it an "informal observation" and quotes the "potential for confirmation bias", asking "When else do spikes occur? How often do they have absolutely nothing to do with geopolitics?"

pella

10 hours ago

It works as a heuristic for inferring classified activity from indirect signals.

check now:

https://www.pizzint.watch/ "PAPA JOHNS PIZZA" 294% SPIKE !

tptacek

10 hours ago

That site definitely wants you to think it works as a heuristic, we get it.

tptacek

10 hours ago

Also if you're going to try to tell this story at least do better than Papa John's.

jaybyrd

12 hours ago

its seemed very deeply like we (i live in the united states) are going to be getting into a conflict with iran FARRRR more likely than a conflict with greenland despite active threats from the president. iran just feels more like something we would get involved in, The Sandbox TM

user

5 hours ago

[deleted]

observationist

11 hours ago

The idea of conflict with Greenland is kayfabe - it's all posturing and bombast. There's a significant probability that the Trump admin attempts and possibly succeeds at buying Greenland. Not usual for the last 5-6 decades, but in a historic context, fairly normal for nations to do this type of thing. There are legitimate strategic and economic arguments for it - not sure that I buy the arguments, but I can certainly entertain the ideas.

Iran is a sticky situation. It looks like the Trump admin is poised to chip in some missiles if it looks like they can tip the balance definitively for the protesters, but according to the intel accounts, the current positioning of assets means they're still at least a few days away from acting. That could be a deception and at any moment the current regime could get erased, so it's probably prudent to get the hell out of Dodge before the missiles start flying, or before the total crackdown and enforcement gets escalated, in the other direction.

ekropotin

11 hours ago

> The idea of conflict with Greenland is kayfabe - it's all posturing and bombast

Given the times we live in, I won’t rule out any, even most crazy, possibilities.

If someone told me (Russian) 20 years ago that we’ll invade Ukraine, I’d think it’s some kind of terrible joke. But here we are.

tptacek

10 hours ago

My rubric for Greenland is to watch what Europe does. If European NATO allies station troops and naval assets in/around Greenland (or demand SOFA changes at Ramstein, stuff like that), I'll believe they're taking it seriously. Right now the sense I get --- totally uneducated take, but it's a message board not the Sit Room --- is that Europe sees this as a media fight and little else.

recursivecaveat

2 hours ago

I remember the last time I dropped by my friend's house, casually put my pistol on the table, and told him I'd start shooting his family unless he sold me his flatscreen. Extremely normal and not coercive negotiating posturing between two good friends (:

WhatIsDukkha

10 hours ago

The term absurdist pro-wrestling term "kayfabe" appears to be an attempt to pretend there are adults in the room in these situations.

We've seen from the last years that's itself a deception to allow the right wing intelligentsia to excuse the erratic choices and profound damage to US international power.

Its an extension of the old Soviet propaganda tool "if everything is a lie, anything can be true".

user

11 hours ago

[deleted]

lovich

11 hours ago

I remember those halcyon days long in the past in the ancient days of 2024 when the idea that we might invade another country with this admin at the helm was poo pood as extremism.

Luckily the Greenland situation is different and we definitely haven’t been going through weekly events “that could never happen”.

As we all know, President Trump is completely comfortable with the word “no” and has been the greatest defender of international law and diplomacy between sovereign nations.

dyauspitr

12 hours ago

It’s going to be a fight in Iran. Most of the population still supports the ayatollah.

SinjonSuarez

11 hours ago

Source? From the latest report I’ve found I see 70% oppose the current regime.

https://gamaan.org/2025/08/20/analytical-report-on-iranians-...

dyauspitr

8 hours ago

This site also reported that the majority of Iranians are atheist. Its methods have been questioned before.

pazimzadeh

an hour ago

what makes you think they aren't?

ebbi

10 hours ago

The nuance here is that most Iranians favor regime change, but majority of them don't want it to come via US/Israel-led change.

tptacek

10 hours ago

You've said this several times on different threads today. You're smuggling in a premise nobody else was discussing. The protest movement is huge. It is not "US/Israel-led". We don't even reach the question of whether the "majority wants US/Israel"; I'm sure they don't!

ebbi

9 hours ago

> smuggling in Your response seems to elicit you have some pre-informed opinions on this that my comment has irritated you. I'm not smuggling anything. I'm making a comment on an open forum.

> The protest movement is huge Source? How big is it? What % of the Iranian population is protesting?

> It is not "US/Israel-led" Source? We have reports to the contrary, and given the amount US and Israeli politicians are leaning in to the protests, notwithstanding their constant talking points on escalating things with Iran, it's not beyond reasonableness to suggest there is outside influence.

I was merely providing a talking point, as the general theme in the West is that US forcing a regime change is a good thing. I'm merely reiterating that it is not (based on historical regime changes the US has been involved in), and that there is good reason to believe majority of Iranians don't want a regime change if it's US-led and not a real democratic outcome.

tptacek

9 hours ago

Again: it's a protest movement, not an Israeli invasion. Your last sentence continues the premise that there's a live question about "US-led regime change". No there isn't.

It would be one thing if you were arguing that it was, and presenting evidence. But this is just innuendo.

ebbi

4 hours ago

Where did I state it was an Israeli invasion?

Also, source on the 'massive protest'? Present the evidence.

epgui

11 hours ago

That’s not what I hear.