> If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes

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 Iran offered to open the strait

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.

> Israel benefits from Iran needing to spend large amounts of money on its own infrastructure and civilian needs, rather than on military development.

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.

> no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC

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.

Certain figures are gone but political and military organization appears mostly intact. Iran also emerged as potent enough to deliver stalemate to combined force of CENTCOM and Israel. Its standing certainly had improved next to the lows after decimation of its proxies and the fall of client regime in Syria.

The argument is interesting, because it happens to repeat administration's assertions. It also is interesting, because the argument itself attempts make peace with the idea that wiping out central command & leadership did not put US in a more favorable position in general.

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.

I'm Iranian, now living in the west. Allow me to chime in..

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

They seem to be heading towards control of the strait, and the tolls from that could be a pretty good pickup for whatever new government forms?

They have proven to the world they have a deterrent akin to a nuclear weapon, but they can actually use it.

considering Trump's personality, i don't think this is a win, his followers certainly wouldn't like that as well. I'm pretty sure this idea isn't even part of their stream of thoughts that trump is a puppet of bibi and this whole war was conducted following the command from Netanyahu.

America first

"America First"

The Saudis have only done "tit for tat" bombing, and are especially cautious to ensure that there is no escalation. Yes, they would prefer if this war could curtail Iran's power but they don't want it at the cost of their economy. Saudi Arabia Built a Private De-Escalation Track With Iran. - https://houseofsaud.com/saudi-helsinki-bilateral-iran-de-esc... (The whole of the https://houseofsaud.com/ provides an interesting Saudi perspective on the war and their relationships with the US).

Mind you Israel was the one that supported the partition plan in 1948. The expansion came from the other side who wanted it all

The Russo-Japanese war ultimately didn't end well for the Romanovs.

A lot of people died in suspicious circumstances.

I mean, someone has to be held accountable for that, don't they?

The US is currently waging a proxy war against Russia where they've managed to engineer something like 1,000,000 Russian casualties according to credible estimates [0]. Although obviously they're doing that for moral reasons since Russia launched an unprovoked war to maintain a sphere of influence around their borders which serious people in the US establishment have explained no country should be allowed to do.

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...

Epstein was irate that he suffered consequences others didn't (I'm not saying he didn't do more than others). He was thoroughly red-pilling and making comments more about how he believed what he did should be okay.

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.

> if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure.

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 was entitled to have radio active materia. Pretty much everyone involved says they followed the contract.

That facility was a nuclear research facility for civilian, military and medical use. Note that military doesn't mean weapons. Iran getting nuclear submarine would increase their threat level. In any case, Iran have a fatwa against developing nuclear bombs (a fatwa is a law edicted by a religious leader, and not respecting it would make you sinful and rebellious, and in a theocratic regime, often end in prison). The fatwa isn't reversed yet afaik, but the US killed the mufti who declared it, so I don't know how it applies.

But anybody saying Iran was working on a bomb is probably misinformed or lying imho.

> Where you're definitely wrong is on the "diplomatic agreement that worked". Iran continued to enrich violating the agreement...

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.

Since my other reply was flagged, and I'm past the edit window, and I learnt a little more about the nuance:

- 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.

Ah, so now none of the protesters were gunned down in the streets? How convenient.

> 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.

compare list of conflicts in europe to those in middle east over past from 1000 AD - 1900AD:

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

You seem to have forgotten to answer the question of 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?

Okay, but I don't think Kiriakou would explicitly admit if the US spied specifically on Israel.

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.

Evangelicals themselves recently brought us into this “post Roe world!” Their influence appears to be at its highest level ever.

This was (I thought) very obvious sarcasm, the man is an easily manipulated buffoon.

> a mix of extreme economic and diplomatic pressure.

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.