IRAN: Trump's war? by SIGNYM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Who Is in Charge of the Government?
And does he know what his own positions are?

By Ben Mathis-Lilley | June 17, 2025 5:54 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/06/donald-trump-reversal-iran
-ice-raids.html

Two stories in the news this week raise the question of who is currently in charge of the world’s most powerful country, the United States.

First, there’s the Wall Street Journal piece about how the U.S. government does not believe Israel’s claim that Iran is moving forward with an attempt to build a nuclear weapon.

Long story short, the U.S. didn’t support Israel’s military escalation against Iran because it doesn’t believe what Israel says about Iran’s nuclear plans. (In the New York Times’ phrasing, it “distanced itself from the strikes” via a statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.)

Except that, as the Journal notes, Donald Trump now says that Iran is “very close” to building a nuclear weapon; Trump is also, according to multiple Tuesday reports, considering ordering the U.S. military to bomb the country too. What changed? Not a ton, at least as far as new intelligence, input from allies, or Iranian belligerence. It’s just that Trump, in the Times’ euphemistic description, has “cycled” to a different position, one on which he “continues to gyrate.” (Sounds beautiful, perhaps even alluring.) Does he know what his own position was a few days ago? Who can say! According to the Times’ report, which, euphemisms aside, is impressively detailed, Trump told “associates” last week that he had urged Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, not to attack Iran—only to begin telling reporters this week that he “had played a bigger behind-the-scenes role in the war than people realized.” (The paper suggests that the president’s change of heart may have come after he got excited watching footage of Israeli strikes on Fox News.)

In a similar vein, there is the Washington Post’s new report that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have told agents to “continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants.” This reverses a directive not to target those venues that was itself issued last week, after Trump posted on his Truth Social site that ICE would back off farms and hotels because “very good, long time workers” were being detained. Compounding the confusion, the (new) Post report notes that the directive that was issued because of Trump’s post has been overruled because “the White House did not support it.” Who runs the White House? I thought it was the president!

These are things that have happened only this week. In late May, the State Department announced that it would be revoking visas issued to Chinese students in the U.S. who have “connections to the Chinese Communist Party” or study in “critical fields.” But last Wednesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Chinese students using our colleges and universities” have “always been good with me.” What else might turn out to be American policy, or have been American policy already, unbeknownst to President Memento (2001, dir. Christopher Nolan) and/or the members of his Cabinet? It will be exciting to find out.

Who’s in charge of the government?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, June 17, 2025 7:56 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Congress Has One Way to Stop Trump From Going to War With Iran

A War Powers Resolution would prohibit the "United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran."

By Jessica Washington | June 17 2025, 7:39 p.m.

https://theintercept.com/2025/06/17/iran-war-powers-resolution-congres
s-israel-trump-massie-khanna/

As President Donald Trump draws the United States perilously close to war with Iran, some members of Congress are working across the aisle in an attempt to reign him in.

On Tuesday, Representatives Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introduced a War Powers Resolution, which would prohibit the “United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Senator Tim Kaine, D-Va., introduced similar legislation in the Senate on Monday.

“U.S. involvement in Israel’s war with Iran is a red line. We need Congress to speak out about that and pass a resolution prohibiting that,” Rep. Khanna told The Intercept. “And we need the United States to try to bring this war between Israel and Iran to an end.”

The War Powers Resolution, enacted in 1973, requires an act of Congress to declare a war. Over the decades, however, presidents have repeatedly ignored the federal law to deploy U.S. troops overseas without Congressional approval, ensnaring the U.S. in numerous foreign wars. Massie noted in his press release that War Powers Resolutions are privileged in the House and “can be called up for debate and a floor vote after 15 calendar days without action in committee.”

The resolution comes against a backdrop of escalating missile strikes between Israel and Iran over the last five days, beginning with Israel’s attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities ahead of scheduled negotiations between the U.S. and Iranian leadership.

As attacks have continued, so too have concerns about direct U.S. involvement in the conflict. On Tuesday, Trump ratcheted up those fears with a string of Truth Social posts taunting the Iranian regime and calling for its surrender.

“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” he wrote. “Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’ Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.”

In another post, he claimed to have the location of Iran’s Supreme leader. “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump wrote. And in a third post, he called for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” News reports emerged Tuesday afternoon that in a meeting in the White House situation room, Trump told officials he was considering joining Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Even before Tuesday, lawmakers expressed concerns about the lack of clarity from the president and senior military leadership. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to offer assurances to Rep. Khanna that the U.S. would stand up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not get dragged into the oncoming conflict. And on Monday, while leaving the Group of Seven summit in Alberta, Canada, Trump refused to answer a reporter’s questions about whether the U.S. military would get involved in the war.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” he told reporters.

Congresswoman Summer Lee D-Pa., told The Intercept that it is Congress’s duty to intervene and prevent Trump from usurping their authority.

“Since taking office, Trump has continuously tried to supersede Congress and is now using the escalating crisis between Israel and Iran to justify executive overreach. Congressional authorization is not optional, and many are already opposed to being dragged into another endless war,” wrote Rep. Lee in a statement.

The Pennsylvania representative also alluded to the United States’ disastrous invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as a reason for caution. “The American people have been lied to before, and millions — at home and abroad — have paid the price. We cannot allow Trump or anybody else to use somebody else’s war for political gain or financial profit,” said Lee.

Members of Congress have previously tried to rein in the President’s military efforts in the Middle East. Earlier this year, progressives sent a letter to the White House demanding that Trump explain his legal basis for strikes against Yemen.

However, on Tuesday, Democratic Senator John Fetterman, also of Pennsylvania, struck a very different chord from Lee — encouraging military action against Iran and saying he would vote against Kaine’s resolution.

“I’m going to vote it down… I really hope the president finally does bomb and destroy the Iranians,” Fetterman told Chad Pergram with Fox News. It marks a reversal for the Senator, who in 2022 criticized President Trump for walking away from the negotiating table with Iran.

Samer Araabi, a member of the Center for Political Education’s advisory committee and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), said the comments from Fetterman aren’t surprising.

“It’s the least surprising thing from a Senator who has been so abhorrently blood chillingly deaf and blind to the situation in Palestine and totally unwilling on any level to recognize the countless war crimes that Israel continues to commit,” he said, adding, “it would be laughable if it wasn’t so horrifying.”

Araabi warned that direct U.S. involvement in the war would be even worse than the invasion of Iraq, due in part to Iran’s larger population and size.

“We’re on the precipice of not even just another Iraq, but something that would potentially be significantly more destabilizing,” he said.

U.S. military intervention on the side of Israel, Araabi said, would heighten the risk for all parties involved. “Even a cursory reading of the past 30 years of history in this country tells us that everything that is happening right now in this drive towards war is making all of us less safe,” he said. “It makes literally every single human being on Earth less safe. It certainly makes the Iranians less safe. It makes Israelis less safe, and it definitely makes us in the United States less safe.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, June 17, 2025 9:04 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I think you may be looking at all of this through a far too conventional lens.

Hey, isn't this when you are supposed to call Trump a war monger?

T

Warmonger is one word, stupid.

No. It is one word.

You are an illiterate idiot, and everyone already knows that about you.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Wednesday, June 18, 2025 4:10 PM

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Thursday, June 19, 2025 3:48 AM

close to the strait of hormuz

The tanker Adalynn is burning in the Gulf of Oman after being rammed by the tanker Front Eagle?

The Israeli Air Force has struck the Ilam Petrochemical Plant in western Iran.
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1935105179243921638#m
'It produces some of the chemicals used to propel Iran’s ballistic missiles'

quote Ted Cruz
'Tucker Carlson is obsessed with defending Russia and the KGB thug that runs it.'
https://x.com/tedcruz/status/1935400776211243458#m

Damage seen to several high-rise buildings in Downtown Tel-Aviv as a result of an impact from an Iranian ballistic missile.
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1935560280395715063

Footage captures the new Iranian missiles launched towards Israel.
https://x.com/MonitorX99800/status/1935446416727433524#m

Soroka Medical Center
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1935562111175803297

Iran says remains committed to diplomacy but acts in 'self-defence' against Israel
https://x.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1935451649092255821

Another angle of the Iranian ballistic missile impact earlier on Soroka Medical Center in the city of Beersheba, as well as the resulting shockwave from the impact.
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1935573047617917015

British aircraft carrier R08 Queen Elizabeth passes through the Suez Canal.
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1935566121979224446

The site of a ballistic missile impact earlier in Ramat Gan, to the east of Tel-Aviv in Central Israel, with major damage seen to several high-rise buildings and other structures.
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1935564133593694717

Even after intercepting ballistic missiles, the debris that falls can be devastating. This huge intercept fragment fell at the entrance to the city of Ariel in Samaria.
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1935563518461538504

“Explosions Reported Near Iran's Arak Nuclear Site”
https://x.com/OSINTOperation/status/1935547931630715127
Israeli strike reported near Arak heavy water facility. No immediate details on damage or casualties.

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Thursday, June 19, 2025 8:22 AM

Trump says supporters ‘more in love’ with him than ever, as MAGA world splits over Iran

https://japantoday.com/category/world/trump-says-supporters-are-%27mor
e-in-love%27-with-him-than-ever-as-involvement-in-iran-roils-maga-world#comments

Scofield Bible has had a significant influence on the Christian Zionist

https://www.wrmea.org/2015-october/the-scofield-bible-the-book-that-ma
de-zionists-of-americas-evangelical-christians.html

Rand Paul and those masonic jewbox airwaves that suddenly break down?
https://files.catbox.moe/jxt233.mp4

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Thursday, June 19, 2025 9:01 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
no Boots on the ground ...yet

but Trump is saying some strange stuff and posting odd remarks on social media.

Strange because Trump doesn’t have a foreign policy

What he has instead is the promise of chaos.

By Zack Beauchamp | Jun 18, 2025, 5:30 AM CDT

https://www.vox.com/on-the-right-newsletter/417156/trump-foreign-polic
y-ukraine-israel-iran

For years, there has been an increasingly bitter foreign policy fight between two factions of the Republican Party. On one hand, you have the GOP hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) who want the United States to impose its will on the world by force. On the other, you have the “America First” crowd — like Tucker Carlson and Vice President JD Vance — who want the US to withdraw from international commitments and refocus its attention on domestic concerns.

The big question, as always, is where President Donald Trump lands. If Trump says that the MAGA foreign policy is one thing, then that’s what it is — and the rest of the party falls in line.

On one read, Trump’s early response to the Israel-Iran war settles the debate in the hawks’ favor. After months of opposing an Israeli strike, Trump rapidly flipped after the attack looked more and more successful. Since then, his rhetoric has grown increasingly heated, opening the door to possible US involvement. And he has publicly attacked Carlson for criticizing the war, writing on Truth Social that “somebody [should] please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, ‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’”

And yet, I think the factional debate remains far less settled than it seems. In fact, I believe it will remain unsettled as long as Trump is in power.

Trump’s own foreign policy thinking does not align neatly with either of the two main camps. The president does not do systematic foreign policy, but rather acts on the basis of a collection of impulses that could never amount to anything so grandiose as a doctrine. Those gut instincts include a sense that the United States should look out for itself only, ignore any rules or norms that might constrain it, use force aggressively without regard to civilian casualties, and seek “deals” with other states that advantage the United States and/or make Donald Trump look good personally.

It looks, in effect, like an internationalized version of Trump’s approach to New York real estate in the 1980s and 1990s.

This isn’t a new observation: I’ve been making versions of this case since his 2016 campaign, and it’s been well-supported by both his first term and early second-term record.

But its significance for US policy is widely underappreciated. His lack of ideology does not mean that he can be permanently persuaded by one faction or the other, but rather produces volatility. The president has teetered back and forth between interventionism and isolationism, depending on the interplay between Trump’s idiosyncratic instincts and whoever he’s talking with on a particular day.

Given the near-dictatorial power modern presidents have over foreign policy, this will likely produce something worse than ideological rigidity: an incoherent, mutually contradictory policy that ends up undermining itself at every turn. At a moment of acute geopolitical peril, when Trump’s ascendant hawkish allies are calling for yet another war of regime change in the Middle East, it’s easy to see how that could end in true disaster.

Trump’s real foreign policy guide is his instincts

Foreign policy analysts like to talk a lot about “grand strategy.” What they mean by this is a vision that identifies the objectives leaders want to accomplish in world politics — like, say, protecting American territories from physical threats — and then develops a series of specific policies designed to work together in accomplishing that goal.

Both the right’s hawks and the America First crowd have distinct visions of grand strategy.

The hawks start from the premise that the United States benefits from being the world’s dominant power, and from there they develop a series of policies designed to contain or eliminate threats to that dominance from hostile powers like Russia or China. The America Firsters, by contrast, believe that remaining a globe-spanning power costs the United States too much in blood and treasure — and that the American people will be both safer and more secure if the US reduces its involvement in non-essential conflicts and lets other countries settle their differences without American help.

When you start from each of these grand strategic premises, you can basically deduce where most members of each bloc land on specific issues. The hawks love Israel’s war in Iran, while the America Firsters fear it might pull in the United States more directly. The hawks believe in aggressively trying to contain Chinese influence in East Asia, while the America Firsters seek accommodations that don’t risk a nuclear war over Taiwan. The hawks (mostly) support arming Ukraine against Russia, while the America Firsters are overwhelmingly against it.

On all of these issues, Trump’s actual policy is all over the map.

He first tried to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran, which the hawks hated, but swiftly flipped to supporting Israel’s war. His China policy has been inconsistent, pairing initially harsh tariffs and talk of trade “decoupling” with a negotiated climb-down and vagueness on Taiwan. On Ukraine, where Trump cozies up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and berates Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, the policy substance is even more muddled — he has cut US aid to Ukraine while simultaneously extending President Joe Biden’s sanctions on Russia, and even threatened new ones if Putin won’t make a ceasefire deal.

Trump’s second-term record, in short, is a tangle of incoherent policies and whiplash-inducing policy shifts. There is no consistent vision of the world, just whatever Trump decides policy should be in the moment — regardless of how much it contradicts what he’s said or done previously. And while all presidents have to develop new policies based on events, the Trump administration makes confusing and radical policy shifts over the course of very limited time periods (Exhibit A: the still-fluctuating tariff rates).

This foreign policy ping-pong can only be understood if you see Trump as someone who is allergic to foreign policy doctrine. You can spin his allergy positively (he’s pragmatic) or negatively (he knows nothing and doesn’t care to learn). Perhaps both are true to a degree, but the evidence — like his refusal to read briefing documents — tilts heavily in the latter direction.

What we get, in place of doctrine, are Trump’s instincts about interests, deals, and strength.

We know he thinks about current US policy in zero-sum terms, such as that NATO and trade agreements cannot benefit both sides. We know he’s indifferent to legal constraints from domestic and international law. We know he’s willing to use force aggressively, authorizing attacks against terrorist groups in his first term that produced shockingly high civilian body counts. And we know he sees himself as the consummate dealmaker, with much of his policy seemingly premised on the idea that he can get leaders like Putin and China’s Xi Jinping onside.

Sometimes, of course, these instincts combine and crash into each other — with Iran as a case in point.

Trump spent quite a lot of effort in his second term trying to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran. In both April and May, he explicitly warned Israel not to attack Iran. Yet now he seems fully on board with Israel’s war, posting bellicose Truth Social posts suggesting Iranians should “immediately evacuate Tehran.”

Trump’s jumping from negotiations to cheerleading war is not a result of him changing his foreign policy worldview. It’s that he wanted to be the dealmaker and then was persuaded, by a combination of Israeli pressure and his own lack of patience, that the talks weren’t working. Hence, Trump decided, war would be the order of the day.

“Now Mr. Trump is seriously considering sending American aircraft in to help refuel Israeli combat jets and to try to take out Iran’s deep-underground nuclear site at Fordo with 30,000-pound bombs — a step that would mark a stunning turnabout from his opposition just two months ago to any military action while there was still a chance of a diplomatic solution,” the New York Times reports.

But even amid said deliberations, Trump pines to be the dealmaker — suggesting in an ABC News interview this weekend that war “had to happen” for talks to succeed, and that it “may have forced a deal to go quicker.” His more hawkish allies see Israel’s offensive as the opening shots in a war of regime change; Trump sees it as the art of the deal.

It is, in short, a category error to try to align Trump with one GOP foreign policy faction or the other. He’s just Trump — a man with a long track record of endorsing and ordering armed violence, but also a deep faith in his near-magical dealmaking powers.

Trump’s real policy is chaos

So, if Trump’s guide is his instincts, why do the factional disagreements splitting the GOP matter?

Because we know for a fact that Trump can be easily influenced by the people around him. While he has some fixed and unchangeable views, like his peculiar idea that trade deficits are inherently bad, there are many areas on which he doesn’t have a strong opinion about the facts — and can be talked in one direction or another. This is the well-known phenomenon of Trump making public pronouncements based on whoever he spoke to most recently.

In Trump’s first term, this ended up having a surprisingly stabilizing effect on policy. He was surrounded by more establishment types like Jim Mattis and Mark Milley, who would frequently talk him out of more radical policies — or else quietly make policies on their own that were consistent with longstanding bipartisan consensus.

There were still many Trumpian moments — everyone forgets that we were shockingly close to war with North Korea in 2017 — but the overall foreign policy record wasn’t as radical as many feared.

As we all know, the second term is different. The Mattis types are gone, replaced instead by loyalists. The factional disputes are not between Trump’s allies and establishmentarians who wished to check him, but rather between different strains of MAGA — some more hawkish, others more dovish. But neither is big on stability, in the sense of wanting to ensure Trump colors within the longstanding lines of post-Cold War US foreign policy.

This creates a situation where each faction is trying to persuade Trump that their approach best and most truly embodies his MAGA vision. The problem, however, is that no such vision exists. Each will have successes at various times, when they succeed at tapping into whichever of Trump’s instincts is operative at the moment. But none will ever succeed in making Trump act like the ideologue they want him to be.

What this means, in concrete policy terms, is that the chaos and contradictions of Trump’s early foreign policy is likely to continue.

In the post-9/11 era, presidents have accrued extraordinary powers over foreign policy. Even explicit constitutional provisions, like the requirement that Congress declare war or approve treaties, no longer serve as meaningful checks on the president’s ability to use force or alter US international commitments.

This environment means that the twin factors shaping Trump’s thinking — his own jumbled instincts and his subordinates’ jockeying for his favor — are likely to have direct and immediate policy consequences. We’ve seen that in the whiplash of his early-term policies in areas like trade and Iran, and have every reason to believe it will continue for the foreseeable future.

In a new Foreign Affairs essay, the political scientist Elizabeth Saunders compares US foreign policy under Trump to that of a “personalist” dictatorship: places where one man rules with no real constraints, like Russia or North Korea. Such countries, she notes, have a long track record of foreign policy boondoggles.

“Without constraints, even from elites in the leader’s inner circle, personalist dictators are prone to military misadventures, erratic decisions, and self-defeating policies,” she writes. “A United States that can change policy daily, treat those who serve its government with cruelty, and take reckless actions that compromise its basic systems and leave shared secrets and assets vulnerable is not one to be trusted.”

So long as Trump remains in office, this is the way things are going to be. American foreign policy will be primarily determined not by strategists or ideologues, but by the confused and contradictory whims of one unstable man.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, June 19, 2025 1:13 PM

Republi-Cons ...Decepti-crats...More than meets the lie

while Iran has been ruled by islamist scum it now seems to be Zionist Donald and Moral Bankruptcy forgot to drain the swamp, Evangelical Doomsday Endtimes Deep State has become reality.

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Friday, June 20, 2025 6:46 AM

Why does Ted Cruz almost melt down when Tucker brings up AIPAC? Like he’s hiding something. Very strange.

https://x.com/gc22gc/status/1935866036303376548

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Friday, June 20, 2025 11:30 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump’s Vagueness on Iran Is Not Strategic

By Fred Kaplan | June 20, 2025 11:00 AM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/06/donald-trump-iran-war-isra
el-two-weeks.html

What is Donald Trump up to? What is he trying to accomplish? Asked by reporters on Tuesday whether he’ll join Israel in its attacks on Iran, the president replied, “I may do it, I may not do it,” adding, “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

Sometimes a remark like this can be useful; it can prod an adversary into behaving with caution. Trump’s supporters have lauded him for his mastery of “strategic ambiguity” — a term coined by scholars of international relations to describe policies designed to deter aggression without quite spelling out the consequences.

But that’s not what’s going on here. In order for this ambiguity to be effective, leaders should have an idea of what they would do if war came — of how they would like to see the conflict play out.

Yet it’s clear, from all evidence, that Trump himself is among those who don’t know what he’s going to do. His contradictions breed only confusion; they might rein in Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but they might also spur him to take gigantic risks, believing (or hoping) that the threats are just bluffs. In any case, Trump has lost control of the narrative — the opposite of what any leader, much less a superpower, should do while playing this game.

Trump has gone back and forth on the question of whether to join Israel’s attacks on Iran, but in the past few days his words and deeds seemed to indicate that U.S. intervention was imminent. He warned residents of Tehran — a city of 9 million people, in a country of 90 million — to evacuate immediately. He said he’d given Iran an “ultimatum.” He said that when his emissary started negotiations with Iranians to get them to give up their nuclear program, he gave them a 60-day deadline — and “today is 61, right?” He said he was demanding “unconditional surrender.” He said he knew where “the so-called Supreme Leader” was hiding, though he wasn’t going to kill him — “not now,” anyway, suggesting that he might do so later (something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu definitely would like to see happen).

Then came his “To be, or not to be” act — maybe he’ll attack, maybe he won’t, “nobody knows what I’m going to do.” Now Trump says he’ll decide what to do within the next two weeks.

This is not strategic ambiguity; it is, at best, ambivalence. In any case, a leader should not utter the rather definitive statements that Trump has uttered the past few days if he still hadn’t made up his mind, or if his mind was whirring like a strobe light.

Given Trump’s consistent record of inconsistency — his frequent threats, followed by reversals (and sometimes reversals of reversals), whether on tariffs, foreign conquests (cf. Greenland, Panama, Canada), or deporting migrants — Khamenei could reasonably conclude that the threats of recent days are more of the same and that, therefore, he needn’t back down. This, of course, could lead to catastrophe, especially if Trump decided to follow through this time — and Khamenei followed through on his own threats to unleash hundreds of missiles against Israel and U.S. bases throughout the Middle East if Trump intervenes.

Whatever happens, world leaders — all of whom are closely watching these events — are learning that nothing this president says should be taken seriously. Again, this is not strategic ambiguity. It’s merely the rantings of an overconfident president who thinks that acting tough gets results but doesn’t know what results he wants.

The best thing Trump could have done, when reporters asked him what he might do or not do in Iran, was to say nothing. Yes, he should have publicly noted that Iran’s pace of uranium enrichment is concerning, that he is considering a range of options. It was also a good idea, in and of itself, to move military assets, especially cargo-transport planes and aircraft carrier groups, into the region — whether as a deterrent or preparation for action. (It could serve both functions; that’s strategic ambiguity.) But then he should have kept quiet.

He should have sent private messages to Israel and Iran and consulted with other leaders — especially Arab and European allies — who have stakes in this war and its outcome. The problem is, Trump craves the spotlight; he can’t resist talking at length when cameras and microphones are pointed his way. And he finds allies unnecessary, at times annoying. He thinks he can figure out everything by himself. In recent days, he has called Cabinet meetings to discuss the options, but his secretaries — all of his minions — have learned to go along with everything he says. Offering contrary views gets them nowhere.

Trump is facing some dissension, if not from within his Cabinet, then from within the Republican Party. Many joined the MAGA movement because Trump promised to avoid getting sucked into the “stupid wars” of previous presidents, especially wars in the Middle East. On the other hand, the more traditional Republicans, especially those long devoted to Israel and hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran, are yearning for Trump to drop bunker busters on the Fordow enrichment plant and help overthrow the ayatollah.

To the extent Trump is swayed by domestic politics, here too he is torn — and not for reasons having anything to do with strategy or ambiguity.

On Tuesday, I wrote a column that began, “By the time you read this, the United States might be at war with Iran. If not, check back in a few hours or a couple of days, as President Donald Trump is giving every indication that he’ll join the fighting soon.”

Well, a few days have passed, and here we are, nervously twiddling our thumbs while Trump has pedaled back and forth to the fence. It is worth noting, once again, that Trump is to blame for what’s going on. In his first term, he scuttled the Iran nuclear deal, which President Barack Obama and six other leaders had negotiated and which — as international inspectors had verified — Iran was following to the letter. In the years since, Iran restarted its nuclear program and is now closer than ever to building a bomb. It is not true, as Trump currently claims, that he gave the Iranians a chance to negotiate a new deal but they refused. The Iranians were negotiating; it’s just that the last remaining obstacle to a deal — Trump’s insistence on barring the country from enriching any uranium, even to the low levels permitted (even encouraged) by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — was a demand that no country could permit, especially Iran, whose advanced program gave it more bargaining leverage than it had during the Obama era.

Now Trump is trapped between his (I think genuine) aversion to war and his bellicose rhetoric to the contrary. If coupled with shrewd diplomacy and a realistic negotiating strategy, this could have amounted to an effective bargaining strategy of his own; it could stand as a case study in strategic ambiguity. But Trump doesn’t know what he wants, or how to get it, so it’s just a muddle — and a dangerous one, which could find him dashing or sleepwalking into war.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, June 20, 2025 3:18 PM

Who will bleed and spend more?

Israel
25 killed
2,345 injuries

Iran
224 killed
1,277 injured

Cheer leading US President Donald Trump has supported Israel's attacks

big loss of economics and property damage on both sides, Iran can maybe shoot more scuds, Iranians have more drones maybe...however Israel can stop some stuff but Iranian hits are getting through, Israel seems to be hitting more Iranian military equipment slowing its ability to fight somewhat

psychological damage 3,800+ Israelis displaced, 5,000+ Israelis homeless

Iran F-14 Tomcats its prized antique planes finally destroyed, tv stations backed, thousands displaced, its possible millions might try flee as refugees

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Friday, June 20, 2025 3:49 PM

They aren't coming here.

We'll shoot them in the face if they try it.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, June 20, 2025 5:36 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Actually, a million ISRAELIS fled. Zionists have also fled their west bank and northern settlements. They're really brave about killing helpless civilians ... 55,000 at last count ... but when someone fights back they shit their pants.

Betcha dollars to donuts we let those sick m'fuckers in, no problem. Bc we loves us them Zionists.

The current thought is that like the Houthis, most of Iran's missiles are underground and that they have thousands left. Iran has a population of 90 million. Israel used to be 10 million, by now maybe 9 million. Israel's industry is densely concentrated and lacks depth, and is calculated to run out of air defense missiles in 10 days or so. It can't replace what it's lost.

What Iran has done... some say ... is instead of saturating Israel with all of its missiles all at once, Iran has stretched this out into ... wait for it ... attritional warfare.

Trump will probably bomb Iran. He's gone too far down the military path. Too many resources committed, too many bases and outposts evacuated. Those itching for war will tell him that since he's already spent so much moving aircraft carriers into position and made such a big deal about Iran SURRENDERING! etc etc he needs to finish what he started or once again be accused of being the TACO President. Damn, but he REALLY paints himself into corners with his stupid posts.

And even tho THGR poo-pooed the idea of us using a tactical nuke on Fordow (as Scott Ritter discussed) that is EXACTLY what is being discussed.

"Nobody would use a nuke on a country that has no nukes"?

Why not, THGR? WE did!

Russia and China are dividing up areas of responsibility for Iran. Russia's and Iran's history is an unhappy one, as Russia tried, and at times succeeded, in taking over parts of Iran as recently as 1946. So even tho Russia and Iran signed some sort of security agreement, it didn't include air defenses or a mutual defense pact. Possibly Iran will accept help from China more willingly.

Many moving parts.

Trump may do what he did in Syria in his first term: huff and puff, then send some PR strikes into Iran, aimed at nothing important, dust his hands: "Mission accomplished". If that's all that happens, we'll be lucky.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Friday, June 20, 2025 5:59 PM

one of the biggest splits in Maga since the cutting of Musk and firing and abolish some of that science and NASA research funding

this one for Evangelicals ranting about boots on ground in Iran is going to be bigger

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/wake-people-dave-smiths-plea-ma
ga-iran

the Shah

and again, Shah

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Friday, June 20, 2025 11:36 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Anybody who wants us to fight Israel's war for them isn't MAGA.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 12:01 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Actually, a million ISRAELIS fled. Zionists have also fled their west bank and northern settlements. They're really brave about killing helpless civilians ... 55,000 at last count ... but when someone fights back they shit their pants.

Betcha dollars to donuts we let those sick m'fuckers in, no problem. Bc we loves us them Zionists.

The current thought is that like the Houthis, most of Iran's missiles are underground and that they have thousands left. Iran has a population of 90 million. Israel used to be 10 million, by now maybe 9 million. Israel's industry is densely concentrated and lacks depth, and is calculated to run out of air defense missiles in 10 days or so. It can't replace what it's lost.

What Iran has done... some say ... is instead of saturating Israel with all of its missiles all at once, Iran has stretched this out into ... wait for it ... attritional warfare.

Trump will probably bomb Iran. He's gone too far down the military path. Too many resources committed, too many bases and outposts evacuated. Those itching for war will tell him that since he's already spent so much moving aircraft carriers into position and made such a big deal about Iran SURRENDERING! etc etc he needs to finish what he started or once again be accused of being the TACO President. Damn, but he REALLY paints himself into corners with his stupid posts.

And even tho THGR poo-pooed the idea of us using a tactical nuke on Fordow (as Scott Ritter discussed) that is EXACTLY what is being discussed.

"Nobody would use a nuke on a country that has no nukes"?

Why not, THGR? WE did!

Russia and China are dividing up areas of responsibility for Iran. Russia's and Iran's history is an unhappy one, as Russia tried, and at times succeeded, in taking over parts of Iran as recently as 1946. So even tho Russia and Iran signed some sort of security agreement, it didn't include air defenses or a mutual defense pact. Possibly Iran will accept help from China more willingly.

Many moving parts.

Trump may do what he did in Syria in his first term: huff and puff, then send some PR strikes into Iran, aimed at nothing important, dust his hands: "Mission accomplished". If that's all that happens, we'll be lucky.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Hoo boy...

Dem Jewz really pushed the limit of Fatigue over the years too, huh?

I never thought I'd see the day where both the right and the left and everyone in between (outside of NeoLibs and NeoCons) was calling out their chronic, awful behavior.

Mayhap Isreal is as jittery and trigger happy as the Democratic Party here is with their chronic low-level activist lawsuits desperately flying out every other day?

Because after decades of being able to be White whenever that suited them, but then throw out the "Jewish Shield" whenever they step way out of line on something, it doesn't appear that is flying in 2025 any more than Democratic Party race/sex cards and emotional blackmail has typically worked for them all of my life.

I don't even know what my opinion on that is. I just find it extremely interesting where the Jewish community finds itself in 2025 vs only 5 years ago, or certainly as far back as 9/11 and the decades before then.

Did hanging WWII ovens around everyone's neck for 80 years finally get old?

Maybe somebody should do a remake of Schindler's List right now and see what the public perception is and whether it ends up being a flop or not.

I'd certainly love to see the results of that experiment.

(*Wow... I thought we could do it in time to make the 30th anniversary of the original release, but I just checked and Schindler's List came out 32 years ago. God I'm old!)

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 1:29 AM

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 3:00 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Must have been performed for NYC Jews. Who are more parochial than Buffalo Polish Catholics.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 4:05 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Must have been performed for NYC Jews. Who are more parochial than Buffalo Polish Catholics.

You never heard that one before, huh? That was huge back when I was in high school.

We all liked to have a good time back in the 90's. It's good to remember that every once in a while.

"OJ Simpson... Not a jew!"

Here's one from the same album that Adam did about every car I've ever owned in my life.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 1:35 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

What Iran Knows About Trump

The mullahs of Iran join the bet that Trump always chickens out.

By David Frum | June 21, 2025, 9 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/iran-trump-taco-play
/683271/

President Donald Trump is being pulled toward war in the Middle East by his predator’s eye for a victim’s weakness and his ego’s need to claim the work of others as his own. But since his “unconditional surrender” social-media post on Tuesday, other Trump instincts have asserted themselves: above all, his fear of responsibility.

Trump enjoys wielding power. He flinches from accountability. Days ago, Trump seemed to hunger for entry into Israel’s war. A dramatic victory seemed poised to tumble into somebody’s lap. Why not his? But as the hours passed, Trump reconsidered. Instead of acting, he postponed. He said that a decision would come within “two weeks.”

Time for diplomacy to work? Perhaps that might be the case in another administration. In this one, as attentive Trump watchers have learned, the “two weeks” promise is a way of shirking a decision altogether, whether on Russia sanctions (deadline lapsed June 11, without action), trade deals (deadline lapsed June 12, without result), or a much-heralded infrastructure program (deadline lapsed May 20, 2017, without action then or ever).

During his first term, Trump claimed to have taken the U.S. to the verge of war with Iran in the summer of 2019, only to cancel the mission (again, by his own account) 10 minutes before mission launch. The story, as Trump told it, can hardly have impressed the rulers of Iran with the U.S. president’s commitment and resolve. But the experience of 2019 could suggest to the Iranian regime a strategy for 2025:

Step 1: Absorb the Israeli strikes, as painful and humiliating as they are.

Step 2: Mobilize Russian President Vladimir Putin to dissuade Trump from military action.

Step 3: Agree to return to negotiations if Trump forces a cease-fire on Israel.

Step 4: Dawdle, obfuscate, and generally play for time.

Step 5: Reconstitute whatever remains of the Iranian nuclear program.

This strategy would play on all of Trump’s pressure points, especially his unwillingness to ever do anything that Putin does not want. It would leave Israel in the lurch, but over the years Trump has left many other allies like that.

Trump is vulnerable to the negotiate-to-delay strategy because he has not taken any of the necessary steps to lead the nation into the war he once seemed ready to join.

Trump has not asked Congress for any kind of authorization. The decision, he insists, will be his and his alone. Which will be feasible if the operation turns out as Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada did in 1983: over in a few days with few U.S. casualties and at minimal cost. But Grenada was a nearby island nation with a population of less than 100,000; Iran is a regional power with a population of more than 90 million.

War with Iran will also need real money. The 78-day air war against Serbia in 1998 cost the U.S. and its NATO allies a comparatively modest $7 billion (about $14 billion in today’s dollars). Iran is likely to prove a more dangerous enemy than Serbia was. Israel’s air war against Iran costs about $1 billion a day, according to estimates published by Ynet News. A fight with Iran will likely require some kind of supplemental appropriation above the present defense budget. Congress may balk at funding a costly war it did not approve in the first place.

Trump has not put competent leadership in charge of the nation’s defense or domestic security. Trump’s secretary of defense is accused by his own former advisers and friends of playacting a role that completely exceeds his abilities. If Iran retaliates with terror attacks inside the United States or on American interests abroad, it will find the U.S. desperately vulnerable. Trump purged experienced leaders from counterterrorism jobs. He installed underqualified culture warriors atop the FBI, and appointed at the Department of Homeland Security a cosplaying partisan who diverted $200 million of agency resources to a “Thank You Trump” advertising campaign.

Trump has not mobilized allies other than Israel. The United States has generally fought its major wars alongside coalition partners. Even Trump did so in his first term. France, the United Kingdom, and many other partners shouldered heavy burdens in the 2014–17 campaign in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State terror group. But Trump did not assemble that coalition; he inherited it from the Obama administration. Trump shows no inclination to try assembling his own in 2025.

Trump has not rallied domestic public opinion. Before this year, only a minority of Republicans and not even a third of Democrats regarded Iran as an important security threat to the United States. George W. Bush went to war in Iraq with almost three-quarters of Americans behind him. As late as the spring of 2006, half the country still supported Bush’s war. Trump will begin a war with Iran with less support than Bush could muster after three years in Iraq. Nor does Trump have any evident path to broadening support. As my former Atlantic colleague Ronald Brownstein quips, Trump is governing as a wartime president, but the war into which he has led the country is red America’s culture war against blue America: Even as Trump weighs the deployment of U.S. air power against Iran, he’s leading a federal military occupation of California.

Trump seems to recognize that he cannot unify the nation and therefore dares not lead it into any arduous or hazardous undertaking. That may be the secret self-awareness behind Trump’s “two weeks” hesitation. This is not a self-awareness that will help Israel or secure the United States’ long-term interest in depriving Iran of a nuclear weapon. But in the absence of any strategic planning or preparedness, that self-awareness is all we have to guide the country through the next fortnight and, very possibly, a long succession of “two weeks” after that.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 1:36 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

American Democracy Might Not Survive a War With Iran

The United States is well down the road to dictatorship. Imagine what Trump would do with a state of war.

By Robert Kagan | June 21, 2025, 7 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/democracy-ir
an-israel-war-trump/683269/

The current debate over bombing Iran is surreal. To begin with, bombardment is unlikely to lead to a satisfactory outcome. If history has shown one thing, it is that achieving a lasting resolution by bombing alone is almost impossible. There was a reason the United States sent ground forces into Iraq in 2003, and it was not to plant democracy. It was that American officials believed they could not solve the problem of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs simply by bombing. They had tried that. The Clinton administration bombed Iraq for four days in 1998. At the end, they had no idea what they had destroyed and what they hadn’t. They certainly knew they had not put a permanent end to the program. In 2003, if George W. Bush thought he could have permanently ended Saddam’s weapons programs by bombing alone, he would have taken that option.

Iran today poses the same dilemma. America’s weapons may be better than they were in 2003, its intelligence capabilities greater, and Iran may be weaker than it was even a year ago, but the problem remains. Bombing alone will not achieve a verifiable and lasting end to Iran’s nuclear program. It can buy time, and Israel’s strikes have done that. American strikes could extend that period, but a determined Iranian regime will likely try again. A permanent solution would require a far more intrusive international verification regime, which in turn would require a ground presence for protection.

However, that is not the main reason I oppose bombing Iran. Nor is it the reason I find the discussion of all of this so bizarre. You would never know, as The New York Times churns out its usual policy-option thumb-suckers, that the United States is well down the road to dictatorship at home.

That is the context in which a war with Iran will occur. Donald Trump has assumed dictatorial control over the nation’s law enforcement. The Justice Department, the police, ICE agents, and the National Guard apparently answer to him, not to the people or the Constitution. He has neutered Congress by effectively taking control of the power of the purse. And, most relevant in Iran’s case, he is actively and openly turning the U.S. military into his personal army, for use as he sees fit, including as a tool of domestic oppression. Whatever action he does or doesn’t take in Iran will likely be in furtherance of these goals. When he celebrates the bombing of Iran, he will be celebrating himself and his rule. The president ordered a military parade to honor his birthday. Imagine what he will do when he proclaims military success in Iran. The president is working to instill in our nation’s soldiers a devotion to him and him alone. Imagine how that relationship will blossom if he orders what he will portray as a successful military mission.

Indeed, I can think of nothing more perilous to American democracy right now than going to war. Think of how Trump can use a state of war to strengthen his dictatorial control at home. Trump declared a state of national emergency in response to a nonexistent “invasion” by Venezuelan gangs. Imagine what he will do when the United States is actually at war with a real country, one that many Americans fear. Will he tolerate dissent in wartime? Woodrow Wilson locked up peace activists, including Eugene V. Debs. You think Trump won’t? He has been locking people up on flimsier excuses in peacetime. Even presidents not bent on dictatorship have taken measures in wartime that would otherwise be unthinkable.

Then there is the matter of terrorism. What if Iran is able to pull off a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in retaliation for an American strike? Or even just tries and fails? The courts will permit a president almost anything in the aftermath of an attack: Any restraints they’ve put on Trump will vanish. The administration may claim that anti-terrorism laws permit it to violate the rights of American citizens in the same way that it is currently violating the rights of the noncitizens being scooped off the streets by masked men. The attorney general has already threatened to use terrorism statutes to prosecute people who throw stones at Tesla dealerships. Imagine what she will do to anti-war protesters with the justification of a real terrorist threat.

Finally, there are the global implications. The United States is currently ruled by anti-liberal forces trying to overturn the Founders’ universalist liberal ideals and replace them with a white, Christian ethnoreligious national identity. American officials are actively supporting similar anti-liberal forces all around the world, including the current anti-liberal ethnoreligious government of Israel. Any success Trump claims in Iran, whatever its other consequences, will be a victory for the anti-liberal alliance and will further the interests of anti-liberalism across the globe. This is true even though the current regime in Iran is itself anti-liberal. Should the mullahs fall, Trump and Israel are likely to support a military strongman against any democratic forces that might emerge there. That has been Israel’s policy throughout the region, and even presidents who did not share Trump’s proclivity for dictators, such as Barack Obama, have acquiesced to Israel’s preferences. I’m not interested in using American military power to make the world safer for dictatorship.

I might feel differently if Iran posed a direct threat to the United States. It doesn’t. The U.S. policy of containing Iran was always part of a larger strategy to defend a liberal world system with a liberal America at its center. Americans need to start thinking differently about our foreign policy in light of what is happening in our country. We can no longer trust that any Trump foreign-policy decision will not further illiberal goals abroad or be used for illiberal ends at home.

Today, the United States itself is at risk of being turned into a military dictatorship. Its liberal-democratic institutions have all but crumbled. The Founders’ experiment may be coming to an end. War with Iran is likely to hasten its demise. Not that it matters, but count me out.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 5:37 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What Iran Knows About Trump

The mullahs of Iran join the bet that Trump always chickens out.

By David Frum | June 21, 2025, 9 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/iran-trump-taco-play
/683271/

That's David Frum goading Trump into attacking Iran by playing on Trump's weak point: his ego.

Instead of discussing the issues...

* Is an attack TRULY necessary? Does Iran really have a nuclear weapons program? Or is Iran simply creating bargaining chips?

* The bunker buster's ability to pentrate 300 ft of rock, and whether a strike, or multiple precision strikes, would be successful or even possible.

* The CONSEQUENCES of a strike, successful or not. Worldwide political, financial, economic, and MILITARY.

* Whether there is any other way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Why isn't the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, with inspections, enough?

* Is "nuclear weapons" just another "Saddam WMD" cover story?

... Frum just psychologizes the hell out of everything.

Instead of CELEBRATING the fact that Trump is reluctant to use weapons, this is all psychological manipulation of the crudest kind.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 5:48 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
American Democracy Might Not Survive a War With Iran

The United States is well down the road to dictatorship. Imagine what Trump would do with a state of war.

By Robert Kagan | June 21, 2025, 7 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/democracy-ir
an-israel-war-trump/683269/

The current debate over bombing Iran is surreal. To begin with, bombardment is unlikely to lead to a satisfactory outcome. If history has shown one thing, it is that achieving a lasting resolution by bombing alone is almost impossible. There was a reason the United States sent ground forces into Iraq in 2003, and it was not to plant democracy. It was that American officials believed they could not solve the NONEXISTANT problem of Saddam Hussein’s NONEXISTANT weapons programs simply by bombing. They had tried that. The Clinton administration bombed Iraq for four days in 1998. At the end, they had no idea what they had destroyed and what they hadn’t. They certainly knew they had not put a permanent end to the NONEXISTENT program. In 2003, if George W. Bush thought he could have permanently ended Saddam’s NONEXISTENT weapons programs by bombing alone, he would have taken that option.

Iran today poses the same dilemma.

Yes, it's very hard to destroy something that doesn't exist.

Quote:
A permanent solution would require a far more intrusive international verification regime, which in turn would require a ground presence for protection.

Saddam was subject to intrusive on the ground UNMOVIC inspections. OUR BOMBS CHASED THEM OUT. Apparently, we're either not satisfied with the NPT and intrusive inspections, or "WMD" isn't really the problem.

The whole drama is surreal, and we created it, not Iran.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 8:01 PM

Explosions reported in Tehran, Tabriz and Shiraz.
https://x.com/InsiderGeo/status/1936563426731471092

Loud explosions reported in Tabriz and east of Tehran right now
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1936554497959944416

Israeli officials have told the Trump Administration they do not intend to wait two weeks for Iran to reach a deal to dismantle key parts of its nuclear program, like the Fordow Nuclear Facility, and that the Israel Defense Force could act alone before the deadline is up, two sources told Reuters.
https://x.com/sprinterindexx/status/1936541215387770917

Javier Bardem

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 9:07 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Trump Confirms Strikes On Iran's Nuclear Sites: Fordow, Natanz, And Esfahan "Successfully Targeted"

OMFG. Sigh.
Trump always does what Israel wants.

This was my LEGITIMATE fear of Trump's policies.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 3:52 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

But if we don't get reports of a big radioactive cloud circling the globe, then this was just a big fireworks show to get Netanyahu and the anti-MAGA war hawks off his back.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 6:08 AM

Trump is now a "war president."
https://www.hide5politics.com/viewtopic.php?t=64892

So a lot of Iranians crossed the Mexico and Canadian border?

what is going to happen now

Aussie Murdoch SkyNews are big fans

Viral ‘eating the cats’ meme sees Donald Trump gain election advantage

Trump ‘ignored’ intelligence advice in ‘surprising’ Iran strikes

A spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reported that the 20th wave of Operation True Promise 3 was launched using new tactics that combine liquid and solid-fuel long-range ballistic missiles with destructive warheads and enhanced capabilities to penetrate enemy air defenses.
https://x.com/SprinterObserve/status/1936669669571580271
The strikes were aimed at
- Ben Gurion Airport.
- Biological Research Center of the Israel Education.
- Support bases and command and control centers.

owned?
https://x.com/mrZEExrp/status/1936618073173205299

the Goyim?
https://x.com/Classicist9999/status/1936204079652651167

Nikki
https://x.com/BerryRazi/status/1936623937192141181

tracker of money
https://x.com/TrackAIPAC/status/1936651724128915586

Every time America is on the verge of greatness, we get involved in another foreign war.
https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1936564082477531596
There would not be bombs falling on the people of Israel if Netanyahu had not dropped bombs on the people of Iran first.
Israel is a nuclear armed nation.
This is not our fight.
Peace is the answer.

"Regime change" is a misnomer. There may be regime collapses. But nothing that resembles a governing system will replace it. It will be civil war, chaos, refugee crises, misery and global instability far worse than the rise of ISIS and what happened in Iraq and Syria.
https://x.com/Harbpeace/status/1935152177032413648

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 6:50 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What Iran Knows About Trump

The mullahs of Iran join the bet that Trump always chickens out.

By David Frum | June 21, 2025, 9 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/iran-trump-taco-play
/683271/

That's David Frum goading Trump into attacking Iran by playing on Trump's weak point: his ego.

Instead of discussing the issues...

* Is an attack TRULY necessary? Does Iran really have a nuclear weapons program? Or is Iran simply creating bargaining chips?

* The bunker buster's ability to pentrate 300 ft of rock, and whether a strike, or multiple precision strikes, would be successful or even possible.

* The CONSEQUENCES of a strike, successful or not. Worldwide political, financial, economic, and MILITARY.

* Whether there is any other way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Why isn't the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, with inspections, enough?

* Is "nuclear weapons" just another "Saddam WMD" cover story?

... Frum just psychologizes the hell out of everything.

Instead of CELEBRATING the fact that Trump is reluctant to use weapons, this is all psychological manipulation of the crudest kind.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

I wonder who should be blamed for the decisions Trump makes, Signym? There must be a Deep State, or a Neo-Con conspiracy, making the decisions he gets blamed for.

21 thoughts on Trump's war with Iran

A risky situation brought to us by a weak president

Slow Boring by Matthew Yglesias / Jun 21, 2025 at 8:51 PM

https://www.slowboring.com/p/21-thoughts-on-trumps-war-with-iran

1. America’s top priority in the Middle East should be decreasing our involvement in the region. President after president keeps vowing to do that, they’ve all failed, and now Trump has arguably failed most of all.

2. What’s been maddening about Iran policy debates for the past decade is that the hawks keeps lying about their own policy preferences.

3. Opponents of the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal would make a big show of getting upset if you said that their preferred alternative to the deal was war. When Trump tore up the JCPOA, they again made a big show of getting mad at anyone who said this was putting us on a course for war. But here we are, at war.

4. Now that war is upon us, the biggest red herring in the world is that proponents will say they did this to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. No. Obama signed the JCPOA to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

5. To be clear, JCPOA critics weren’t delusional. The reason that Iran was willing to sign the deal was that it provided them with meaningful upside in the form of sanctions relief. And because the point of the JCPOA was to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, it did not address other concerns one might have with Iran, like the nature of its regime or its cultivation of a regional network of proxy militias or its ballistic missile arsenal. But JCPOA prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. What deal opponents didn’t like was that this was all that it did.

6. The problem with making a deal with Iran that offers Iran upside is it lets them improve their economy and thus pour more resources into various non-nuclear undertakings. This is especially a problem from Israel’s perspective, since they are the targets of many of these undertakings.

7. But the problem with not offering Iran upside is that if Iran doesn’t get upside in a deal, then there’s no deal. You end up with either a nuclear Iran or a war.

8. Now, maybe the war will end up being a “splendid little war” conducted by air with no American casualties and minimal impacts on Israel. Maybe Iran caves and signs a humiliating deal. This definitely might happen, and I wouldn’t trust anyone who professes to be certain it will turn into a fiasco.

9. That said, as Robert Pape wrote a few days ago, the practical track record of countries achieving major strategic goals through air power alone is pretty thin. Ever since aerial bombardment was invented, there’s been a desire to believe wars can be won by securing air superiority and dropping bombs, but it rarely works. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/israels-futile-air-war

10. It’s going to be hard to know how much damage has actually been done to Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.

11. The treatment received by North Korea over the past 25 years — in contrast to Iraq, Libya, Iran, and, in a different way, Ukraine — is a strong argument for countries to sprint to nuclear weapons development and then figure things out from there. The “Iran surrenders” scenario is definitely on the table, but “Iran genuinely goes for a nuclear weapon” seems like a more likely scenario.

12. Which again brings us back to the JCPOA debate: The Obama administration wanted to make a deal because they didn’t want Iran to build a nuclear weapon and they didn’t want to get sucked into a regime change war. JCPOA opponents were happy to have a regime change war, but they’ve never wanted to admit that.

13. Israel attracts a lot of moralistic outrage for its conduct toward Palestinian civilians, much of which I think is warranted, and for its refusal to engage in good faith negotiations around a two-state solution, where I think the outrage is entirely wanted.

14. In the eyes of a lot of western progressives, this creates a kind of moral contamination around everything else that Israel does. But judged in isolation, Israel is clearly the sympathetic party in its regional conflict with Iran. And while the Iranian “axis of resistance” has been a thorn in Israel’s side, the sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis has, in practice, only brought disaster on Palestinians.

15. I would have no particular objection to Israel deciding it wants to wage war against Iran, or to the United States helping Israel on the level of selling them weapons and military equipment for that war. The problem with an “Israel bombs Iran” scenario has always been that Israel lacks the capacity to take out the underground nuclear facilities, so an Israeli bombing campaign means starting a war they can’t finish and hoping to bait the United States into finishing the job for them.

16. A lot of people felt that Joe Biden gave Netanyahu everything he wanted, but he absolutely did not give him this.

17. Donald Trump could have simply embarked on this course of action if he thought it was a good idea. But he plainly did not and was trying for a while to reach a new diplomatic accord with Iran, an accord that by all accounts would look a lot like the JCPOA. But for all Trump’s bluster, he’s a fundamentally weak and indecisive leader, and he let Netanyahu jam him up in a way that Biden and Obama never did.

18. You can hardly blame Netanyahu for taking advantage of Trump’s weakness and lack of control over the situation. From the standpoint of Israeli policy, it is definitely better to have the US maximally engaged in the Middle East rather than cutting a deal that could strengthen the Iranian economy.

19. The problem, obviously, is that the US and Israel are different countries with different interests.

20. A lot of people spent years insisting the Trump administration’s pro-Russian views on the Ukraine War reflected either a general anti-war disposition or else a strong desire to set regional priorities and focus American energy on the Pacific. The decision to go to war with Iran puts the lie to all that and reveals what should have been clear to anyone paying attention: There’s no sophisticated strategy guiding Trump on Ukraine, he’s just on the other side.

21. I have grave, grave misgivings about this course of action — there are so many ways it could end up going horribly, and the upside to the United States of any possible “better deal” than the JCPOA is limited. Still, it’s at least possible that it will work out fine. Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah and earlier strikes on Iran have shown that Iranian military capacity is not as strong as many observers thought. I hope for the best. But hope is not a plan, and I seriously doubt that Trump has a better one.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 9:53 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But if we don't get reports of a big radioactive cloud circling the globe, then this was just a big fireworks show to get Netanyahu and the anti-MAGA war hawks off his back.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

That is NOT what would happen if Iran bombed an American Uranium enrichment site, so why do you trivialize the idiotic thing Trump just did? He started a war without a declaration of war from Congress. If Congress wasn't made up of a majority of highly irresponsible and fearful individuals, worried mainly about themselves, he would be removed from office for what he did to Iran, yesterday.

Most people agree, at minimum, that the Declare War Clause grants Congress an exclusive power. That is, Presidents cannot, on their own authority, declare war. Although it is somewhat more contested among scholars and commentators, most people also agree that Presidents cannot initiate wars on their own authority (a minority argues that Presidents may initiate uses of force without formally declaring war and that Congress’s exclusive power to “declare war” refers only to issuing a formal proclamation).

In the early post-ratification period, the clause’s limit on presidential warmaking was read broadly. Many key founders, including Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and James Madison, referred to the clause’s importance as a limit on presidential power. In the nation’s early conflicts, Congress’s approval was thought necessary – not only for the War of 1812, for which Congress issued a formal declaration, but also for lesser uses of force including the Quasi-War with France in 1798, conflicts with the Barbary States of Tripoli and Algiers, and conflicts with Native American tribes on the Western frontier (all of which were approved by Congress, albeit without formal declarations).

https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/article-i/cla
uses/753

Some lawmakers in both parties question the legality of Trump's Iran strikes
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/lawmakers-both-parties-quest
ion-legality-trumps-iran-strikes-rcna214316

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 9:54 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump: “I’m attacking Iran because they have nuclear weapons.”

Why don’t you attack North Korea?

Trump: “Are you crazy? They have nuclear weapons.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 12:45 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

COPIED FROM ONE OF THE MANY OTHER THREADS ABOUT IRAN

Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Vance says U.S. 'not at war with Iran, we're at war with Iran's nuclear program'

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/vance-says-us-no
t-war-iran-re-war-irans-nuclear-program-rcna214329

Wow, and he thinks hair-splitting is going to protect us?

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 1:03 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

This was posted in 2007

Quote:
The details of his study of negotiation options with Iran are classified, but Bueno de Mesquita says that the broad outline is that there is nothing the United States can do to prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear energy for civilian power generation. The more aggressively the U.S. responds to Iran, he says, the more likely it is that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. The upshot of the study, Bueno de Mesquita argues, is that the international community needs to find out if there is a way to monitor civilian nuclear energy projects in Iran thoroughly enough to ensure that Iran is not developing weapons.

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=31276

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 1:06 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
SECOND

That [radioactivecloud circling the earth] is NOT what would happen if Iran bombed an American Uranium enrichment site,

And you know this ... how?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 1:21 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Probably no major military damage but major geopolitical damage

The Iranian National Nuclear Security System Center confirmed the attack, but stated that no signs of radioactive contamination or leaks had been detected during emergency inspections at the affected facilities. The International Atomic Energy Agency later also said that no increase in radiation levels had been reported in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. I assume that the attack was not successful. Al Mayadeen ‘s correspondent in Tehran also reported that initial findings contradict the US account and confirm that only external areas such as gates and fencing were hit. The superficial damage was negligible and would not affect further uranium enrichment. (Source: Professor Seyed M. Marandi – here and here)

Fortunately we don't have to rely on Iranian sources, as there are radiation sniffers all around the globe which detect underground nuclear tests and well as nuclear accudents

Quote:
Contrary to Trump’s bluster, the military strike therefore achieved nothing, apart from the fact that the American president completely removed himself from the game diplomatically.

Trump already had a hand in the “Spiderweb” attack, the drone strike against [some strategic] targets in Russia, and lied about it. Trump also lied through his teeth about his involvement in Israel’s attack against Iran. We reported on this in our article “Diplomacy on his deathbed – from peace president to warmonger”. With Trump’s announcement three days ago that he would decide within two weeks whether the US would go to war, he gave the impression that he was striving for a diplomatic solution. Anyone who is still negotiating with Trump and believes his words can be described as a complete idiot.

Too true. A real negotiator needs to protect his/her credibility. Whatever credibility Trump had, he zeroed his account in the past two weeks

Quote:
Furthermore, Trump has robbed himself of the opportunity to act by this stupidity. He now has to wait and see what happens and not only Iran, but also Russia, China and Pakistan can now calmly decide how they will react, while Iran has the opportunity to reduce Israel to rubble. The escalatory dominance therefore lies with Iran and its partners.

Israel and the US have no chance in the war against Iran

My research and discussions with sources reveal a picture that does not correspond at all to what the Western media proclaim, namely that Israel is in the process of winning.

If Israel was "winning" why do they need our help?

ALSO, FOR THOSE WHO KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IRAN AND INSIST ON CONFLATING THEM WITH RADICAL SUNNI TOWELHEADS

Quote:
Iranian society

I visited Iran twice last year and was very impressed by the country and its people. I had the opportunity to talk to many people, including professors, scientists, civil servants, entrepreneurs and lawyers. People from all walks of life and of all age groups. As a completely non-religious person, I was invited several times to the home of a highly religious family and spent great evenings with people who live their religion but have no reservations whatsoever about those who live their lives and their faith differently and answer every question about religion and society with great joy and openness. I was also struck by the incredibly high level of education of the people and the propaganda-free view of the West and East. I never sensed any hatred towards Israel and certainly not towards Judaism, as the more than 20,000 Jews in Iran are able to practise their faith in their synagogues without any restrictions.

Iran has been under sanctions for 45 years and the fact that this multi-ethnic state has survived is thanks to a people who are certainly not impressed by a little Hitler in Israel or a screamer in Washington. There are problems in Iran and there are voices calling for reform. However, suggestions on how Iran should change must come from within and not from outside – and that includes me.

The naive and arrogant opinion of the West that the attacks could provoke an overthrow of the government is complete nonsense. My sources tell me that this attack led to people standing together.

MORE AT https://sonar21.com/trump-has-decided-to-attack-iran-this-will-have-co
nsequences-for-the-whole-world/

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 3:35 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

So, a couple of thoughts:

Trump has this fixed idea that Israel is our friend (hahagahaha!!!). He may also have a genuine paranoia about Iran and nuclear weapons. The other equally credible idea is that he bought Israel's frothing about Iran's nuclear wespons program.

Problem is, if Iranian nuclear weapons was the REAL problem, there were already bulletproof proposals on the table that would have solved that, one of them being that Israel would turn its 60% enriched uranium over to Russia, and operate an enrichment program for civilian nuclear power as part of a consortium, including even the USA.

That, apparently, wasn't good enough!

So Trump couldn't withstand hysterical Israeli pressure, nor the pressure from MANY Republicans and some Democrats to "Bomb, bomb, bomb. Bomb, bomb Iran".

Rumor is that Trump did some sort of backdoor deal with Iran, informing them of the strike in advance, and that our bunker buster bombs were never dropped, or not dropped on anything important. The deal, if there is one, seems to be going like this:

Trump: I get to declare victory and derail Israel's regime change operation, Iran promises not to attack our regional bases (which would invite a military response and further escalation from us).

IDK about Israel, which is actually taking a more significant beating than Iran. If Israel not part of the deal, Iran and Israel continue their "missile/ drone/ (assasination program on Israel's part) war of attrition", which Israel will probably lose. And Iran responds asymmetrically by, for example, closing straits of Hormuz.

There are a few things to look for:

Do other nations detect radiation cloud circling the globe? (There's a lot can be determined by specific isotopes as well as overall radioactivity.)

Does Israel continue its missile attack on Iran? If so, protecting Israel is not part of any Trumpian deal, and Israel and Iran will continue to exchange blows.

Does Iran close the straits of Hormuz, attack our regional bases, both, something else, or nothing?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 3:51 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

One step closer, hasn't happened yet:

Quote:
Iranian Parliament Backs Strait Of Hormuz Closure, Oil Market Braces For Turmoil
Sunday, Jun 22, 2025 - 08:05 AM

Iranian state-owned outlet Press TV has released a new report quoting Major General Kowsari, a senior member of the Iranian Parliament's National Security Commission, who stated:

"The Parliament has reached the conclusion that the Strait of Hormuz should be closed, but the final decision in this regard lies with the Supreme National Security Council."

MORE AT https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/iranian-parliament-backs-strait-
hormuz-closure-brent-market-braces-turmoil

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 3:53 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
SECOND

That [radioactive cloud circling the earth] is NOT what would happen if Iran bombed an American Uranium enrichment site,

And you know this ... how?

"With uranium… the radiation doesn't really travel very far," says Prof Claire Corkhill, Chair in Mineralogy and Radioactive Waste Management at the University of Bristol.

But for people close to the site, there could be health risks, she said.

"Highly enriched uranium is about three times more radioactive than non-enriched uranium. But in fact, on the scale of things, neither of them are particularly densely radioactive. It wouldn't cause a major environmental contamination problem," explains Prof Jim Smith, from the University of Portsmouth, who has studied the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.

"We're more concerned about what are called the fission products - the things that uranium splits up to when it's in a reactor or in a bomb - things like radioactive caesium, radioactive strontium, radioactive iodine. They are more of an environmental contamination issue."

But because no nuclear reaction is taking place at the enrichment sites - and a blast from a bomb would not trigger one - these dangerous radioactive "fission products" would not be present, he said.

Instead the uranium could be dispersed locally by a blast.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ykjvl1y9jo

On the other hand, if Trump nuked Iran, that would spread radiation around the world. America had about 1,030 above-ground nuclear explosions. To Trump, nuking Iran would be test 1,031, no big deal to him. Trump could probably sell the idea to his Trumptards that dropping 14 nukes on Iran is no bigger violation of going to war without a declaration of war from Congress than dropping on Iran the 14 "bunker-buster" bombs known as the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/8/29/visualising-the-2056
-nuclear-tests-conducted-since-1945

Pentagon reveals how B-2 bombers struck Iran nuclear sites in mission dubbed "Operation Midnight Hammer"
June 22, 2025 / 1:06 PM EDT / CBS News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-briefing-us-strikes-iran-nuclear
-sites/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 4:45 PM