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> Do you see an out for Khamenei et al? They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent and expect to keep their heads. Israel and America cannot accept i

> Do you see an out for Khamenei et al? They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent and expect to keep their heads. Israel and America cannot accept it, particularly now that its conventional defences have been shown ineffective Honestly, I don’t think the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war, and Israel has shown in the past that if you recognize their right to exist in some form, they’ll leave you the hell alone - see Egypt, Jordan, etc. So if he pulled back from those two rivalries, I doubt that hurts him much. I’d see it as riskier because of internal power struggles and possibly from regional rivals, but who knows. Guy’s in his mid 80s and there’s a decent chance Mossad knows exactly where he is. He’s got one foot on a banana peel and the other foot in the grave regardless.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> don’t think the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war We don’t. That’s why the only plausible escalation here is we bomb stuff and go home. > if he pulled back from those two rivalries, I doubt that hurts him much Hmm, I wonder if this could work together with IAEA denuclearisation. Possibly with Chinese help. They, too, have an interest in Iran remaining deradicalised and flowing.
seydor 1y ago
> the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war, Sure they do. It's another faraway TV war. Trump is just pretending like he s hesitating to ease his fundamentalist MAGA base into it.
- andrewflnr 1y ago
  But the Democrats/liberals also don't want a war, especially one that vaguely supports Israel. Very few people in America are anything less than strongly opposed, just a few Iran hawks.
  - seydor 1y ago
    We re about to find out in the following days
    - andrewflnr 1y ago
      Find out what? I mean, I'm not sure whether Americans support war has much bearing on whether it happens.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > We re about to find out in the following days No, we're not. Not wanting war isn't the same as being willing to sacrifice your livelihood to stop it.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Sure they do. It's another faraway TV war. Trump is just pretending like he s hesitating to ease his fundamentalist MAGA base into it Nobody wants war. We've re-labelled military maneuver with words that aren't spelled W-A-R. Because, in a perverse way, both "preëmptive strike" and "genocide" are less loaded--emotionally and historically--than war. But it's still war. War means you die. War means everything you love will die. The things you spent a lifetime building, from paintings to companies to relationships with neighbors and children and pets. They will all die. War means the entropy we ought to have bequeathed to our successors gets spun up to-day. Then it's over. New generation. Nobody remembers. The drums start beating again. Almost as if by design. Pulses of competition, if one had to be generous. If there is a single adjuvant to reviving these martial tones, it's the notion that this time is different. That everyone, this time, is just pretending to want to kill each other. That the consent is manufactured. It's not. It's real. We're singing it together.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> don’t think the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war We don’t. That’s why the only plausible escalation here is we bomb stuff and go home. > if he pulled back from those two rivalries, I doubt that hurts him much Hmm, I wonder if this could work together with IAEA denuclearisation. Possibly with Chinese help. They, too, have an interest in Iran remaining deradicalised and flowing.

seydor 1y ago

> the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war, Sure they do. It's another faraway TV war. Trump is just pretending like he s hesitating to ease his fundamentalist MAGA base into it.

andrewflnr 1y ago
But the Democrats/liberals also don't want a war, especially one that vaguely supports Israel. Very few people in America are anything less than strongly opposed, just a few Iran hawks.
- seydor 1y ago
  We re about to find out in the following days
  - andrewflnr 1y ago
    Find out what? I mean, I'm not sure whether Americans support war has much bearing on whether it happens.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > We re about to find out in the following days No, we're not. Not wanting war isn't the same as being willing to sacrifice your livelihood to stop it.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Sure they do. It's another faraway TV war. Trump is just pretending like he s hesitating to ease his fundamentalist MAGA base into it Nobody wants war. We've re-labelled military maneuver with words that aren't spelled W-A-R. Because, in a perverse way, both "preëmptive strike" and "genocide" are less loaded--emotionally and historically--than war. But it's still war. War means you die. War means everything you love will die. The things you spent a lifetime building, from paintings to companies to relationships with neighbors and children and pets. They will all die. War means the entropy we ought to have bequeathed to our successors gets spun up to-day. Then it's over. New generation. Nobody remembers. The drums start beating again. Almost as if by design. Pulses of competition, if one had to be generous. If there is a single adjuvant to reviving these martial tones, it's the notion that this time is different. That everyone, this time, is just pretending to want to kill each other. That the consent is manufactured. It's not. It's real. We're singing it together.