For the people who didn’t read the article - apparently everyone in this thread - the reason for the postponement is not Trump’s comments, despite how the headline makes it sound.
Iran are smart enough to let Trump mouth off. What killed the talks is that Israel killed a bunch more people in Lebanon today.
This was inevitable. Iran wants a muzzled Israel as a condition of the war ending. Israel doesn’t want the war to end with anything less than the total destruction of Iran (they certainly don’t want a capitulation that actually leaves Iran stronger). So Israel are going to deliberately break the ceasefire until one of three things happens;
Iran stops calling them on it (there is zero evidence that this will happen).
Trump gives up on peace and commits to a full scale invasion.
Trump finds a way to make Israel do what he tells them.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, this war isn’t remotely close to over. US vs Iran was the pre-show. Defeating AIPAC’s iron grip on US politics is the main event.
That doesn’t solve the strait, and the US is about a month away from having too little crude oil to actually run their refineries (you have to maintain a certain pressure level in the pipes or the whole system stops). We haven’t seen the real oil crisis yet. The real oil crisis is 10x gas prices, rationing, grounded planes… It would be cataclysmic.
Trump has to pick an option here. If declaring victory and walking away was possible he would have done it already.
Annoyingly, it’s technically accurate, but extremely misleading.
If I say my friend died after eating at Arby’s, while neglecting to mention the part where he went to a bar, got stinking drunk and wrapped his car around a tree, the entire statement is technically true. Those events did happen, in that order. He certainly didn’t die before eating at Arby’s. But there’s an implied cause and effect that has nothing to do with the reality.
The fortune teller gave me some grim news, she said that I’m going to die after eating at Arby’s 8(. I haven’t been to one in decades but now I’ll never go back for sure.
Currently, based on public statements from him and Vance, it actually looks like Trump thinks a fight with AIPAC is more winnable than a fight with the global oil market. Both he and Vance have been pretty openly threatening Israel. Whether they’ll have the spine to put some steel in those threats is to be seen, but that seems to be the direction they’re leaning, at least for now.
I had thought all this time that he and others had never even publicly entertained the idea of breaking with Israel on policy due to a combination of a steady stream of bribes and a dossier of compromising information on many prominent figures with the implicit threat of intentional leak.
I guess we might be about to see if that was true!
My bet is on 1. I don’t see a way for 3 to happen and 1 is a better outcome for Iran than 2.
It makes sense for Iran to sacrifice Lebanon now and use their control over the strait to pressure other countries to stop supporting Israel. They will not defeat Israel now but if this deal is implemented they have a chance to do it in the future.
Hard disagree. Right now I give 1 less than about a 5% chance. Iran have repeatedly demonstrated that they fully believe they have the US by the balls (they’re right). And Iran stakes a lot of their regional power on their control over groups like Hezbollah. Abandoning one of them would be a huge blow. They’re not going to resort to that unless they get desperate, and currently they’re as far from desperate as they could possibly be. They have no reason to back down on this and plenty to lose by doing so. The only way that math changes is if Trump pulls out some crazy left field move to radically reshape the power balance. I don’t think he’s capable of that.
It’s between the other two options. Either Trump commits to a full invasion, or he commits to a fight with AIPAC.
I’m about a 40/60 split between those right now. Theoretically Israel are backing down given their agreement to a ceasefire with Hezbollah today, but a) that doesn’t mean they won’t come for blood in the midterms, and b) there’s a good chance they’re playing nice until they can create some kind of false flag attack from Hezbollah as a pretext to resume hostilities and shit-can the deal.
Not the OP, but I think this issue will continue to rise in temperature until it is more heavily influential on US domestic politics. I believe at some point, support of Israel on these recent events will become politically suicidal, and slowly the compromised politicians rendered unable to break with Israel will get drummed out of office by primary or normal election.
Then, US will officially drop support and the math in the middle east gets a lot less complex for them.
Nah, it’s forever war. That is the reason for this, not the stated ones, Israel is using it’s epstein blackmail to keep war going for domestic political purposes. War is fun when you have overwhelming technological superiority and unlimited money.
That said, Trump and Vance have now both progressed to openly threatening Israel in public, which suggests that either Israel haven’t fully played their hand yet, aren’t holding as much as we think, or have too much to lose from any blackmail material getting out in the open. Keep in mind that Epstein being an Israeli political operative cuts both ways; I’m sure there’s a lot in those files that could seriously damage Israel if it got out. If it were publicly known that they were, say, trafficking children for political favour with US politicians, that’s the sort of thing that could be really bad for them. Not saying that happened, but we’ve not got much reason to believe it didn’t at this point.
If Israel had enough usable blackmail on Trump and his crew to get their way here, I think we’d already be two months into an invasion, not discussing US surrender. Why wait this long to use it if you have it?
Nah, Israel has the usuable blackmail, not just epstein stuff either to be sure. Invading Iran was never feasible, it would seriously take a million troops even for a half assed iraq style invasion, and Iran has mountains, and is 5x the size.
Israel doesn’t actually care about Iran, they are a foil for their politicians. They know they’ve been lying about them for decades, and while they do want to hurt them, that is not their reason, forever war for domestic political purposes is.
This will not end, even when it seems like it ended, it will keep on, this is forever war, and Israel is going to turn lenanon into a series of ghettos.
Israeli media itself admit that the plan existed. The idf said it has small chance of succeed but leaders ignore warnings all the time. Netanyahu still wanted to do it. There is no PR benefits to admit a failure of a plan
Invading Iran was never feasible, it would seriously take a million troops even for a half assed iraq style invasion, and Iran has mountains, and is 5x the size.
You’re correct, but I think what you’re missing is that this has nothing to do with the political calculus currently taking place in the White House. If they were capable of realistically assessing military threats they wouldn’t have been blindsided by Iran’s ability to strike at their military bases or by the closure of the strait. Trump truly believes that the power of the US military is infinite. What’s holding him back from an invasion isn’t a fear of losing, it’s a fear of the political cost of being seen to sign up the US to another decades long occupation.
Israel cares very much about Iran, because Iran is still a serious threat to them. They can have their forever war without Iran in the picture, they’ve got an almost unlimited supply of local adversaries to pick fights with. But Iran is currently by far the most dangerous of those allies to Israel, at least in Israel’s estimation.
I was going to take issue with the calculus term you used, but as I believe calculus is measuring the area of probability curves, it might fit. The probability curve of fucking children on tape being released.
That said, Iran is not a real threat to Israel and we all know it. Iran can’t do shit to Israel, that has overwhelming advantage. Any suggestion to the contrary is Israel playing their sheep.
To get back to the calculus, it has nothing to do with winning or stopping Iran from whatever. Why anyone would take them at their word at this point is beyond me, not the least on this issue.
For the people who didn’t read the article - apparently everyone in this thread - the reason for the postponement is not Trump’s comments, despite how the headline makes it sound.
Iran are smart enough to let Trump mouth off. What killed the talks is that Israel killed a bunch more people in Lebanon today.
This was inevitable. Iran wants a muzzled Israel as a condition of the war ending. Israel doesn’t want the war to end with anything less than the total destruction of Iran (they certainly don’t want a capitulation that actually leaves Iran stronger). So Israel are going to deliberately break the ceasefire until one of three things happens;
As I’ve noted elsewhere, this war isn’t remotely close to over. US vs Iran was the pre-show. Defeating AIPAC’s iron grip on US politics is the main event.
That doesn’t solve the strait, and the US is about a month away from having too little crude oil to actually run their refineries (you have to maintain a certain pressure level in the pipes or the whole system stops). We haven’t seen the real oil crisis yet. The real oil crisis is 10x gas prices, rationing, grounded planes… It would be cataclysmic.
Trump has to pick an option here. If declaring victory and walking away was possible he would have done it already.
Stupid headlines
Annoyingly, it’s technically accurate, but extremely misleading.
If I say my friend died after eating at Arby’s, while neglecting to mention the part where he went to a bar, got stinking drunk and wrapped his car around a tree, the entire statement is technically true. Those events did happen, in that order. He certainly didn’t die before eating at Arby’s. But there’s an implied cause and effect that has nothing to do with the reality.
The fortune teller gave me some grim news, she said that I’m going to die after eating at Arby’s 8(. I haven’t been to one in decades but now I’ll never go back for sure.
Technically, some day I will die after eating at Arby’s and that’s a horrifying thought.
A forever war, then?
We have ways been at war with Eastasia.
West Asia
Currently, based on public statements from him and Vance, it actually looks like Trump thinks a fight with AIPAC is more winnable than a fight with the global oil market. Both he and Vance have been pretty openly threatening Israel. Whether they’ll have the spine to put some steel in those threats is to be seen, but that seems to be the direction they’re leaning, at least for now.
I had thought all this time that he and others had never even publicly entertained the idea of breaking with Israel on policy due to a combination of a steady stream of bribes and a dossier of compromising information on many prominent figures with the implicit threat of intentional leak.
I guess we might be about to see if that was true!
Yeah, it’s pretty astonishing. I never thought I’d see the day.
My bet is on 1. I don’t see a way for 3 to happen and 1 is a better outcome for Iran than 2.
It makes sense for Iran to sacrifice Lebanon now and use their control over the strait to pressure other countries to stop supporting Israel. They will not defeat Israel now but if this deal is implemented they have a chance to do it in the future.
Hard disagree. Right now I give 1 less than about a 5% chance. Iran have repeatedly demonstrated that they fully believe they have the US by the balls (they’re right). And Iran stakes a lot of their regional power on their control over groups like Hezbollah. Abandoning one of them would be a huge blow. They’re not going to resort to that unless they get desperate, and currently they’re as far from desperate as they could possibly be. They have no reason to back down on this and plenty to lose by doing so. The only way that math changes is if Trump pulls out some crazy left field move to radically reshape the power balance. I don’t think he’s capable of that.
So what do you think will happen? The strait is closed permanently?
It’s between the other two options. Either Trump commits to a full invasion, or he commits to a fight with AIPAC.
I’m about a 40/60 split between those right now. Theoretically Israel are backing down given their agreement to a ceasefire with Hezbollah today, but a) that doesn’t mean they won’t come for blood in the midterms, and b) there’s a good chance they’re playing nice until they can create some kind of false flag attack from Hezbollah as a pretext to resume hostilities and shit-can the deal.
Not the OP, but I think this issue will continue to rise in temperature until it is more heavily influential on US domestic politics. I believe at some point, support of Israel on these recent events will become politically suicidal, and slowly the compromised politicians rendered unable to break with Israel will get drummed out of office by primary or normal election.
Then, US will officially drop support and the math in the middle east gets a lot less complex for them.
Nah, it’s forever war. That is the reason for this, not the stated ones, Israel is using it’s epstein blackmail to keep war going for domestic political purposes. War is fun when you have overwhelming technological superiority and unlimited money.
That’s certainly Israel’s goal.
That said, Trump and Vance have now both progressed to openly threatening Israel in public, which suggests that either Israel haven’t fully played their hand yet, aren’t holding as much as we think, or have too much to lose from any blackmail material getting out in the open. Keep in mind that Epstein being an Israeli political operative cuts both ways; I’m sure there’s a lot in those files that could seriously damage Israel if it got out. If it were publicly known that they were, say, trafficking children for political favour with US politicians, that’s the sort of thing that could be really bad for them. Not saying that happened, but we’ve not got much reason to believe it didn’t at this point.
If Israel had enough usable blackmail on Trump and his crew to get their way here, I think we’d already be two months into an invasion, not discussing US surrender. Why wait this long to use it if you have it?
Nah, Israel has the usuable blackmail, not just epstein stuff either to be sure. Invading Iran was never feasible, it would seriously take a million troops even for a half assed iraq style invasion, and Iran has mountains, and is 5x the size.
Israel doesn’t actually care about Iran, they are a foil for their politicians. They know they’ve been lying about them for decades, and while they do want to hurt them, that is not their reason, forever war for domestic political purposes is.
This will not end, even when it seems like it ended, it will keep on, this is forever war, and Israel is going to turn lenanon into a series of ghettos.
Israel do care about Iran. It want is fully destroyed. It thought arming some protesters and factions like the kurd would have created an civil war
No, they didn’t. They have betrayed the kurds a number of times, and knew they wouldn’t trust them, rightly so.
You are confusing what the Israelis say they are doing with what they are actually doing.
Israeli media itself admit that the plan existed. The idf said it has small chance of succeed but leaders ignore warnings all the time. Netanyahu still wanted to do it. There is no PR benefits to admit a failure of a plan
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-israeli-plan-for-kurdish-invasion-of-iran-reportedly-collapsed-amid-leaks-distrust/
You’re correct, but I think what you’re missing is that this has nothing to do with the political calculus currently taking place in the White House. If they were capable of realistically assessing military threats they wouldn’t have been blindsided by Iran’s ability to strike at their military bases or by the closure of the strait. Trump truly believes that the power of the US military is infinite. What’s holding him back from an invasion isn’t a fear of losing, it’s a fear of the political cost of being seen to sign up the US to another decades long occupation.
Israel cares very much about Iran, because Iran is still a serious threat to them. They can have their forever war without Iran in the picture, they’ve got an almost unlimited supply of local adversaries to pick fights with. But Iran is currently by far the most dangerous of those allies to Israel, at least in Israel’s estimation.
I was going to take issue with the calculus term you used, but as I believe calculus is measuring the area of probability curves, it might fit. The probability curve of fucking children on tape being released.
That said, Iran is not a real threat to Israel and we all know it. Iran can’t do shit to Israel, that has overwhelming advantage. Any suggestion to the contrary is Israel playing their sheep.
To get back to the calculus, it has nothing to do with winning or stopping Iran from whatever. Why anyone would take them at their word at this point is beyond me, not the least on this issue.