Yeah, he was rather explicit if brief towards the end that Iran (and by extension Russia and China) have the military means to fuck up the US’s plan.

The US threw a bunch of shit at a wall and this is something that actually stuck when the rest didn’t. After everything else blowing up in their faces, they finally landed on a decent gameplan. I don’t think it’s a long term plan for various reasons many people have already stated.

No, it’s “from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs” as written in the Critique of the Gotha Programme. Yes, the more fortunate have an obligation to do more than their fair share of labor for the sake of the less fortunate by virtue of having more ability to do so. The fruits of labor belong neither to those who labor nor to those who own the means of labor, but those who need the fruits the most.

I don’t think it’s meaningful to speculate on what red lines Iran (or any other country for that matter) has. Since misdirection, deception, and subterfuge are deployed in politics and certainly during warfare which is just politics through other means, no country or party will truthfully state all of their actual red lines, especially during times of war. There’s going to be at least three categories:

1. red lines that are publicly stated

2. fake red lines that are publicly stated for deceptive reasons

3. red lines that are not publicly stated but either communicated through private channels or just not revealed because revealing them would expose weakness that the red line is addressing

Throw in “black lines” and you have an even greater clusterfuck like black lines being deceptively portrayed as red lines, red lines being deceptively portrayed as black lines, fake black lines used to bait the opposition into focusing on a fake weakness, etc, and it just all becomes completely useless from a complete outsider to speculate on.

A recent video put out by Richard Medhurst (I think you linked that video here) demonstrates this. His analysis is that the US actually doesn’t want the strait to reopen. The US demanding that the strait reopen or else is the fake red line. The real red line Iran could cross would be Iran reopening the strait and charging a low enough toll that shippers won’t leave WANA for the US.

His analysis also suggests that ceasefire talks are worthless because Iran could simply take the initiative and reopen the strait to select shippers instead of waiting for another party that pretends to care about reopening the strait but actually doesn’t want the strait to be reopen in the first place. I think this is a much stronger argument of the ceasefire being a waste of time.

adventurism most popular among middle-age people who are too old to do serious adventurism and less popular among young people who are strong and young enough to do serious adventurism

The feds just playing the US left like a fucking fiddle.

Pentagon grossly underestimates amount of Chinese missiles in their arsenal:
https://xcancel.com/policytensor/status/2042732854463857062

Iran has already fired as many SRBMs and MRBMs as the Pentagon told Congress were estimated to be in the Chinese arsenal last year.

“Iran has launched roughly 5,156 drones, 2,181 ballistic missiles, and 59 cruise missiles since the war began, according to JINSA data.”

Baby steps. At least they aren’t shooting up a school.

What part of “pool’s closed” do you not understand

You can pinpoint the precise moment when the Ramadan War started:
https://hormuztracking.com/

DPRK balloons full of trash floated so Russian ships full of trash can sail.

War is a continuation of politics through other means:
https://xcancel.com/m4h007/status/2042145757722243147

There are many accounts (especially Axis of Resistance types) claiming Iran made a significant mistake to accept negotiations.

But war is a continuation of politics, only through other means. At some point, Iran will have to translate its military wins into political gains.

It would be valid to say Iran should not accept negotiations based on US terms.

But it defies basic logic to say Iran shouldn’t even accept negotiations based on its own terms. How’s it going to consolidate its military gains otherwise?

This is particularly the case with respect to the sanctions regime that has been put in place against Iran. These sanctions aren’t necessarily monetary. Many are legal restrictions that deny access to most basic services. For years, IEEE membership was an issue for Iranians. These sanctions aren’t just for dealing with US. Many prohibit third country entities from dealing with Iran, or else lose access to US.

If Trump is reneging on the terms, that’s a signal. But it’s not a signal that was available before accepting to negotiate.

Trump has consistently demanded terms that are nothing but capitulation. Accepting Iran’s terms even as a ruse is still a major concession. It automatically sets the baseline expectation moving forward.

I personally don’t believe Trump is anywhere near accepting Iran’s terms. His reneging shows that.

Furthermore, I don’t believe he has the political capital in order to make such concessions. Democrats and media are already attacking him. He needs support from Republicans, which he doesn’t have at this point.

The acceptance of Iran’s terms will only come when economic reality in grocery stores and gas stations forces the Congress and Trump to do so.

https://xcancel.com/ripplebrain/status/2042242712246661589

Here’s my best guess at what’s going on right now. Iran and Israel are in a game of diplomatic chicken, each trying to fracture the other’s military coalition. The Israelis want to either continue the broader war or reduce it in scope by forcing the Iranians to abandon Hezbollah. The Iranians are attempting to exert pressure on the US to restrain Israel and withdraw from the war, while trying to isolate Israel internationally.

Much of the commentariat on here is focused on the Iranians ‘revealing their weakness’ by not immediately launching a counterattack on Israel. This doesn’t make much sense to me. The Iranians almost immediately played their strongest non-escalatory card by re-closing the strait. Doing so exerts pressure on the US, not on Israel, which shows the Iranians understand the fundamental reality of the power structure they’re up against. The Israelis can only be stopped by forcing the US to restrain them, or taking huge escalatory steps that have a good chance of leading to Israeli nuclear strikes on Iran (desalination plants, energy infrastructure). The closure of the strait denies Trump any claim to a military victory and compounds the economic damage that’s already inevitable at this point.

Meanwhile, there’s been a flurry of diplomatic activity from Iran. Spain and South Korea are making moves by reopening their embassy in Iran and sending a special envoy to Tehran, respectively. A increasingly long list of countries have made public statements over the past day demanding Lebanon be covered by the ceasefire. Araghchi has been calling everyone in the region over the past 24 hours, and the UAE has publicly condemned the Israeli strikes on Lebanon (very surprising). These are good signs for Iran, which can achieve major gains in Israel’s international isolation by capitalizing on their breaking of the ceasefire.

Even better are the signs of the normalization of relations with the rest of the world. If this continues, it’ll demonstrate how fundamentally effective the Iranian strategy has been in this war. If they can secure broad international recognition of their right to control and impose tolls on passage through the strait, it’ll be a massive victory. The continued closure of the strait, which the Iranians have made clear is the fault of Israel, will drive a wedge into the coalition currently fighting Iran.

The Iranians have made dozens of statements asserting they will not abandon Lebanon. And I don’t think it’s politically tenable (internally) for them to do so even if they wanted to. The Israelis aren’t doing particularly well in their ground war against Hezbollah either.

So we’ll have to wait to see how this plays out. It’s not impossible that the Iranians are in a weakened position, or that they’ll lose their nerve. But I don’t see any reason to assume this is the case as long as the strait remains closed. The current situation is a pressure cooker for the US/Israeli relationship, and the American relationship with the rest of the world. Iranian patience makes sense here.

Even if the US, Israel, and mediators like Pakistan are entirely perfidious and only negotiating in bad faith, the Iranians have potentially enormous diplomatic gains to make here. It would be foolish and premature not to take advantage of the situation just to bomb Israel a day or a week earlier. The Israelis can take more bombing and survive. A full, long-term strategic defeat of Israel is only possible through the destruction of its relationship with the rest of the world, which is well underway.

NYT: Though the cease-fire was announced late on Tuesday Eastern time, Wednesday saw the lowest ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz since late March.

Well, that’s one way of saying only two (2) ships passed through the strait.

Trump would never hand his VP a win. He will only ever give his VP an L.

Damn, so simple yet something I never thought about until now lol

After decades of criminal neglect and much harsh criticism, the Roman Catholic Church finally takes a firm stance against pedophilia.

The funniest thing is that my tl;dr rant would essentially just be, “the ceasefire won’t fundamentally change the trajectory of the war because it’s only two weeks.” I meant that in a long strategic view 5-d chess sense, not in a the-ceasefire-will-be-torn-apart-in-less-than-24-hours-anyways sense.

It’s the same good cop bad cop routine. The US is the good cop while the Zionist entity is the bad cop. The Zionist entity refusing to abide by the terms of the ceasefire means that the US considers the terms of the ceasefire insulting and completely unacceptable. Their attempt at retrieving the uranium was an unmitigated disaster, so they will ramp up the escalation ladder. This means full invasion, MOABs, and tactical nukes.

But the strait will remain closed.

So basically everyone’s tl;dr hot takes of the ceasefire gets thrown in the trash bin because the West didn’t bother honoring it anyways. A grand total of 2 ships, a Greek ship and a Liberian ship, made it through the strait before the pool got closed again. We are back with the bellum status quo where the US still has air superiority^TM, the Zionist entity still targets civilians because the IOF always gets owned by Hezbollah, Iran still has undisputed control over the strait, China still alternates between drafting useless letters and sending much more useful intel to Iran, GCC countries still express incredulity over being thrown under the bus etc. Literally nothing has changed.

I’m glad I didn’t bother wasting my time typing some massive unhinged rant shitting on the doomers and their terrible analysis lol

US bases and irreplaceable AD assets destroyed ✅️

This alone is a major victory for Iran and the rest of humanity. And no amount of doomer speculation about Iran’s alleged botching of the ceasefire will change this. Make no mistake, the vassals in East Asia and Southeast Asia are taking notes. The Philippines, one of the most rabid US “allies” within SEA and part of the island chains to encircle China, have already resumed talks with China. They were escalating hostilities with China, but Iran showed the world how fast the US will throw their vassals under the bus.

Iran still controls Strait of Hormuz ✅️

Iran closing the strait also pushed the Philippines to begin talks with China over oil and gas development in the SCS. And this is just one country in SEA.

pool’s closed (again) - Iran