If Washington’s participation in Israel’s June 2025 war with Iran elevated U.S. military force to a perfectly viable instrument of the United States’ Iran policy, the success of current talks would signal the formal undoing of that logic. But should the failure of talks pave the way for another full-scale war, the United States and Israel will be fighting an Iran vastly different from June. For the Iran of today appears to have made its peace with the grim conclusion that while a decisive slog with Israel and the United States is sure to be agonizing, it is preferable to the recurring attrition of repeated wars and a chronic strategic vulnerability that only emboldens adversaries to target Iran and its regional allies.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
    41·
    4 hours ago

    The analysis that everything bad Trump does is because he’s really an extension of Russia is very clear example of a retreat to innocence. These are US decisions that have decades of history behind them, not idiosyncratic acts of a single president who is actually not part of US interests but actually is part of our enemy’s interests.

    Yeah, you are definitely projecting it on to me that I am someone that would disagree with that, the US needing to bomb Iran is one of the more rabid devotions of US foreign policy over many decades and administrations.

    That doesn’t mean Putin isn’t Trump’s daddy?

    Stop trying to lecture me about a belief I don’t hold, I don’t at all think the fucked up relationship the US has towards Iran started with Trump or is the result of some Russian conspiracy.

    Nope, it is just there are two shit sandwhiches here aligning in the sky above us in a total eclipse of rationality.

    • freagle@lemmy.mlEnglish
      31·
      3 hours ago

      So if you understand the role the conflict plays in the continuity of US policy, attempting to analyze whether it will or won’t happen on the basis of Trump being owned by Putin is mostly useless. If the national security apparatus is still functioning enough to maintain this level of continuity, then how did it allow for a known adversary to take the presidency. If a known adversary took the presidency, why are his actions still continuous with the last several decades of foreign policy?

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
        2·
        3 hours ago

        If the national security apparatus is still functioning enough to maintain this level of continuity, then how did it allow for a known adversary to take the presidency.

        Who said the ruling class of the US are really the enemies of Russia? Like kind of, but in reality it is more about money and making deals than anything else so yeah… om my answer to the above quote is very easily, all it took was buckets of incompetence, collusion and people saying “not my problem!”.

        • freagle@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          3 hours ago

          Who said the ruling class of the US are really the enemies of Russia?

          So then are you saying Trump is a puppet of Russia or are you saying that the ruling class of the USA is and has been collaborating with Russia for some time, in which case, Trump is not a puppet but rather just another bog standard member of the ruling class?

          • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
            2·
            3 hours ago

            Both to a degree.

            What you are asking is how could the current situation be probable given my estimation of the motivations behind the important actors involved, relying on some kind of Newtonian perfect estimation of how one thing will bounce off another and I am saying these people are unbelievably incompetent, they absolutely would and did elect a complete traitor to have power over them. They make existentially conflicting strategic choices all of the damn time. You can’t evaluate the shitshow that is US power politics without adding in a massive dose of idiot juice, otherwise it will endlessly confound you that sometimes the decisions that are made don’t even seem to benefit the people who are in power making them.

            Putin is Trump’s daddy, that doesn’t mean I am attributing the follies of US foreign policy all to some elaborate Russian conspiracy, I am just stating the obvious, Putin is Trump’s daddy, it is clear from his behavior.

            • freagle@lemmy.mlEnglish
              11·
              1 hour ago

              Putin is Trump’s daddy, that doesn’t mean I am attributing the follies of US foreign policy all to some elaborate Russian conspiracy, I am just stating the obvious, Putin is Trump’s daddy, it is clear from his behavior.

              Yeah but the benefit of the US and other powers blowing through all their air defense missiles in another conflict with Iran would be so massive to Putin that in my opinion that is a major reason Trump is pushing this war.

              Which is it? Your opinion is that Trump is pushing this war to deliberately weaken the US military establishment so that Russia can take military advantage of the situation because Trump personally has a submissive relationship with Putin personally? Or you don’t attribute the foibles of US foreign policy to some elaborate Russian conspiracy?

              From the outside, your words look entirely contradictory

              • GreenBeard@lemmy.caEnglish
                1·
                25 minutes ago

                Trump is a senile lunatic, of course the nonsense spewing out of his brain is contradictory. Nothing he is doing makes any rational sense on any level. People are just trying to play idiot-whisperer to sus out what random two malfunctioning brain cells are going to form his next policy choice (foreign or domestic). Of course what they’re saying is contradictory, the random-bad idea generator running the country is a contradiction factory.