Trump and Iran, by popular request
I posted this on my Facebook, but several friends asked me to share more widely, so here goes:
I voted against Trump three times, and donated thousands to his opponents. I’d still vote against him today, seeing him as a once-in-a-lifetime threat to American democracy and even to the Enlightenment itself.
But last night I was also grateful to him for overruling the isolationists and even open antisemites in his orbit, striking a blow against the most evil regime on the planet, and making it harder for that regime to build nuclear weapons. I acknowledge that his opponents, who I voted for, would’ve probably settled for a deal that would’ve resulted in Iran eventually getting nuclear weapons, and at any rate getting a flow of money to redirect to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
May last night’s events lead to the downfall of the murderous ayatollah regime altogether, and to the liberation of the Iranian people from 46 years of oppression. To my many, many Iranian friends: I hope all your loved ones stay safe, and I hope your great people soon sees better days. I say this as someone whose wife and 8-year-old son are right now in Tel Aviv, sheltering every night from Iranian missiles.
Fundamentally, I believe not only that evil exists in the world, but that it’s important to calibrate evil on a logarithmic scale. Trump (as I’ve written on this blog for a decade) terrifies me, infuriates me, and embarrasses me, and through his evisceration of American science and universities, has made my life noticeably worse. On the other hand, he won’t hang me from a crane for apostasy, nor will he send a ballistic missile to kill my wife and son and then praise God for delivering them into his hands.
Update: I received the following comment on this post, which filled me with hope, and demonstrated more moral courage than perhaps every other anonymous comment in this blog’s 20-year history combined. To this commenter and their friends and family, I wish safety and eventually, liberation from tyranny.
I will keep my name private for clear reasons. Thank you for your concern for Iranians’ safety and for wishing the mullah regime’s swift collapse. I have fled Tehran and I’m physically safe but mentally, I’m devastated by the war and the internet blackout (the pretext is that Israeli drones are using our internet). Speaking of what the mullahs have done, especially outrageous was the attack on the Weizmann Institute. I hope your wife and son remain safe from the missiles of the regime whose thugs have chased me and my friends in the streets and imprisoned my friends for simple dissent. All’s well that ends well, and I hope this all ends well.
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Comment #1 June 22nd, 2025 at 8:17 am
What do you think about the polymarket “Iran Nuke in 2025?” probability basically unchanged and actually slightly up in response to the US bombing?
https://polymarket.com/event/iran-nuke-in-2025
Comment #2 June 22nd, 2025 at 8:22 am
I hope your wife and son remain safe.
Comment #3 June 22nd, 2025 at 8:27 am
Will #1: I don’t know; I’ll leave that question to someone who follows prediction markets more closely than I do.
But it occurs to me that an Iran that could assemble a nuclear weapon in days or weeks whenever it chose, but maintains the plausible deniability of not having actually done so, is almost as bad as one that took the final step. So I’d be interested in a prediction market for breakout capability also—how could that not have taken a hit this past week?
Comment #4 June 22nd, 2025 at 8:29 am
Incidentally, before anyone asks me: Russia and North Korea are both extremely close runner-ups to Iran for the title of “most evil regime on the planet,” and several other contenders could be mentioned too. But for all their achievements in murderous barbarity, none of the also-rans proudly boast of a future second Holocaust as a central geopolitical goal.
Comment #5 June 22nd, 2025 at 8:54 am
I second AlgorithmsGuy #2, and I should have said so in my first message. Hope for the safety of your wife and son, and for all Israelis and Iranians, and everyone else.
I agree the prediction market question doesn’t really get at the most important questions, but I think my broader question is: what makes you feel so confident that US involvement here will actually lead to a better world? Because I think a lot of us don’t feel that confidence.
Comment #6 June 22nd, 2025 at 8:57 am
I am of two minds on your comments, Scott.
Asimov’s “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent” feels poignant… yes, Trump in his incompetence may have incidentally acted this once in a way that (in the long run) could tilt us to a more stable, secure world. Nonetheless, my deep pacifist instincts wonder what paths exist(ed) that include deescalating this conflict and deproliferation in Iran? Is more violence truly needed?
And to echo your support of a free Iran, I hope this triggers a change of Iranian national sentiment from “Iranian to Persian” (even if it is only 2/3 ethnic composition), and this 90 year old construction of a state has not squelched Iranian’s strong “good vs bad” Zoroastrian moral fabric.
Comment #7 June 22nd, 2025 at 9:16 am
Will #5 and Nifty Reindeer #6: Of course I’m not confident that this will lead to a better world! The history of humanity in general, and Iran in particular, is full of well-intentioned ideas that backfired and made things worse.
Having said that, you can’t say that the path of negotiation wasn’t tried. It was tried, for decades. I actually wish that Trump hadn’t unilaterally left the JCPOA, which seemed to be succeeding at its narrow goal of stopping enrichment. But crucially, even during the JCPOA years, Iran was using the windfall from sanctions relief primarily to arm Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel—we now know that the original plan for October 7 was for all of Iran’s proxies to attack at once, and annihilate Israel completely, before Sinwar unwisely jumped the gun. As long as the ayatollah regime exists, one way or another it will be plotting the second Holocaust, arguably its central geopolitical goal since its founding in 1979 (its victory, in perpetrating that Holocaust, would then demonstrate the ultimate superiority of Shia over Sunni Islam).
Negotiations can buy time and be worth it, airstrikes can buy time and be worth it, but the only long-term solution is the downfall of the regime and its replacement by one worthy of the Iranian people.
Comment #8 June 22nd, 2025 at 10:01 am
I will keep my name private for clear reasons. Thank you for your concern for Iranians’ safety and for wishing the mullah regime’s swift collapse. I have fled Tehran and I’m physically safe but mentally, I’m devastated by the war and the internet blackout (the pretext is that Israeli drones are using our internet). Speaking of what the mullahs have done, especially outrageous was the attack on the Weizmann Institute. I hope your wife and son remain safe from the missiles of the regime whose thugs have chased me and my friends in the streets and imprisoned my friends for simple dissent. All’s well that ends well, and I hope this all ends well.
Comment #9 June 22nd, 2025 at 10:08 am
CS student #8: You have more courage in your fingernail than the last thousand anonymous commenters on this blog will probably ever experience in their lives. I wish safety to you and all your friends and loved ones, and victory to the kind and decent Iranian people against their regime.
Comment #10 June 22nd, 2025 at 10:19 am
Thank you, Scott.
By the way, where do you get your news from? Your knowledge that the mullah regime wants to use the destruction of Israel as a proof of the superiority of Shia Islam truly astonished me.
Comment #11 June 22nd, 2025 at 10:34 am
I’m wondering what would be good links to share with skeptics for “proudly boast of a future second Holocaust” and “Iran was using the windfall from sanctions relief primarily to arm Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel?” From my casual reading of the news, these are plausible accusations, but I wouldn’t want to repeat them without having evidence ready.
Comment #12 June 22nd, 2025 at 10:42 am
By my estimate, the action by Israel and Trump have reduced Iran’s capability to get nuclear weapons, but will have dramatically increased their resolve to do so.
Which means that if this action does not lead to the end of the current Iranian regime, it effectively *guarantees* that they eventually get a nuclear weapon.
While it’s possible that these actions lead to the end of the current regime, that seems pretty difficult to me – who would put the boots on the ground to make that happen? Military intervention to create positive regime change does not have a great record in the last few decades.
I believe that these actions have dramatically increased the risk of a nuclear weapon hitting Israel in the next decade or so.
Comment #13 June 22nd, 2025 at 11:28 am
I wonder what the best strategies are for Iranians to coordinate a protest or any organized action in this time of internet blackout. Is a hidden (but still highly detectable) Starlink dish, or a Phone-to-Phone mesh that uses regular radio waves but with a lower fingerprint, or simply relying on sneakernet?
Comment #14 June 22nd, 2025 at 11:56 am
CS student #10: I just spend way more time than is psychologically healthy reading about past and present conflict in the Middle East! Some of what I’ve learned lately comes from Haviv Rettig Gur, who’s emerged since Oct. 7 as maybe the most knowledgeable, articulate, and morally sane commentator in all of Israel. See especially this recent podcast by Haviv and Sam Harris.
Comment #15 June 22nd, 2025 at 11:59 am
Brian Slesinsky #11: Nothing I said is hard to find with a Google search. The regime hasn’t exactly made a secret of its goal of annihilating Israel; there’s even a “countdown clock” in Tehran looking forward to 2040 when that will supposedly happen. You could start for example with the MEMRI Iran Studies Project, which regularly translates the regime’s talking points from Farsi.
Comment #16 June 22nd, 2025 at 12:04 pm
Does this change your mind about “Single issues voters”? I know someone who really doesn’t like Trump and almost everything he stands for but held his nose and voted for him because of this. He’s a very calm non-confrontational fellow, but if I were him I might run victory laps. This can arguably (*arguably* ofc I can see the argument for democracy long term getting eroded, etc.) be the most important issue and he was right.
Comment #17 June 22nd, 2025 at 12:05 pm
Thank you for the pointer. I will check that. I can sympathise since I spend way more time than is psychologically healthy in the middle of the conflict in the Middle East.
Comment #18 June 22nd, 2025 at 2:18 pm
I was waiting for this post Scott.
I feel similarly to you on most of this (though as an Israeli, not an American, I have opinions on President Trump but no actual influence). I also was wondering what you’d been hearing from your Iranian colleagues and former students.
In any case, I hope your wife and son are staying safe, are in an apartment with a safe room, and aren’t too worried. I’m sure they’re surrounded by friends and family, but I hope you know you have readers from Israel, like myself, who’d be happy to help with anything you/they need.
Comment #19 June 22nd, 2025 at 2:33 pm
Edan #18: Thanks so much for offering!! Yes, despite the sirens at night, the running back and forth to the shelter, and everything else, Dana and Daniel are surrounded by family and reasonably happy and “safe.” My main concern is, with commercial flights indefinitely cancelled, how to get them back to the US for a bunch of summer activities we had planned starting two weeks from now, including a math camp for Daniel and a cousin’s wedding. I’ve been exploring some options. In the meantime, I myself am now headed to STOC in Prague, where I’m giving a plenary talk on Friday, and where I was supposed to meet Dana before this all started.
Comment #20 June 22nd, 2025 at 2:35 pm
Will #1: My guess is that a probable US strike was already mostly priced in, and the market is reacting to the possibility (currently 60% per Polymarket) that Fordow was not successfully destroyed in the strike.
Comment #21 June 22nd, 2025 at 2:47 pm
My 2¢ here: Even when Trump is doing the right thing, after years and years of failed Democrat policy, you would “still vote against him today”. Make this make sense.
Comment #22 June 22nd, 2025 at 2:54 pm
Scott #18:
Of course!
We’re in a similar situation, we have a member of my wife’s family visiting that was supposed to leave Israel a couple of weeks ago, but her flight was cancelled, and we’ve been trying to figure out what our options are.
If they haven’t done so, there’s a form they can fill out to sign up for a waitlist for flights leaving Israel, I think specifically for people who had cancelled flights.
Comment #23 June 22nd, 2025 at 2:57 pm
I don’t know if what Trump did will turn out to make things better or worse. Regardless, I don’t like the fact that he caused an act of war to be committed without the the constitutional review and authorization of the USA Congress. This is one more long step on the road to a de facto dictatorship, if we are not there already.
Comment #24 June 22nd, 2025 at 3:09 pm
Iustin Pop #21: There are 10,000 things one could pick to explain why Trump has been a catastrophe for the US and the world, but one that sticks in my mind right now is the gutting of USAID, which will cause hundreds of thousands of children to die needlessly, for no purpose except to give DOGE a symbolic and fiscally almost meaningless “win.” Every Trump supporter should have those children’s deaths on his or her conscience forever.
Comment #25 June 22nd, 2025 at 3:17 pm
JimV @23: A lot of Presidents have done similar things without explicit authorization from Congress. For example, Bill Clinton launched missiles at Al Qaeda training camps (and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan) in response to the bombings of US embassies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Infinite_Reach
Comment #26 June 22nd, 2025 at 3:18 pm
What’s the reasoning behind thinking that bombing their facilities will make enrichment over the next ten years less likely rather than more likely? On one level I get how people would think bombing centrifuges = delaying enrichment, but if the centrifuges weren’t running, it could have been exchanging a decline of 0% in enrichment rate today for an increase of an unknown amount later on.
Comment #27 June 22nd, 2025 at 3:23 pm
Doug S #25: Yeah, was about to say exactly that. Those who say that congressional authorization was needed to bomb Fordow, but who didn’t say that about any of the previous airstrikes ordered by US presidents, just seem like pure opportunists.
Comment #28 June 22nd, 2025 at 4:30 pm
As an Israeli, the combination of the current euphoric Post Six-Day War-style hubris with the ongoing barbarization and decline of everything that remotely resembles Enlightenment in Israeli society, is way more terrifying than the Iranian threat. So before our hubris is turned to nemesis, we should start facing the problems that won’t be solved by any number of American B-2’s, things like the consequences of our actions in Gaza or the fact that our nuclear weapons are practically in the hands of religious fundamentalists such as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. The premature celebrations of victory over Iran are just another way to sedate ourselves and distract us from facing the real problems in our own backyard.
Comment #29 June 22nd, 2025 at 4:35 pm
How do you talk to your Iranian friends about this? I have an Iranian co-worker who has always been kind to me and he is not a supporter of the Iranian government, but I don’t know him so well that I’m not afraid to misspeak. I want to let him know that I sympathize with the worry he must be feeling and that I hope his family in Iran will be safe. I wouldn’t mention my views about Trump’s attack, but I’m still worried that sympathy from someone who thinks the attack was probably a good idea is not welcome to him.
Comment #30 June 22nd, 2025 at 5:33 pm
This seems pretty clearly unambiguously positive to me, and the talk of these strikes making it more likely that Iran will have nuclear weapons in the future seems too clever by half.
Iran’s capacity to produce nuclear weapons has been significantly hobbled. If they try to start production again, that attempt can be struck down again. A clear message has been sent. Trump has said very directly that Iran will not be allowed to build a nuclear weapon.
Comment #31 June 22nd, 2025 at 5:43 pm
Scott #7, do you really believe there was a plan to annihilate Israel by essentially tripling the October 7 attack? I mean, in 1973 Israel was suddenly attacked by at least three (actually more) Arabic states, armed by the Soviet Union with thousands of cutting-edge tanks and planes, and dozens of modern SAM systems, with war plans devised by Soviet “military advisers”. Israel was completely outnumbered and had arguably worse technology. Still, Israel managed to win with embarrasingly high (for the aggressors) K/D ratio. Do you think ANY person, however fanatical, could actually believe a few thousands of lightly armed infantrymen would militarily defeat the entire IDF, even caught off-guard? This doesn’t seem plausible to me, it’s just too insane.
Answering the obvious counterargument, the situation is not comparable neither with the February 24, 2022, nor with the June 22, 1941. In the first case, western analysts and even Ukrainians themselves actually expected the regular Ukrainian army to crumble in the first days or weeks, and were stupefied by Russia’s inability to achieve this goal. In the second case, Hitler’s goal even appears achievable in retrospect. The Soviet Union suffered the greatest military defeat in the history of mankind at the first stage of the war, and there were at least two times when the fate of the USSR hanged in balance (Battle of Moscow in 1941-42 and Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43). And of course it seemed achieveable to Hilter’s generals, who had observed the actual capabilities of the post-Great Terror Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939-40, and correctly expected the red commanders to quickly lose control over their units.
Comment #32 June 22nd, 2025 at 6:01 pm
Haim #28: If you don’t mind my saying so (and as someone who also despises Smotrich and Ben-Gvir): I’m glad that Israel will now survive for another day and another year, so that the progressive Israelis like yourself can continue to worry about its soul.
Comment #33 June 22nd, 2025 at 6:04 pm
But, how long before the Iranian Mullahs get their hands on a copy of “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” to realize that it’s way safer and easier to focus their energy on building the very first Jihadist AGI?
Comment #34 June 22nd, 2025 at 6:04 pm
Alex K #29: If someone is a true friend, tell them how you feel! “I hope your family is safe. I hope the kind, decent majority of Iranians will use this opportunity, whether they agree or not with how it came about, to liberate themselves from oppression.”
I’ve strongly disagreed with some of my Iranian friends and colleagues about Zionism, nuclear weapons, etc, but AFAIK I have yet to offend one. (My American friends are a different story! 😀 )
Comment #35 June 22nd, 2025 at 6:10 pm
Rather surprised that nobody is backing Xi’s barbaric junta in the worst-government-in-the-world sweepstakes. Stealing freedom of speech and association from over a billion, genocidal oppression of Uighurs & Tibetans (that we know about), feels like the leader by most pain-inflicted-on-humans metrics I can think of.
Also worth bearing in mind, from Timothy Snyder on Bluesky:
1. Many things reported with confidence in the first hours and days will turn out not to be true.
2. Whatever they say, the people who start wars are often thinking chiefly about domestic politics.
3. The rationale given for a war will change over time, such that actual success or failure in achieving a named objective is less relevant than one might think.
4. Wars are unpredictable.
5. Wars are easy to start and hard to stop.
Comment #36 June 22nd, 2025 at 6:54 pm
JimV @23. The New York Times today has a list of all the times (that they found) since world war 2 when “U.S. presidents have repeatedly joined or started major conflicts without congressional consent.
President Harry S. Truman sent U.S. forces into Korea.
President Ronald Reagan ordered military action in Libya, Grenada and Lebanon;
President George H.W. Bush invaded Panama;
President Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of mostly Serbian targets in Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War;
President Barack Obama joined a 2011 NATO bombing campaign against the government of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and led a military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
In January 2020, Mr. Trump chose not to consult Congress before ordering an airstrike that killed a senior Iranian military commander, Qassim Suleimani.
Last year, President Joesph R. Biden Jr. ordered U.S. airstrikes against the Houthi militia in Yemen without getting congressional permission, and Mr. Trump did the same this year.”
Before world war 2 we have the following examples:
President Polk initiated military action against Mexico before Congress declared war.
President McKinley initiated military action against Spain in Cuba and the Philippines before Congress eventually declared war.
President Roosevelt authorized the use of military force in the Atlantic before the formal declaration of war following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Comment #37 June 22nd, 2025 at 6:55 pm
Hey Scott. Since you mentioned Haviv Rettig Gur, may I mention that he has his own podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@AskHavivAnything
He also had a couple of appearances on Russ Roberts’ Econtalk:
https://www.econtalk.org/an-extraordinary-introduction-to-the-birth-of-israel-and-the-arab-israeli-conflict-with-haviv-rettig-gur/
https://www.econtalk.org/terrorism-israel-and-dreams-of-peace-with-haviv-rettig-gur/
Speaking of Russ Roberts, he has his own Substack on the current events in Israel: https://listeningtothesirens.substack.com/
Comment #38 June 22nd, 2025 at 7:20 pm
I hope your family stays safe and unharmed. I also hope that this nightmare ends, and soon, for all the kids in the region.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Iran’s regime is authoritarian and evil – one need only look at what is has done, time and time again, to its own young people. This is even before looking at the regime’s actions beyond its borders. Millions of Iranians have endured this regime for decades. No, such a government should not have nuclear weapons.
I just see no quick path from this moment in history, to the place we all hope for: one in which there is peace, democracy and stability in all the countries of the Middle East. My imagination has failed me utterly, and I’m less sanguine than Trump that it’s going to be easy to Make Iran Great Again (his words) overnight. The desired, prayed-for outcome we all agree on. What is the path to it? Is there a government-in-waiting? Will the UN step in if the regime evaporates to ensure civic society still functions, and fair elections are held? Or will it be the US/Israel providing interim governments?
How will this work in the days and months to come? I don’t know enough about any of this, and hope there’s a plan – for the sake of all the kids in Israel, Gaza, Iran, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Libya. They didn’t ask for any of this.
Comment #39 June 22nd, 2025 at 7:51 pm
Tim #35
and for a year and a half Israel has been calling whatever they’ve been doing in Gaza a “war”, when it’s been “shooting fish in a barrel”… they will soon find out what an actual war is really like nowadays:
Ukraine vs Russia is the current standard, with two parties lobbing daily dozens of missiles and hundreds of drones at one another, in an endless spiral of measures and counter-measures… with Iran being one of the main suppliers of drones for Russia.
Even at low intensity, sustaining this is a huge drain on a country.
Comment #40 June 22nd, 2025 at 8:03 pm
Scott #4: I’m by no means a Putin fan but it’s absurd to put Russia in that category. Russia is less authoritarian than China. Comparing it to Iran or North Korea is ridiculous. It’s not Turkmenistan or Eritrea either.
Comment #41 June 22nd, 2025 at 8:41 pm
NK and Iran vs Russia #40: Maybe you would’ve had a point before the murderous invasion of Ukraine, and the imposition of complete authoritarian rule in Russia that accompanied it. Today, though, yes, Russia is obviously at least a runner-up for the most evil regime on the planet. China will acquire the same status, if and when it commences its long-threatened invasion of Taiwan.
Comment #42 June 22nd, 2025 at 9:40 pm
I would be delighted if this conflict resulted in the downfall of the ayatollahs, or the end of its nuclear arms program. If America’s involvement led to either of those outcomes, I would be even more proud to be an American.
I don’t expect to be delighted, or proud.
Conventional aerial bombardment, at any scale, does not result in the downfall of the regime. Doesn’t matter how evil the regime was, or how hated, how thoroughly effective the bombardment or how demonstrably ineffective the regime’s defense, we know how this ends. In the entire history of aerial warfare, it has never ended with the downfall of the regime. The closest you can get to that would be Slobodan Milosevic, and that only happened because he was fool enough to call a snap election in the immediate aftermath. If you give people *permission* to depose the regime that failed to protect them from bombardment, sure, maybe they’ll depose the regime.
Otherwise, the people who were already committed to the fight against the regime will redouble their efforts, sure that this is their time, and no one will join them. Anyone who is even remotely undecided on the issue, will rally around the flag and unite against the foreign enemy that is actually bombing them, even if it means siding with the lesser evil that merely oppresses them. And the ones who are opposed to the regime but not fanatic about it, will not volunteer to be curbstomped by the aggrieved masses of flag-wavers looking for *someone* they can hurt seeing as how they can’t touch the bombers. We know this, because we’ve seen it, over and over.
And it won’t do more than delay Iran’s nuclear program by more than a year or two at most. Possibly not even that. But even if the US and Israel destroy literally every centrifuge, vaporize literally every gram of enriched uranium, kill literally every nuclear scientist, so what? Iran did all of the science and probably all of the engineering ten to twenty years ago. There are almost certainly a hundred flash drives hidden across Iran, and encrypted archives in the Cloud, with the complete technical data package for a nuclear warhead compatible with Iran’s missiles, and all the support infrastructure. It’s just down to manufacturing.
Iran is a major industrial power. They’re in the top ten steel-producing nations, they manufacture a million or more automobiles a year, they build helicopters, ballistic missiles, and even the occasional spacecraft. And they’ve got plenty of uranium. I don’t think there’s anything the United States could manufacture in 1955, that Iran can’t manufacture today, and we could mass-produce lightweight nuclear warheads without anyone else’s help in 1955. If Iran wants nuclear weapons, they just have to issue the purchase orders. Which they could have done any time in the past ten years, but didn’t.
Now, they have every reason to go forward, and no reason to hold back. Now, the lesson of Pinochet and Gaddafi and Kim is that there can be nothing on this Earth more important to the ayatollahs than*may nuking up, ASAP. And *maybe* Netanyahu and Trump have delayed that by six months or a year or two. But within the next five years, an Iran still firmly under the rule of the Ayatollahs is probably going to have an arsenal of a dozen or more nuclear missiles, and a rather large grudge against the United States and Israel.
I suppose in theory we could literally bomb them into the stone age, or at least the 19th century. That would do it. I don’t think we could do it without killing a million innocent people, and I’m not sure we could do it without using our own nuclear weapons. Otherwise, we’ll find out what a bunch of seriously pissed-off Persians are willing to do with a batch of shiny new nuclear missiles.
Comment #43 June 22nd, 2025 at 10:29 pm
Re: #15: Thanks for the suggestions. I did some web searches and found a helpful Wikipedia article specifically on this subject: “Destruction of Israel in Iranian Policy.” Unfortunately it’s been nominated for deletion.
On a whim, I decided to learn more about the countdown clock, since it’s something very concrete to search for. A recent New York Times opinion article gave this summary:
> In 2017, anti-Israel protesters unveiled a digital countdown clock in Tehran’s Palestine Square, showing 8,411 days — almost 24 years — to what they said would be the “destruction of Israel.” The clock reportedly stopped working in 2021 amid widespread power cuts in the Iranian capital.
The clock’s installation seems to be well-documented. See this story for a photo of it:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-al-quds-day-protest-clock-president-hassan-rouhani-a7806056.html
But the source for when it stopped working is apparently a tweet? (And the attached photo is fake.)
https://x.com/AsaadHannaa/status/1412116493429583872
I was unable to find any information about whether the clock was ever repaired or any other photos of it, working or broken. Its current status seems unknown.
Comment #44 June 22nd, 2025 at 10:35 pm
John Schilling #42: If a day of bombing can set the Iranians back two years, what prevents another day of bombing sooner than that if the Iranians insist on continuing their nuclear-weapons program?
Comment #45 June 22nd, 2025 at 10:44 pm
I told friends beforehand that if he didn’t do it I would join the anti-T demonstrations. After this action the US must adopt a long term commitment (matching Israel’s) that Iran never has a nuclear arsenal. Whatever it takes.
There was apparently unusual activity at Fordow in the hours before the strike so it appears the Iranians had some warning. The narrative that a feint was effective would require the Iranians to be imbecilic. As soon as US planes appeared they certainly knew the targets.
US operations against the Houthis was rather pathetic so hope the damage is in fact what has been described. The Iranians released propaganda footage a couple months ago that was claimed to be from inside Fordow and it didn’t appear to be engineered well for a strike of this kind. Hope for the best but it is essential to plan for the worst at this point since likely just a new phase of the conflict.
Comment #46 June 22nd, 2025 at 10:56 pm
John Schilling #42
Have you considered the possibility that a state which is unable to keep its top military commanders and other key personnel sufficiently well protected to avoid their assassination by a country 1000 miles away may also be unable to keep secret a sprint towards nukes involving thousands of people?
Comment #47 June 22nd, 2025 at 11:15 pm
Brian Slesinsky #43:
I did some web searches and found a helpful Wikipedia article specifically on this subject: “Destruction of Israel in Iranian Policy.” Unfortunately it’s been nominated for deletion.
Alas, that wouldn’t surprise anyone who’s followed the story of the recent takeover of Wikipedia by anti-Israel fanatics (most notoriously, the article on “Zionism” now pretty much exclusively presents the anti-Zionist perspective, and further discussion of the matter is banned).
The discussion page for the deletion of “Destruction of Israel in Iranian Policy” makes for a fascinating read—basically, over strenuous objections, some editors decided that Iran’s policy of destroying Israel, though admittedly 100% real, is too narrow and contentious a topic to deserve its own page, however well-written and well-sourced, and needs to be folded into “Iran-Israel relations.”
This reminded me of how, 15 years ago, my students and I created some Wikipedia pages on block sensitivity and other theoretical computer science concepts, which were then immediately deleted for being insufficiently notable. I resolved then that, as long as I lived, I would never again donate my time to that site.
It would be amusing to troll the editors by marking the Wikipedia page on the Holocaust for deletion, since that can clearly just be folded into the broader subject of German-Jewish relations.
Comment #48 June 23rd, 2025 at 12:00 am
Scott #27
No, you know better than this kind of nihilism! This is how the Constitution dies. If people are being hypocritical, call them out on their hypocrisy, but it doesn’t change the object level that making war without Congressional authorization is a clear constitutional violation and should not be just shrugged at. I have bona fides FWIW — while I feel quite favorable about Obama’s overall presidential record, I have said he deserved impeachment for strikes in Libya without Congressional authorization (or clear necessity in immediately defending US property / personnel). Presidents get away with too much, and of course Trump has dialled that up past 11 and should have been impeached and removed several times over now. It’s more important now than ever to be clear-eyed about this, I feel.
Comment #49 June 23rd, 2025 at 12:07 am
We can all agree that the regime ruling Iran is pretty reprehensible. Every single problem nation in the world is either a dictatorship or a religious ethnostate. It would be wonderful if secular democracies embracing enlightenment thinking could be the standard for governments everywhere. Where such governments don’t exist, however, I don’t think it is our job to run around installing them.
Obama negotiated a perfectly good agreement with Iran which permitted them a civilian nuclear program, and had sufficient oversight to make sure material was not diverted into a weapons program. Trump tore up this agreement.
That Iran is building nuclear bombs and will have them ready in a matter of days, has been a Netanyahu talking point for the last several decades. We all remember Netanyahu at the UN with his giant cartoon bomb.
The intelligence community negs to differ, and it concerns me that we have a President who is more interested in repeating Israeli talking points than in listening to his own intelligence experts, who are unanimous in stating that Iran has not decided to make a nuclear weapon.
I also recall a war in Iraq that was based on lies about weapons of mass destruction. This looks a lot like that, with Trump and Vance running around claiming they bombed a “nuclear weapons factory.”
Bombing the civilian nuclear program of a country that has not attacked us, which they have a right to under the NPT, and which is a UN member state, violates the UN charter and international law, and is the kind of behavior that further destabilizes the region.
If Iran withdraws from the NPT and accepts a gift of a dozen warheads from Kim Jong UN, I seriously doubt that is going to promote peace in the region.
I also note that Iran is the last remaining country on the list of seven targeted by Bush and the Neocons for “Regime Change.”
I therefore have mixed feelings about the strike, and worry it may cause more problems than it solves.
Comment #50 June 23rd, 2025 at 12:13 am
John Schilling #42: I’m not nearly as pessimistic as you are right now (ironic, since I’m normally ultra-pessimistic). But supposing for the sake of argument that I was, the conclusion I’d draw is simply that Israel and the West have no viable options. If they attack, Iran builds a nuclear weapon. If they don’t attack, Iran builds a nuclear weapon. Either way, the regime stays intact, and Iran proceeds under a nuclear umbrella to strangle and annihilate Israel by 2040, as is its stated intention.
Frankly, if Israelis really saw these as the only two options, most would probably prefer to go down fighting, and I couldn’t blame them. They’d follow the example of those Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and the death camps who, knowing that they were doomed anyway, at least tried to take out a Nazi officer or two on their way out.
Comment #51 June 23rd, 2025 at 6:17 am
I’m really skeptical that the destruction of Fordo solved the matter in the sense that they’re not stupid and had plenty time to move and secure their highly enriched uranium. Remember that the US bombs used to take the site were designed and advertised during the Obama administration (who crippled momentarily the Iranian centrifuges with Stuxnet).
And we’re told that the main goal of the Mullahs is to destroy Israel, even if it means their own annihilation…
but then, if a regime change is coming and they have nothing to lose, how hard would it be for them to now assemble a few dirty bombs and lob them at Israel in the next few weeks?
Comment #52 June 23rd, 2025 at 7:28 am
Eric Cordian #49
Non proliferation policy is very different than wagering on the outcome of a sporting event. When the existence of a country is in question Type I errors are reasonably preferred over Type II’s.
Comment #53 June 23rd, 2025 at 7:35 am
I worry that the bombing will make regime change in Iran harder, not easier. And that it could as easily accelerate Iran getting the bomb as prevent it. The Israel-firsters have really screwed up US foreign policy in so many ways.
Comment #54 June 23rd, 2025 at 8:42 am
@Scott #50: Ten years ago, and possibly as late as two weeks ago, there were three options. First, the Iranian could continue the policy they’d had in place since about 2004, of having a nuclear weapons program that would hold maybe six months short of actually building a bomb, while pursuing peaceful-ish relationships with most of the world. Second, the regime could build a nuclear arsenal and use it the way House Kim uses its family atomics – as a deterrent against anyone with ideas of “regime change”. And third, the regime could build a nuclear arsenal and say “fuck it, we’ve got nothing left to lose in this world, let’s kill all the Jews on our way out”. The western world generally, and the United States in particular, had a great deal of influence in which of those paths the Iranian regime would choose. And Israel clearly has a great deal of influence in which path the US will choose.
We’ve chosen to pretty much take the first option off the table, and we’ve almost certainly pushed the balance towards the third option. But option two, Iran as another North Korea, is still on the table, and I’m not seeing a better one with any real plausibility. And, long term, option two has the possibility of the ayatollahs being overthrown by their own people, if we don’t keep jinxing that by giving them a common enemy to unite against.
Comment #55 June 23rd, 2025 at 9:03 am
@Alex #44: Not knowing what to bomb, other than “Every factory in Iran, just to be sure”. It takes longer to build an intelligence network capable of mapping out a modern covert nuclear arms production campaign, than it does to covertly build a small nuclear arsenal. I don’t think we’ve *ever* known where an enrichment cascade was until it was already in operation. And Israel’s existing intelligence network in Iran is mostly either burned or looking in the wrong place.
@Vladimir #46: Politicians and other national leaders have to make regular public appearances, at least in peacetime. Scientists and military leaders don’t absolutely *have* to, but they almost all do – and ask our host how he’d feel about “never attend another scientific conference again” as a condition of working some special project. They can’t be hidden away in the corner of some nondescript industrial facility, never to see the light of day for years at a time.
Iran’s former policy of holding six months short of building nuclear weapons, gave us *twenty years* to pin down the details of the Iranian nuclear arms program. The best Iran could do was to bury it deep underground, and that may not have been enough. The next round, we don’t get twenty years, and we might not get even two.
But if you want to believe the Godlike omniscience of Mossad and the CIA will let them know everything that matters in real time, to facilitate proper and timely smiting from the heavens, I can’t stop you and I expect you’ll find the belief quite comfortable. For a few years, at least.
Comment #56 June 23rd, 2025 at 10:56 am
if the regime does not fall, it will go for a nuclear bomb definitely, and internally it will become much more oppressive.
it is too soon to say it will fall, prediction markets point to the other direction at this point.
so this might end up being more the first gulf war where Saddam Hossein remained in power but accelerated its nuclear program, and become a much more brutal dictator internally. the general population suffered for decades.
it is too soon to say how this will end.
Bibi and Israel got what it wanted mostly, at least for a while, but the rest of the world I am not sure are going to be more safe as a result, and it might still drag the US forces into conflict of the regime starts to really feel it has nothing to lose.
Trump and his advisors know this, that is why they are clearly signaling they are not pushing for a regime change.
they still have millions of hard line supporters in there and hundreds of thousands of military personal, they are not going to go away that easily.
if the regime doesn’t fall, and acquires nuclear bomb secretly in a year, what would you think?
the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Comment #57 June 23rd, 2025 at 11:03 am
the optimal solution for us would have been the regime forgiving the enrichment in a deal, but they don’t budge, they really seem to become a nuclear power.
Comment #58 June 23rd, 2025 at 2:06 pm
It’s quite something to read that the Iranians didn’t want diplomacy when it was Trump who ripped an agreement the world had negotiated with them, under pressure from Bibi…
And now we’re told by Bibi that the Iranians were about to get the nuke, once again…
– for over 30 years he’s been saying that they’re about to do it.
– recent US intelligence said they weren’t.
– Bibi hasn’t shown any evidence, but we should take the word of the guy who apparently totally missed the biggest terror attack of the last 24 years, coming from an enclave/ghetto entirely within his own country…
of course the real goal here is to drag the US into a new forever war.
Ya know… this time it won’t be like Iraq, this time we really need to do it, and it will work.. we dropped half a dozen bombs on a country of 90 millions and it’s already 90% mission accomplished!
Comment #59 June 23rd, 2025 at 2:43 pm
Disappointed to see that you’ve fallen for the warmongering and propaganda Scott. Yes, the Iranian regime is evil, but you are kidding yourself if you think wars are started for moral reasons. The US backs plenty of regimes that are utterly backwards, such as Saudi Arabia. Morals don’t matter. What’s happening in Gaza is also an example of that.
This is not about Iran’s nuclear program, this is about regime change. Iran has had a latent nuclear capability for two decades, they are a member of the NPT (unlike Israel btw) and allow IAEA inspectors to visit their nuclear sites. Less so after the US pulled out of the JCPOA, but still to some extent. There has been no intelligence shared, or even stated to be had by anyone except Israel, that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapons capability. In fact, there are many statements to the contrary.
“Having said that, you can’t say that the path of negotiation wasn’t tried. It was tried, for decades. I actually wish that Trump hadn’t unilaterally left the JCPOA, which seemed to be succeeding at its narrow goal of stopping enrichment. ”
It’s very disingenuous to say that it was tried, when it was abandoned while it was working. The JCPOA was about a lot more than just Uranium enrichment, and funny that you call it a “narrow goal” while it’s the only piece of substantiated intelligence supporting this war. This latest round of negotiations were not conducted in good faith. The Trump administration held the position that they would not tolerate any enrichment (clearly a non-starter), and set an arbitrary 60-day deadline, the day after after which it expired they were complicit in the assassination of the exact people they were negotiating with.
And now you see Reza Pahlavi being paraded around the media. Have people completely forgotten history? Was the 1953 coup a good thing now, do people want to install the Shah again?
Since this is about regime change, please tell me of a western-led regime change war or coup, in the middle east or anywhere else, that ended well. Iraq 2003 was a disaster and directly led to ISIS. Libya led to a ten-year civil war, and a massive refugee crisis that Europe is still dealing with today, not to mention that the lesson learned from Libya’s disarmament and subsequent fall of the regime was clearly that belligerent nations must pursue these weapons rather than giving them up. This is why North Korea will never disarm, and why this military action against Iran will only push them towards a nuclear capability, not away from it.
If there was evidence Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, there’s this international organization the IAEA is a part of where this could be discussed, the evidence presented, resolutions passed and measures taken. Israel thinks this organization is kind of a meanie though, with their constant stream of pesky condemnations. In all seriousness, without even the clownish pretense of properly justifying the war, like was done in 2003, this is not any more justified than Russia’s illegal wars. Thinking you are morally in the right doesn’t give you the right to topple foreign regimes without any regard for the consequences. Do I believe that Ukraine has secret biolabs? No, Russia doesn’t either, they are just making a mockery of the west and showing our hypocrisy, which we so kindly demonstrate once again.
Comment #60 June 23rd, 2025 at 3:21 pm
Scott, your stance is not moral, it is just cynical. You bend over backwards to defend things that are clearly irrational in the reality of human social contexts. Israel has nuclear weapons already and is actively attacking its neighbors. Why do we not ask them to give up those nuclear weapons if we are so willing to attack anyone in the region who has a nuclear program?
I am going to pre-empt what I think your response will be roughly just because you like to avoid real engagement when you think you have a rational counter at a surface level. So, you are likely to respond along the lines of ‘but Israel is under threat they need those’. This is clearly irrational as a justification if we are going to bomb any country that could develop a nuclear weapon. That is not how nuclear weapons act as a deterrent, it is how a nuclear power bullies a non-nuclear one. Israel is an apartheid state bullying its neighbors to bend to its wishes, not the home of enlightenment that protects all Jewish culture.
If that is the culture you want then again, not enlightened morality, just cynicism. If you will admit your cynical attitude is not really anything attached to rational morality, then I will just happily move on 🙂
Comment #61 June 23rd, 2025 at 3:28 pm
Granted the Iranian regime is very bad indeed, and I pray for its overthrow, but what on earth leads you to believe that the US government has the right to unilaterally attack a sovereign nation, let alone celebrate the attack? What justification is there other than “might makes right”? The hypocrisy of so-called moderate Americans is staggering.
Comment #62 June 23rd, 2025 at 4:08 pm
r.e. Doug S. #25, Scott #27:
Operation Infinite Reach is the wrong historical analogue. The strikes on training camps (the strike on the al shifa pharmaceutical plant notwithstanding), were proximate to the attacks on US embassies two weeks earlier. This is the type of situation envisioned by the war powers act when it authorizes the president to act in the case of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces”.
The better historical analogues are the cases of the 2011 intervention in Libya and the assassination of Soleimani by Trump I. In neither of these instances is the provision above applicable. Both of these instances garnered dramatically more opposition from across the political spectrum including for explicitly separation of powers reasons.
Comment #63 June 23rd, 2025 at 4:30 pm
People here talk about rebuilding the nuclear programme like it is rebuilding a house. However, the estimate I have heard, is that it costed $500 billions to build it n the first place. Do you think that Iran can come up with these sums so easily, especially with economic sanctions? Do you think it would be so easy for Iran to replace the dead scientists? Israel destroyed most of their air defence, so it can freely fly over Iran and take photos. It can also destroy anything new or old which is suspected to be part of a nuclear programme. You might say Iran can do it secretly. But it seems that Israel intelligence knows everything that happens in Iran. Well, you might say now Iran will be able to root all the Israeli agents, really? Israel decapitated their intelligence services, it probably the other way around, it would be even easier to infiltrate their services. Meanwhile, if Iran won’t reach an agreement, then Israel can more or less destroy their economy and prevent them from being able to rebuild anything.
Comment #64 June 23rd, 2025 at 8:37 pm
First of all, I really hope you and your loved ones are safe, especially with everything going on in the world right now.
I,m not trying to rank who’s worst out there, but it’s hard not to see the US as one of the biggest offenders to human survival—mainly because of the massive and irreparable damage it keeps doing to the environment. Trump is just the icing on the cake.
Comment #65 June 23rd, 2025 at 8:45 pm
This maybe ended with what on the face of it appears to be a bit of political theater . Apparently per CBS, the US appears to have telegraphed its intention to launch strikes, so Don Trump can look strong as well without launching a broader conflict. Perhaps Israel comes out with a slight edge having ‘mowed the lawn’ for the time being.
Comment #66 June 24th, 2025 at 12:08 am
Why the Israeli concern when Khameini’s life is centered on the destruction of what he terms the cancerous tumor of the Israeli state? Iranian sponsored Hamas hasn’t invaded Israel and slaughtered innocents for some months now-forgive and forget. Why consider these now historical facts as providing any basis at all for expectations of future Iranian actions? Forget about the past and don’t consider the future and judge these unjustifiable actions by Israel and the US in the purity of the present moment. Be here now.
What ideological tripe when the survival of a tiny 400 sq mile nation that is attacked perpetually, and that contributes more to human advancement in a year than its neighbors do in a century, is found at fault for attacking Iran’s nuclear capability and requesting US support in doing so.
Comment #67 June 24th, 2025 at 2:25 am
@fulis #59:
> “There has been no intelligence shared, or even stated to be had by anyone except Israel, that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapons capability.”
“The evidence that Iran is continuing on its path to building a nuclear weapon can no longer be seriously disputed” – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, June 23
Comment #68 June 24th, 2025 at 3:41 am
There is no doubt that the current Iranian regime is an evil one that doesn’t respect human rights and freedoms, it sides with other such regimes (e.g., Russia) and possesses real existential threat to Israel. This has to be fixed.
However, I think that what is happening right now is the worst possible way to solve this issue, at the worst possible time, and it’s being done by the worst possible leaders (who are themselves wannabe dictators).
Most importantly, I doubt that those bunker strikes could solve the issue at all (long term). There were, and still are, many other ways to deal with it. The Trump administration abandoned the previous nuclear deal with Iran. What was the reason for that? The West also hadn’t seriously respected the Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear warheads (3rd largest arsenal in the world). It’s like Iran is forced to create nukes. And so is any other independent nation.
Comment #69 June 24th, 2025 at 5:14 am
First and foremost: I hope your family stays safe.
I understand your concerns with Iranian nuclear capacity and your happiness about taking it out. But, zooming out, I’m not happy with international law being ignored by western countries.
The USA never held up its part of the bargain under the JCPOA even though Iran did (or seemed to) – and then the USA ripped the whole thing to shreds. Gaza life is made impossible, children are dying of thirst and famine – and western countries are afraid to speak up (although the ICC named it genocide). The first-strike on Iran went against all international laws and should be condemned by the UN, but won’t.
It’s easy to “agree” with this as it contributes to a goal we “like”.
But the longer-term consequences can be disastrous. Who would trust US diplomacy again if it doesn’t follow through on previous deals? Who protects the minorities that cannot protect themselves if the UN doesn’t uphold international law?
Won’t words ring hollow when we condemn China and Russia for their atrocities, but not our own allies?
What’s the message to Iran? It was in talks with the US, and still got bombed.
Comment #70 June 24th, 2025 at 5:40 am
Matthijs #69
The message to Iran is “you will not have nukes”.
Comment #71 June 24th, 2025 at 6:43 am
Vladimir #70
This is tough-sounding cool-talk, and it kills rational thinking.
The message to Iran is just as easily: “there is no point in negotiating with the USA, nor a point in complying with international law, nor complying with IAEA inspections”
Comment #72 June 24th, 2025 at 6:55 am
This discussion has been either realistic or pesimistic depending on how things play out. I interject an optmistic view from an email discussion I had with a friend in Israel:
BILL: I wonder if the following analogy is possible:
After Germany and Japan were completely devastated in WWII they became reasonably peaceful countries.
For example, the notion of Germany attacking France is now absurd.
I wonder if Iran may follow that pattern: after being completely devastated, become a reasonably peaceful country.
FRIEND: This analogy is not only good, but the situation between us and Persia is even better than the one between France and Germany. The latter two had been enemies for centuries. But Israel and Iran were actually very close allies. The Iranian people till today are very sympathetic to Israel. The problem is the Ayatollah regime which came into power in the revolution of 1979. The Persian people are not Arab. They were conquered by the Arabs in the Seventh century when the Arabs created the biggest and most successful colonial empire in the history of the world. They culturally appropriated every culture they conquered, turning the great cathedral of Byzantium – the Hagia Sophia – into a mosque. They converted the Shri Ramlallah Mandir – the great temple of the god Rama in Ayodhya – into a mosque, and the location of the destroyed Jewish Temple in Jerusalem into a mosque. They forced their language and their religion on all the nations they conquered, from North Africa, via the Middle East, all the way to Persia. They conquered Byzantium, the center of Eastern Christianity and would have conquered all of Europe if not stopped in the Battle of Tours, fought in October 732, where Charles Martel’s Frankish forces defeated the invading Muslim army led by Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi. This victory is considered by many historians to be a turning point, halting the northward advance of the Umayyad Caliphate into Europe and preserving Christianity as the dominant faith in the region. They did impose their religion on Persia, but not their language (only the Arabic alphabet). However, till today the Persians have much Zarathustran influence, over their Shiite religion. They also don’t consider themselves Arab. So under the Shah there were great relationship between Iran and Israel. The Ayatollahs reversed that but could not inculcate their hatred to the masses in Iran. This is why there is a non-epsilon chance that the current situation will enable the patriots to overthrow the Ayatollah regime. This will reinstate the friendship between Iran and Israel. I am quite hopeful.
Comment #73 June 24th, 2025 at 8:25 am
There’s really nothing deep going on here.
Bibi has full endorsement from Trump behind the scene, on Gaza and Iran. He’s free to go as far as he wants in terms of breaking international rule of law and war crimes.
But Trump loves “surgical” remote strikes because it makes him and the US military look super strong at very minimal cost and risk.
The thing Trump will never do is put US boots on the ground to fight.
Trump and Iran have an understanding that it will let them do a theatrical strike back as long as they give the US plenty of notice, just like what happened after Trump killed Soleimani with a missile strike back in 2020. Then Trump always says “I forgive them”, and both Trump and the Mullahs save face with their own audience.
Trump told Bibi to not worry about all his fake “cease-fire” gesticulation or pretending to slap Israel on the wrist once a while… again, it’s all for his local MAGA audience and working up his case to get eventually a Nobel Peace prize.
In the end Trump doesn’t give two shits about Ukrainians, Russians, Arabs, Jews, or Persians.
So, yea, Bibi has carte blanche, but Trump isn’t interested to go very far. And, as we’ve seen with Russia vs Ukraine, having the military upper hand isn’t everything… it can still drag for years and years.
Comment #74 June 24th, 2025 at 8:42 am
If you want a clue how Israel/Iran is gonna play out with Trump, just look at Russia/Urkraine.
Trump aligned fully with Russia, giving Putin free reign.
Fake Cease-fire gesturing for his local audience, how “horrible” things are.
Fake mild wrist-slapping on Russia/Putin when they push it a bit too far (like bombing Kyev night after night)… “Putin has gone crazy!”.
Thinking that Ukraine has its back against the wall and has no cards left to play… and they are therefore ripe to use Mafia style racketeering on them to force a “deal” to extract their natural resources for nothing.
But, just like Ukraine, the Iranian people have their pride, and still lots of resources to endure.
And once it’s clear things are not as simple and easy as he thought, or becoming too much of a liability for his home audience, Trump walks away and distracts the world with something new.
Comment #75 June 24th, 2025 at 8:48 am
Matthijs #71
The point in negotiating with the USA and complying with IAEA inspections is that the alternative is getting bombed.
Comment #76 June 24th, 2025 at 9:11 am
Matthijs #71
The actions of Iranian proxies that precipitated the current attacks demonstrated that not only is Iran is less than 100% committed to international law but less than 100% committed to the most fundamental laws of humanity as it relates to the destruction of Israel.
William Gasarch #72
I would share your friend’s optimism if I thought that Iran will be treated equivalently to Germany and Japan and with similar destruction.
Comment #77 June 24th, 2025 at 9:29 am
@William #72:
After Germany and Japan were completely devastated in WWII, *and invaded, conquered, and occupied by a foreign army*, they became reasonably peaceful countries. Eventually, after a decade or so, with hundreds of thousands of their more troublesome citizens kept as prisoners well after the end of the war so that the country could be rebuilt without their influence (and occasionally with their slave labor).
This is a recipe that has often worked in history. But you need the conquering army to make it work. For a hundred years, theorists have promised that we wouldn’t have to do that any more, that the ugliness of land wars was behind us, that as the technologically superior power we would just bomb the enemny from the air and they would be so desperate for the bombing to end that they would do whatever we asked, that they would become peaceful and subordinate and accept their place in the new order decreed by their aerial overlords.
This has never, ever, ever worked. It’s not going to suddenly start working now.
https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower-101/
Comment #78 June 24th, 2025 at 10:26 am
Vladimir: you seem to have decided uttering oneliners is the same as thinking. It isn’t.
The world is not one-dimensional.
Beating someone down multiple times doesn’t always beat them into submission. Instead it might make them fight back harder and dirtier.
This is why we have laws. Rules to prevent vigilantism, prevent cycles of violence.
Disobeying international law leads to shit like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
Comment #79 June 24th, 2025 at 1:04 pm
John Schilling #72
I agree with you. A new (old) calculus is needed that practically results in the desired future order rather than frozen conflicts that defer problems to the future with ultimately larger costs in men and materiel than would have been if fought initially to unconditional surrender and then liberal use of the gallows. It’s not an attractive ideological position but it matches reality no matter the hand wringing and erudite reasoning.
Don’t start a war unless you are willing to see it fully through to unconditional surrender. The enemies of the West understand this quite well and use it to their advantage. Wait them out no matter the cost and they will fold. Israel can’t fold because it would have existential consequences but others can. I don’t know how long this smug belief in the invincibility of technical military capabilities will last. Surely it must end at some point.
In the case of Iran I believe worth fighting to the end. They lost any appeal to humanity with the barbarism of the Hamas operation in Israel.
Comment #80 June 24th, 2025 at 3:15 pm
So many people here are demanding an explanation from Dr. Aaronson and I wonder why he feels obliged to answer whether Israel is justified in protecting its citizens. Israel was attacked on october 7th. Jewish civilians were attacked! Unprovoked! I am not jewish and i have no jewish friends at all, but common sense tells me that Israel is protecting itself. Have the jews no rights when it comes to defending themselves. Are they only supposed to churn out the most brilliant minds that help solve most of humanity’s problems including for all of their worst enemies .It was shocking to hear that Israel would tell people in Gaza to move out of specific areas before striking the targets there.How can we forget that their hostages are still not freed. Yet none of this matters. The world demands an explanation from Israel and every jewish person over why should Israel have the right to exist. I feel so sorry. I wonder whether humans always lacked humanity or is it the times. India stands with Israel now and forever.
Comment #81 June 24th, 2025 at 7:51 pm
I think I agree with John Schilling here, though I don’t have enough information to be very confident. To inject some optimism here, the USSR had a large nuclear arsenal, and it was in principle ideologically committed to the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary goal of worldwide communism, and yet it collapsed in a remarkably bloodless way, from my recent reading a large part of that was due to Gorbachev’s personal ideological commitments against the use of force and interest in limited internal reform. Khameini is old now, my hope is his successor is more moderate.
Comment #82 June 25th, 2025 at 6:40 am
Vrushali #80
And India must be very proud of NYC (after Tel Aviv, the largest Jewish population in the world) electing its first mayor of Indian descent – his dad is from Gujarat and his mom is Punjabi!
Congratulations!
Comment #83 June 25th, 2025 at 6:45 am
Iran is “the most evil regime on the planet”?
That’s certainly news to the rest of the world.
The US killed about 4.5 million peopled in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen since 2001. (https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human)
How many people in the Middle East has Iran killed in that time? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not even within two orders of magnitude of the carnage caused by the US.
You’re either ignorant of this history or your moral compass is badly broken.
Comment #84 June 25th, 2025 at 10:14 am
@Scott #24
You wrote:
———
“…the gutting of USAID, which will cause hundreds of thousands of children to die needlessly…Every Trump supporter should have those children’s deaths on his or her conscience forever”
———
Do you reach the same conclusion when it comes to Biden voters, given the sanctions against Afghanistan (UNICEF warned of 1 million children dying due to malnourishment)? Or for Obama voters for similar reasons, given the sanctions the against Syria?
If not, what is the key difference that absolves supporters of Biden/Obama supporters, but not Trump?
Comment #85 June 25th, 2025 at 11:39 am
AllRedCards #84: The question obviously becomes harder when we’re trading off unintended civilian deaths against some geopolitical goal, like the downfall of an evil regime that would ruin those civilians’ lives forever (regardless of whether that goal was achieved in some particular instance). I wouldn’t want to say, for example, that the Allies should not have fought WWII because of the certainty of all the civilians they’d kill—even though that’s exactly what much of the world does say if we replace the Allies by Israel.
With cutting USAID, by contrast, there’s no plausible geopolitical rationale (indeed, the geopolitics goes in the opposite direction). There’s just a huge amount of pointless innocent death, in order to save a trivial amount of money and score domestic political points.
Comment #86 June 25th, 2025 at 12:12 pm
fred #82: If he’s indeed (as it now looks) going to be the next mayor of NYC, home to the world’s second-largest Jewish community, Zohran Mamdani will have an opportunity to demonstrate that when he says he supports “globalizing the intifada,” he means something other than the obvious interpretation of terrorizing the Jewish community, or looking the other way as others commit such terror. If he doesn’t, it might no longer be the world’s second-largest Jewish community by the end of his term.
Comment #87 June 25th, 2025 at 1:02 pm
Scott #86
Why don’t you ask Bernie Sanders and Brad Lander?
Comment #88 June 25th, 2025 at 2:09 pm
Scott, I have great respect for you and your honesty, but I hope you can reconsider this positioning.
@Scott #86: The first paragraph from the Wikipedia page for intifada:
“Intifada (Arabic: انتفاضة, romanized: intifāḍah) is an Arabic word for a rebellion or uprising, or a resistance movement. It can also be used to refer to a civilian uprising against oppression.”
“[Globalize] the intifada” is a slogan of solidarity. Specifically, at this time, with the people of Gaza who are currently having a genocide performed against them (as concluded by a UN Special Committee, Amnesty International, etc.). Equating Arabic words with antisemitism is not based in fact, but in Islamophobia because Americans are primed to be afraid of “those people”.
I respectfully hope you will reconsider your support for this unjustified military aggression against a sovereign country’s nuclear facilities. Even though we agree that the Iranian government is itself unjust and despotic, it is not clear at all that we can bomb them into becoming more democratic. There has been no intelligence demonstrated to suggest that Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon or that they would intend to use one, an act of mutually assured destruction.
Please consider this in good faith.
Wishing you and your family health and safety,
Ryan
Comment #89 June 25th, 2025 at 2:53 pm
Ryan #88: There’s a different Arabic word, “Thawra,” for uprisings and revolutions in general. The word “intifada” in practice refers exclusively to violence against Jews — whether suicide bombings, Oct-7-style massacres, or shooting American Jews in Washington DC or setting them on fire in Boulder, Colorado. That is the only thing “globalize the intifada” has ever meant, and that is what its proponents support. Now that you know, you can either dissociate yourself or join in the fun.
Comment #90 June 25th, 2025 at 3:02 pm
fred #87:
Why don’t you ask Bernie Sanders and Brad Lander?
Firstly because I don’t have them in my phone contacts — despite what you might think, Jews don’t all meet each other at secret Elders of Zion retreats.
Secondly, because Sanders and Lander are pretty clearly in the ~10% of Jews who believe that progressive values, as they understand them, take precedence over the physical survival of the world’s remaining Jews. That the 7 million Jews in Israel should disarm before Hamas and Hezbollah, even offer themselves up for annihilation, if that’s what would bring the greatest joy and satisfaction to the world’s masses, or most advance the dream of human equality. So it isn’t facts that I disagree with them about, but terminal values.
Comment #91 June 25th, 2025 at 3:20 pm
Masha Gessen wrote about Mamdani and the charges of anti-semitism. Some excerpts:
Between a sleazebag like Cuomo, giving pandering responses to his billionaire backers, and a fresh face running on a platform to improve the situation of cost of living in NYC, it appears that primary voters made what was for them a better bread-and-butter choice.
Comment #92 June 25th, 2025 at 4:46 pm
Scott #91: “Secondly, because Sanders and Lander are pretty clearly in the ~10% of Jews who believe that progressive values, as they understand them, take precedence over the physical survival of the world’s remaining Jews.”
This is just so incredibly lazy, and you repeat it over and over on here. Sanders, reasonably and like many other Jews, simply does not believe that it’s a choice between progressive values and the survival of the world’s remaining Jews. (Where I guess progressive now includes the notion that the bar has to be pretty damn high for bombing a sovereign country that hasn’t attacked us, or that killing tens of thousands of civilians is not a moral response to October 7 even if Hamas is using them as shields.)
Comment #93 June 25th, 2025 at 5:35 pm
Scott #91
“That the 7 million Jews in Israel should disarm before Hamas and Hezbollah, even offer themselves up for annihilation, if that’s what would bring the greatest joy and satisfaction to the world’s masses“
I get that the fate of Israel and Jewishness are two of your top focus in life… that’s totally legit.
But the vast majority of the “world’s masses” have other things on their mind.
Here’s the truth, Scott, and this may be shocking to you:
*Everyone* (including your worst enemy) is going through life subjected to a constant assault of perceptions and emotions telling them that they are at the *exact* center of the known universe…
Once you realize this, it may relieve a bit the weight that’s on your shoulders.
Comment #94 June 25th, 2025 at 6:56 pm
RB #92
> Between a sleazebag like Cuomo, giving pandering responses to his billionaire backers, and a fresh face running on a platform to improve the situation of cost of living in NYC, it appears that primary voters made what was for them a better bread-and-butter choice.
Except for some mysterious reason poor, Black, and Hispanic voters all favored Cuomo. Damn plebs don’t know what’s good for them, eh?
Comment #95 June 25th, 2025 at 7:21 pm
Looks I was right on point:
The US bombing did jack-shit to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and everything is back to square one – including Iran still willing to negotiate…
And Trump now makes it clear that, in the end, it wasn’t at all about some life and death struggle for Israel, it’s about playing the two very confused sides in an endless conflict to prop himself
“They’re not going to be fighting each other. They’ve had it. They’ve had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. You know they fight like hell. You can’t stop them.”
Comment #96 June 25th, 2025 at 9:57 pm
John #92 and fred #93: To clarify, I don’t think that the annihilation of Israel’s Jews would bring joy or satisfaction to more than, let’s say, 20% of the world’s population (which would also be my estimate for the fraction of Europeans brought joy and satisfaction by the Holocaust while it was underway).
Most people are, indeed, too absorbed in their own problems to worry one way or the other about the prospect of Jewish genocide, but would be against it if the subject came up.
At the same time, just a few days ago I was arguing with an anti-Zionist on Facebook who asked the classic question: “if, as it seems, Israel can survive only by waging constant wars against its neighbors, then doesn’t that itself prove the problem is Israel’s existence, and that modern Israel should never have been created at all?”
Rather than answer that question directly, my preferred response is to generalize it slightly: “If Jews can survive only by the skin of their teeth, and only in constant conflict against those who want to annihilate them, doesn’t that prove that the problem is Jewish existence—that the world would be happier and more peaceful if Hitler got his wish and the Jews ceased existing?”
I used to be much further left than I am now. I turned against leftism largely because I saw how the progressive anti-Zionist worldview, taken to its logical conclusion, leads inevitably to this sort of question. If the highest value was the welfare of the masses, and if (hypothetically) the masses wanted the Jews gone, then by what right would the Jews remain alive?
The way leftist Jews like Bernie Sanders resolve this problem is not by articulating a reason why Jews should still remain alive, even if wildly outvoted by masses who want them dead, but instead by denying that such a conflict could ever exist at all.
One of the many things Haviv Rettig Gur taught me over the past two years is the best response to their position. That response is simply: “I hope you’re right! I pray that your faith in the goodness of the masses is rewarded, and that it’s never again betrayed, as it was for our grandparents in Europe. The good news is that, if you turn out to be wrong a second time, the State of Israel now exists—and it will even let in the likes of you, should you change your mind and want to live.”
Comment #97 June 25th, 2025 at 10:47 pm
Vladimir #94
Lower income went 49 to 38 for Cuomo, and Hispanics went 48 to 41 for Mamdani. The margin with black was bigger at 51-34. It’s not exactly the kind of Republican/Democrat disparity you see in Presidential elections. Whatever one might think of Mamdani’s platform, he did run on cost of living in NYC.
Comment #98 June 26th, 2025 at 3:08 am
What an incredible social experiment this will be. We may not be able to still get 60 Guilder equivalent for it once this has run its course. This is a case of reap what you sow in that he has advocated stripping money from Columbia. His loss that another politician got there first.
Comment #99 June 26th, 2025 at 3:29 am
fred #95
I don’t think the extent of the damage and the impact on Iran’s nuclear weapons’ schedule is clear yet. Work is underway on an improved version of the bombs used in this attack so what remains would provide a good test bed. Mossad likely has the best assessment of what was destroyed and the likely schedule impact it will have.
Comment #100 June 26th, 2025 at 8:11 am
OMG
I don’t think it matters much anyway: they already have 400 kg of highly enriched uranium, now in the wild, and that’s enough to build 8 bombs, which is plenty. It’s not like they need the massive facilities they used to get those 400kg to make another extra ton in the next 10 years (whatever time it took them).
They could now switch to an entirely new phase of weaponizing that material if they want to, which would require a much smaller operation, meaning they can also distribute it for redundancy.
In the end it shows that keeping the initial agreement (that Trump ripped off) would have been the better option because it would have given way more access and tracking opportunities while still keeping a military option on the table at any moment.
Comment #101 June 26th, 2025 at 11:09 am
fred #100
I have every confidence that if the 400 kg was moved its location is known by Israel and it will be addressed appropriately.
If it starts moving then a new set of vulnerabilities. Are you sure it moved?
Comment #102 June 26th, 2025 at 12:10 pm
OMG
obviously I’m not sure it moved, but, to me, it seems that if the stock was indeed vaporized by massive ordinance at various sites, those sites would probably show signs of significant radioactive contamination (as if a dirty bomb had gone off). But so far none was reported by anyone.
Anyway, we’ll see I guess…
Comment #103 June 26th, 2025 at 1:18 pm
@Scott #96:
“Rather than answer that question directly, my preferred response is to generalize it slightly…”
I think, to a naive reading, you’re switching categories here, not just generalizing. My belief, as I said in past comments, is that I don’t recognize some abstract moral right for any particular state to exist; only *people*, individual human beings, have right,s such as the right not to be killed or oppressed. States, to my mind, are artificial structures used for the administration of the populations residing in a certain radius. No more, no less. And I’m saying they’re *bad* structures; I’m no open-borders radical. But whatever additional emotional investment people might place in borders and flags and nations is a purely personal matter.
Which doesn’t mean that this personal preference of theirs should be treated lightly; being a true liberal means caring a great *deal* about people’s personal preferences even if they seem arbitrary. But “denying a million people their preference to create a particular state in a particular place and live in it”, while it *does* mean doing these people a quantifiable harm, is by no means the same category or indeed order of magnitude of harm as killing those people. “Kill all Jews” and “prevent Israel being founded” are not remotely comparable actions.
Unless, of course, one believes — as you do — founding Israel was the only way to prevent further mass murder of the surviving Jewish populations in the wake of the Holocaust. But this is an empirical claim, albeit a difficult one to test without a time machine. And I still think your *level of confidence in it* is unreasonably high, even if I can see why someone would entertain it. Surely Israel’s perpetual precariousness should be counted as evidence against *that*. It’s not at all the same kind of no-brainer, anyone-who’s-not-a-motivated-reasoner-should-grasp-this thing as “*dissolving Israel tomorrow* would lead to a second Holocaust”. If you didn’t spell it out, I’m genuinely not sure your interlocutor in the conversation you quote understood that you were starting from the *premise* that obviously, not-founding-Israel would have yielded a higher probability of Jewish genocide! The “generalization” only makes sense with that unstated assumption, and the validity of that assumption seems the whole crux of the matter.
(Let me be clear: I’m not saying Jews weren’t at risk before Israel was founded! Just that it’s not at all clear to me that founding Israel was a good solution. I think putting so many eggs in one easily-bombed basket might have brought us *closer* to a second Holocaust than in the counterfactual world where Israel’s founding population instead scattered in America and other parts of the West, even *before* collateral harms to non-Jewish people are entered into the moral calculus. While protection from future harm was certainly a consideration for the 20th century Zionists, I think it’s clear that other, “sentimental” factors about the desirability of a nation called Israel in that particular place also entered into their reasoning; and I am not at all sure the bottom line would still come out positive when you abstract away those factors and look simply at harm prevention.)
Comment #104 June 26th, 2025 at 1:24 pm
(Dammit. Spotted a typo just a second too late to edit: “And I’m saying” should obviously be “And I’m not saying”.)
Comment #105 June 26th, 2025 at 3:34 pm
Edmund #103
The essential contours of that debate have stayed the same since Nahum Goldmann, founder of the Jewish World Congress, wrote about it in 1970.
It seems moot to argue about the existence of the state. But that the parameters of the debate are the same fifty years later suggests that this conflict can go on for much longer than any one person’s lifetime.
Comment #106 June 26th, 2025 at 5:05 pm
fred #102
They are constructing a new underground facility at “Pickaxe Mountain”. There is currently a tunnel there that is apparently well engineered to withstand an attack of this sort. Speculation is that it was moved there. Maybe that is the impetus for the US developing a new generation of ground penetrating munitions.
I thought there may have been confirmation that it was moved and that was the reason for my question.
Comment #107 June 26th, 2025 at 6:32 pm
RB #103, unfortunately for everyone, the Palestinian are the Black Knight of international relation, they keep loosing more and more parts (of their land).
https://youtu.be/ZmInkxbvlCs?si=whqZiKy-gtPb0i87
Comment #108 June 26th, 2025 at 6:51 pm
A bit of funny trivia to lighten the mood…
Zohran’s mom is a movie director, she made “Kama Sutra – a Tale of Love”, which I remember enjoying back in 1996
Comment #109 June 26th, 2025 at 7:10 pm
@RB #105:
> That the parameters of the debate are the same fifty years later suggests that this conflict can go on for much longer than any one person’s lifetime.
Well, quite. I don’t expect to turn Scott into a skeptic! But when we’re dealing with fifty-year-old controversies, I think it would behoove him to acknowledge that it *is* a point of valid disagreement, something about which reasonable minds can draw different conclusions — whereas he seems inclined, nowadays, to treat it as something that should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a fool or an anti-semite. It isn’t that I blame him, exactly. The people he has to put up with *do* believe a lot of things which are obviously bogus to anyone who isn’t a fool or an anti-semite. But “founding Israel in 1948 was definitely necessary” just isn’t one of those, and I wish he’d see that.
> It seems moot to argue about the existence of the state.
Well… yes, in the sense that now that it’s lasted for going on a century, dismantling it would be both reckless and evil. We agree there. But I don’t think that makes the retrospective argument moot or pedantic. I wouldn’t waste Scott’s and your time with it if I did. I think it *matters*, for a host of reasons, that this debate is at best unsettled.
Firstly, how legitimate or illegitimate Israel’s foundation was might affect how much we feel is owed by Israel to the Palestinian population (in principle; naturally it’d be hard to start reparations with one hand and carpet-bomb them with the other. but the war won’t last forever… hopefully).
Secondly, how effective Zionism actually was, as a practical strategy for safeguarding the future of the world’s Jewish population, could serve to guide future policy when dealing with the resettlement of other oppressed populations. If Israel was indeed a good solution, then perhaps we should support the creation, some day, of an independent, well-armed Uyghur state, on China’s own border if need be…? Whereas if Israel’s foundation is recognized as an underwhelming experiment at best, albeit one whose children we cannot abandon this late in the game, we should be equally motivated to *avoid* repeating the patterns that got us here.
Thirdly and most fundamentally, I care about the truth; and I do not want to have to endorse positions I don’t believe, on questions which remain unsettled, just to dissociate myself from fools and monsters. Scott’s posts on the war have increasingly divided the intellectual world between “Zionists” (people who believe in the necessity of protecting Israel to prevent a second Holocaust, *and* believe founding it in 1948 was a good idea) and “anti-Zionists” (people who positively want Israel to be destroyed, and are either blind to what it’ll mean for Jews, or welcome it openly). I know it isn’t as though he’s putting a gun to my head asking me to pick a side, but I respect him, I value his perspective, and I would appreciate it if he made room in his model for people like me, who are his natural allies in the present controversy, but very badly want *not* to have to endorse the 1948 bit.
(I think there’s more of us than he realizes, many of whom are likely to be alienated by his hard dichotomy altogether, and fail to try to talk it out in blog comments. Which seems a shame.)
Comment #110 June 26th, 2025 at 10:39 pm
Edmund #109
> Whereas if Israel’s foundation is recognized as an underwhelming experiment at best, albeit one whose children we cannot abandon this late in the game, we should be equally motivated to *avoid* repeating the patterns that got us here.
Interesting argument against the establishment of a Palestinian state, though something tells me you’ll object to using it in that context.
Comment #111 June 27th, 2025 at 12:34 am
Something in the whole argument against Israel is completely illogical. Let’s forgot about morality which is always difficult to agree upon. I think everyone believes Israel has nuclear weapons (I have no direct knowledge about it, but it seems very reasonable). If so, it makes very little sense to push Israel into a corner. Nevertheless, Hamas, Hizballah, the Houthis, and Iran do not seem to worry about it. That does not seem very rational to me. Moreover, what do you think will happen if the Iranian will develop nuclear weapons in a bunker that cannot be destroyed by non-nuclear bombs? It is realistic that an Israeli prime minister will decide to destroy it with a nuclear weapon. Nevertheless, many people in the west seem to either support the Iranian right to do so or at least not willing to to press Iran to stop it. This seems crazy to me. Can anyone explain to me the rational?
Comment #112 June 27th, 2025 at 1:51 am
the regime didn’t fall, and is not expected to fall,
the American expert think that even if all the nuclear facilities that haven’t been hit are completely destroyed the regime can build a nuclear bomb within 1 year,
because they couldn’t defend against an external attack it is expected that they will go for a nuclear bomb to at least have the safety from external attacks like North Korea
it is expected to go into a purge and witch hunt mode initially and now oppression,
and it is going to be very hard to make any deal that the regime can sell to its hard liner supporters
so overall these attacks made no one safe or better really
if Trump manages to get them to sign onto a deal that prevents them from being able to build a nuclear bomb, kodus to him, doesn’t look likely.
the regime has decided to kick inspectors out and suspend cooperation with IAEA, which means that they can build a bomb without anyone knowing
and even if we notice, we will need to keep repeating the attacks, an endless war, and at the end not likely to be able to prevent them from building one
Comment #113 June 27th, 2025 at 6:48 am
Vladimir #110:
No, I actually think it’s a pretty sound argument. Indeed, the Palestinian leadership is under no illusions that “found a state directly bordering our bitter hereditary enemies” would be a stable long-term solution, which is why *their* plan involves wiping Israel off the map as a first order of business.
I don’t have a *good* solution to this mess up my sleeve. If I did, I wouldn’t be talking about it in the comments section of a physics blog, however distinguished. But my belief that there are no currently-devised good solutions does indeed entail that *a near-future two-states solution wouldn’t be “good”*. It may be the best we can get — how should I know? But it won’t be easy, it won’t be stable, and it won’t guarantee peace for either side, any more than Israeli statehood did. Not until the facts on the ground about who hates who begin to alter, anyway, and that would doubtless take a few generations even in a very optimistic scenario.
Comment #114 June 27th, 2025 at 11:49 am
Edmund #113:
Indeed, the Palestinian leadership is under no illusions that “found a state directly bordering our bitter hereditary enemies” would be a stable long-term solution, which is why *their* plan involves wiping Israel off the map as a first order of business.
Will you at least acknowledge that there’s a massive, important asymmetry here? Again and again (in 1937, 1947, 1967, 2000, 2008), the Israelis were willing to try having a state next to their bitter enemies, in the hope that that could be a step toward their no longer being bitter enemies. It was the Palestinian side, in every one of those cases, that came back with a counteroffer of “how about instead, Israel gets wiped off the map?”
Comment #115 June 27th, 2025 at 12:49 pm
Edmund #113
Is that really the strongest version of your argument applied to a Palestinian state you could come up with? If Israel is an “underwhelming experiment at best”, Arab-Muslim states as a whole are colossal failures; if you ascribe no value to the concept of self-determination, establishing another one should seem insane regardless of the neighboring “bitter hereditary enemies”.
Comment #116 June 27th, 2025 at 5:28 pm
Scott #114:
Oh, I acknowledge it readily! Sorry if I wasn’t clear, but I really didn’t intend to give off the impression that the blame was symmetrical! You seem, again, to be ascribing “anti-Zionist” positions to me which are quite far from where I stand. My point is that there’s more to “was founding Israel a good idea” than a question of moral blame. By all means, let us say that Israel was founded in error *due to an excess of idealistic optimism regarding human nature*! That’s still an error!
When I say that I would have been against the Zionist project in the 1940s, it is in large part *because* of Palestine’s defect-bot behavior — which I think could have been foreseen at the time, as, indeed, it was by some thinkers. Now, yes, being defect-bot is bad. If one player starts out intending to cooperate if possible, and the other is defect-bot, defect-bot is “in the wrong”. But with the benefit of hindsight, getting into a situation that can only really work out if defect-bot starts to cooperate one fine morning is just… not a good plan. Once you’re locked into the cycle of reluctant defections, then, however much defect-bot is “to blame”, the least you can say is “in hindsight, I shouldn’t have started playing iterated prisoner’s-dilemma with defect-bot, that was kind of stupid of me”.
(This isn’t incompatible with thinking this means Israel owes something to the Palestinians. Granting that their hostile behavior, on the relevant timescale, was inevitable, founding Israel led to needless Palestinian deaths and suffering in the same way that arbitrarily building a chicken coop in the middle of a wolf pack’s natural hunting ground, then decimating that pack in defense of your chickens, would constitute needlessly harming those wolves.)
Vladimir #115:
With respect, you’re caricaturing my position. Firstly, I do not “ascribe no value to the concept of self-determination”; I simply ascribe it much lesser value than utilitarian concerns about people being killed, oppressed, etc. (My point was that, without the implicit step of ‘without Israel, we would have had the Holocaust 2.0 soon enough’, ‘prevent Zionists from founding Israel’ is not a *comparable* harm to ‘slaughter six million Jews’.)
Moreover, I was grading the Israel “experiment” specifically along the axis provided by Scott as the ultimate justification of its creation: i.e. the degree to which it helped to safeguard its persecuted population. Insofar as they weren’t founded to protect *their* populations from worldwide persecution, there is simply no way to judge the other Arab states as failures or successes in that sense. There would, on the other hand, be an obvious analogy to the Palestinians, who regard themselves as oppressed and under an ever-present threat of genocide, much like Jews in the wake of the Holocaust.
Thus we can fairly ask “would founding a proper Palestinian state decrease that threat more or less than other solutions e.g. a diaspora”, just as we can ask whether Jews in 1948 were better-served by Zionism or by some other way forward. In both cases, I think any solution which yields a neighboring Israel and Palestine is unlikely to foster peace in our lifetimes.
And, yes, mostly because of Palestinians’ anti-Semitic resentment in both cases! I’m not denying that! I’m not saying the situations are symmetrical in a naive way like “Israel won’t work because Palestine wants to slaughter Israelis, and Palestine won’t work because Israel wants to slaughter Palestinians”. Anti-Palestinian sentiment in Israel is a concern, but it’s ultimately a secondary one and the argument remains the same even if Palestine is always the one and only aggressor. It’s just that, in terms of cold hard practicality, in terms of the death toll, putting a Jewish country and a violently anti-Semitic country next to each other is a bad idea, whether you start with the anti-Semitic country and found the Jewish country next to it, or vice-versa. You’ll get pogroms, and reprisals for those pogroms. You just will. If you can possibly avoid it, avoid putting yourself anywhere near that situation.
Therefore the least-bad move in the 1940s would have been not-founding-Israel (or anyway, not-founding-Israel-*there*; founding a new Jewish state in some completely other part of the world with no history of violent anti-Semitism could have worked, or at least worked better). I don’t know what the least-bad move is now, because all the remaining moves are terrible. The outlined argument simply provides some reason to think that all else being equal, found-a-formal-Palestinian-state might not be the least-bad move in 2025 either.
Comment #117 June 27th, 2025 at 5:31 pm
Edmund #109
The conflict has been going on from much earlier than 1948. The recognition of Israel as a state entitled to land was simply a return to much much earlier boundaries.
Are you suggesting that Jewish people should not have emigrated from Europe before and during WW 2 or during the Inquisition or the Odessa pogroms or the Kiev pogrom or the Iraqi pogrom or after WW 2 the Istanbul pogrom and Tripoli and the Aleppo pogrom, they should have remained in place in order not to concentrate in a single area? Why draw any conclusions from the past or consider reasonable expectations of future events. Concentrating again in Israeli lands is just so darn inconvenient in the present.
I can understand if your thesis is that the world is screwed up that Jewish people have to be concerned for their existence but that is exactly what it is. The formation of Israel was required and just.
Comment #118 June 27th, 2025 at 8:53 pm
Scott #86, #88: this is another pattern I’ve observed.
You’ll be like “well then explain what `globalize the intifada’ means.”
And someone will explain that to many people, including 99% of those in America who say it, it’s just a fairly abstract expression of general solidarity for the Palestinian plight which does not entail violence against Jews.
And then you’ll respond with something like, “The word `intifada’ in practice refers exclusively to violence against Jews — whether suicide bombings, Oct-7-style massacres, or shooting American Jews in Washington DC or setting them on fire in Boulder, Colorado. That is the only thing `globalize the intifada’ has ever meant, and that is what its proponents support. Now that you know, you can either dissociate yourself or join in the fun.”
Besides the fact that your assertion is demonstrably false (like many of your claims about Chomsky, btw, as people have pointed out in the comments sections of other posts), I’m not sure what you’re doing here. Why ask for an explanation when you’re just going to assert anyway that there is only one meaning of that slogan in practice?
Comment #119 June 27th, 2025 at 11:07 pm
John #118: I will grant you that some large percentage of the people who chant “globalize the intifada”—though I doubt it’s 99%—simply have no idea what the term “intifada” means, to Palestinians and to others who speak Arabic and know the history of this conflict. Which then leads to an excellent test: namely, once you explain to them what it does in fact mean, will they continue to chant it?
Comment #120 June 28th, 2025 at 12:02 am
Edmund #116:
When I say that I would have been against the Zionist project in the 1940s, it is in large part *because* of Palestine’s defect-bot behavior — which I think could have been foreseen at the time, as, indeed, it was by some thinkers. Now, yes, being defect-bot is bad. If one player starts out intending to cooperate if possible, and the other is defect-bot, defect-bot is “in the wrong”. But with the benefit of hindsight, getting into a situation that can only really work out if defect-bot starts to cooperate one fine morning is just… not a good plan. Once you’re locked into the cycle of reluctant defections, then, however much defect-bot is “to blame”, the least you can say is “in hindsight, I shouldn’t have started playing iterated prisoner’s-dilemma with defect-bot, that was kind of stupid of me”.
I hereby nominate that for the best anti-Zionist comment in the history of this blog — maybe even the best anti-Zionist comment ever, the one that gazes most truthfully (and amusingly) into the actual truth of what happened.
But I can also give you the Zionist answer: to Jews in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, the entire planet was defect-bot. It’s not just that European Jews had seen their own neighbors turn on them in an orgy of murder, or that they’d seen the Red Cross visit the Nazi concentration camps and give them a clean bill of health. It’s that not one country on earth would accept Jews fleeing the Holocaust in any significant numbers—and even in the years after the Holocaust, not one country on earth wanted to accept the survivors languishing in DP camps.
In that context, the likelihood that Israel’s neighbors were going to play defect-bot didn’t seem unusual or extraordinary at all. What was unusual was that Israel was being born as the first Jewish state for 2000 years that could fight back.
Comment #121 June 28th, 2025 at 10:26 am
To all the commenters who do not understand why Israel and then the US attacked Iran. Please learn from Israel’s experience on October 7th.
If someone threatens to destroy you, take them seriously. If they are weak, don’t “contain” the problem. Strike decisively before they gain too much power.
p.s.
About a diplomatic agreement with Iran, learn from past mistakes, i.e., the Clinton administration’s agreement of with North Korea.
Comment #122 June 28th, 2025 at 11:57 am
I must say that as someone that was born in Israel and his parents were born in Israel and is grandma was sixth generation in Israel I do not understand why there is any discussion about the establishment of Israel in relation to the current situation. Israel exists! It is what it is! Whether Israel should having been established is an historic debate and bringing it into the current discussion is anachronism and worse as it creates the impression that we are considering the question as relevant and therefore encouraging people to think there is a way to reverse history. There isn’t a way! Actually if someone will find a way to destroy Israel, then they should remember that Israel probably has nuclear weapons and I suspect that if it will be on the verge of anhelation, then it will burn the whole Middle East out of existences which will have terrible ramification for the whole world.
Comment #123 June 28th, 2025 at 12:09 pm
Scott #120
“ It’s that not one country on earth would accept Jews fleeing the Holocaust in any significant numbers”
The denial of safe harbor to the MS St Louis is the most shameful political event in US history. This voyage of multiple tragic denials demonstrates explicitly why a Jewish state is necessary. It is beyond my imagination the horror that parents felt returning their children back across the Atlantic to face the death camps.
Comment #124 June 28th, 2025 at 2:49 pm
Yiftach #122: As someone who’s been getting into arguments with anti-Zionists for decades, I’m actually thrilled when they stop talking about the outrage du jour and talk instead about 1948, the Nakba, and the illegitimacy of Israel’s existence. For that’s the moment when their cover is blown and the gaslighting ends. Now they’re no longer tender souls just trying to teach peace, love, and understanding to the icy-hearted Zionist occupier. Now they’re the one who needs to explain what happens to millions of Jews for whom Israel is the only home that ever accepted them — do they get “sent back to Poland,” where their grandparents were murdered? Back to Yemen, Egypt, Syria, and all the other countries that expelled their Jews? Slaughtered in a second Holocaust, or a thousand more October 7ths? If not, it’s now the anti-Zionist’s job to explain how to prevent those default outcomes, without effectively reinventing the State of Israel and the IDF.
Comment #125 June 28th, 2025 at 5:17 pm
Scott # 120 — Yes, this is the crux of it.
Edmund, way back at # 103:
“I think putting so many eggs in one easily-bombed basket might have brought us *closer* to a second Holocaust than in the counterfactual world where Israel’s founding population instead scattered in America and other parts of the West, even *before* collateral harms to non-Jewish people are entered into the moral calculus.”
He had me at “… scattered in America and other parts of the West…” WTF? The West had made it *very* clear that was not about to happen.
Comment #126 June 28th, 2025 at 5:43 pm
Scott #124, I don’t think you should aim to win the moral debate. Discussions on who is right and who is wrong, more or less, never convince anyone. Rather than helping reach a solution they increase the flames. For all I care both sides can think they have the moral superiority, it is irrelevant. The belief that some have that if they’ll only convince enough people that their side is right, then somehow everything will be okay is really dangerous and one of the biggest reasons we cannot solve the problem between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It is a distraction which is often raised by extremists (on both sides) in order to avoid discussing solutions. The reality is that Israel exists and has millions of citizens and that there are millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Comment #127 June 28th, 2025 at 6:46 pm
Yiftach #126:
I don’t think you should aim to win the moral debate. Discussions on who is right and who is wrong, more or less, never convince anyone.
The philosophical difficulty is that, as soon as you try to convince me about what I should do, you’re violating your own dictum! 🙂
More seriously, my preferred mode of arguing is actually relentlessly focused on solutions — “would you agree to a two-state solution? If not, why not, and what alternatives do you propose?” In my experience, the most militant anti-Zionists basically never want to discuss these questions explicitly. The suspicion arises that the reason why they don’t is the same reason why Mein Kampf never explicitly sets out the Final Solution, but only implies it by floridly denouncing every possible alternative.
Comment #128 June 28th, 2025 at 8:20 pm
First of all, thank for all the praise I actually don’t deserve.
I agree with John Schilling #42 that Israel’s military campaign against Iran will probably not accelerate the fall of the Iranian regime (though I would love it if it did). Nationalist sentiments are very common in Iran and have been leveraged by the government in since 2009 to gain popular support, as seen in the rise of Ghassem Soleimani, a figure even many regime opponents admired, and hence a foreign invasion is generally not something people welcome. Also, anti-Israeli sentiments are wider in Iran than those who support the regime. While attitudes towards Israel soften across the political spectrum and regime opponents generally don’t want a genocide of Jews (of course ordained by a democratic referendum) but I don’t believe many Iranians think Israel is a good-faith actor. In particular, the bombing of the Evin prison has outraged every single Iranian I know, myself included. (Read Siamak Namazi’s piece on this if you haven’t already.) I believe it was meant to be a symbolic act without casualties, but it has tragically resulted in the death of innocent people, such as someone visiting to secure a relative’s release. All these may have driven some segments of the population toward supporting the regime. Of course, there is the opposite push coming from the blame people put on the regime for entering into a pointless hostility which has resulted in a war. I’m uncertain which of these forces is stronger. Additionally, wars targeting the very existence of an authoritarian regime often strengthen its cohesion, as evidenced by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s excellent book. I’ve also heard that some people feel hopeless about overthrowing the regime, believing that if killing high-ranking military officials didn’t collapse the system, they stand no chance with their bare hands.
Comment #129 June 28th, 2025 at 8:23 pm
Scott #90: Aren’t you being uncharitable of Sanders? See this as an example. I believe your differences with him are more on matters of fact (how much collateral damage is actually necessary for defending Israel or how morally the IDF is actually conducting its war) and not basic values.
Comment #130 June 28th, 2025 at 8:31 pm
Scott #120: Asking out of curiosity, what do you think of the Uganda scheme? I know it was meant to be only a temporary refuge but what if they accepted it and tried to make it the final destination?
Comment #131 June 28th, 2025 at 10:38 pm
Yiftach #122:
“I do not understand why there is any discussion about the establishment of Israel in relation to the current situation. Israel exists! It is what it is! Whether Israel should having been established is an historic debate and bringing it into the current discussion is anachronism”
I agree! This is, in fact, more or less the point I was originally trying to make! From where I’m standing, it is Scott who, in his frequent rhetorical insistence that everyone be either a “Zionist” or an “anti-Zionist” while using a definition of “Zionist” which ‘smuggles in’ a positive stance on the legitimacy of Israel’s foundation as a prerequisite, needlessly brings this acrimonious-but-irrelevant historical debate into the argument.
I, for one, am happy to say I am “pro-Israel” as far as the 21st century is concerned. But I do not want to endorse “Zionism” by that name, so long as that word is popularly understood to encompass a positive belief in the necessity/well-advisedness of the 1948 stuff. Throughout this thread, my overarching purpose has been to convince Scott that he shouldn’t *care* so much what people like me think about 1948, because it’s perfectly possible to disagree with him about 1948 while agreeing with him about all relevant factors in 2025.
(I did go on to list some reasons why someone *might* care about the historical debate today, which may have sparked some confusion. But these were simply intended as justifications for why I care enough about the question to have a strongly-held opinion on it at all; as reasons for being perhaps-oddly committed to not calling myself a “Zionist” exactly. I wasn’t saying the question should be a major factor in modern Israel-Palestine debates. Sorry if that muddied the waters.)
Scott #120:
You have my sincere thanks for the wry “best anti-Zionist comment” nomination! (Though for the record I wouldn’t so much call myself *anti*-Zionist as just… *non*-Zionist.)
When it comes to your and others’ (e.g. Patrick #125)’s claim that there *was* literally no other option than founding Israel, short of effectively-suicidal inaction… well, thank you for clarifying it. I think I had previously understood you to be saying that all other options would have failed; not that there *were* no other actionable plans. That seems to be the crux. (One might perhaps point out that in your model, unless one is pro-genocide, the question of Zionism vs anti-Zionism in 1948 would have been literally meaningless.)
With this comment having started with my reasserting that this debate doesn’t ultimately matter very much, I’m loath to get further into the historical weeds here. Besides, I have only a layman’s understanding of the history (though doubtless it dwarfs the average protestor’s) and would need to do some reading before I seriously made my case-for-skepticism. Suffice it to say, I find it difficult to take seriously the claim that in some alternate history where something went ‘wrong’ in the 1940s and Israel’s foundation was blocked, we would today *necessarily* be living in the shadow of a second Holocaust. The West wouldn’t have welcomed millions of Jewish refugees with open arms from day one, no, but I believe *something* short of Holocaust 2.0 would have been worked out, however painfully — and would, in the long run, have resulted in a less volatile situation.
(Note also that I also entertain the great what-if of an independent Jewish state founded elsewhere than in the historical Holy Land — the Uganda Scheme and all that. Such a thing would no doubt be decried threefold by the actual, militant anti-Zionists of today as unforgivably colonialist; but prima facie, I think it might have had better odds of long-term peace than what we got.)
Anyway, I *said* I didn’t want to get too into the weeds… Thank you again; I better understand your position now. Dare I hope that, now we’ve identified this crux, you better understand where *I’m* coming from…?
Comment #132 June 29th, 2025 at 11:52 am
CS student #129: In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, I actually thought Sanders was surprisingly reasonable—perhaps remembering his own time on a kibbutz in the 1960s. As time has gone on, though, he’s become more and more militantly anti-Israel, seemingly egged on by the hard eliminationist position of all the other far-left people who surround him.
Comment #133 June 29th, 2025 at 11:58 am
CS student #130: I think that, if 6 million European Jews had been able to settle in Uganda, that would’ve been infinitely preferable to them being murdered.
On this dark timeline, however, the best we can say is that many different proposals for a Jewish homeland were explored in the early 20th century, and that the only one that actually worked out was their original homeland, Israel.
Comment #134 July 2nd, 2025 at 4:39 pm
Hi Scott#124, I’m curious what your thoughts are on a one-state solution? I don’t care much whether it’s a new state or the existing state, whether it keeps the name or takes on a new name. A state that gives equal rights to all people that live in it, and absorbs Gaza and the West Bank. Let’s say it preserves the Jewish right of return, but also gives right of return to all people who left or can prove ancestry to the land (within the last 100 or 200 years). In theory, would that be a reasonable (albeit idealistic) anti-zionist position to take?
Do you view it as politically intractable and so not worth discussing? Do you think even if it magically happened it would never work and you would get a civil war / constant terror attacks? Or do you think a state like that would inevitably change it’s charter over time to not be explicitly Jewish, and so it couldn’t serve it’s role in the world of making sure Jews always had a safe place?
I grew up with and always hear the assumption that if Israel isn’t a Jewish state then there won’t be any Jews there, and I would love to hear more explicitly your thoughts on why that will be. Certainly, empirical evidence suggests that from looking at the arab countries surrounding, and how many Jews remain living there now. But also there are important differences that make me think, theoretically at least Jews could remain in a non-Jewish Israel. Certainly, we see that Arabs are able to live in Israel and so I don’t see why Jews couldn’t live in a one-state solution state.
Comment #135 July 2nd, 2025 at 8:27 pm
Daniel #134: My position, which I’ve expressed many times on this blog, is that in any world like our current one, a “one-state solution” would lead so directly to ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel, that it has to be considered a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. After all, that’s what the vast majority of Palestinians have consistently said they wanted at every juncture for the past century, and it’s what they acted to achieve whenever they thought it might be in their power: not two states, not a binational state, but the Jews gone. Back to the countries that murdered or expelled them and that don’t want them back. That’s what those who we now call Palestinians wanted back in the British Mandate era, when a “one-state solution” was an actual live possibility, and that’s what they want now. There was never, not once, an analogue on the Palestinian side of Ben-Gurion agreeing to the UN partition plan in 1947, or Ehud Barak agreeing to a two-state solution at Camp David.
This has always been what makes the Israel/Palestine conflict so hard. The only way to make the conflict seem easy, is to construct a fake reality where mass Jewish expulsion isn’t the bare-minimum Palestinian demand, no matter how loudly they repeat that it is the demand. So that’s exactly what most of the world does.
Once you understand this, you see that the only real solution would be for one generation of Palestinians — that’s all it would take — to be educated in a different way, not to see the expulsion or destruction of the Jews as the highest possible calling on earth. Ironically, if that happened it would not only make a one-state solution possible, but also a two-state solution! In other words, once you’ve reached the point in education and culture where Palestinians could coexist with Israelis in a single state, you’ve already passed the point where they could coexist in a separate Palestinian state. So you might as well just go for the latter as soon as it becomes possible.
Comment #136 July 2nd, 2025 at 9:39 pm
Daniel #134, I somewhat disagree with Scott and somewhat agree. Both sides hate each other, possibly for good reasons (it doesn’t matter why). If you’ll force them to live together, someone will kill someone else, then there will be a retaliation, and then a retaliation to the other side, and soon there will be a very vicious civil war. It is like a couple that need to divorce. Unfortunately, they will stay neighbours and we cannot put another country between them.
I also think it will take way more than a generation. It is possible Scott is too young to remember how peaceful it seemed in Yugoslavia. People from different ethnic groups marrying each other. Or in Iraq, where Suny and Shias also got married. After decades of living together in relatively peace people turned on each other and murdered each other. Similarly in Rwanda neighbours murdered each other. And maybe the most obvious example the Holocaust.
Wishing things don’t make them happen. I assume you are western and grew up in a place without wars (or at least people in your immediate circle were not exposed to war). You might not understand the feelings of people who grew in a different surrounding, but do not assume these feelings do not exist or that they are negligible.
Comment #137 July 3rd, 2025 at 8:51 am
Scott #135
> Once you understand this, you see that the only real solution would be for one generation of Palestinians — that’s all it would take — to be educated in a different way, not to see the expulsion or destruction of the Jews as the highest possible calling on earth.
Given the deep religious and historical roots of the Palestinian cause, making them abandon it in one generation would require – at a minimum – Chinese-style re-education camps. At that point, it’s arguably more humane and certainly simpler to forcibly expel them.
Comment #138 July 3rd, 2025 at 8:59 am
Vladimir #137: I strongly disagree. The German abandonment of Nazism and Japanese abandonment of imperialism after WWII will forever stand as proofs of how quickly dramatic change can happen.
Comment #139 July 3rd, 2025 at 9:07 am
Scott #138
Germany didn’t have a deep religious and historical attachment to Nazism, and Japan certainly didn’t have one to imperialism. In both cases it was largely a matter of replacing an authoritarian government; in the West Bank (and the broader Arab world) it’s the authoritarian government that’s holding back the population’s anti-Israel tendencies.
Comment #140 July 3rd, 2025 at 11:34 am
Vladimir #137, confusing a fantasy and reality is not a good idea. Regardless of what is morally right or legally right there is no way to deport millions of Palestinians because nobody is willing to take them (there are good historic reasons for other countries not to trust Palestinians). In my view, two states solution is the only realistic solution. It has to be done very slowly and progressively with clear control of security by Israel and there should be clear bench marks (in terms of violence and education) tight to control of land. If the Palestinians achieve the goals, they get more land, if they fail, they lose land.
Unfortunately, I suspect there will be lots of political pressure to finish the process within a few years. So I am not optimistic.
Comment #141 July 3rd, 2025 at 11:51 am
While Israel is not like the colonial empires of the past in that the people have a historical connection to the land, there are also similarities from the lens of the local population to other colonial struggles. This includes being seen as culturally inferior, in some of the massacres that have taken place, the justification for stern measures and corresponding popular approval etc. Which brings us to a situation that neither side trusts the other in a very deep way. This is not about re-education. This is about each generation carrying the scars of the immediate past. I don’t pretend to know how this ends.
Comment #142 July 5th, 2025 at 2:28 pm
Scott #135: “one generation of Palestinians — that’s all it would take — to be educated in a different way”
Netanyahu (along with anybody who supports him) has single-handedly shattered the chance of that down to absolute zero over the past 2 years. Do you really think a child in Gaza who has witnessed their family being burned alive by the IDF and their home burned down to ashes and being starved daily by the IDF is more likely to grow up to be “educated in a different way” or to grow up to become a terrorist? Humanity aside, logically and game theoretically speaking, anything that Netanyahu has been doing is a massive self-own and an existential disservice to all Jews. I wouldn’t be surprised if future history books deem Netanyahu to be among the greatest anti-semites of our era, considering the massive impact of what he is doing today.
Comment #143 July 5th, 2025 at 6:16 pm
Mahdi #142: What you’re saying is false in an extremely deep way. We can see this, once again, from the example of Germany and Japan, which were even more decimated after WWII than Gaza is now, after losing the genocidal wars that they started. And yet the children of Germany and Japan didn’t swear revenge on the Americans or Chinese or British or Russians who had wrought all this destruction—exactly the contrary. Why? Because Germany and Japan had given up all hope of ruling the world. They had abandoned their earlier ideologies. By contrast, Islamism—as epitomized by the Iranian government and its Hamas proxy—has not given up hope of “restoring its lost honor” by destroying Israel and annihilating its Jews. And it’s encouraged in this genocidal fantasy by students and activists all over the Western world. That is the active ingredient here. That is the difference.
Comment #144 July 5th, 2025 at 6:20 pm
Alright, I’ll close down this thread tonight. The gaslighting, in favor of history’s latest campaign against the Jews, presented as a matter of mercy and human rights (isn’t it always??), has once again reached the limit of what I can take.
Comment #145 July 5th, 2025 at 8:14 pm
Scott #143: Yes, and given that as you correctly say Islamism is a core issue, the fact that Netanyahu’s actions have caused global outrage (“students and activists all over the Western world”, etc.) and (along with Trump’s added contribution) have only strengthened and spread Islamism, can only add to the argument that what he is doing today is a great disservice to the Jews. Eventually, only time can tell for sure.
Comment #146 July 6th, 2025 at 1:54 pm
Scott #143
It seems to me that there is no historical parallel for Israel-Palestine. Israel is not a traditional colonialist since the people are connected to the land and are there to stay. Palestinian people are not equivalent to the Germans/Japanese who had governments which started imperialist wars. They also fit the definition of living under occupation and that story has in the past played out over hundreds of years in other places where the hatred was not replaced by any sort of re-education. External players like Iran (and their proxies) have inserted themselves for Islamist and power politics reasons. I still think that this is a story of two people living and reliving the experienced and remembered trauma of their collective past.