Now just about everyone is saying that Iran’s nuclear capabilities were dealt a very serious blow
Ace has a good roundup of the statements here, plus a cameo by Khamenei doing his best Baghdad Bob imitation, to wit:
“The Islamic Republic was victorious and, in retaliation, delivered a hand slap to America’s face,” Khamenei declared, … “Such an action can be repeated in the future too. Should any aggression occur, the enemy will definitely pay a heavy price.” …
He dismissed America’s involvement as ineffective, saying the United States “achieved no gains from this war.” According to Khamenei, the U.S. only intervened after realizing the “Zionist regime would be utterly destroyed” without assistance.
I wonder whether anyone on earth believes him.
But it’s not just the fact that the attacks by Israel and the US were successful. Just as important, I think, is that the mullahs now know what they may have thought very unlikely, which is that the US is prepared to strike hard if Iran tries to build their nuclear weaponry program up again. So there’s a real deterrent effect. Not only is the Iranian leadership in disarray, with many dead, but perhaps they’re wondering where they would get the money from to regroup and reinvest in enriching uranium.
Of course, that wouldn’t keep them from other approaches such as increased terrorism, but there may be a deterrent effect even for that endeavor. After all, October 7 may have seemed to Iran’s mullahs like a huge success at the time, but look what has happened to Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran as a result.
These things are true for at least as long as Trump, or a MAGA-type successor, is president. The Iranian leadership had better hope that Zohran Mamdani becomes POTUS, because Biden isn’t coming back.
According to US General Dan Caine, the development of the bunker busting strategy was at least 15 years in the making. I have no problem believing that, because I wrote my first post that mentioned bunker busters back in 2004, over twenty years ago. In fact, it was only the third post I’d ever written on this blog. The subject matter was John Kerry’s performance in a presidential debate, and here’s the relevant quote:
But I must say that Kerry said a few things that literally made my jaw drop: his emphasis on “summits” and the UN (I thought I was back in the early 60s); the giving of nuclear fuel to Iran as some sort of test; and the nixing of the bunker busters, one of the few weapons that have the potential to allow us to destroy nuclear weapons and material stored in underground bunkers by the likes of Iran or North Korea.
Plus ça change, as far as the Democrats are concerned. Fortunately, when push came to shove, Democrats were not in charge.
So there’s a real deterrent effect…. These things are true for at least as long as Trump, or a MAGA-type successor, is president.
It also depends on foreigners understanding American politics well enough to know when this is actually true. It’s not safe for foreigners to assume that a given American political establishment is anti-war, that’s a really good way for them to get more war than they bargained for.
“I wonder if anyone believes him”.
I have a coworker who believes Israel called for the cease fire because it was loosing the war they started.
@Harry Mallory:I have a coworker who believes Israel called for the cease fire because it was loosing the war they started.
There are a lot of people who believe the opposite of what’s in the news. But smart is not the opposite of stupid.
The people who gather and disseminate the news have interested motives and they selectively cite facts in order to mislead. And they may be saying today that the sun rises in the east because they want the government to require everyone to buy solar panels. But it would be incredibly stupid to assume from this that the sun really rises in the west.
And a lot of people who know the media deceives them are being almost as stupid.
Who knows what’s up? The implications will emerge in stages.
Plus ça change, as far as the Democrats are concerned. Fortunately, when push came to shove, Democrats were not in charge.
It’s hard to imagine Kamala/Que Mala making the decision to bunker bust Iran. Which is why I have long said that the best foreign policy role for Democrats is to choose which ethnic restaurant to patronize.
its not merely that, john kerry to take one example, has been an enemy of the nation, for so long,since he pushed along atrocity narratives in Vietnam, same in central America, same in Afghanistan and Iraq and with Iran he actively colluded with Iranian officials in and out of office
Russia and China likely are reconsidering considering what happened.
Russia still doesn’t have air superiority in Ukraine and Israel was able to impose it over 1000 miles away
https://x.com/GedaliahBlum/status/1938190918252642433
Harry Mallory, apologies for being spelling police, but it’s losing the war, not “loosing.”
It’s bizarre to me just how common this particular error is.
Marisa, I pour over mistakes like that all the time. 🙂
Until more robust damage assessment emerges, one may be cautious.
However, the claims I encountered that Iran would be able to pull up its socks, replace some broken china, and produce a nuclear bomb within two months were simply insane.
Baghdad Bob territory.
“It’s bizarre to me just how common this particular error is.”
Bizarre? The two o’s to my mind produce the long o sound required to properly pronounce the word, which should have made it quite understandable that this is a common spelling “mistake”.
I think you and others should insist upon the new proper spelling for the word loosing so’s you can be relieved of the problem of being annoyed by it.
English hasn’t been spelled on a phonetic basis since, I don’t know, Beowulf? Maybe Chaucer. I know that every letter of the word “knight” was once sounded.
I don’t think it’s any more confusing to spell “lose” with one ‘o’ than it is to spell “women” with an ‘o’ instead of an ‘i’.
well they have entirely different connotation, its similar with the their/they’re one is possessive another is indicative of position,
Took a look at a fookin’ doom book zoomie, loose yer boots, toots
Mamdani was born in Uganda (and was only naturalized something like 8 years ago), so fortunately he can’t become president.
But I’m sure the Democrats could run an eligible candidate just as awful as Mamdani.
I’ll admit I pronounced “draught” to rhyme with “caught” and “bought” for years–for those afraid to ask it’s actually pronounced “draft”.
Easy to do when you only see a word written and never spelled out. I’ve never met anyone who could say confidently they knew how to pronounce “schism”. It’s from a Greek word which would be hard to pronounce and written in a different alphabet, and it’s been spelled with and without the “h”, so I don’t think anyone really can say, but fortunately it rarely comes up.
I likewise get exasperated at “loosing” being used instead of “losing.” That is an elementary school spelling mistake that should have been corrected in elementary school. That’s why spelling is a subject in elementary school. 🙂
The way I avoid that mistake is to note that “losing” is pronounced with a “z” instead of an “s.” After all, “lose” is pronounced “looZ.” Thus “losing” is pronounced “looZing.” Whereas, “loose” uses an “s” sound, not a “z” sound.
I wonder if the confusion of “loosing” and “losing” is a consequence of using spell-check in electronic word processing. I note that if I write, “I did not like loosing the election,” MS Word does not correct the sentence. But everyone knows that you don’t “loose” an election, you “lose” an election. 🙂
English is not consistently phonetic, so such differences need to be memorized.
Another such word is “gaol,” a British spelling for “jail.” Which is pronounced just like “jail.” Which I learned only this year.
I asked my buddy, Chat:
The linguistic facts:
“Loose” is originally an adjective (“the door is loose”), but it can also function as a verb meaning “to release” or “to set free” (now somewhat archaic or poetic: “to loose the dogs of war”).
When you add “-ing” to the verb form of “loose” — not the adjective — you get the present participle or gerund: loosing.
So in the phrase “loosing the hounds of war,” “loosing” is the present participle of the verb “to loose.” Even though the word “loose” can also be an adjective, in this usage it’s functioning as a verb, and the “-ing” is applied to the verbal form.
“I have a coworker who believes Israel called for the cease fire because it was loosing the war they started.”
You work with Teddy Beale?
Well… there’s the problem. 😉
Marisa seems to have touched a nerve, and one of my favourite subjects.
(I often use British spelling if I don’t consciously think about it; comes from reading too much Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers books as a child.)
Cue Henry Higgins: “Why Can’t the English Learn to Speak?”
Technically, of course, using the standard rules of English pronunciation, the word “lose” should rhyme with “close”. But it doesn’t.
Who knows why anymore.
A lack of knowledge of pronunciation, as Niketas mentions, is IMO due to children not being read to by older speakers who DO know how the word is traditionally sounded.
The perils of English speaking and reading have been fought over for ages, literally.
https://www.historytoday.com/brief-history-english-spelling-reform
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/527745/early-20th-century-society-tried-make-english-spelling-more-intuitive
My favorite reform is of a common noun: ghoti.
Don’t look at this link until you have guessed!
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=81
But the best of all is this poem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos
“”The Chaos” is a poem demonstrating the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation. Written by Dutch writer, traveller, and teacher Gerard Nolst Trenité (1870–1946) under the pseudonym of Charivarius, it includes about 800 examples of irregular spelling.”
It is a marvel that anyone ever learns English as a foreign language.
That children absorb it effortlessly is also a marvel, since the rules are insane and broken at least twice in any given sentence.
That’s mostly because English words come from so many different sources, with adjusted spelling to drop out any “furrin” sounds and letters, and inserted into the corpus of the language without further ado. The oddities reflect the history of the acquisition.
“English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary”
https://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question41640.html
Yes, Spell Checkers are not your friend.
Double check any suggested revision of your text.
And be aware that sometimes they sneak behind your back and restore the selection you rejected.
We dodged a bullet (or bomb?) when Kerry was defeated, although Obama eight years later enacted many of Kerry’s bad ideas.
In re John Kerry – it is a never-ending conundrum to me that John Kerry is still messing around with politics and policies 21 years after Neo wrote that post.
Once a narcissist, always a narcissist.
Trump doesn’t even come close.
Despite my complaints about Bush, and I have had more as time went on, I am always thankful that he beat Kerry.
And that Trump beat Kamala.
Ace also notes why CNN’s source was so bad.
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/415422.php
Update: CNN’s Big “Scoop” Came from… Iranian Sources Passing Iranian State Propaganda
Heck of a job, CNN!
@ miguel – thanks for the link, but can anyone explain where Blum got the pictures of the inside of Fordow?
The Iranian government is certainly not releasing them.
Does Mossad have operatives that can do that?
“It’s bizarre to me just how common this particular error is.”
It’s not the only one; “There”, “Their” and “They’re” are often treated as if they were interchangeable.
I blame spell-check programs, which can’t deal with homonyms. They can tell you if you’re using a valid word, but have no way to know if it’s the RIGHT valid word.
I could have typed “know way to no” in that sentence and it would have been totally fine.
The Fordow thing was just a bunch of people who had no idea what bomb damage SHOULD look like weighing in on how the bomb damage at Fordow didn’t look like what they expected.
@AesopFan:That’s mostly because English words come from so many different sources, with adjusted spelling to drop out any “furrin” sounds and letters, and inserted into the corpus of the language without further ado. The oddities reflect the history of the acquisition.
If you know what language an English word came from it’s not so hard to consistently spell English. But you pick that up by osmosis, actually writing out and remembering all those sets of rules would be a lot of work.
There’s a widely spread impression that words SHOULD be spelled phonetically as a matter of logic, but it’s just a prejudice and certainly plenty of other languages don’t. In spoken French, for example, lots of letters are not actually pronounced and many words have different spellings on paper but the same pronunciation. Some languages don’t have written vowels. Irish seems to be made as difficult as possible to spell on purpose and like French most of those letters are not used: “Caomhanach” for example is pronounced like “Kavanaugh”.
Chinese and Japanese have systems which you can’t really describe as “spelling”. Chinese uses symbols for everything, some of which indicate a pronunciation in some situations and the rest of the time not. Japanese has a system of written syllables they use only for foreign words, another system of written syllables they uses sometimes for some Japanese words, and an old-fashioned Chinese system for most words.
Then you have Italian and German that have really regular phonetic spelling.
yes there isn’t a homonym problem in spanish, that I can recall
I think my opinions about John Kerry are pretty clear,
his accountability for his part in the Winter Soldier blood libel, has never come,
is it partially self hatred on his part that drives him to be an Arabist,
i wonder if he believes himself.
Related (“…touched a nerve…”)?
https://instapundit.com/728779/
I was referring to this in the other thread
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/magazine/building-saddam-hussein-s-bomb.html
When dealing with the Middle East, always remember the words of Buffy “Slayer” Summers, to Dracula :
“Don’t you think I’ve seen your movies ? You ALWAYS come back”.