If Trump ends up doing nothing it will be a black mark on his presidency.

“…F-22s removed from Super Bowl flyover”—
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/f-22s-removed-super-bowl-flyover-official-says

I would like to blame Bad Bunny for all this, but it’s looking more and more like he’s a deliberate plant—IOW another trademark Trumpian distraction.
Guess we’ll soon find out…

At Least 112 USAF C-17 Aircraft Headed To Middle East: ‘Desert Storm Levels’

https://x.com/i/status/2020546949397541295

Can’t all be fun and games with levels like that. Looks like March will be spicy.

HC68:

Quite so.

Of course, with enough force the US can drive out the mullahs. But at what cost?

My guess is that Trump got out ahead of his skis with his announced support of the protesters. He had hoped the protesters could overturn the regime on their own with just threats of American support.

I don’t doubt he will do something, but he is now thinking it through more carefully. He’s bringing in the fleet to make his threats more credible and ratcheting up the negotiations still hoping for a peaceful resolution.

Which I doubt will happen.

Stay tuned.

We have a lot of reasons to want regime change there.

Yes, but how to pull that off.

– Iran is big
– The opposition is not organized
– Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Israel are part of the mix
– We are stuck with air and naval power, no land border

It is a difficult problem, and not just military. We continue to build up forces in the region, but the question of how to use them remains.

— Chuck

I have written before that Trump still might make good on his threats. But so far he has not.

— neo

I don’t know what’s going on, and I hope for a good outcome. But I have a nasty suspicion that part of the problem might be that Trump and his circle still just can’t see a way to make the outcome they want happen at an acceptable cost. Yeah, they could obliterate the regime. We’ve had the power to do that since 1979.

But this is a case that calls for a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer, and it looks to me like a genuinely hard problem to solve.

And it’s also true, of course, that some problems are just insoluable. I don’t know if that’s true of this one, but I can’t say I’m sure about that.

shia islamism seems to be a relatively new phenomenon, they had some elements in indian provinces like oudh, but was a rarity, maybe that was where
mamdanis indian strain, arose from certainly not before 19th century persian

the sunni ummah was on the march since the 7th century in various phases, there was brief respite with the mongol encounter, which was the source of
the more recent salafism of ibn Thamiyah, but certainly the Ottomans had a major influence for about 400 years, certainly Vienna was the high water mark of incursion into Europe, but like Marxist, they are not deterred but delayed,

one might say the colonial incursions into north africa and the levant might have reawakened such impulses represented by abdu mawdudi rida and finally ak banna in various guises

the leftists, start through marx, and then go fabian trying to breach through gramsci and the frankfurt school

as o’sullivan and conquestt noted in their own way, any institution, intrisincally anti communist cannot prevail, that psoes a problem as there are few institutions that treat

Yes…but only if one REFUSES—and there are some very good reasons for such refusal—to comprehend that we have arrived at a very SINISTER, GLOBAL juncture where our elites have decided—in their collective wisdom, concern and hard-headed “compassion” for our world, its inhabitants of ALL varieties, species and sizes, and for nature itself—to take charge and institute what they would characterize—rationalize— as a “BENEVOLENT” (and if not “benevolent” then NECESSARY) totalitarianism, “necessary” so as to save us all from ourselves…

Call it, if you will, an all-encompassing “tough love”, where what’s at stake is nothing less than global survival—at least in the eyes of those “benevolent” but clear-sighted elites; (and if they can make a buck or two from their efforts, well they are, after all, doing their very bestest to save the planet and all its inhabitants, thereof…).

It is, after all, the cutting edge of morality….

One can perfectly understand why any DECENT person would wish to refuse to comprehend such a grim, cynical—even nihilistic—conclusion: the glorious elite’s uncompromising effort (or creed?) in the pursuit of GLOBAL SALVATION…but where have we seen this before?)…

OMMV…

Our Western leadership has failed to recognize this core source for a long time (1979 being only the beginning of a more obvious exposure, with the 1993 and 2001 tower “episodes”, and a misguided “religion of peace” proclamation. The Iraq debacle and all of the smaller scale attacks since then still make the focus on “terrorism” as a result and not Islam as the cause.

Now Western scholars over the last 50 years or so have been critically examining the origins and related history of Islamic claims and finding the Muslim story to be largely false. I keep thinking a concerted PR effort at proclaiming these errors would unsettle enough of the believers as to reduce the jihad/terror element and eventually the flawed social structures and cultures of those nations and societies. I am probably naive about this, or at least have to accept that it would still take 50 years to obtain the desired results even if our leadership all had a crash course in the more realistic view of Islam and its history and validity.

I have seen a very few Muslim and nonMuslim voices suggesting the politicization of Islam really only began in the early 1800’s, gained significant strength in the 1920’s and later, and then fully hitting its stride with the 1990’s and later. This suggests some alternative amelioration might be possible. But I remain skeptical as these views don’t really seem to be gaining ground in any meaningful way.

++++++++++++++
Somewhat related: I am truly totally baffled by the EU, WEF, Starmer, et al. and their jettisoning of Western political theory and practice. I just don’t understand how they can do what they seem to be doing as a syndicate/cabal/club/consortium of some few thousand people focusing on ruining their societies, supposedly for I am not really sure what goal beyond petty power over surfs vs. leading a set of real republican democratic nation states.

If their populist fractions don’t rise up vigorously enough soon, the demographics of the European immigration practices will make any corrective moves almost impossible.

Agreed that it’s a difficult problem. That’s why I have objected to Trump’s telling the demonstrators that he will help them, if he didn’t know how.