“A Murder Brings the Left One Step Closer to Power in France;
“The killing of the far-right activist Quentin Deranque, 23, by six antifa in the city of Lyon is about to alter France’s political crisis for the worse”—
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/deranque-murder-brings-french-left-closer-power
H/T Powerline blog.

The three major Abrahamic faiths collide head on there…

It goes without saying that Israel’s refusal to roll over and die is the REAL (and ONLY) obstacle to global “peace in our time”…as so many “pursuers of peace” are eager to tell us…and it is precisely THIS that “compels” reasonable, caring, compassionate and fair-minded people to conclude that the Dear Mullahs and their various virtuous proxies MUST be supported to the hilt in their spiritual, peace-seeking—and, not least, aesthetic—goals

OTOH, might one wonder about possible outcomes should some wunderkind hit on a solution to FUSION?
(Either that or Elon Musk figuring out a way to transport energy from orbital solar panel farms to dear old planet earth…)

It will succeed.

— Richard Illyes

There’s a decent chance it will, for certain values of and depending on the definition of ‘succeed’.

It will rid the world of Twelver lunatics

— Richard Illyes

Highly improbable. It may well weaken them enormously, but nobody that I know of has ever completely wiped out a religious or ideological movement by force alone, unless it’s incredibly tiny.

and result in a wonderful period of peace in that part of the world.

— Richard Illyes

This sort of talk is just the kind of thing that breeds cynicism when it doesn’t work out, and it never works out.

Even if we crush the mullahs entirely, and even if a somewhat sane and civilized state or collection of states takes their place, the Middle East will remain a rumbling powderkeg. The three major Abrahamic faiths collide head on there, and countless ethnic and cultural fault lines intersect there as well. Its geographical location and natural resources make it strategically critical, geopolitically.

It’s a powderkeg and it’s going to continue to be a powderkeg whatever the outcome of the Iran War.

I’ve heard a lot of people say they just want OUT of the middle east mess, but that’s irrelevant. All roads lead back to the Middle East, like it or not.

Azerbaijan was where the oil was discovered sometime at the turn of the 20th century, Koba Stalin used to do hold up in that neck of the woods, they briefly declared independence after the Revolution, but Lenin, in a cynical twist, used jihad to take it over, Zinoviev explains to Reed, (Kosinki to Beatty) the stratagem,
Reed still dies on the way to Baku, and Louise Brooks marries William Bullitt, the future envoy to the Soviet Union turned cold warrior,

several generations of apparatchiks rule the roost, the last being Heydar Aliev, who rose to the rank of the Central Committee eventually President, the end of the cold war, sparked the fraticidal conflict with Armenia, and they clashed on a number of occassions, Azerbaijan enlisted fighters like Basayev to fight their battles, Armenia aligned with Iran, in the peculiar arithmetic of the region, as did a host of other figures who would become infamous in the following decade,

*it was a footnote in the opening to crimson tide, where a thinly disguised Zhirinovsky reacts to Western sanctions over strikes in Rutul and Belagani
too small cities there,

the Alievs still became a hereditary kleptocracy, run in the same way as most of the regimes in Central Asia, perhaps less so, various foreign policy mandarins of both left and right politics, sought commercial ontacts in Baku, there was a pipeline that ran across Turkey its Western neighbor to the Caspian

it is like their southern neighbor a predominately Shia state, with a decidedly secular orientation, it has sought tacit alliance with Israel despite this,

I don’t either, but Trump’s & Hegseth’s prior successes, plus the real news of what has actually happened makes me pretty confident that Trump’s going to achieve many of his goals. Tho I wish I knew his goal was regime change & that he achieve that. I don’t know that.
I do know that the Iran regime not knowing what Trump really wants means their defense will be minimized, so the minimum number of Americans will be killed. Far more than 0, far less than 10,000 (a third of last year’s auto deaths). I guess & hope less than 1000 for regime change, with Iranians becoming the boots on the ground needed for regime change.

All US deaths are kind of equal, but don’t all get the same level of publicity.

It wouldn’t surprise me too much if Marines taking over Kharg are called “temporary” so they don’t count, as boots in Iran. (60%) Nor that it’s not US Marines, but are other allies who take over. Nor be surprised if no boots at all (40%)

Whoever controls Kharg Island controls Iran’s sole source of income and has China’s attention.

“Hamas’s secret letter to Mojtaba Khamenei;
“Alongside an official and ceremonial letter, Hamas sent a secret letter to the new Supreme Leader of Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, which included a declaration of militant intentions.”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/423990