I wonder who in Iran made this decision, and why
President Trump on Wednesday said Iran will not executive eight Iranian women accused being involved in protests against the regime, as previously planned.
“Very good news! I have just been informed that the eight women protestors who were going to be executed tonight in Iran will no longer be killed,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
The president said four of the women will be immediately released and the four others will be sentenced to one month in prison, a day after he urged the Islamic Republic to halt their executions.
Perhaps the regime never intended to go through with it in the first place. Now they get to look so very magnanimous.
There is no reason to trust them on anything, period.
[ADDENDUM: Ace writes about some Iranian attacks on ships going through the Strait, as well as the sparing of the eight women. First, on the women:
Iran can take an infinite number of its own people hostage and then release them as a “concession.
Exactly; they are hostages, and Iran is completely in control of their apprehension and their release. What a fun game.
Iran is attacking shipping. This is not them saying “SOS.” This is Iran attacking shipping.
Yes, they are collapsing financially — but that will take a while. In the meantime, they’re attacking shipping, and for some reason, we’re not blowing up their attack boats.
Because of the “cease-fire” that only we are observing.
Why are we not attacking the fast attack boats? Why are we not dropping air-burst bombs over their harbors?
I think we will be. But I’m not sure, and I agree with Ace that at this point our forbearance seems ridiculous. However, there may be things going on behind the scenes of which I’m unaware: time for assets to get into place (either ours or Israel’s), or perhaps some machinations regarding the Gulf States.]
I don’t trust them either. There are plenty of fanatics in the IRGC, who is going to stop them? Trump is putting them on the hook, nothing more.
When I saw these typos, I thought at first that Trump must be drunk-tweeting, although he doesn’t touch alcohol.
“…Iran will not executive eight Iranian women accused being involved …”
However, looking at Neo’s link, that’s the lead paragraph from The Hill.
How does something like that get onto a high-profile national publication?
Rhetorical question, I know.
They halted an earlier execution, tortured the man, and then hanged him anyhow. Nothing coming from the current regime is trustworthy.
At AesopFan at 5:09 pm:
I taught college grammar/writing/literature back when that actually meant something. This is not to say that I never make a mistake, but if in doubt, I almost always look up the grammatical standard. I see glaring typos and errors online all the time. To me it looks like human beings just don’t edit anymore. Our AI future? Spare me. The purpose of grammar, spelling, and writing rules is to make the content as clear, exact, and easy to read as possible. Maybe no one cares anymore. Personally, I don’t read much beyond the glaring error(s).
who in Iran made this decision
Does anyone know at all? I like to think the Mossad has well placed assets in Iran and at least they know, but that may be wishful thinking.
vahidi is a blood thirsty ghoul, with a past that goes back to beirut and buenos aires,
like they would say in texas ‘he needs killing’
allegedly he had the foreign minister, the speaker and at least one other detained to prevent him from going to the negotiations,
vahidi is a blood thirsty ghoul
Ok. So…kill him. This is a nation that can’t defend itself. Do I have to think of all this crap myself?
We don’t know what the play(s) is or are. My first pass guess is that Trump is working to embolden and strengthen the group within Iran than seeks to work with us to end the war, accede to our demands, and bring Iran into the ME coalition. The folks that continue to push back by attacking boats and such simply identify themselves as the enemy. An additional benefit is that by acting this way we reinforce that our aim is to dismantle Iran’s terror machine, eliminate their nuclear ambitions, and make the ME stable – showing the world that we are not warmongering, blood for oil types.
My opinion is that the Warthogs need to be unleashed, and hunt down the Iranian boats. And, will the Marines go in and take over the ships Iran has captured?
Left is saying that the blockade is over because some ships have supposedly ran it. Again, what is real and what is Memorex.
Mke Plaiss:
He may be too well-hidden at this point.
One of the Indian ships that was attacked was leaving after making deliveries to Iran. Good to see Iran enforcing sanctions on itself.
Trump just may be trying to find a way out. A ceasefire that holds, a profit sharing toll business w Iran, a “we’re leaving, we won, they are so degraded militarily, all done” even if Iran still has control of the Strait.
I quit listening to the 4D chess stuff a long time ago. He’s really good at selling himself to people and that works somehow on most things but when it’s something that he doesn’t really have the control levers on it’s a lot harder. He can’t just speak victory into existence here.
“no new wars”
Ahh, I see. Bill likes TACOs
Nah, physicsguy, Bill is just stupid. See: “new war”.
Idiocy, front and center.
Hi guys
No New Wars was a major selling point for DJT from a ton of people. It was one of his major campaign promises.
@Bill Nice try, but Iran has been at war with us since 1979.
Billie:
Iran has been in asymmetrical war with the US since 1979.
47 years is not considered “new” war but you appear to favor a “forever” war, or until Iran “wins.”
Are you that ignorant?
I’d prefer no wars, to be honest.
I prefer no lunatics with nukes especially ones that have stated they WILL use them on you know who regardless of how many Iranis are killed in a counter strike. They said so. Repeatedly. They wish to bring about the apocalypse. They said so. Repeatedly.
War is not the worst thing.
The goalposts keep moving.
We destroyed their nuclear stockpiles last summer, if memory serves. At least that’s what we were told. And now they’re on the brink of having a nuke?
Time to stop feeding this dim troll, Billie.
If my memory serves, last summer the capability of producing a nuclear weapon was destroyed. I take that to mean the centrifuges and other support structures were eliminated. The Iranians then started bragging (yes, bragging) about still having nearly a half ton of 60% enriched U. Given their nearly half century of desiring to nuke the US and Israel, why not take them at their word and make sure they understand we will never allow them to have such material? It may still be buried deep, or not. Doesn’t matter. If we let them go, they will get it out one way or another to continue what they started.
Bill,
President Trump had this conflict thrust upon him, based on the current reality. Every President since 1979 has kicked the can, while Iran continued to gain regional power through it’s proxy network and developed what are now fairly sophisticated short/medium range ballistic missiles. I don’t know whether Iran was developing hypersonic missiles or whether China/Russia was providing them.
Based on intelligence Iran continued production of drones/missiles following the Israeli strikes in 2025. Waiting another year would have probably made Iran untouchable with the number of drones/missiles/launcher continuing to be produced.
Iran was /is building a new enrichment facility (Pickaxe) which was/is being built at a depth that would/will have rendered it also unreachable by our largest bunker buster bombs.
Once Iran had a defensive shield of drones/missiles they could have resumed enrichment to weapons grade and began development of a bomb which we would have no capability of taking out.
This was the best time to take on Iran. It wouldn’t have gotten easier next year or the year after. It would have given the Iranians the ability to hold the world hostage– even if they didn’t fully develop a nuclear bomb.
By the way, are you the same Bill that wouldn’t vote for Trump in 2016 and couldn’t understand why Neo or people commenting her would consider it?
Bill, I think everyone here would prefer no wars.
But sometimes an adversary/enemy who has pledged “Death to America” moves in a direction that reinforces their aspiration/motivation/capability to act on their pledges and should be taken seriously.
Add this to the mix of risks Iran poses– Pickaxe Mountain:
— Grok
Plus it’s assessed that not all the HEU is in one location.
Isfahan– Majority (~200+ kg) Underground tunnels; possible full transfer before strikes; largely intact
Natanz– Smaller amount. Some still believed present; much possibly buried under rubble
Fordow– Smaller / uncertain. Heavily damaged; material likely entombed
Notice the problem here. Slightly more than half was/is at Isfahan, but there is evidence that this HEU was moved before the 2025 strike. If so, where?
We can’t end the conflict until we can confirm where all the material is. Right now we moved to a waiting game– which might also be part of the strategy of moving to Iranian insurgency.
Here’s where taking out all the bridges/rail lines/roads that allow movement in the country could allow an insurgency to work in Tehran. Since the IRGC/Basij are dispersed, destroying the infrastructure that makes it difficult for the province’s military to reinforce any area under attack by the insurgency, whether it’s the Kurds or the Persians.
Hi Brian. Yes, that’s me.
Politically independent still.
I have lurked some over the past few years. Was interested in engaging because (and please don’t jump all over me but of course feel free if you must) I don’t think the “we’ve been at war since 1979” is the slam dunk argument people here think it is. I also think Trump’s “no new wars” pledge was interpreted by a lot of reasonable people who voted for him as to mean that we wouldn’t go to war with anyone. We are a war-weary country. I know a traumatized Afghan vet and I almost want to say, instead of “thank you for your service” say “thank you and I’m so sorry”.
There’s a reason so many of Trump’s advisors refused to call it a war in the early days
Unlike a number of my friends, I admit that I supported the wars we started in the early oughts. Strange a lot of people now act like they were against them the whole time. I don’t buy it I thought we had learned from our mistakes. Wars have a way of getting away from you
I’ve said for decades (before DJT) that wars should not be launched until Congress has given approval (preferably a formal declaration of war). That never happens now and I think that’s bad. But I don’t subscribe to the unitary executive theory of governance.
As far as past Presidents kicking cans, Trump is a past President. He didn’t and wouldn’t have done this in his first term. My level of trust in what he says is probably a lot lower than the norm in this space, but I’m not buying the current rationales.
I hope things turn out for the best. We’ll see.
Still an idiot.
@Bill:But I don’t subscribe to the unitary executive theory of governance.
The Founders did and wrote it into the Constitution, Article II Sec 1, so you’re kind of stuck with it:
I had skepticism about how this operation would go, because among other things I feared that they would strike hard against the saudi oil fields, they have made some attempts against that target package, as well as fields in the UAE and Qatar,also there are some concerns of what could happen in the clash over Kharg Island, but that hasn’t come to pass either,
by the time Trump got around to Suleimani, the architect of hundred if not thousands of efp casualties, in afghanistan as well as iraq the
presidencywas nearly over
Niketas – there are three articles in the constitution.
Would you have wanted Obama to have unlimited power to wage war?
Congress is supposed to be a necessary check to executive power. Checks and Balances. That’s the beauty of our system. I didn’t know this was controversial. But I guess it is.
The founders designed the Constitution to prevent unchecked power being delivered into the hands of one man. They had experienced royal fiat and did not like it to the point of fighting a war over it..hence our three branch system of government.
Bill, I don’t think President Trump took this on lightly. Had Iran agreed to turn over it’s enriched uranium, I don’t think Trump would have engaged. While the ballistic missiles/drones are a regional threat, it’s the nuclear material that rises to existential.
Like every other weapon system developed, in time countermeasures are developed and that is true of the missile/drone threat. But we don’t have countermeasures for nuclear bombs.
And this is why the nuclear threat will increase over the next few years. As Israel and the Arabs develop/install defensive systems to neutralize the threat of missiles/drones, the next level threat will be nuclear.
It’s not coincidence that Iran is developing a new enrichment site beyond the reach of our bunker buster bombs and increasing production of missile/drones that will make it to0 dangerous to the global economy to attack them. At this point Iran can develop it’s final weapon in its own timetable.
Radical Islamists are not rational actors and launching a first strike against Israel is not irrational to their thinking. And a first strike against Israel would also include a first strike against the US mainland simultaneously. Likely from some civilian vessel that can launch a IRBM off one or both of our coasts.
We can not allow them to maintain their enrichment program or existing HEU stock.
I think the intelligence showed waiting would make this harder/impossible.
Bill, I also was soured on our engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military actions were successful, but our nation building attempts were the disaster. But this Iran engagement is nothing like these conflicts.
This is really closer to delivering some airmail packages into Iran. Yes there have been some deaths– but our military suffers deaths every year. In fact the average number of deaths by uniformed military personnel is about 1,300/ year for the last 10 years. Most deaths (~75–85%) are non-hostile (accidents, illness, suicide/self-inflicted). Hostile action deaths were very low until recent conflicts in 2025–2026, but they have and do occur.
I think the President has and will do a better job managing this conflict than previous presidents that have fallen prey to mission creep.
Part of the reason this is getting more attention than the seven-month Libyan bombing campaign, or the 78 day Kosovo bombing is partly the increased 24/7 news cycle and the fact the President is Trump, not Clinton or Obama.
Thanks Brian
@Bill:Congress is supposed to be a necessary check to executive power. Checks and Balances. That’s the beauty of our system. I didn’t know this was controversial.
It isn’t. But you said “unitary executive”, which has nothing to do with checks and balances. Unitary executive is literally written into the Constitution from the beginning.
Would you have wanted Obama to have unlimited power to wage war?
He had the same powers to wage war Trump has now. The executive was just as unitary then as it is now and as it was in 1789. It’s a silly question to ask what I would have wanted Obama to have when it isn’t different. Obama did have those war powers Trump has now, they were not unlimited then and aren’t now. Trump does have those powers Obama did have, and they are not unlimited, never have been, and nothing Trump is doing is changing those powers.
@Bill
Firstly, thanks for your response. And whatever our differences, I do not view you as having said anything that would show you as a troll, or acting in bad faith (unlike some I can think of, including regulars), so I will respond to what you say honestly and seriously, because I believe what you say warrants it, and because you deserve it. And even if on the off chance you did not, the arguments are worth making. But some hard, ugly truths are going to have to be said, and while I agree broadly with the likes of Brian E and others i do differ in some others. I will also be jumping around a bit, so apologies for that and that this is gonna be a long one I might have to break up into multiple parts.
But first, a bit about me. I too have been a lurker on Neo for years, and years before I started commenting on here with any regularity. But at heart I am a history obsessive who is the son of a lawyer and a nurse, and have spent years studying things like various military conflicts and legal acts, and have gotten a few credits here and there as a consultant. I am not really a “political independent” as I have been a conservative republican for more than 20 years, and have voted for Trump three times in the General, though not without reservations as my fundamental beliefs are closer to the likes of Cruz, DeSantis, or now Rubio and the sort of ‘NeoCon’ wing of the party. So Caveat with that.
However, a few things need to be said.
Unfortunately that’s pretty true, and not just due to Trump or US Domestic politics. Goal post moving has been a pretty pervasive part of diplomacy and war for centuries and we can see this in things line the letters the Continental Congress sent to our negotiators at Paris telling them about things like when to ditch what terms of our Alliance with France in order to secure peace.
But as bad as the British and French could be, they were not adherents of a religion whose final prophet in his own words stated things like “I have been made victorious through terror” (Sahih Bukari Hadith 2977) and who expressly commands that one is not to take nonbelievers as friends or guardians and that it is permitted to deceive and gain victory through deceit. And particularly were not disciples of an outright apocalyptic death cult offshoot of that religion which taught that the rise of the Mahdi (the Islamic savior) from a Well in Qom, Iran (yes literally) would come only during a time of apocalyptic turmoil and global strife with nonbelievers, which this lot took even further into arguing (with some doses of Marxist influence here and there) that the Tru Believers (TM) should seek to plunge the world into such chaos Deliberately to help bring about the rise of the Mahdi.
Welcome to Twelver Shiite Islam, and particularly as practiced by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leadership, or what is left of it. For reasons that I hope are rather obvious, or should be soon, it is incredibly hard to come to any kind of lasting agreement or peace with them in a way that will have them actually Stick to it. And some like myself have basically given up hoping for it and believe the less destructive or turbulent course of action is flat out seeking the overthrow of the regime altogether and its replacement by something else, something Trump etc. al. have toyed around with rhetorically but have not locked in.
In this case the problem is that your memory is not serving, as physicsguy said. The main thing we destroyed last summer was not the STOCKPILES of enriched uranium (ie the ingredients that they’d use to make the bomb) though we probably did SOME damage to those. The main thing we did was destroy and/or devastate the FACILITIES used to produce it and other nuclear program supplies like heavy water. Iran at the time had three sites for the project, and our public assessment was that we destroyed one and heavily damaged the other two and made it so that they’d have to take a minimum of months digging out and then repairing them before they could make any more enriched uranium, and would probably be delayed by at least two years.
Unfortunately it looks like we underestimated both their actual capabilities and especially their sheer, bloodyminded willingness to throttle their own economy and quite literally turn much of the Iranian plateau into an arid, over-salted hellscape in order to forcibly rebuild the plants on or ahead of schedule so they could return to enriching uranium. Because even if the regime is having rolling blackouts well before we started bombing them again and was openly talking about evacuating Tehran and forcing its population into an exodus towards the Gulf due to aquifer depletion, the Final Imam the Mahdi MUST come. All else be damned.
So to summarize: our target in Operation Midnight Hammer were their nuclear production FACILITIES, not their stockpiles (though we probably blew up part of that too), meaning that while we didn’t get all or even a substantial amount of their stockpile we did prevent them from making more of it until they rebuilt the facilities, essentially freezing one of the “Nuclear Weapon Construction Progress Bar”s until they could rebuild the facilities.
But we underestimated how committed they were to the project, the kinds of costs they were willing to facetank in the process, and the sheer amount of domestic misery they would endure both as a government and on their own people in order to facilitate their return.
Or at a minimum the Iranian regime during negotiations with WItkoff (who I normally neither trust nor like but I trust and like far more than I do the death cultists who believe lying to infidels is holy and who have been trying to kill or kidnap Americans for 47 years) through Sunni Arab Gulf intermediaries claimed they had a large stockpile of uranium enriched to 60%, far above any practical civilian or peaceable use for it, and within weeks of hitting useable nuclear weapon thresholds. Maybe they were lying, but the fact that both Witkoff and the Gulf Arabs are consistent on this indicates the lies aren’t coming from our side of the negotiating table or the intermediaries, and definitely not from the Israelis who a certain group of scumbags have tried to blame.
So if this were true, it is an absolutely existential threat to ourselves and many of our allies, given how we are looking at the prospect of the world’s foremost terrorist state coming into possession of nuclear weapons while having an ideology that might not be limited by MAD, and which demanded action STAT. And even if this were CREDIBLY, POSSIBLY true even if it were later to turn out to not be so due to bluffs or calculated dishonesty, it would still be a threat that could not be ignored (like the burglar with a gun-shaped black-sprayed piece of wood, or Saddam Hussein’s attempt to play the WMD Ambiguity Card while violating the Gulf War Ceasefire terms about inspections).
Agreed there, but they also designed it to be able to respond to emerging situations and threats that they had to assume could not be met in a timely manner by the Congress, who constitutionally were required to meet at least once a year because there was open doubt about whether it was practical to have them meet any more frequently (this is one of those places and times where American law REALLY shows its age and limitations), and the framers were often veterans of either the American Revolution or the Continental Congress and so could remember the years where the Congress had to relocate multiple times a year in order to avoid capture by the British in things like the fall of New York City and the temporary occupation of Philadelphia, and less seriously or frequently but still a problem the tendency of Congress to drain the resources of whatever locality was hosting it (often literally in things like alcoholic drink stockpiles and sometimes potable water or food), triggering a recess.
This is the sort of framing you have to have when you read the Constitution and especially things like the Congressional Declaration of War, because as much flak as we give Congress now (and justifiably so I’d say) and as dismal a reputation their work ethic is now even among other legislatures, the fact remains that we still get far more attention out of them than basically anybody in the 1760s expected we would, and again the Framers anticipated that there would be years where Congress might meet once a year for maybe a couple weeks if that (and that the President and his cabinet would not necessarily be reachable at the time, instead delivering a yearly report by mail to them, the original State of the Union format). This was never a system that was viewed as being the only means by which the US could respond to aggression or diplomatic slights against it, and the Framers were under no illusions that events could outpace it.
And even if they HAD been, a series of crises in the early Republic involving everyone from the Revolutionary French to the British to North African “Barbary” Pirate Jihadis to the Spanish and various Amerindian warlords would have thoroughly disabused them of that, and it not even being certain that we wouldn’t see American STATES or communities inside them fighting wars against one another.
So a Congressional Declaration of War was always meant to be the most severe of sanction and the greatest writ of military action and it was vested in Congress for very good reasons, but the role of Commander in Chief was vested with the President for even more solid reasons. Because as damaging or destabilizing as empowering the Commander in Chief to conduct military action largely under their own direction was (sans funding, which would be under Congress, and this was an era of much smaller government where the gov’t’s ability to play money printer was much more limited), allowing threats to manifest. Indeed, it is notable that even the Anti-Federalist papers objecting to the Constitution as it was formulated largely pooh-poohed dangers from the “Indians” and foreign powers less by saying Congress would always be on hand or the Presidential Executive would be a potent force to oppose them (as the anti-Federalists generally opposed the creation of Congress and the Presidential Executive as is) but by arguing either the threats were inadequate in the face of a united American Confederation (like with the Amerindians) or that we would not be attacked by – say – France over unwilling delays in repaying debts, and essentially arguing the state governments and civilian rallying would be enough and could organically respond while Congress could not.
To say this judgement and much of that in Anti-Federalist #4 did not age well would be an understatement. The blunt reality is that I can probably name the number of times the US Congress had to issue a declaration of war as the aggressor on my digits, and most times either the US was the aggressed and made a Congressional War Dec in response, or the conflict didn’t even get that far.
Honestly that’s giving us too much credit. This is a narrative we like telling ourselves about the Founders and ourselves, but the reality was if anything even grimmer and more terrible. Aye, it is certainly true the Founders experienced plenty of Royal and Parliamentary fiat, and justifiably disliked it (even the more honest or moderate form of turncoat like “Isaac Low”, a sort of “Reformist British Colonial” who had been part of the Continental Congress until independence was declared only to them declare his intention to remain a British Subject and essentially got granted safe passage back by his former colleagues). But they didn’t start fighting a war over that from things like taxation without representation or the military occupation of Massachusetts.
They fought because the Militia got word that the British Army was conducting a series of operations to seize private weapons and the powder store – essentially the “national” or “colony” ammunition – and in April 1775 got wind the British Army were about to try and do so to the remaining powder stores of Massachusetts Bay Colony, leading to the Minutemen being roused and sent to stop the British Army from disarming the colonists of their last means of defense and often a sizable amount of private property.
Hence Captain Parker’s supposed words to the militia on Lexington Green: “Stand your ground; don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” Because if the militia allowed Parliament and Crown to roll over them yet again, there would be literally nothing more to give, no safety, no means of self-defense.
Well, someone fired. We’re still not 100% sure who did it – Loyalist or Patriot – or why (whether it was an accident or intentional). But within seconds bloodshed began and you had two running battles.
But what’s remarkable and arguably damning is that even AFTER this, after dozens of people were killed, even as the Continental Congress was authorizing large scale mobilization and even invasions of Canada and raids in the Caribbean, it sent a last, desperate Olive Branch Petition to the Crown, essentially begging King George III to reign in Parliament and his Cabinet. Apparently the King refused to even look at it and then declared the Proclamation of Rebellion essentially attaining vast amounts of the colonial populace as traitors.
So that’s why the Founders fought at the time. Because of knowledge that they either had to take up arms to resist military occupation conducted with the sanction of both Parliament and the King and the violation of their traditional rights to the point of losing all capacity for it, or they had to surrender and put themselves at the mercy of the King and Parliament and whatever mercenary soldiers or “scum” that were sent for purpose. In essence, they had war foisted upon them, much like Massachusetts had.
This is also important because it underlines a couple things.
A: The Founders didn’t start killing their fellow Britishmen out of simply desiring to pay less tax, or so on. They allowed things to escalate to outright dangerous, terminal levels while remaining peaceable (or “mostly peaceful” as some news outlets might say).
But also
B: They did not blame the likes of the Minutemen in Massachusetts for failing to phone them or their colonial assembly before deciding to block the way of the British Army coming for their property and guns. They understood full well that $hit happened and that they would have to respond to provocations and acts of war like the British confiscation march on their own initiative, even when the legislature was not in session or could not be reached in time.
Sure, but the legislature and executive are the ones that govern diplomacy for the most part, and it is the executive in their role as Commander in Chief that has broad latitude to deploy military force, even in the absence of congressional authorization (that again might not be coming in a timely manner or at all). The judiciary mostly cleans up afterwards or assesses some of the finer points.
Fair enough.
Honestly I think it is even moreso than most people think it is. Because it shows that we have been going through this dance for decades, under many different US administrations of differing attitudes, and even under supposed “hardliner” or “moderate” members of the Iranian regime. And what has it gotten us? This is a regime that came to power professing to be happy to do business with the US and to continuing the traditional pro-Western, conciliatory policies that marked the Shah’s government before, and also echoed in the Shiite Clergy that we had business with for decades and who joined with us and the Shah to do things like oppose St. Mossadeq’s Autogolpa attempt in 1953 (which is one of the most badly misunderstood episodes in modern Iranian history, and with the current Iranian regime simultaneously pushing a fairy tale of Mossadeq the Democratically Elected* – Iran had no constitutional function for electing Prime Ministers, Mossadeq was democratically elected to the Parliament but he owed his position as PM to appointment by the Shah, and in any case he had well exceeded his powers – martyr and borderline saint (nevermind the use of Stalinist paramilitaries from the Tudeh Party to help rig elections) abroad while harshly, brutally quashing any claiming fealty to his memory at home).
Once in power they proceeded to break some of the most basic and immutable rules of the diplomatic game by sponsoring the paramilitary takeover of the US Embassy and the kidnapping and torture of diplomats and civilian staff, along with threats to execute them. At the time the regime claimed (unconvincingly) that it was not responsible but that it was being done by “activists”, but pointedly ignored that even if that BS had been true the Iranian government had a legal obligation to secure the “rescue” of said diplomats and staff by force of arms if need be under the law, and did not and even gave support to the hostage takers by things such as subsidized food and power and access to national broadcasts. Since then it has mostly dropped the pretense and has admitted this was masterminded by the first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomenei.
Remember what I said about the commandments that perfidy and deceit were valid when used against infidels? The fact that this violated some of the most universal taboos against mistreating envoys or diplomats in human history and a lot of black letter international and diplomatic law like the Vienna Conventions meant basically nothing to the Mullahcracy. And unfortunately this was hardly some kind of out of the blue one off crisis moment like the Moroccans taking some of our ships in the first years after independence in order to negotiate diplomatic recognition and trade with us.
If those people were interpreting that so broadly as to that we would not respond with war to any situation, even blatant attempts to violently sever the chain of command by killing a sitting President and other US Officials in state sponsored terrorist attacks…..
https://www.nydailynews.com/2026/03/06/asif-merchant-convicted-in-political-murder-for-hire-scheme-tied-to-iranian-intelligence-trump-biden/
…. then I have to say those people do not deserve the identifier of “reasonable people”, and indeed are acting monumentally unreasonably. It has been established US doctrine for a long time that state sponsored attacks on the US Government with the aim of killing our officials, or even doing so to RETIRED ones like Saddam’s attempt to whack HW Bush, constituted violent action that justified military response.
The Merchant plot was apparently not even the only or first case Trump identified, and it is remarkable he instructed Witkoff to continue negotiations even after that. But that we had this PLUS the fact that the Iranians apparently boasted (whether accurately or not) to having a sizable chunk of 60% enriched Uranium within breakout capacity for nuclear weapons to both Witkoff and the Gulf Diplomats meant that we have a hostile regime that has openly spat on international law, openly declares its ideology to be dogmatic pursuit of chaos in the name of helping the Mahdi arise, and that has tried to endanger the US Government and continuity of government by assassinating Trump and other government leaders in a classic case of state sponsored terrorism was now doing the equivalent of a Greedo pointing something that looks suspiciously like a blaster in our face talking about how Iran would not accept any limitations on nuclear enrichment.
If ‘reasonable people’ think that does not warrant military action to eliminate the threat, then those people are not reasonable and are indeed textbook useful idiots. The term may be harsh and even profane, but I think it is thoroughly justified, because if that does not justify it then what would be? Some kind of formal declaration of war? Oh wait, we already have that as of Khomenei’s decades old Fatwah, which we know is still binding because they’ve said it is and because similar Fatwahs like that female virgin prisoners be raped before execution and that Salman Rushdie be killed for blasphemy are still in force to this day. Hostile action? The IRGC helped shelter and fund Osama and Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 in one of the most twisted love-hate relationships this side of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and we still have documents from Abbottabad in which Osama talked about his people transiting Iran with regime approval, but also sometimes how they had to negotiate for release after being periodically thrown in prison. Hostile action? The Mullahcracy tried to do to Trump what various people claim the CIA, FBI, Mafia, Castro, and the Soviets did to JFK. And apparently tried to do so multiple times.
This isn’t quite “The Revolutionary French are literally grabbing American merchantmen out of New England ports” ala the Quasi War or “an Iranian Navy flying Iranian flags and Sigils bombs Port Arthur” but it is probably just a couple steps below that and in some ways even worse because we have no evidence even now the French Directory of the 1790s or the Imperial Japanese Juntas wanted to try and destroy the US’s continuity of government as a whole. But the Mullahcracy has shown that interest and is not that subtle about what it wishes to.
If I put forth this kind of conduct to pretty much any US Congress elected in the first 50 years of independence, it would have probably declared war or at a minimum justified large scale military operations little different from war ala Tripoli, full stop.
That we are, and I fear we will become more war weary as we get on. I came to the conclusion very soon after 9/11 that we were in the midst of a generational, civilization-shaping conflict I would not live to see the end of (and I am fairly young, I was a teenager then). I’d also point that probably the oldest traceable origin for “Cold War” goes back to the “Tepid War” defined on the frontiers of Iberia in the Medieval Era.
Understandable indeed. Afghanistan was one of the most grotesquely mismanaged of conflicts, and much of it still makes me angry. All the worse because I know several vets of it and other conflicts, and have more coming into service. But as mismanaged and botched as Afghanistan was, let’s not forget the reason why it started and one of the main reasons to be angry for how we pulled out. On September 11th, 2001 Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network – from their shelter in one of the most cardboard and paper thin of “custodies” in Afghanistan – orchestrated and launched the largest terrorist attack in American History, killing around 3,000 people as the bloody climax to decades of prior terrorism. Apparently they also planned a series of follow ups. The US – justifiably angry – gave the Taliban one last chance to turn over Osama and Al Qaeda to our custody or be branded as co-conspirators. The Taliban, having lied and misdirected for decades, only promised to turn him over to a Muslim third party (most likely Pakistan or Iran) to then turn over to us, an ‘offer’ that was laughably inadequate and unacceptable even if we ignore how they probably could be expected to let Osama and many of his network ‘conveniently and shockingly escape custody’ in the intermedium.
I have a lot of grounds to complain about the Afghan War, the Afghan Peace, how they were fought and conducted, and stuff like the staggering corruption and the screams of Bacha Bazi that have traumatized many vets lucky enough to have physically survived unharmed otherwise.
But let’s not forget why we were there. We were there for some very good, undeniable reasons that no US Government could ignore without forfeiting any expectation of being taken seriously and abdicating the constitutional duty to secure the rights and lives.
Which has more to do with legalese and finessing over how the US has rarely declared “wars” per se even in most of its history and particularly not after 1945.
Fair, though this is one area where I would distinguish myself from both you and Brian E. Brian E argues that “Bill, I also was soured on our engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military actions were successful, but our nation building attempts were the disaster.”
To be honest, while I soured on much of our engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan I still am on the record defending and supporting both, as I believe (present tense) they were still the lesser evil and justified under the law. Moreover, as much of a debacle as they turned out (Afghanistan moreso than Iraq), they still accomplished much. Osama is Dead and the Al Qaeda ecosystem destroyed or largely crippled. The Hussein dynasty of Iraq is dead or rudderless, with Saddam and his demonic sons dead, ending one of the most endemic sponsors of terrorism in the world and a habitual violator of the peace (and who in a true brainlet move someone who decided to STEP UP his support for Al Qaeda and various vassal organizations – more on those later – *after* and as a direct result of 9/11). In his place is a deeply flawed democratic republic plagued by sectarianism, ethnic tensions, and a largely Shiite Muslim majority that until recently was feared to be a client of Iran but which has since proven to be an uneasy ally of us and the Israelis, but which in any case is a vastly less odious problem than the monstrosity that came before it and most of the alternatives like an actual Iranian client or a Daesh style Sunni Jihadist Caliphate.
And even in Afghanistan the Taliban have been heavily weakened from decades of war and forced to begin rebuilding their power and central authority while fighting republican resistance movements and various militias. And ironically have sided with us to some degree against their former frenemies and patrons in Pakistan and Iran. They are unlikely to be able to sponsor another Osama/AQ style network or to serve as the safe harbor for another 9/11 style attack on the US homeland in the intermediate future.
Were these adequate results for the cost and effort we went through? I would say no. But the alternative was worse, and it is often made worse by a lot of myths – largely the result of remorseless spindoctoring for politics by leftists and various Paleocon or Isolationists on the Right (see: Tucker Carlson and his shilling of the Taliban). I might dive into these more and particularly how our admittedly often dismal intel gathering in the leadup to Afghanistan and Iraq were spun (especially when you realize the word games and how “Saddam Hussein’s Gestapo/KGB Homage act the Iraqi Mukhabarat knowingly funded the Army of Muhammad, a direct cutout of Al Qaeda sworn to Osama Bin Laden personally, knowing that it was basically a franchise of Al Qaeda under a different name, for the purpose of attacking the US and other allies” got magically transformed to “no direct connection” – because you see, there’s a literal paper thin cutout with Al Qaeda wearing a sock puppet with “Army of Muhummad” stamped on the front, and ergo when the Iraqi Gestapo is handing money to the Al Qaeda hand grasping it through the Army of Muhummad sock puppet before then taking the sock off and grabbing it, that’s not a DIRECT Connection!!!!)
Now, to address that.
Firstly: “the wars we started”?
To which I would say ‘who is we kemosabe?’
Afghanistan is something even Obama had to acknowledge was foisted on us. We were attacked and hundreds upon hundreds of us and other nationals were murdered in cold blood by a terrorist organization that was supposedly “in custody” in Afghanistan, as part of Al Qaeda’s decades old jihad against us. We gave the Taliban one final chance to actually extradite the plotters to us, which they tried to BS us on. As such we went in.
Meanwhile Iraq? Iraq had Saddam breaking almost every part of the Gulf War Ceasefire that would if taken literally make a return to war automatic and incumbent upon the side violating them. The main issue is we’re not quite sure how much he violated given provisions (largely because he took pains to kick inspectors out or limit them and obfuscated other ties), which is itself another set of violations. And while we now know that many of the doomsday “sexed up” intel analysis of him having nukes capable of hitting the British on Cyprus were wrong, we do know he was coordinating financing of Al Qaeda and continuing to amass WMD material, including hiding decades old and probably-not-that-useful chemical and bacteriological WMD like some old sarin gas shells he had some people like relatives of my Kurdish-American former neighbors dig in as slave labor back in the 1980s and especially 1990s.
Again, we gave him multiple last chances for offroads to avoid. He refused. So he got the FAFO.
In both cases we were responding to multiple acts of war from those went at.
Secondly: What would the proper response to something like 9/11 be if not that?
Defeat is an orphan, while victory has many fathers. And that goes ditto for those who still think so.
I’d say we learned from some of them, and in particular Trump did something that few dared do with the Iranian regime. But there are multiple kinds of mistakes, and some of them are at not responding to hostility.
Agreed.
Unfortunately, that only works when the war is being launched from the American POV, and the other sides also get a vote and may not be so kind to be open about it. And again, let me reiterate that the idea that the US would be unable to conduct military conflicts without a congressional declaration of war was Never something the Founders as a whole would have agreed to, because again it was taken as granted that some warband or privateers could come over the mountain ridge or into port, shoot things up and kill people, and then slip away to possibly do it again at a time when the scheduled meeting of Congress would still be half a year away and it would still take 1-2 months under ideal circumstances to get them together with a world that runs at the speed of the sail or hooves.
You might argue that’s a big problem and underlying issue with the Constitution and how powers are balanced, and I’d agree and even think it needs changing (which makes Congress’s follies and divisions making such changes impossible even more lamentable). But the fact remains is that the US Commander in Chief is garbed in terrifying and awesome powers (to modify Lincoln), that this is by design, and the POTUS is not elected to suffer any assassination attempt or state sponsored terrorism that another government decides to try and pull on the US. That by necessity means independent ability to command the military and intelligence, even if not to do so for their funding.
I agree but I think that’s the result of several symptoms and wider problems, and in any case the Founders would not have viewed something like Iran as needing a declaration of war.
Pace Nik and Brian, I do and for reason. There is a need for a unity of executive action and military command, even if limited by the legislature and judiciary. It’s also worth noting that a lot of the legal precedent for said unity of command is even older than not just the Constitution but the Articles of Confed, with George Washington as Continental Army CinC doing things that would be jaw dropping (such as “nuh nuh”ing a Congressional order to prepare to invade and occupy the Vermont Republic during a time of war).
Trump is a deeply flawed vessel operating in issues.
True, but still.
Probably more due to limits in power and practical issues, as well as Iran’s attempts to murder him as well as what was probably a very ill timed attempt to rub his nose in the fact that they were back to trying to get the bomb mid-negotiations. You say that you thought we learned from mistakes. Trump clearly has learned from many mistakes from his first term in other grounds. Is it inconceivable this is one of them?
To which I would say that what rationales would you believe? Which is again I go back to the “How can people be called reasonable if they expect Trump to not respond to an avowed enemy regime trying to kill him and boasting about planning to get nuclear WMD”?
That’s one benefit, and why I am pretty confident that for all of my distrust of Trump, I can defend probably the vast majority of his rationales on this from many different avenues, including if I assume some like the Mullahcracy’s 60% Uranium boast being false rather than true (because Executives are not obliged to know if an enemy is actually telling the truth or not about an imminent threat).
The Executive and the US was meant to be nimble, responsive, and capable of addressing opportunities or crises that might not be possible to address if a full Congress is required. See things like the Louisiana Purchase. I do grate at how Congress has debased itself and believe declarations or war or authorizations of military action should be more common and that the Congress needs to grow and reassert its powers, but POTUS supposedly followed through on the constitutional limits to this by telling the Gang on what was coming, and it would be folly to expect the Founders would have allowed a mortal threat like what the Iranian Regime had already done and was claiming to be capable of manifesting to play out just because Congress had not put it to a vote.
Depends on how you count but often far more.
No, but Obama grasped far more concerning powers beyond the scope of the law, as we are seeing with the barely closeted censorship. I also opposed his bombing of Libya, not because I defend Gaddafi or believe he did not deserve it so much as because of legalistic limitations that he did not dot the Is and Cross the Ts, and because I did not believe they had plans for any kind of better alternative. But as far as Obama’s overreaches went Libya was relatively minor and not even explicitly in contravention, and tie in with US.
Sadly “Pen and Phone” Obama has worsened it. But again, even among those whom do not find checks and balances controversial, the scope of the ways to check one another and things like the reactivity Are. Because again, this is a Constitution written for the turn of two centuries ago, where it was believed Congress might meet once a year and the SOTU would be delivered by letter, and it was understood that not all threats would wait.
Probably trying to but I doubt Just that.
Iran doesn’t “still have” control of the Strait, and it’s amazing how people trying to spin results that Iran’s prior leadership viewed as miserable failures during the 1980s Tanker War are conflated with “control.” Indeed, it’s lodged to the UN some rather jaw dropping adjustments such as claiming the Strait is open to all “non-hostile” shipping, essentially abandoning nearly half a century of pretenses to be able to shut the Strait to all non-allied shipping in the event of a conflict, and even older pretenses to being the rightful hegemon of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
Traffic is down to a trickle and it’s harder to assess due to the number of AIS and Transponder turn offs, but as I pointed out to Baghdad Bauxite there is a steady stream of people making bank defying the Mullahs. Even at the apogee of their power Lloyds of London estimated the Iranians were able to force the compliance of 60-70% of all ships with transponders on, meaning that at “best” 30-40% of ships with their transponders on were telling them to do something anatomically impossible with themselves, and presumably the vast majority of those with their transponders off (who were also the main forces transiting) did as well.
And again, in the Tanker War of the 1980s that was the Iranian Regime’s inspiration for its naval doctrine it inflicted thousands of casualties and sank or damaged dozens of tankers. Now IIRC it has sunken a tugboat and killed maybe 13 or so sailors, meaning it is trading at a negative for *Allied combatants and neutral sailors put together* against *IRGC and IRN Speedboats.*
To say this is not tenable for them is an understatement.
I think it is worth listening to, even if skeptically. I’m not fond of the “Drumpf only ever wins, he will make us sick of winning, he is always a stable genius” narrative, and I’ve criticized him plenty. But he is far smarter in his areas of expertise than many give him credit for and has actively sought out others.
The USN has been prepping for a Straits of Hormuz war for half a century, and the Maduro Snatch and the slow, gradual buildup should have convinced anyone that Trump is capable of 4D chess, even if he doesn’t always do it successfully.
I mean he can’t just speak victory into existence, and has had to cooperate heavily with the Israelis and the Iranian opposition, but he’s obtained significant success. And there aren’t many more control levers than naval and aerial supremacy as well as the ability to kill more senior Iranian leadership than they can kill or wound US and Israeli troops plus neutral sailors. And it’s certainly better than letting them sponsor terrorists across the world killing thousands of Americans with almost impunity.
Suffice it to say some of my friends (including a guy who had to get an Honorable Medical Discharge due to how service was screwing with his body and marriage) have something to say about the Mullahs.
And unfortunately this is another case where what he could deliver was limited by what the other guys can do. Since Iran has been at war with us for decades, and again there’s only so much you can do when they try to assassinate you, the President of the US, directly.
So would I, but that distinguishes us from the likes of the Ayatollahs in Iran, who view holy war as a religious commandment and a quick road to heaven and paradise on Earth.
I’m reminded of the Kingston Trio’s “Good Reuben James” about a US Navy ship sunk even before the formal entry of the US into WWII by a Nazi Submarine.
And particularly the sort of end, though I think it is well worth listening to for the full effect.
Turler: “Wars have a way of getting away from you.”
They do, don’t they?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpd575n1znzo
@Steve Sailer
Firstly: TurTler, not Turler. Like a Turtle. Easy mistake to make, so no worries.
Secondly: that quote was not original to me but my responding to Bill.
Thirdly:
Not sure why you linked that; beyond wonder at how the BBC will do just about anything to hate on Israel in particular and Jews in specific, even to the point of highlighting one scumbag IDF fucker destroying a Christian statute in Lebanon.
Fortunately, wars and armies do often “get away” from those commanding them and Israel is no exception. What matters is how they institutionally deal with the scumbags.
Fortunately that’s a test Netanyahu and Israel passed with flying colors.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/21/middleeast/israeli-soldiers-damaged-christ-figure-intl
Now if only the Jew haters and concern trolls and faux Christian concern trolls would give a scintilla of the care they pretended to show about this about the cultural genocide and outright murders of Christians at the hands of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamist elements of the Nigerian government. But in any case, Israel is deeply flawed (and as a Christian I can gripe about how we quite literally had one of the most esteemed Orthodox rabbis identify the savior as Yeshua and that was still not enough to convince many), but it at least tried to learn things like the Parable of the Good Samaritan far better than some I can think of. Hence why the statue of the Murdered Savior rose again – not unlike his mortal form did – and all the vandals got for their trouble was infamy and an express trip to the brig in cuffs along with explicit, public condemnation by the Israeli government.
If only others were so dutiful.
Thanks Turtler. Also – Wow! I appreciate the extensive and well-written response.
I don’t have time at the moment to respond (and am going to have to take your word on a lot of it) but I did want to say that I never voted for Obama, and I think his “stroke of a pen, law of the land, pretty cool” comment regarding EOs to be very destructive to our constitutional order (not that he is the first president to govern like that).
Regarding performative EOing, Trump has taken it to the next level from my perspective, partially because Congress has decided to emasculate itself. Performative because many of his EOs got/will get struck down in court anyway. You can’t just end birthright citizenship with an EO, for example. no, I don’t want to argue with you guys about birthright citizenship).
OK, I’ll bite.
Who might that be?
@Barry Meislin
Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, who went into a trance mid session and claimed to have a vision from God, leaving the supposed name of the Messiah in a note that – once hnpuzzled – identified the name “Yeshua.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M6_kVMed26A
Was more notable since Rabbi Kaduri had previously been a harsh (though not sadistic or irrational) critic of Christianity.
Now to be 100% clear, the note only identifies the supposed name of the Messiah as Yeshua. Meaning that literally speaking it does not necessarily claim that the Messiah is the Yeshua from Galilee, Son of God, Born of Mary, Stepson of Joseph and Brother of James etc etc, it could theoretically be referring to another, different Yeshua. And then there’s the question of if the note is – ya know – actually correct at all.
But it is still pretty jaw dropping.
To hear an argument from the con side:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=68e2Ve5wZSQ
I am biased granted but even considering that Rabbi Singer has struck me as being rather dishonest before, but I would feel remiss if I did not at least offer the Devil’s Advocate.
Thanks!
Let’s hope that the Holy One Blessed Be He is truly a forgiving God…