Hasn’t that been the case for quite some time? Their approach at the moment continues to be to make passage through the Strait difficult and to bomb the Gulf States and other Arab countries in order to harm US military personnel based there and to get those states to pressure the US to stop.

None of this is new.

Two or three (two killed, one missing) US military members were killed over the weekend in Jordan:

The Pentagon said the soldiers were supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, the name for the U.S. mission against the Islamic State group.

One more military member died from a drone attack in Iraq. However, the article says that was a “controlled detonation” – so was it an accident in which an unexploded drone was being purposely detonated and something went wrong? Seems that way, but the articles I’ve found on the subject aren’t entirely clear.

RIP.

The post There’s plenty of news on the Iran war appeared first on The New Neo.

From commenter “Gregory Harper”:

Do the mullahs really seek martyrdom? Probably not. They’ve had their chances and have always declined. They like wealth and power and martyrdom is for the gullible little people. Do I want them to obtain a nuclear weapon to test the theory that they wouldn’t actually use it? Nope.

I agree that they don’t seek martyrdom. They could do that easily enough, by becoming suicide bombers or standing in the middle of the street holding a sign saying, “Great Satan and Small Satan, here I am!” What they do seek is the destruction of the Jews and the West, and the spread of Islam – particularly their own brand of Shia Islam – all over the world, with them in charge.

But despite this, they’re willing to become martyrs if along the way they happen to meet that fate. It’s a win/win situation for them. They try to avoid martyrdom because they like power, plus they think they will be able, while alive, to steer the world towards the glorious goal of Islamic supremacy and takeover for which they aim. So they try to stay alive if they can. But not at the expense of wreaking havoc and seeking to wreak more.

And they’re fine with martyring their own people, even children. Those supposed keys to paradise they gave the mine-clearing children during the war with Iraq, for example – I don’t think that was just a cynical ploy. They were fine with the children dying because their belief is that those children would become blessed martyrs, too. The children’s lives are cheap; their deaths would be in order to effect the same victory for which the mullahs yearn, and their deaths are of no real consequence to the mullahs. And of course killing infidels, or apostates, or Iranian women whose hair in insufficiently covered – that’s okay too, to the mullahs.

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Yesterday Vance appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and said some things that indicate agreement with Carlson. Here’s a report:

JD Vance has claimed he is the target of an Israeli-funded propaganda campaign over his Iran peace push, and that Jeffrey Epstein had ties to the ‘highest levels’ of Mossad.

The vice president made the explosive allegations during a nearly three-hour sit-down with podcaster Joe Rogan.

Vance pointed to a Time magazine report he said proved American influencers were being paid to attack the Iran deal. The report notes that money has flowed through a former Trump campaign operative and is bankrolled by elements of the Israeli government.

‘My response to that is, well, go to hell,’ Vance said of those taking the cash to smear him. The vice president, who complained he has been branded an anti-Semite, declared that Israel is losing the public opinion battle in America.

He also said that ‘figures’ inside the Israeli government are manipulating American public opinion to keep the war going ‘indefinitely.’

Vance then shifted to the administration’s handling of the Epstein scandal, revealing that the disgraced financier ‘clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence’ and ‘Israeli intelligence.’

These are claims that have been aired by the Tucker wing for quite some time, and the evidence for them is extremely poor and mostly rumor and innuendo. The following is about Vance’s allegation about Israel sabotaging the peace negotiations, which he says he based on an article in Time:

… [T]here is apparently a “very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign” to derail negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, according to Vice President JD Vance on Joe Rogan’s show last night. Why is the Vice President perpetuating this dubious claim? The reason is simple: it benefits him too.

Much like other theories that find a home on Rogan’s podcast, this one is thinly sourced and vastly misinterpreted. The article Vance cites for this conspiracy does indeed point to an Israeli-funded influence operation—a FARA-registered, Israeli-government-funded campaign, run through political consultant Brad Parscale’s Clock Tower X, pushing pro-Israel content into the MAGA ecosystem, including through paid influencers who reportedly received suggested language via private group chats and compensation tied to engagement.

Where the article cuts against him is on the one point his whole story depends on: that this was a deliberate campaign built “to derail the negotiations” and keep the war going indefinitely. The Time magazine reporting establishes no such intent. Per the article, the contracted goal was preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel—a reputation campaign, not an anti-ceasefire operation. The sabotage motive is Vance’s attribution, not the reporting’s finding.

And the two people best positioned to know deny his version.

So, whatever you think of Vance’s using a Time story as support for his allegations, he’s not even citing it properly.

Vance was heavily involved in the negotiations with Iran. Now he’s indicating that he didn’t fail; Israel stabbed him in the back. I wonder if this sort of statement on Vance’s part represents a rift between Vance and Trump on this or whether Vance is doing this with Trump’s permission, to keep the Tuckeresque right in the GOP camp for the midterms.

Another statement of Vance’s is somewhat in the same vein:

Vance then shifted to the administration’s handling of the Epstein scandal, revealing that the disgraced financier ‘clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence’ and ‘Israeli intelligence.’

When Rogan noted that most people believe Epstein was working for Mossad, the vice president did not dispute it. Vance noted that it was Mossad ‘or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country or both.’

Vance, who described himself as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ on Epstein, said that anything tying the pedophile to spy agencies was likely destroyed after 2006 – when the financier was first arrested.

Get it? Epstein was a Mossad agent but he conveniently destroyed the evidence, so we can never know.

Actually, Epstein had “connections” to a lot of people who had nothing to do with his pedophilia; he was a famous guy with a lot of money and influence. I would have hoped this sort of insinuation would be beneath Vance, but apparently not:

On Epstein, the vice president agreed with Rogan that the financier was running an operation to pressure or compromise powerful people.

‘I will go to my deathbed believing there’s a story there,’ Vance said, though he admitted he cannot prove it.

‘And I promise you there’s not some document, at least that I’m hiding, that allows us to prove exactly what was going on and how.’

There, Vance sounds like Candace Owens, who likes to say she doesn’t know-know but she knows.

More here:

Asked by Rogan how he was being attacked, Vance pointed to social media posts and leaks to reporters.

“They’re attacking me obsessively, saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran. We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely,” he said.

Vance said critics had accused him of being influenced by Qatar and other foreign governments and of taking “marching orders from Tucker Carlson.” …

“When I open up the pages of Time Magazine and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing, and, oh, by the way, many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways, you know, my response to that is, well, go to hell,” Vance said.

Boo hoo, those Israeli-funded meanies were attacking him and that’s why Iran didn’t just give in to his brilliant negotiations.

It’s also of relevance that Vance chose the Joe Rogan podcast to air these grievances against Israel and these excuses for himself. Rogan is not Israel-friendly, nor is his main audience. I doubt Vance would go on Tucker’s show – Vance is smart, and he knows better than that. But Rogan’s show is the next best thing without being especially controversial.

For quite some time I’ve hoped that Rubio is the GOP presidential candidate in 2028. I’m certainly open to other possibilities, but so far Vance is not one of them.

[NOTE: When Carlson decided to split from the Republican Party, I wondered who he’d be supporting for the presidency in 2028. For a while I considered that Tucker himself might want to run. But now it occurs to me that it’s possible that he’d be supporting Vance for the head of a third party. This would be disastrous, IMHO, and could easily cause a Democrat to win if enough people ended up supporting Vance.

I’m not saying this will happen. I still think Vance wants to be the GOP nominee. But if he doesn’t get the nomination, I can easily imagine a situation in which he goes third-party to ally with Tucker and Tucker’s followers.]

The post Vance reveals himself, and it’s not pretty appeared first on The New Neo.

Another conundrum trying to understand the mind of leftists. I know…an impossible task. But someone explain to me why the ones I know enthusiastically cheer every drone strike the Ukrainians make on Russia? Why is that such a just war? I’m not saying it isn’t, but their hypocrisy in not supporting the US getting rid of the 50 year threat of Iran having a nuke. Ukraine good, US bad.

The answer has several elements to it. The first is that the Ukraine War, and our position of helping Ukraine, began during the Biden administration. Had Trump been president and done the exact same thing as the Biden crew in taking Ukraine’s side, the reaction from the left probably would have been much less supportive of Ukraine. In fact, the left might have been against it. On the other hand, Trump’s war against Iran obviously must be condemned by the left, much like everything Trump does.

That’s not all, though. Another factor is that Putin is still connected in their minds to Trump, either by a continuing belief in Russiagate, or just by the idea that they’re both dictators and birds of a feather. Therefore of course the left will support Ukraine rather than Putin in the war (and by the way, I also support Ukraine, but for reasons which I’ve aired before).

Then there’s Israel. The left has come to uniformly hate and demonize Israel, and Israel is a major beneficiary of and military partner in the current war against Iran. Therefore the majority of the left must be on Iran’s side, just as it is mostly on Hamas’ side and on the Palestinians’ side.

So the whole thing is not hypocrisy or even inconsistency if you understand that the left’s guiding principles go like this: Trump bad, Israel bad.

The post Leftists, Ukraine, and Iran appeared first on The New Neo.

… [T]he mullahs have had the ability for some time to put a dirty bomb on the Temple Mount or Tel Aviv . Dirty bomb would actually be more worser than a true nuclear device because of the isotopes involved . 1000 years without the wailing wall.

They have not done so. Maybe we should have just left the crazies alone. We could always kill them later.

I think that sounds like a topic worth tackling.

First, on the dirty bomb question:

While it remains doubtful that Iran has developed a nuclear weapons capability, it is widely believed to have access to sufficient radioactive material for use in dirty bombs, particularly from civilian nuclear and industrial sources.

Unlike nuclear weapons that require fissile materials such as uranium or plutonium, dirty bombs can be assembled using radioactive isotopes from civilian sources such as cesium?137, cobalt?60, or americium?241, paired with conventional explosives. Though not designed for mass lethality, a well-placed dirty bomb can cause localized surface contamination, psychological trauma, and economic disruption, as well as significant cleanup costs …

Depending on their size, most dirty bombs and similar devices can only impact an area the size of 1-2 city blocks, but winds can disperse the radioactive particles over a few square miles …

This potential form of asymmetric escalation fits within Iran’s doctrine of warfare and long-standing reliance on proxy actors, offering a plausible but risky retaliatory tool, should Tehran perceive that it faces an existential threat …

The article mentions that Iran could use Hezbollah or the Houthis as the conduit. It also states what is rather obvious, which is that fear of massive retaliation – perhaps nuclear retaliation – could also discourage a dirty bomb’s use. In my opinion, that’s one reason why Iran has been so eager to pursue its own conventional nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles – to finesse such retaliation.

In addition, the article points out that a dirty bomb could end up hurting Israel’s Muslim neighbors, because the radiation is difficult to control and unpredictable.

Therefore, I don’t think it’s at all surprising that Iran has never used a dirty bomb. I also think – as I’ve written before – that Iran’s leaders are somewhat unpredictable because they display a mix of pragmatism and of extreme apocalyptic fanaticism. Which tendency will win out, and when? We can’t afford to risk finding out if it’s the apocalyptic fanaticism, but does the current war increase or decrease that danger? Iran is also not just a self-contained tyranny only affecting the Iranian people, but has ambitions (some of which have already been carried out) of takeover of other countries and the spread of worldwide Islamic terrorist jihadism against other Muslim counties and the West.

Here’s another relevant article:

[Trump’s] methods [of deal-making] have produced impressive results in all sorts of unexpected areas, but for them to work, his counterparts need to be rational actors capable of understanding and acting in their own self interest.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a rational actor.

From its very earliest inception, the Islamic Republic of Iran has mirrored founder Ayatollah Khomeini’s belief that the United States (“the Great Satan”) and Israel (“the Little Satan”) are affronts to Islam that must be fought and destroyed. Catspaws Hezbollah and Hamas believe that the founding of Israel (“the Zionist entity”) was a literal affront to God that must be expunged through violent jihad. …

And don’t forget that Iran’s fundamentalist Twelver Shiia regime has devout apocalyptic eschatological beliefs about the return of the occulted Mahdi, one in which the Islamic Republic will create the conditions to hasten his return and reign before the Day of Judgment. Asking them to stop supporting terrorism in the wake of bombing and hyperinflation is like asking an Evangelical to give up their belief in the Rapture and the Second Coming in order to lower their gasoline bill. By the standards of economics, traditional geopolitics and game theory, they cannot be considered “rational actors.”

Some observers have argued that the U.S. has already “won” the war against Iran by shattering its nuclear program, decapitating its leadership and destroying numerous military assets while taking extremely few casualties. But the United States won just about every battle it fought in Afghanistan and Vietnam, but still lost those wars by letting its adversaries survive.

We’re not going to be putting boots on the ground in Iran. It’s a big country with a deeply entrenched (and somewhat decentralized) military, and ruthlessly devoted to putting down dissent in a violent manner. Regine change is probably necessary for victory, but at this point I don’t see how it can be achieved, or how regime change for the better could be guaranteed. But leaving the regime in place just kicks the can down the road.

Without such change, this sort of thing is inevitable:

Alarming new satellite images show signs that the Iranian regime appears to be rebuilding its suspected nuclear facilities at Pickaxe Mountain and Parchin.

Footage of both areas – which sustained extensive damage during US and Israeli-led bombing campaigns that began in late February – reveal “major signs” of activity …

The regime puts these efforts very high on its “must do” list.

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I happened to see this relevant clip yesterday. I’ve cued up a one-minute excerpt:

However, I don’t think Trump is necessarily finished with negotiating, no matter what he says.

The post Trump and Rubio on Iran appeared first on The New Neo.

But note the qualifiers such as “I think”:

There may be somewhat of a distinction between the people they’ve been talking to and the people in charge of decisions to attack, although Trump doesn’t say that in those remarks. But many of us have speculated that those two groups are not quite the same.

Trump also leaves some wiggle room for negotiations to continue. In other words, we still don’t know where this will go. Trump is highly motivated to keep oil prices down before the midterms, and the Iranians know it. That’s a huge factor in all of this. Note, also, that he’s not threatening to bomb them into the Stone Age (or even the Bronze Age).

The post Trump says talks with Iran are off … appeared first on The New Neo.

The U.S. strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.

What’s more, there’s this:

President Trump is officially REVOKING the US license that allowed Iran to sell their oil, after the mullahs STRUCK vessels in the Strait of Hormuz — Reuters

The US says Iran’s actions WILL be met with consequences.

How does that get enforced? Does the US once again block Iranian ships from leaving the country and getting through the Stait?

The post Things heat up with Iran appeared first on The New Neo.

Rubio’s attitude and the tenor of his message contrasts at least somewhat with that of Vance. Rubio seems more realistic to me in terms of what he’s saying. Of course, neither is in charge; Trump is. And the Rubio/Vance contrast – which is more one of emphasis, I think – may be intentional, with Rubio presenting to Iran as the “bad cop” and Vance the “good cop.”

The video isn’t all that long. But it highlights the important bits, with commentary. I watched it like I watch most talking heads videos: speeded up. But if you don’t have the patience to watch, here’s a very short excerpt I think is important. Rubio has a very clear way of stating things; here he’s asked about the attitude of the current Iranian leaders and whether they are religious fanatics:

The post Rubio speaks on the topic of the Iran MOU appeared first on The New Neo.

The U.S.-Iran summit in Switzerland has run into trouble on its third day, with both sides making conflicting claims. A day after Vice President JD Vance hailed a ‘major milestone’ in talks, declaring Iran had agreed to allow United Nations inspectors back into the country, the Iranian negotiators denied the claim.

There’s much more at the link, if you’re interested.

The post Iran again. Or not. appeared first on The New Neo.