Hi there, !
Fri 06/27/2025 Thu 06/26/2025 Wed 06/25/2025 Tue 06/24/2025 Archives
Rantburg
558859 articles and 1927213 comments are archived on Rantburg.

Today: 53 articles and 28 comments as of 5:55.
Post a news link    Post your own article   
Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT    Local News    Politix   
Gunmen kill 17 soldiers in northern Nigeria attacks
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 4: Opinion
0 [13] 
0 [12] 
1 01:53 Skidmark [28] 
2 02:44 Skidmark [38] 
0 [25] 
0 [22] 
0 [18] 
0 [22] 
Page 1: WoT Operations
1 02:20 Grom the Affective [31]
0 [21]
0 [18]
0 [24]
0 [26]
1 01:18 Grom the Affective [36]
0 [24]
1 01:40 Skidmark [30]
0 [21]
0 [24]
0 [22]
Page 2: WoT Background
0 [12]
1 02:21 Grom the Affective [25]
0 [14]
0 [13]
0 [13]
1 00:09 Skidmark [39]
3 02:14 Grom the Affective [33]
3 05:41 Besoeker [38]
0 [24]
2 02:38 trailing wife [34]
1 00:12 Skidmark [33]
0 [17]
0 [20]
0 [17]
3 05:20 NN2N1 [39]
2 02:29 Grom the Affective [39]
Page 3: Non-WoT
0 [23]
0 [12]
0 [16]
1 05:17 NN2N1 [26]
1 02:18 Grom the Affective [29]
1 02:06 NN2N1 [36]
0 [16]
0 [17]
3 04:51 Seeking Cure For Ignorance [42]
0 [19]
1 11:38 Skidmark [40]
Page 5: Russia-Former Soviet Union
0 [14]
0 [14]
0 [15]
0 [17]
0 [14]
Page 6: Politix
0 [15]
1 02:17 Skidmark [34]
-Lurid Crime Tales-
Democrat Memphis Mayor Almost Kidnapped After Going Tough On Crime. (Good reportage on crime there)
[YouTube] Crime in Memphis is so bad… they tried to kidnap the mayor. In this eye-opening video, we dive into the shocking rise—and sudden fall—of violent crime in Memphis, Tennessee. From viral billboards calling to "defund the police" to property crime destroying lives and livelihoods, Memphis has been in a state of emergency. Newly elected Mayor Paul Young
…Democrat, BS electrical engineering, MS city planning, MBA, so he should be more analytical/logical than most Democratic politicians. Here’s hoping he really does turn the city around…
vowed to clean up the streets, and initial data shows he’s made real progress—but not everyone’s happy. Trenton Abston allegedly scaled the mayor's wall, armed with a taser and rope, demanding answers. Was it a confrontation… or an attempted kidnapping? We break down everything, from the crime epidemic to the justice system’s contradictions, and ask: Is this what justice looks like in America’s crime capitals?


Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Ulailet+Thud3602 || 06/27/2025 00:00 || Comments || Link || [18 views] Top|| File under:


-Great Cultural Revolution
Startling new figures show how migrants are ballooning America's population
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Immigration has had such a strong impact on American demographics that it is helping counteract the nation's declining birth rates, new data has revealed.

Birth rates across the US have steadily declined year-on-year, but a Census Bureau report published Thursday reveals America's population gain last year was largest it has ever been.
Birth rates go up when the populace trusts the future will be good, and down when they don’t, ie. up during Republican administrations and down under Democrats, at least starting during the Obama presidency. This is offset by the aging of the Baby boom bulge, so what we’re seeing is the net effect after four horrible years under the Biden Politburo. It will be very interesting to see the numbers by age cohort at the end of Trump 47.
The older population, adults aged 65 and above, climbed by 3.5 per cent from 2023 to 2024, figures show.

The number of youths - people under 18 - nationwide has continued to drop annually, with last year recording a decline of 0.2 per cent.

Although women are having fewer children, America's population is growing, especially among the Hispanic, Asian and black communities - which experts largely attribute to a rise in immigration.

The Hispanic or Latino population increased by 1.9 million last year, an increase larger than that of all other race or ethnicity groups combined.

The Asian and black populations rose by 4.2 and 1 per cent, respectively. America's white population was the only population that dropped, declining 0.1 per cent.

Census data doesn't say whether illegal immigration contributed to these figures, although the number of people intercepted crossing the border has slumped since President Donald Trump began his second term.

'This past year, the population gain was bigger than it's ever been before,' Bill Frey, a specialist in American demographics, told the Washington Post. 'Overall, it's because of immigration.'

The Asian population recorded the fastest growth - at 4.2 per cent or an increase of 898,113 people - in the US from 2023 and 2024.

California experienced the largest increase in its Asian population, followed by Texas.

The report notes that Texas' annual growth rate of 6.9 per cent was 'substantially faster' than the recorded 2.7 per cent in California.

America's Hispanic population, including both immigration and births, has increased by 9.7 per cent from April 2020 to July 2024.

Latinos, for the first time ever, now account for 20 per cent of the total population.

Despite this group growing the second-fastest nationwide, data shows that only nine states recorded that Hispanics accounted for one-fifth of their total population.

The white population was the only population that dropped between 2023 and 2024, declining 0.1 per cent or by 226,072 people.

Experts say the historic rise in immigration has largely contributed to population growth, as especially since the number of children being in the country is declining.

America's older population increased from 12.4 per cent in 2004 to 18 per cent 2024, the census bureau report revealed, while the share of children declined from 25 per cent to 21.5 per cent over the same period.

The gap between the two age groups dropped from 20 million in 2020 to just under 12 million last year.

'Children still outnumber older adults in the United States, despite a decline in births this decade,' Lauren Bowers, chief of the bureau's Population Estimates Branch, said.

'However, the gap is narrowing as baby boomers continue to age into their retirement years. In fact, the number of states and counties where older adults outnumber children is on the rise, especially in sparsely populated areas.'

Trump's administration has prioritized policies to encourage more people to have children, including tax incentives for parents, paid family leave, child subsidies, and his proposed $1,000 investment accounts for babies born during his tenure in office.

Trump, at the same time, has carried out a sweeping immigration crackdown that has removed millions of illegal migrants from the US.


Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Skidmark || 06/27/2025 00:00 || Comments || Link || [22 views] Top|| File under: Migrants/Illegal Immigrants


-Land of the Free
ICE director reassures Americans they can feel safe on Fourth of July despite recent warnings
[JustTheNews] Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons emphasized that federal law enforcement officers have been preparing for the upcoming holiday for months, including working with local law enforcement, and Americans should not fear large events next week.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Skidmark || 06/27/2025 02:21 || Comments || Link || [12 views] Top|| File under:


Economy
Trump has 'outsmarted all of us' admits backpedaling economist who bashed President's bold plan
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A world-renowned economist has changed his tune on President Donald Trump's tariffs.

Torsten Sløk, a chief economist at Apollo Global Management, posted a new note admitting that his initial reaction to the policy may have been wrong.

'Maybe the administration has outsmarted all of us,' he wrote.

The admission comes just months after Sløk warned the tariffs would be ‘painful’ and economically destabilizing.

Experts speaking to DailyMail.com warned that Americans should take his note with a grain of salt.

But now, he's framing the President’s policy as a clever long-game — one that invites global negotiation while increasing federal revenue.

In the note, Sløk outlined a potential scenario: the White House could maintain its current tariff rates — 10 percent on most imports, 30 percent on Chinese goods — and give trade partners a year to negotiate with the White House.

Extending the current 90-day pause on new tariffs, he argued, would give American companies time to plan ahead and could help stabilize markets.

'This would seem like a victory for the world and yet would produce $400 billion of annual revenue for US taxpayers,' he added.

The timing is key. Trump's 90-day pause on new tariffs, announced in April, is set to expire on July 9.

Without an extension, the tariffs would immediately increase, with billions of dollars worth of products suddenly incurring more taxes.

But if the President extends the pause but keeps tariffs where they are, Sløk says the policy could offer clarity for companies and leverage in negotiations.

Sløk's sudden, tepid support for the tariffs is an about-face. He initially criticized the import taxes, saying they threatened business stability, Wall Street's record highs, and the stability of US treasury bonds.

'The short-run effects of a trade war [are] certainly painful,' the economist told Yahoo Finance in February.

And not everyone is convinced. Neil Saunders, a retail expert at GlobalData, warned that they will mostly impact American consumers.

'Tariffs, at any level, increase the cost of doing business,' he told DailyMail.com. 'If tariff rates remain at current levels, prices should only increase modestly – although these hikes will come off the back of years of pretty hefty inflation.'

He added: 'The problem is, no one knows what will happen to tariffs. The policy has been erratic and remains uncertain.'

Trump has also been ramping up pressure on both domestic and global fronts while trying to start negotiations with nearly every country around the world.

At home, he's pushing Republicans to pass the sweeping 'Big Beautiful Bill' by July 4 — a legislative package that could outline his domestic agenda, but has drawn criticism from some of his most prominent allies.

Elon Musk, the biggest donor in the 2024 Presidential election, called it a 'disgusting abomination.'

At the same time, the President has escalated his rhetoric on Iran since America bombed the country's nuclear facilities.

In a Sunday night post on Truth Social, he wrote: 'It's not politically correct to use the term, "Regime Change," but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!'

As the tariff deadline approaches, the biggest unknown remains whether Trump is bluffing on country-by-country negotiations — or if the higher import taxes are here to stay.

'Unless their name is President Donald Trump,' Saunders said, 'anyone saying they know what will happen to tariffs is not being completely honest.'
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Skidmark || 06/27/2025 00:23 || Comments || Link || [38 views] Top|| File under:




Home Front: Politix
In Historic 6-3 Supreme Court Decision, 3 Justices Ruled To Be Morons
[Babylon Bee] WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ramifications were predicted to be felt for generations after today, as in a historic 6-3 Supreme Court decision, 3 justices were ruled to be morons.

The ruling came near the end of the U.S. Supreme Court's current term, leaving legal analysts around the country saying that the decision was sure to have a long-lasting impact on all future cases.

"This was a ruling that shifts the balance in the country," one expert said. "According to this 6-3 decision, three of the justices sitting on the Supreme Court are morons, with the three morons themselves providing the dissenting opinion."

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, stating unequivocally that the dissenting justices were, in fact, idiots. "The evidence was clear," Thomas said. "Three of our colleagues are babbling fools. It is the opinion of this court that this be recognized and applied accordingly to all future cases brought before the court. Let the record also show that one of my dissenting colleagues got a pencil eraser stuck in her ear during closing arguments."

The dissenting opinion, written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, provided insight into the court's reasoning. "What does ’dissent' mean?" Jackson asked. "How can the court conceivably rule that three of its justices are ’morons' when there remains no consensus among the justices of what a woman is? Someone said Justice Kagan is an example of a woman, but she sure doesn't look like one to me. Also, what is an ’opinion?'"

At publishing time, the court had issued an amended ruling on the case that would require all of the moron justices to pass a literacy test before joining in any future opinions.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Frank G || 06/27/2025 00:00 || Comments || Link || [25 views] Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats


The Icarian Gene: The Rise and Fall of the Expert Class
[Johnathon Turley] The warning was stark. At issue was a privileged class that has long dictated policy despite countervailing public opinion. At issue, the luminary warned, is nothing short of democracy itself. No, it was not the continued rallies of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., VT) to “fight oligarchy.” It was Justice Clarence Thomas rallying his colleagues to fight technocracy, or government by experts. He warned against allowing “elite sentiment” to “distort and stifle democratic debate.” Yet, the story is even more profound of an elite class which succumbed to the Icarian gene and fell to Earth due to hubris and excess.

In his concurrence in United States v. Skrmetti, a case upholding Tennessee’s ban on adolescent transgender treatments, Thomas called for his colleagues to stand against an “expert class” that has dictated both policy and legal conclusions in the United States.

The reference to “experts” is often used to insulate an opinion as self-evidently true on a given question when they speak as a group. It distinguishes the informed from the casual; the certifiably authoritative from the merely interested. Yet, what constitutes an “expert” can be little more than an advanced degree, and the “overwhelming opinion of experts” can be little more than groupthink.

Thomas warned his colleagues that “[t]here are particularly good reasons to question the expert class here, as recent revelations suggest that leading voices in this area have relied on questionable evidence, and have allowed ideology to influence their medical guidance.”

Indeed, those “good reasons” have become increasingly obvious to those outside of the Beltway. The public saw experts line up during the pandemic to support mandatory uses of surgical masks, shutting down schools, and requiring the ruinous six-foot rule of separation. Many of these rules were later found lacking in scientific support. At the same time, dissenting experts, including the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, were blacklisted, censored, or fired for challenging these views.

We have seen the same orthodoxy on issues ranging from gender dysphoria to COVID measures.

In his concurrence, Thomas lashed out at the virtual mantra in court papers and the media of an “overwhelming medical consensus” in favor of transitioning children. This is often cited as the conclusive judgment of experts as opposed to citizens who overwhelmingly oppose treatments for children, including castration or surgical removal of genitalia. Thomas insisted that “so-called experts have no license to countermand the ‘wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.’”

For decades, citizens largely identified the government with bringing modern approaches to programs eliminating long-standing social ills from poverty to illiteracy to inequality. Roughly 100 years ago, the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt transformed the government’s role in American life. A generation of experts brought new ideas of electrification, education, and economics to the country.

This veneration was furthered by Kennedy’s assemblage of “the best and the brightest” and Johnson’s “Great Society” reformers.

The courts later followed with greater and greater deference afforded to these experts, including the establishment of the “Chevron doctrine” insulating agency decisions from substantial judicial review. The Supreme Court ruled that courts were poorly equipped to second-guess the expertise of agency experts.

The Reagan Revolution challenged those assumptions. Reagan famously told voters that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

Over the years, the mystique took on a more menacing aspect for many in the country as they watched academic and scientific groups become more advocates than experts. There seemed to be a shift from making for a better life to making us better people through progressive social agendas.

The result has been a dramatic change in trust for higher education and, by extension, the supremacy of the expert class. According to Gallup, only a third of Americans today have great confidence in higher education and roughly the same number have little or no confidence. That is a drop of over twenty percent in the last ten years.

Other polling shows drops in the trust for state and local public health officials as well as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The decline of the expert class can be traced to the changes in higher education over the last couple of decades. As I discuss in my book The Indispensable Right, an orthodoxy has taken hold of most universities with a purging of conservative, libertarian, and dissenting faculty. Within these ideological echo chambers, appointments, publications, and grants often seem to turn on conclusions that favor political agendas.

Over the years, dissenting faculty members have been forced out of scientific and academic organizations for challenging preferred conclusions on subjects ranging from transgender transitions to COVID-19 protections to climate change. Some were barred from speaking at universities or blacklisted for their opposing views.

As shown during COVID, many of the exiled experts were ultimately proven correct in challenging the efficacy of surgical masks or the need to shut down our schools and businesses. Scientists moved like a herd of lemmings on the origin of the virus, crushing those who suggested that the most likely explanation is a lab leak (a position that federal agencies would later embrace).
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/27/2025 00:00 || Comments || Link || [22 views] Top|| File under:


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
VDH: In the End, Everyone Hated The Iranian Theocracy

Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Skidmark || 06/27/2025 02:35 || Comments || Link || [13 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran


Iran's Flying Monkeys
[Tablet Magazine] A few months before he was buried under the rubble of his Beirut bunker, the late leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, repeated to his followers, as he had done many times before, his famous line that Israel was "weaker than a spider’s web." That is, Israel was an artificial implant that structurally was bound to collapse. All it needed was sustained violence and patience. The end result was inevitable: Israel would vanish from the map with a wave of the hand.

The fantasy that Nasrallah peddled to his followers and "resistance" fans was not, on its face, entirely ungrounded. Iran, a much larger country than Israel, with 10 times the population, was a rising power. Its regional reach spanned from the Gulf to the Mediterranean. It had established missile bases on Israel’s borders and on a critical maritime passageway in the Red Sea. It controlled four Arab capitals and dominated the landmass across Iraq through Syria into Lebanon. In addition, Iran was allied with the United States’ two great rivals, Russia and China. In short, for Nasrallah and the resistance faithful, it appeared certain that Iran was inexorably ascendant.

In reality, Iran’s winning hand was a mirage. It took Israel 21 months to blow through it—15 of which were during a hostile American administration that actively tried to hobble the Israeli effort, to prevent the Iranian Wizard of Oz and his legions of flying monkeys from being scattered to the winds.

Gaza, Iran’s southern front, is now a wasteland, which, if President Donald Trump implements his stated plan, will be emptied of most if not all of its inhabitants—or at least those who choose not to live in rubble. Whether Trump’s Gaza plans rise or fall, it’s unlikely that Israel will ever cede control over the strip’s border with Egypt, which means that Gaza as an active front against Israel is gone for good.

Next to go was Hezbollah, the oldest and best equipped of Iran’s regional terror assets—indeed, the lynchpin of its regional network. Within three months in 2024, Israel eliminated the group’s entire command structure, decimated its infrastructure along the shared border, and blew up its weapons caches. Despite a U.S.-imposed cease-fire, Israel has maintained operational freedom and continues to take out cadres and arms caches inside Lebanon at will, with Hezbollah unable to mount any response.

Not long after Nasrallah’s demise, the other big piece on the Iranian board tumbled. In a matter of days in December 2024, the Assad regime, the Islamic Republic’s strategic ally since the 1979 revolution, was gone. Hollowed out by a decade and a half of war, and with Hezbollah eviscerated and Russia bogged down in Ukraine, the 53-year rule of the Assad family was suddenly history. In its place, a new Sunni regime in Damascus, Syria, is now intercepting weapons shipments to Hezbollah.

Iran’s multiple militias in Iraq, another card in the mullah’s winning fantasy poker hand, didn’t bother to deploy in Syria and have largely been irrelevant in the axis’ confrontation with Israel. While Iran maintains political clout in Baghdad, its militias there have proved worthless as a military instrument in its regional project, as Iraqi Shia turn out to look good only on paper while displaying little motivation to get slaughtered by a superior enemy on behalf of Iranian adventurism.

With its Levantine network in shambles, Tehran’s most relevant proxy over the past 20 months has been the Ansar Allah group (the Houthis) in Yemen. The Houthis have held global shipping in the Red Sea hostage while occasionally lobbing missiles and attack drones at Israel. As a result, they too have been hit hard, by both the IDF and the United States and Britain. In recent days, the Houthis have threatened to resume targeting U.S. ships in the Red Sea, which would likely invite a punishing response.

Finally, there was Iran itself: the home base of the mighty resistance axis. In recent years, Israel had already shown how thoroughly it had penetrated Iran. From the theft of the mullahs’ entire nuclear archive to multiple sabotage operations and high-value targeted assassinations, including taking out Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the heart of Tehran in July 2024, Israel showed the ability to operate with ease throughout Iran—including in the country’s most sensitive and well-guarded places. The country’s intelligence services and decision-making echelons were forced to assume that Israel was privy to the regime’s secrets and could kill its leadership at will.

After making short shrift of Iran’s air defense systems in October, Israel demonstrated its total military superiority this month, gaining full control of Iran’s airspace and going to work on its nuclear facilities, ballistic missiles and launchers, command and control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the nuclear program’s top scientists, clearing the way for the United States to demolish Iran’s three main nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. And with that, Iran’s nuclear dreams went up in smoke, much like its regional enterprise.

Since Israel thrashed Hezbollah a year ago, and the cascade of wins that followed, the global reaction to its achievement has been one of surprise—shock at the comprehensiveness of the Israeli domination and the complete Oz-like hollowness of the Iranians. But the Iranian regional position, much like its nuclear program, was a function not of Iranian strength but most crucially of U.S. support. If the Iranians were illusionists, the fuel for their tricks came from an America that repeatedly wrote monetary and diplomatic checks under the assumption that the magic act was real.

This applied across the board. In Iraq, the American nation-building project ensured the Iranians a sanctions-busting vehicle and protection. Whenever a Sunni revolt against the post-2003 order emerged in Iraq, the Iranians relied on the United States to put it down and prop up Tehran’s assets in the country.

But it was in Syria where Iranian dependence on U.S. protection was most evident. When Syria’s Sunnis rose against Iran’s vassal, Bashar al-Assad, Iran mobilized its Lebanese and Iraqi assets to prop him up. Soon it was sending Afghan and Pakistani Shia into the Syrian theater, too. Still, it wasn’t able to put down the uprising, despite Assad using chemical weapons against population centers.

Yet it turned out that Iran and Assad had little to fear from direct American involvement in Syria. When Tehran’s ally, then President Barack Obama, finally intervened in 2014, it was against the Islamic State group, which the United States and Iran’s Iraqi assets were partnering against in Iraq as well. Regardless, by 2015, Iran’s position in Syria was still wobbly. It required Obama facilitating the entry of Russia’s air force into Syria to help Iran’s militias gain the upper hand, though even that was not enough to take back the whole country.

Similar to Iraq, the American nation-building enterprise in Lebanon was also a condominium with Iran designed to protect Tehran’s holdings. Much as the Obama administration teamed up with Iranian assets in Iraq under the cover of the "anti-ISIS campaign," it did the same in Lebanon behind the veneer of supporting "state institutions," which allowed Hezbollah to protect its flank while prosecuting Iran’s war in Syria. Moreover, at various points before Oct. 7, Washington intervened to dissuade Israel from responding to Hezbollah provocations, locking it instead in diplomatic and even economic arrangements with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon. Even after the group opened the front against Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, the Biden administration deterred Israel from attacking in response. Even the cease-fire the administration announced in November 2024 was reportedly imposed under threat of a U.S.-backed U.N. Security Council resolution against Israel.

The IRGC and its regional proxies all benefited from American protection under the Obama team’s three terms in office. While Obama protected the IRGC from being designated as a foreign terrorist organization, and his deal with Iran removed international sanctions on regime terror chief Qassem Soleimani, the Biden administration likewise removed Yemen’s Houthis from the terror list. With Obama’s help, the IRGC consolidated its position across the region.

U.S. protection and funding—including, for example, the famous 2016 direct payment of $1.7 billion in cash—were at the heart of Obama’s deal with Iran. The JCPOA not only legitimized Iran’s nuclear weapons program but also protected Iran’s nuclear assets with an international, namely American, shield. That shield took the form, among other things, of leaks against potential Israeli preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. In fact, Obama administration officials bragged about blocking Israeli military action, declaring that it was now too late for Israel to do anything: The administration had successfully protected its new ally’s nukes.

For more than a decade, Israel has had to work around this American protective cover. Fear of leaks intended to sabotage Israeli operations was so pervasive under Biden that the Israelis did not give advance notification of the September strike that killed Nasrallah. The following month, ahead of Israeli retaliatory strikes against Iran, the administration made clear its objection to any Israeli targeting of Iranian nuclear or energy facilities. It took Israel as long as it did to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and regional project only because Washington hobbled it for all but six of the past 21 months, between diplomatic pressure and threats, slow-rolling arms deliveries, and micromanaging the Israeli war effort, especially in Gaza.

So what changed? As the past few weeks have demonstrated, the key variable—the difference between a U.S.-protected nuclear Iran that dominates the region, and the geopolitical picture we have today, with Iran cut down to size—is leadership. Any misalignment on either side, in the United States or Israel, could well have prevented the current outcome.

Had the Obama team’s campaign to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded at any point between 2021 and 2024, it seems unlikely that Netanyahu’s American-approved replacement would have been able to successfully navigate the post-Oct. 7 landscape and destroy Iran’s regional project. Likewise, had Trump lost the 2024 election or, worse still, had he not turned his head at that precise moment in Butler, Pennsylvania, the likelihood of American support for the destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons program drops to zero. Remove the great men of history, and everything defaults back to the Obama structural settings on the Democratic and also some of the Republican side of the aisle.

Even now, you can see it in some of the comms environment in Washington, after the U.S. strikes on Iran, where we’re hearing things from both Democrats and Republicans about the need for a "long-term settlement" with Iran, to be accompanied, no doubt, by endless new rounds of negotiations. Over what, exactly? A new and improved JCPOA, after having destroyed all their centrifuges and facilities? Why? Who cares?

President Trump put it best. When asked if he’s interested in restarting negotiations with Iran, the president was dismissive: "I’m not. ... The way I look at it, they fought. The war is done. I could get a statement that they’re not going to go nuclear ... but they’re not going to be doing it anyway. ... I’ve asked [Secretary of State] Marco [Rubio], ’You want to draw up a little agreement for them to sign?’ ... I don’t think it’s necessary."

The president is being praised for using military force while eschewing long-term commitments and entanglements. The corollary of that policy is, properly, for America to walk away after the strikes yet threaten to bomb again should the need arise. Everything else, whether it’s a new "deal" or the hope of "integration" for a "moderate" Iran, is static from the Obama signal.

Why the D.C. establishment, left and right, feels such an intense attachment to Iran defies any rational cost-benefit analysis related to the national interest. It therefore can only be explained by extrinsic factors that are probably best explained by a shrink who specializes in subjects like "white guilt" or "the burdens of empire"—which means I am obliged to take a pass. I can only observe that this attachment is a powerful one that must therefore signify something important to those who continue to feel its attraction, even when the United States and Iran are at war.

Fundamentally, D.C. is a pro-Iran town, where factions on the left and right have shown a core investment in ensuring that Iran has the means and the opportunity to go nuclear as part of their political programs at home. Why? Again, I can only speculate, as it so clearly defies basic calculations of the national interest. Perhaps they see Iran, as Obama did, as a useful tool in factional wars against domestic political rivals.

Luckily for the rest of us, the behavior of D.C. sewer dwellers matters far less now, thanks to President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. The illusion that the D.C. establishment has maintained, hand in hand with Iran, for decades, has been shattered. The proxy armies that formed Iran’s "Axis of Resistance" are no more. We can even pinpoint the moment when Israel pulled the curtain aside: Sept. 27, 2024, the day it killed Nasrallah, whose Iranian masters turned out to be part of the same illusion that he was.

Now that the Ayatollah’s monkeys have scattered, whatever remains or does not remain of Iran’s nuclear program doesn’t much matter, even while anonymous sources in Washington do their best to put cards back into the regime’s hand by claiming that Fordow wasn’t "fully" destroyed and other such irrelevancies. The spell is broken, and the regime’s regional alignment, which was at the heart of both its threat to its neighbors and its strategy of deterrence, has been shattered beyond any hope of easy repair. Now it’s time for Washington and regional leaders alike to deal with reality.


Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Grom the Affective || 06/27/2025 01:06 || Comments || Link || [28 views] Top|| File under:




Who's in the News
24[untagged]
8Govt of Iran
6Migrants/Illegal Immigrants
5Hamas
3Govt of Iran Proxies
3Boko Haram (ISIS)
1Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
1Antifa/BLM
1Govt of Pakistan
1Hezbollah

Bookmark
E-Mail Me

The Classics
The O Club
Rantburg Store
The Bloids
The Never-ending Story
Thugburg
Gulf War I
The Way We Were
Bio

Merry-Go-Blog











On Sale now!


A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
Click here for more information

Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
Frank G
3dc
Skidmark

Two weeks of WOT
Fri 2025-06-27
  Gunmen kill 17 soldiers in northern Nigeria attacks
Thu 2025-06-26
  Lebanese Army says arrested IS Lebanon leader
Wed 2025-06-25
  Iranian - Israeli War News roundup for June 24th, 2025: Both Iran and Israel claim the win, but Iran arrested 700 for spying for Israel, hanged 3 more
Tue 2025-06-24
  President Trump has announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, to be followed by an official end to the war
Mon 2025-06-23
  Iran's parliment votes to mine the Strait of Hormuz
Sun 2025-06-22
  Trump says US has bombed Fordo nuclear plant in attack on Iran UPDATE: Trump bombs 3 nuke sites
Sat 2025-06-21
  American B-2 stealth bombers reportedly take off from US base towards western Pacific
Fri 2025-06-20
  Unconfirmed reports from Tehran that Khamenei's bunker in Lavizan neighborhood was attacked
Thu 2025-06-19
  Iran armed forces urge evacuation of residents in major Israeli cities
Wed 2025-06-18
  US moving fighter jets to Middle East
Tue 2025-06-17
  Afghan National Pleads Guilty to Plotting Election Day Terror Attack in Oklahoma on Behalf of ISIS
Mon 2025-06-16
  Both IRGC head of Intelligence and his deputy were eliminated
Sat 2025-06-14
  Israel has resumed its strikes on Iran, targeting the underground Fordow nuclear facility
Fri 2025-06-13
  Israel launches 'preemptive strikes' on Iran as explosions are heard across Tehran: Jerusalem declares 'special state of emergency' and braces for all-out-war


Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
216.73.216.74
Help keep the Burg running! Paypal:
WoT Operations (11)    WoT Background (16)    Non-WoT (11)    Local News (5)    Politix (2)