Radio War Nerd EMERGENCY EP #585 — US-Israeli War On Iran

Great job on an unfolding situation! To John's amazement at the stupidity of people, I offer Talbot's words from the "Maid of Orleans" by Schiller, "That monumental stupidity that even the Gods rage against in vain." I also very much appreciated your awareness of how much confusion and half truths are floating around and how difficult it is to sort through the propaganda. Just today I read that Trump is holding forth that Iran was about to attack us. Sure, just after the Martians landed. Again, great job. As the war continues, as it surely will, I hope you will keep up the reporting and sifting of false from true.

Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't seen any mention of F35s or B2s flying over Iran. Isn't that the definite evidence that stealth is basically fake?! At least against a "medium power" such as Iran. (As i have seen Iran being designated as) Wonder of this will change the way defence equipment is organised in Natostan

As long as China and Russia "KINETICALLY" stay out this it will just drain the US of all strength. I assume then they can make whatever moves, stepping over or around the husk.

There are reports that the Israelis are attempting to mobilize Kurds in Syria, Iraq and Iran against the Iranian government. Presumably to support a breakaway region in Iran. What exactly is the Turkish response going to be to this, and what are the odds that Trump has even factored this consideration into his own assessment? What is Bibi's assessment? Does he actually want to draw Turkey into a conflict with the U.S. too?

This isn’t going to work. The Islamic Republic will still stand when Trump changes his mind and moves on to the next thing. A few weeks of expensive gas and bad poll numbers and no spontaneous rising up to great the bombs as liberators is all it will take. We’re going to lose this like we lose everything. This country is so horrible and embarrassing.

The Iranian response has been weak. Yes, a few strikes get through but either the US and Israel have effectively targeted Iran's offensive capability, they have not put serious assets at risk, or the Iranian threat was always overblown. Pinging missiles around certainly makes for a fireworks show but at this point nothing Iran has done will in any way deter the US and Israel aggression.

Mark, your point about Trump distracting from the loss in Minneapolis cannot be overstated. For the true Maga supporters, Trump is completely betrayed them on immigration to them even before ICE platform was maybe 10% of what they truly they feel Trump bitched out of Minneapolis. They have this typical whiny loser mentality that they’ve already lost in mid terms in 2028 along with other decisions related to H2B visas .

Mark, I think I heard you say “cache” (cash), meaning a hidden stash of something. Did you mean “cachet” (cashay), meaning special sauce?

I cannot stress enough how stupid america is not just for martyring Khamenei, but leaving Larijani alive.

This is going to sound flippant considering the damage that is going to be done for Iran. But for the world increasingly shifting against Israel, it might be impossible to quantify how important for PR the footage of Israel *constantly* getting hit is. Same as the 12 day war. This is widely accessible footage that entire generations could never dream of occurring lol.

Im willing to say that it is likely (67% chance) this war doesn’t last longer than two weeks. The US and isreal don’t have the air defense to stop missile and drone barrages forever and in some respects, you could say that Iran only has to hit one ship before the US tolerance for casualties is reached, given the reaction to the houthis. You can’t bomb Iran into regime change, even with nuclear weapons so the US strategy is akin to pushing on a string

It will be interesting to see what the new leadership in Iran shapes up to be. A lot of people responded to the assassination by pointing out that he’s not indispensable, which is true. But he is the supreme leader that the state is constitutionally built around. Moreover, Khamenei was quite important to making the Islamic Republic what it is. He very much was the Stalin to Khomeini’s Lenin. Where Khomeini kind of did take the idea that the supreme leader was supposed to be an aloof spiritual head-of-state more seriously because he had the charisma and clerical/personal authority to coral the competing power centers of the early republic. Khamanei, by contrast, was more of a bland operator who built up more mechanisms of formal control, ballooning the supreme leader’s staff several times over as he micromanaged things more-and-more in his competitions with technocrats like Rafsanjani and reformists in the civilian government. Even if he was withdrawing from public life in his old age, Khamanei’s death does leave a lot of things up in the air. And without a designated success, and no obvious replacement among the clerical class, there’s an open question as to whether that center can hold. That’s perhaps a reason why so many people seem to assume power will gravitate even more towards the IRGC, with the supreme leader being more of a puppet, but we’ll see. As self-interested as institutions are, I kind of suspect the IRGC is cognizant of the resentment they engender, and would know better than to just nakedly put themselves in charge like that. And they may that it’s harder to make the guy who’s theoretically the ultimate authority on everything a puppet than you’d think. That’s what happened with Khamanei, after all

I mean... I feel Board of Peace has it in for you guys... Making you do emergency episodes every few days... I'm annoyed because you guys mentioned doing a UK episode which would be funny but all these wars pushing our backwards island down the pecking order 🙂‍↕️

At this point I just picture you guys as the "Yes Dear" meme, every time America drags you out for another emergency ep! Not sure what I'd do without these sanity checks though, so Ty!

What does this mean for the Russia-Ukraine War?

The big question I have and have had, in the Indo-Pak border conflict, in Iran last summer, in Venezuela and now in Iran again is this? Where is the PLA? People rightly ribbed the Soviet Union for totally chickening out whenever their client states were threatened. But China is content to do nothing at all for them. In the Sino-Vietnamese war for example even Brezhnev told Beijing if they marched too far in China would face Soviet nuclear retaliation. But China can't even be bothered to do that, let alone supply air defense munitions never mind """volunteers""" like they did after Kim Il Sung bit off more than he could chew in the 50's. I wonder if India will get the confidence to be more muscular in the disputed border regions as a result.

If Israel can get launchers now how much can Iran retaliate. Got to use them while you can

Good choice for thumbnail art

The U.S. strategy has assumed that the Iranian regime is teetering on the verge of collapse, although one of the ironies here is that Iran's repressive regime may outlast some of our friendly dictatorships. Bahrain in particular seems particularly vulnerable. Either way, a disaster for the region and the people of the region. Just pure idiocy. A waste of lives and resources that is planting rotten seeds for generations to come..

Terrified when I think of how vulnerable Shia will be in the coming decade. If Iran falls they will have no state protection and an incredibly hostile world, we know the risks of that state of affairs well.

I also thought the “Khamenei wanted to be martyred” line was kind of strange. If so, why was he surrounded by family? Stoically accepting a noble death, and luring your family into an airstrike are very different notions.

Cat Steven’s

Mark it’s so important that you keep repeating the Robert Jackson idea of aggressive war being the supreme crime against humanity. American propaganda starts as a given that this worst crime will inevitably be committed, it’s just the sub crimes that matter in American politics, if at all.

Trouble

aragchi did all that song and dance with diplomacy so everyone understood that iran was not the aggressor

khamenei was basically retired since the june war anyways. killing him affected nothing

Important advice to John given he's new to twitter: It is COMPLETELY flooded with ai bots, it has become absolutely ridiculous the last couple years, every single post relating to anything political is almost automatically replied to by contrarion, inhumanly stupid nonsense, mostly to intentionally draw engagement but also fpr propaganda purposes. I'm not saying this as a "russian bot" style dismissial of other views, there absolutely are millions of deeply stupid people and straight up nazis on twitter, but that noise is dwarfed by the chatter of god knows how many bots. It makes it an incredibly depressing and frustrating experience to interact with anything, because AT LEAST half the time the stupid, evil thing you are reading is a bot made to be stupid and evil. I'm really not exagerating, look at anything about palestine and you will have dozens of blue check bots with automatically generated takes designed to make you feel insane and hopeless. That, on top of twitter's existing elon-era psycho hegemony, makes it a bad bellweather for determining how people are really reacting to most things

The “Millenium Challenge” incident is one of the classic War Nerd stories. It was mentioned on a Chapo appearance if I recall correctly. The cautionary edge of it being Iran would use a high volume of small attackers against larger US assets. We’re seeing echoes of this in the use of drones against land targets. I’m wondering if we’ll see this extend to the original context against naval assets.

much needed therapy session with the war nerds

Everything in US is made with profit in mind. Profit over productivity or efficiency. Sure as heck our weapons are lackluster. Then we sell them around the world, to shoot at those that go without.

John Dolan’s story about the “F*ck Iran” carving reminds me of the Two Bad Neighbours Simpsons episode where they find the anti Ayatollah Khomeini shirt in the attic and Marge pushes Homer to get rid of it and Homer says “Marge it works for any Ayatollah.”

It's just so fucking stupid. They actually thought assassinating senior leadership would cow them and bring them to the table. What they actually did was make a whole bunch of martyrs during Ramadan, which is what you would do if you wanted maximum escalation and a maximum Iranian response.

Boom boom Tel Aviv

thank you in advance for this analysis of what Brother Ali called America's "billion dollar a week killing brown people habit," another copy-paste from the 2000s. This wretched world.

mr war nerd any tips on how to be an american refugee in europe?

…seconded on the “please can you unlock this” sentiment, if just to quote Mark just going “It’s just copy-paste 2003!”

Thanks for posting!

This would be a great episode to unlock. I would love to share this with my friends who aren’t subscribers

Excited to see this. Been reading random social media. All sorts of random BS going around, you guys always have good info. Thanks!