Radio War Nerd EP #614 — Iranian Kurdish Groups and the Iran War, feat. Kamal Chomani

For those interested in another perspective, you may be interested in checking out Sahar Kurdish radio. https://kurdish.sahartv.ir/ Of course, you will need to understand Kurdish- it seems that some mischievous scamps within the Islamic Republic of Iran's Broadcasting service are maintaining a Kurdish language radio station despite the Kurdish language being 'banned' by the 'regime'. Curious

RSS feed + direct download should be fixed now. Thanks everyone for being patient!

For anyone who can't figure out how to download the mp3: the three dots menu didn't have a download option when I viewed the post in my feed. When I clicked on the episode title and had the post on its own page/tab, the three dots had the download option. Problem solved!

It seems like your foreign guests really need a lesson on American Legalism. It helps that the U.S deserves Trump because he is the apotheosis of this system in a person: a born-wealthy, double-dealing, bad-faith actor in every transactional relationship (which is every relationship) who reads every deal in bad faith and who will always violate any transaction when the political, legal, and financial systems that were designed to protect people like him (those who already have amassed significant wealth and power) make violating the deal more beneficial than honoring the deal. If the legal and financial circumstances are such that it's to one's benefit to bankrupt a casino, then so be it. Contract good and services then be a deadbeat, because it costs the other guy more money to litigate than eating the loss and there will always be other suckers for the next deal? Do it. Obviously, the history of the U.S. double-dealing with Native American tribes should be obvious that this has been a fundamental practice of the state and society from the beginning, but this isn't just a plot point of U.S. settler-colonialism, it's a trait of the American state and society. There's a line once attributed to Trump that if you owe the bank $100,000, they own your house, but if you owe them $100 million, you own the bank. That is how the U.S. operates, and has explicitly operated the dollar. The U.S. has made itself so indispensable to the global economic and can be a bad actor/bad-faith actor over and over again when it's to the state's interests to do that instead of acting like a country that assumes following the Rule of Law means following it in good faith. When there is no consequence for violating the law, and it is in one's interest or even benefit to do so, then it would be stupid not to. That is who you are dealing with. And the U.S. will continue to be indispensable and above the law for a long, long time. In fact, the U.S. remains so indispensable that it is in the rest of the world's interests, and specifically China's and the GCC states' interests, to prop up the U.S., which is what they are doing now and will continue to do because no institution is Too Big To Fail more than the U.S. state. This is what has fucked over Vladimir Putin for 27 years and will fuck over the rest of Russia because the old man keeps needing to be taught this lesson. Hence the terrorist attack on Moscow this weekend. Not only will the U.S. always choose to act in bad faith, with Russia in particular, it's personal. America hates Russia. It doesn't matter why. There is no "Why" here. There is only our interests, and our willingness to do anything so long as the consequences for the doing the wrong thing outweigh acting in good faith. There is also the distinction between spirit of the law and letter of the law, but that just circles back to the point of fidelity to the system.

Planting the Iranian Kurds story didn't spur on the Kurds to fight, it didn't cause IRI reallocation of resources for more than a day or two, didn't encourage The Loser King to provide them any further material support, and it vaporized the element of surprise and secrecy that is one of the only advantages guerrilla forces possess, but it did accomplish the goal of getting IRI and Iraqi Shia militias to kill Kurds.

The Kurds seem to be waking up to the idea that working with the Americans is a really bad idea.

This is related to the topic at hand but is a broad question: Are mechanized infantry tactics even viable in the cheap drone swarm era? The New York Times comments are full of people who think that once President dumbass is gone we’ll be able to just go back to Iran with the marines and “Mission Accomplished” them like it was 2005 and is that even theoretically true on a tactical level? Do soldiers invading a moderately resourced country just get zapped now? I have heard a lot about drones as part of larger discussions but I’d really like to know what the current state of play is with what even works on a battlefield now. Are 20 year olds with rifles riding around in humvees just obsolete?

The “we sent guns to the Iranian uprising in January but the Kurds kept the guns” story is bogus then? I don’t recall Mr. Chomani addressing it specifically. Was there any coordination in January 2026 between the Iranian Kurdish militant groups and the armed uprising that occurred within the larger protests?

This hasn’t shown up in the RSS feed. Anyone else have an issue?

Shorter: Iranian Kurds surrendered before they got curb stomped.