TurtlesAllTheWayDownTheRabbitHole

Let’s be real here. Europe has spent decades freeloading on American security. Even now, with every NATO member finally hitting the 2% GDP target in 2025. But beyond the financial contributions, the real rupture is philosophical and the Iran crisis has shown a spotlight on it. Europe worships process. Endless committees, consultations, and “predictability.” Macron actually calls it a virtue. For Trump, this is paralysis as his style is to articulate a threat, fix a target, and act. The Americans are men of conviction and purpose. Europe on the other hand lives by bureaucratic liturgy and in high-minded abstractions. Sure, Americans might make mistakes when acting. But Europe never considers what the costs of not acting actually are. Just look at how their nations are doing on various fronts, especially on the border crisis, and you see the same cancerous rot that undergirds their foreign policy approach play out domestically. It's the same problem on a different scale. Iran is currently holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage, choking 20% of global oil and spiking prices past $100 a barrel. Meanwhile, the regime is bleeding from strikes, its nuclear ambitions are still alive despite degraded capability, and its proxies are firing missiles at allies and oil tankers. If this isn’t a clear and present danger to the global economy - of which Europe is a part - then I don’t know what is. Yet when Washington asked to use European bases to finish the job - bases the US has defended for generations, the response was hesitation and hand-wringing. The US did strike from RAF Fairford, but only after warnings that British soil could become a “legitimate target.” If you cannot agree that a theocratic regime with eschatological ambitions who have shown no restraint in hitting out at Gulf countries and threatening the world’s energy jugular is an enemy worth confronting, then what, exactly, are we allies about? Europe loves to preen about being tough on Russia. They issue condemnations and speeches and slap sanctions that hardly work to cripple the Russian economy. Now here was a chance to do something concrete: let the Americans use the bases they already pay for, help clear the Strait, and actually degrade the Iranian war machine that arms Moscow’s proxies. Turmp didn’t ask for boots on the ground or any kind of more offensive action. All he wanted was permission to operate from the infrastructure America has underwritten for decades. They couldn’t even manage that. So can you blame the Americans for seeing NATO for what it is? A paper-tiger alliance that expects Washington to bleed and pay while Brussels and London convenes and deliberates. If Europe refuses to treat Iran as the threat it is while happily letting American power keep the Strait open and the lights on, then the alliance is already dead. Trump is simply stating the obvious and the Americans are becoming very reluctant to subsidize the European delusion any longer.

Iran was trying to use the North Korean model to get a nuke: create sufficient conventional deterrence so you won’t be challenged in acquiring one (it’s called the Seoul Hostage Problem). This has been explained over and over since day one. Everyone claiming shifting goalposts or no imminent threat has been lying. The reason North Korea was allowed to get nukes is because Seoul (and its 10 million inhabitants) is within artillery and rocket range of North Korea. During the 1994 nuclear crisis, the Clinton administration seriously considered airstrikes on North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor but backed off precisely because of the artillery threat to Seoul. Iran was trying to accomplish the same by stockpiling missiles and drones which would have had the same deterrent effect. The proof is what Iran has been doing in the past month: attacking all its neighbors in order to pressure the US to stop attacking it Beyond this, they were building medium-range ballistic missiles that could reach Paris and London, meaning all of Europe could be held hostage as they built a nuclear bomb. The reason Iran has not built a nuclear weapon until now is not because it couldn’t, but because it knew it would be attacked and denied this capability. So by allowing them to continue developing this conventional deterrence, you would be allowing Iran to get a nuclear weapon. And unlike North Korea, Iran is led by an eschatological death cult Reagan saw nuclear mutually assured destruction (MAD) as both morally bankrupt (because of the innocent-body-count problem) and dangerously fragile because it assumed flawless rationality between adversaries…this means it only takes one irrational actor to destroy the world. Working backwards from the conclusion that Iran’s Islamist regime must never have a nuclear weapon, it was necessary for the US to attack Iran to deny it the conventional capacity to hold the entire eastern hemisphere hostage. Every European leader knows this and behind the scenes praises the US for this action. But they are cowards, held hostage by their own internal Muslim populations, and so adopt these ridiculous public positions. This was never about Israel. And if your argument is that Iran should be allowed to get a nuclear weapon then you are a fool and a traitor to western civilization…you’re a useful idiot

President Trump issues a new deadline for Iran.

Europe is dependent on the US in many ways: - Ukraine - own security - tech - trade Yes, Trump is difficult to say the least. But is it a smart strategy to offend him without necessity?