Sonny Masterson 🍌🍌

I had forgotten about this from Jan. 3, 2017. Here is Chuck Schumer actually saying something prescient. "You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at ya." -Chuck Schumer youtube.com/watch?v=c3p2zK…

@svgmzr @HeTows They did protect against bombs. And going door to door would have been suicidal for the IDF, as Hamas planted IEDs in upwards of 50% of the buildings.

@sunmaster14 @HeTows If hostages didn’t protect against bombs they wouldn’t have protected against going door to door, killing militants and actually occupying Gaza

I wrote a lot about the many parallels between Epic Fury and the Gaza War. This weird negative feedback loop is yet another similarity between them. The world's interest in Gazan civilians often forced Israel to conduct the war more slowly, at a lower level of intensity, in a two steps forward - one step back manner, which also emboldened Hamas. This stretched out the war, eventually resulting in a higher death toll than if the world had viewed the war with the same indifference as it views wars in Africa. Now something similar is happening in Iran. Originally, the war was launched to degrade Iran's nuclear, ballistic missile and naval capabilities. But at some point, the press decided that really the war is about the oil price. This makes the Iranian regime more stubborn, forcing Trump to escalate further. Eventually, the damage done to Iran's economy and infrastructure will be much larger than it would have been otherwise. In both cases, a hostile press turns an old-fashioned kinetic war into a weird postmodern war, artificially turning a regrettable side-effect of the war into an extra card in the weaker side's hand. Then the weaker side overplays this card and absorbs much more damage than it would have in a plain kinetic war.

@svgmzr @HeTows You apparently forgot that Hamas held Israeli hostages the entire time. It is a similar dynamic to Iran holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage. The losing side's bargaining chip gives it the misplaced confidence to soldier, which results in greater damage.

@HeTows As far as I remember Israeli government told from day one they have no plans of occupying Gaza and installing a government there. All their actions like demolishing civilian building, shooting at queues from humanitarian aid paint a very clear picture

@HeerJeet @Nadav_Eyal Huh? Israel has been right about Iran the whole time. Mossad understands Iran better than the IRGC itself. You're simply confusing suicidal stubbornness with strategy.

@Nadav_Eyal Israel has been woefully wrong about Iran for a long time. Why should anyone take what you say seriously?

Exclusive- Israeli officials I speak with admit Iran’s core perception may be decisive: Tehran believes it is winning this war. When Iran agrees to a “gesture of goodwill” in Hormuz, it doesn’t see a concession- it sees recognition of its control. They say the leadership- operating under pressure and isolation - has only a partial picture of the damage inside Iran, reinforcing that confidence. Some now argue only a sharper escalation, including energy targets, can reset that calculus. This view has been presented to both American and Israeli decision-makers. Read my latest here, (and sign up to my substack): nadaveyal.com/p/irans-danger…

@edwardross01 @TodorovNikolaj @gummibear737 Taking 6 million barrels of oil from world supply would only raise prices by about 30%. Gasoline prices would go up much less than that.

@TodorovNikolaj @gummibear737 Blow it up and you will take away 6 million barrels of oil a Chinese will be forced to buy that 6 million in open markets and your smart angry ass will end up paying $20 a gallon for gas.

I don’t understand this obsession with taking Kargh Island You can cut off their sale of oil with a blockade You’d be controlling a flat island within Iran’s artillery/unguided rocket range Maybe it’s meant to be a red herring or a feint…but otherwise I just don’t get it

@gummibear737 I disagree that he is a serious person. I was rather surprised at how empty his reasoning is. Did he even make an argument other than "I wrote some books, and I think this won't work"?

I listened to this very carefully, thought about it a lot Professor Pape is a serious person with well founded views But I'm wary of people who have spent a lifetime building overly deterministic models, he makes many assumptions I think lack nuance/context and he completely ignores the eschatological nature of the threat we face Ultimately what's a deal breaker for me is his contention that the best path forward is going back to Obama's JCPOA Everything about Obama's foreign policy towards Iran has been a disaster Still, I don't dismiss everything Pape says and he makes a number of good points that I need to factor into my thinking moving forward

@gummibear737 This has been my theory all along.

I've got a theory about how the conflict in Iran originated I've long been skeptical of how Trump got Israel to accept the ceasefire in Gaza because it offered no guarantees that Hamas would dismantle....and here we are in March 2026 and there has been ZERO movement on Phase two of the ceasefire Yet Israel made it crystal clear from day one that they would agree to no deal that leaves Hamas in power or armed...yet they still signed Trump’s Phase 1 anyway So why the sudden change of heart by Israel (even if they won't admit it publicly)? Here's what I think happened: I think Israel saw the war in Gaza as becoming counter productive in terms of being able to fully eliminate Hamas. The longer it went on, the worse their international image and they had no effective military solution to ending Hamas So they negotiated with Trump something in exchange: full US backing to go after Iran...the regime that bankrolled, armed, and green-lit Oct 7 plus every terror proxy in the region Trump gets his big PR “peace deal” win, international heat on Israel drops, and the US gets to finish off its objective (which began with Operation Midnight Hammer) of definitively destroying Iran’s nuclear threat once and for all The two fronts were always linked. No hard evidence of a straight quid pro quo…but damn if the pieces don’t line up nicely Think about it...Hamas has seen a resurgence in Gaza, yet Israel is mostly quiet about it!?! That's not what Israel does... Just noticing. Thoughts?

@lebaneseflare @MarioLeb79 Oh, ok. I didn't realize you were talking about the Rafael video. Sorry.

@sunmaster14 @MarioLeb79 Dude you are getting too scientific fuck HA, am talking how we see two distinct explosions in the promotional video of the trophy system . I don’t even watch HA propaganda videos .

2 Explosions. 1st trophy 2nd kornet

@lebaneseflare @MarioLeb79 It's a weird claim. Yes, it's possible that Hezbollah manipulated the video to make it look like the explosions were 100ms apart instead of 2ms apart, but it strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely.

@sunmaster14 @MarioLeb79 I don’t care what happened , n the footage am just saying how the two detonations was shot , when in real life you wouldn’t see two it would be just one because it’s too fast .

The PLO was using Lebanon as a base to attack Israel, which prompted various IDF incursions, culminating in the Operation Peace for Galilee in 1982. The Lebanese Shia welcomed Israel. Once the PLO was kicked out as a reuslt of the 1982 war, Israel maintained a security buffer in Southern Lebanon, which Hezbollah was formed to oppose. Israel left completely in 2000, but Hezbollah decided it rather liked conflict with Israel, and especially getting Syrian and Iranian support for that conflict because it gave Hezbollah the means to dominate Lebanon, militarily and politically. Using the Shebaa Farms dispute as a pretext, Hezbollah continued to harass Israel and build up its military. The tradeoff was that it had to agree to become a subsidiary of the IRGC and do Iran's bidding. I haven't even gone into the history of Syrian domination of Lebanon in violation of the Taif Agreement in 1989. Anyway, Lebanon has been effectively occupied by the IRGC for over 30 years. Israel is now freeing Lebanon from that occupation, although I'll freely admit that Israel is not doing it out of a sense of altruism (in contrast to its protection of the Syrian Druze).

Israel has invaded southern Lebanon on multiple occasions. Southern Lebanese Shia (Hezbollah) have resisted Israel. US and NATO should have aided Lebanon and Hezbollah against Israeli aggression but failed to do so; Iran did. I haven't seen any evidence that Iran initiated the Israeli invasion into Lebanon.

Hezbollah stole Lebanon and gave it to Iran. Israel is ending that occupation.

@leadlagreport Probably not, but the previous ones going back to Carter, with the single exception of Obama, certainly were.

Unpopular opinion: the next President will still be at war with Iran.

What's your point? The two explosions are clearly separated by far more than the time between the tandem explosions in a Kornet. The time between the initial and primary detonations in a Kornet would be on the order of 1-2ms. The strategy to defeat the Trophy system on the Merkava with a Kornet is to fire two Kornets in quick succession at the same place. That didn't happen here.

@sunmaster14 @MarioLeb79 I said shot on 1000fps not played back at 1000fps After you shoot it in 1000 fps the motion looks static then you speed it up to the desired duration and motion then voila you get a 25 fps slowmo footage .

@lebaneseflare @MarioLeb79 The video is nowhere near 1000fps.

@MarioLeb79 That’s because it’s shot on a 1000fps camera and slowed down, in real time there is milliseconds between the two explosions

@MarioLeb79 Yup. Also notice the plume of smoke on the building to the right. Probably the shaped charge of the Kornet was diverted by 90 degrees.

Quite a non sequitur. Regardless of the origins of Hezbollah, do you seriously dispute that it operates as a subsidiary of Iran that uses Lebanon as cannon fodder against Israel? I recommend you take a breather and consider whether your anti-Israel arguments are really up to the standards you have displayed when it comes to climate change or Russia collusion analysis.

you are making irresponsible BS. Hezbollah arose in southern Lebanon as local population resistance to Israeli invasion and occupation in 1982. Even in the FDD list of so-called "terrorist" incidents that was plagiarized in the recent White House Statement, there wasn't a single US death attributed to Hezbollah in nearly 40 years, except for the death of a single IDF soldier (dual citizen) on an Israeli invasive operation in southern Lebanon in 2006. Absurd to call this a terrorist threat.

Iran is most definitely the head of the snake when it comes to opposing US interests in the Middle East. It is run by a suicidal religious cult that was well on its way to making itself impossible to deter - first with ballistic missiles and then with nuclear weapons. Worse, it is likely that the regime's goal was genocide against Israel, even at the expense of millions of its own citizens.

@mc_kinl1 US pretext (Gulf of Tonkin) was fabricated. Iraqi WMD claim was fabricated. US claim that Iran is "head of the snake for global terrorism" is fabricated. It was based on falsified analysis by Israeli-backed FDD.

Lyndon Johnson held his nerve on Vietnam as well. LBJ was "determined to see the military campaign through to completion". It took courage to walk away from an ill-conceived foreign adventure. It will also take courage to walk away from the present ill-conceived foreign adventure.

@EFischberger All of the useful idiots claim that the possession of nuclear weapons gives one immunity from attack, but not one can explain why Israel is constantly attacked by Iran and its proxies despite the fact that everybody believes Israel has nukes.

Glenn Greenwald admits he's sad Iran doesn't have nukes. Please weep with Glenn.

Sorry guys, but that interview was utterly devoid of interesting content. It was like eating 10 lbs of celery. Pape is one of the most shallow so-called experts I've ever listened to. His arguments consist of "listen to me because I wrote a book," and "this stategy, under completely different conditions, didn't work 30 years ago, so it couldn't possibly work now." Every point he made was stupid. Every single one. One of his dumbest arguments is that 100 years of military history shows us that decapitation strikes are counterproductive and that you can't achieve regime change through air power alone. Air power is not the same as it was 10 years ago, let alone 80 years ago. Israel already has the entire senior echelon of the IRGC living in tents or homes commandered from regular civilians. Rank and file Basij troops at checkpoints are getting sore necks from looking at the sky for drones. It's hard to imagine how demoralized and chaotic the regime is right now because propaganda is cheap and easy, the internet is shut down, and their only hope is convincing useful idiots in the West that the regime is holding strong. Which, in turn, create pressure for Trump to take an off-ramp.

"This War Will FAIL" - Military Expert @ProfessorPape Watch the full episode right here on X.

@DanielConlin6 @neoavatara Yup, of course.

@neoavatara Trump didn't consult NATO because the plans would have leaked to Iran, and everyone knows this.

NATO didn't help because Trump et al were too arrogant and stupid to consult NATO before the war. The head of NATO was told of the attack only minutes before it started. Its Trump's incompetence that led to that. Nobody else's.

@jbatman70 @davidharsanyi @neoavatara They have intentionally waited on the threshold, but have, for decades, been able to build a bomb within a few months and probably without our knowledge. Also, they have, in parallel, been working on refining their missile technology so that they can credibly deliver a bomb.

@davidharsanyi @neoavatara They have been 2 weeks away from building a bomb for the last 30 years.

Things are going great.

@neoavatara @davidharsanyi Certainly they can't all be suicidal idiots. I imagine there are even some Mossad agents in the line of succession.

@davidharsanyi The real wisdom is how many of these people would rather martyr themselves than give up the nuclear material. That's a real impediment to ending the war.