Philip Pomerantz

From the Shapiro family's Seder table to yours, happy Passover and Chag Pesach Sameach!

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

BREAKING: Armed attack on the Christian city of Suqaylabiyah in Hama, Syria. HTS-aligned residents of Qalaat al-Madiq were seen attacking properties belonging to the Christian population in Suqaylabiyah. They also targeted a statue of the Virgin Mary in the city. The attack involved rioting and vandalism targeting several shops, as well as assaults on civilians.

What almost certainly happened: guy chose to take revenge by (fallaciously) attacking a Jewish institution for the actions of Israel, the Jewish state. The most proximate cause is clearly blowback, rather than some intrinsic hatred of Jews he just randomly woke up with yesterday

If you are an American, and you haven't read a single history book written more than 50 years ago, travelled outside your continent, and don't have any friends who are non-western, consider that you are heavily propagandized and don't know wtf is really going on in the world.

Liar. But the kind of lie the left likes and admires. Slick, eliding, obfuscating, straw-manning. Their problem with Trump is he lies in a manner they find intellectually low. They are liar-snobs. But give them a good well-written wordsmithed lie, and they are totally cool with it.

U.S. Delta forces captured in Iran. These are the soldiers who arrested Nicolás Maduro. We told you Iran is not Venezuela.

Iran has drawn blood from the United States, is pummeling Israel, and wiping out trillions of dollars of US military hardware, Gulf assets and revenue. They are slowing the global economy, with clear ability to grind it to a halt. And we're just on Day 5, using the old Iranian missile and drone stockpiles. Their newer technology hasn't yet been unveiled. When they do, perhaps there will be nothing left of America's presence in the region. I'm not posting this to prove how powerful Iran is, but to show how honorable, restrained, and rational they are. Unlike the US and Israel, they never acted in haste. They obviously had the power to cause great destruction and harm, but they acted with restraint, negotiating in good faith, making hard sacrifices to avoid war, despite the US reneging on earlier agreements and crippling their economy with sanctions. The day before the US and Israel launched yet another unprovoked attack on them, weeks after the US and Israel tried to foment a color revolution to topple their government, the Iranian leadership acted with grace, cooperation, and prudence, agreeing to Trump's central demand that they never seek nuclear weapons—all in an effort to avoid this madness. But here we are. And all the world is Iran.