FittingMechanics

If the last decade—and especially the last two months—have taught anybody running a country anything, it's that nuclear weapons are a key part of regime survival. Everything that's happened since Feb 28 will only make Iran *more* determined to get nukes.

You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about you loser. Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of because you clearly can’t read.

Israeli PM Netanyahu says ceasefire doesn’t include Lebanon

Twitter all day: Omg, he's crazy, he's gonna start WWIII Twitter now: Lol he TACO'd again!

Feeling bad right now for those who take Trump at his every word. A few months ago it was invading Greenland. Everyone lost their minds. Now he shitposts about end of civilisation and everyone takes the bait. You’ll probably see a deal struck soon. Just enjoy the ride 🍿

🚨דוברת הבית הלבן קרוליין לוויט אומרת לי: "הנשיא טראמפ עודכן לגבי ההצעה להפסקת אש של שבועיים, בקרוב תימסר תגובה״

I mostly avoid commenting on what President Trump says from day to day, while pulling no punches in my assessments, whether positive or negative, of his policy. His Iran ultimatums feel different. Making such threats is a policy. If he were to follow through on them, the consequences would be immediate, irreversible, and catastrophic on a world-historical scale. So while some will inevitably insist he should be “taken seriously rather than literally,” or that he is executing a sophisticated “madman” strategy in a complex game of 5-D chess, or that he needs everyone’s steadfast support to maximize his leverage, now rather than later seems the time to say that the actions that he is proposing would be a disaster for our country, both strategically and morally, which makes the remarks themselves a terrible mistake. Simply put, what’s the point of all this? If these are empty threats that we all know he will not carry out, then they are ineffective threats (the Iranians are on X too!), merely making the president and our nation look foolish. If they are not empty threats, then the president is asserting the American position that such actions are acceptable in this situation and ones we are willing to take. We are not living in some quantum thought experiment where he simultaneously is and is not serious. We cannot expect the Iranians, but only the Iranians, will believe him. Whether the threats are empty or not, we should be willing to say: This is wrong. We should not establish a pattern of threatening escalation from a blockaded strait to elimination of a civilization. We should not launch strikes intended to devastate the lives of millions of people and take our nation to total war without indisputable justification, or before the American people have deliberated upon and assented to the path with full understanding of what total war might mean for them. Those principles are vital to our Republic, independent of whether the strategy could “work.” But it’s also worth emphasizing that the strategy is a dead end. This war is actively weakening American power, increasing the danger to American citizens, and frustrating the president’s important efforts at addressing our many domestic challenges. It has closed a strait that was previously open, strengthened the incentive for other nations to pursue nuclear weapons, and in this most recent rhetoric made more plausible their use. Our choices for continuing the war appear to be catastrophic escalation of the air war or extensive deployment of ground troops, neither of which were planned or had support at the outset. Stepping back from these threats and admitting such actions do not offer a path to resolving the conflict may be unpalatable, but it is by far the least unpalatable option available. Let us all hope cooler heads prevail.