I'm Iranian, now living in the west. Allow me to chime in..
So Iran doesn't have a central command, they've developed a mosaic system where the 30+ chains operate autonomously. It is also multi-layered (IRGC, Artesh, Basij, etc).
The multi-layered design was developed after the revolution, when they realized that the regime should be protected in case of internal mutiny.
IRGC specifically was put in place to protect the regime and it only responds to the Supreme Leader. Neither the president or the parliament control it.
The mosaic system was started few years back after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani (though it possibly dates further, I can't confirm this).
The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.
What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war. Their motto is "Every day in Ashura, every land is Karbala".
There is a potential for bias among Iranian converts to Christianity, but for those whose stories I've listened to, the common answer is yes, there is an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran.
The entire Shia sect is basically an apocalyptic religious movement. Has been since the start when Ali, the first Imam and fourth Caliph for the Sunnis, was assassinated, his sons following him, only for the assassination mastermind to usurp his Caliphate. Combine that with the millenarianism of the Safavids in the 15th and 16th centuries.
> Is there an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran?
It's more of a Jihad/Martyrdom ideology that's driving them.
> Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?
That's a rather different issue, and luckily one that at least causes a lot less problems in practice. Sam Harris has some decent material on why this is(a lot of it comes down to important differences in doctrine).
> The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.
Iran would be highly unlikely to be able to prevent a ground invasion from the US since Iran's convention military capabilities are not particularly strong(hence why Iran often fights through proxies or other non-convention means). They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
> What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The problem is more that those with the ideology have all the weapons in Iran, so even though the regime and their ideology may be extremely unpopular it's still quite difficult to change things when the fanatics are the ones in power.
> The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war.
Yeah, unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point as Iran seems to be unwilling to abandon their goal of destroying Israel and nuclear weapons program.
Ngl, anyone arguing for a ground invasion of Iran will have a hard time convincing US population. I get that president's war powers are pretty expansive, but everything has limits.
> They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
That is far from obvious. A command structure scattered around a huge country should be able to outlast U.S. willingness to throw bodies into a shredder.
It’s easy to look at Ukraine for example. Since drones came into the picture it’s way harder to do a successful ground invasion. Russia has unimaginable losses and they still haven’t reached their strategic goal.
The Vietnamese proved that it's not the bombs you can throw at the country - it's whether you have hearts and minds on your side.
The Americans learnt from that and went to Iraq claiming to have hearts and minds on their side - but quickly discovered that, in fact, they did not (and still do not).
The Americans need to take stock of their own actions in this conflict - they put Trump in the white house, they allowed him to be influenced by other governments, they gave him the power to get involved in the conflict.
> they can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force
I'm genuinely sceptical of this. If America literally invaded Iran, there is a good chance Chinese production comes to back them up. At that point we're fighting with a long logistics chain on someone else's territory (giving them advantages of knowing the land, having local sympathies and having a greater reason to fight) while getting pelted by asymmetric-warfare tactics we can't meaningfully reciprocate.
> unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point
Why? Just remove their ability to destroy Israel. Keep taking out their nuclear programme from time to time and have the Congress ratify the JCPOA in case they come back to the table.
Why do people buy this bs is beyond me. Let's review actual warfare and its requirements.
Logistics. You can mosaic your heart out but you need to provide arms, food, water, electricity, medicines, parts, fuels ... for each of these high level cells. None of that is "distributed" or "independent" or quite frankly given the kleptocracy that is IRI is even given. All that the so called mosaic has achieved is that when the leadership cadre was killed this did not affect a loss of operational readiness as each high level cell had independent command authority. Read that again: operational readiness.
US military could trivially end this shit show. The question is why is this strange war being dragged on like this. For example, we are told "they have dug out the entrances to the missile cities". Now besides the fact that most of those videos of the missile cities scream CGI, even assuming they do exists, this nation is supposed to have a fucking "space force" and was reading license plates back during cold war from outer space. Are we to believe Centcom is incapable of burying those entraces yet again?
The "who would have thunk it!" b.s. about the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, everybody and their mommy knew this was a strong possibility. Equally, most knew if US used its bases in the area the host nations would be targeted. I am convinced part of this shit show is to make Arabs sweat. US "provokes" IRGC and some parts of Arab infrastructure is smoked. "They need to all agree to be on board with Abraham Accords" said the Orange front man, the other day.
The "we now toll Strait of Hormuz". Aha. Let's see: we live in a planet where great powers started and fought world wars to decide exactly this sort of matter: who controls what parts. Are we to assume that the funky IRI regime and the IRGC have now achieved what world powers achieved after sacrificing tens of millions of casualties with just some stupid surface to surface missile batteries in northern shores of the Persian Gulf? Bullocks, as they say in the isle of perfidy.
From where I sit, US removed all obstacles for the succession of Khamenei's "gay" son. The other day one of these cheeky IRI embassy twitter accounts (who have a pretty good propaganda chops these days) were self congratulating since the Orange frontman who used to m.c. "pro wrestling matches" said "I'd be honored to meet him!". Will he bring a cake in the shape of a 'Pink' Dildo? One wonders.
If the United States permits IRI to actually have a control over the well being of the entire global economy, then folks, you must realize this is all a plan that we are not privy to. There is no way, none whatsoever, in any reasonable reality, where a middle tier nearly bankrupt, socialy unstable, and isolated theocracy can have the lever to dictate terms to Superpowers armed with atomic weapons.
IRI dictating terms to whoever needs the spice to flow from the Persian Gulf -- and that includes China, India, Japan, S. Korea, EU ... -- without the great powers saying 'no you dont' simply does not compute in any rational universe.
As to Karbala and Ashura. Well, 2023 came by and then "ready to die" martyrs of the fabled "Shia" weren't exactly lining up to fight Israel. Also, I can not think of any slogan that does more to cheapen the martyrdom of Hussein son of 'Ali than to claim that anywhere, anytime and anyone is equivalent to where, when, and who of the actual Karbala.
p.s. US was already worried in 70s about the Shah of Iran controlling the Persian Gulf. One of the reasons they got rid of him, as a matter of fact.
Read this short story that was published in 1976 in New York magazine. This was the psyops back then ! that was used to scare the Gulf Arabs to accept US bases. It's a fun read. The Shah takes over the Persian Gulf and controls the Strait of Hormuz. Atom bombs are involved ...
It all was many years ago after the great depression, and similar. Then people kept voting in republicans who's life mission is to gut the SEC and all related regulation keeping them from doing things like this.
The argument I have generally heard is consistent power output and grid availability 24x7 with solar is harder. So they augment with gas turbines.
IMO augmenting it with nuclear is better.
Augmenting intermittent renewables with nuclear doesn’t really make sense since nuclear is all fixed costs whereas gas generation is mostly fuel costs which makes it economic to run part of the time.
Most (all?) 401k plans limit you to a pre-picked list of ETFs and mutual funds you can invest in. Not to mention the standard advice for decades has been 'broad market index fund'.
Afaik this is the first time that an IPO is big that it immediately gets a significant share of a broad market index fund. The rules among the providers are actually quite diverse, so it's complicated. The Rational Reminder podcast discussed it in April: https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/406
Their conclusion: It might be bad, but so be it. No need to change strategy.
Good thing is that index funds don't hold stocks at market capitalization but only at free float value. So a company whose shares are mostly held by founders, employees, and strategic investors gets a weight well below its headline valuation.
I believe it's the opposite :)
All major indices (S&P500, MSCI, FTSE...) use free-float adjustments. And recently also NASDAQ - they've changed to cap of 3x the value of free-floating shares.
If your plan uses Fidelity you can move your 401k into Brokeragelink and that lets you pick individual stocks. Schwab, TIAA, Alight and some others also have something similar.
I see masters in technological related fields as a way to get a job in USA for many non us candidates. It’s a good thing that this gamification of the system is meeting its demise. I for one have not found many masters students talented than the undergrads at software tasks. PhDs are another matter though.
How do you ban bitcoin? It’s not hosted or supported by American financial rails or any entity like swift which can be influenced by the USA in any meaningful way.
The hypothetical was that the US "bans" bitcoin, presumably meaning it becomes illegal for US financial institutions (or US-dependent ones, which is nearly all of them) to convert bitcoin to dollars. Somebody else might give you dollars for bitcoin, but then it becomes their problem. As the saying goes, "you can't eat bitcoin".
How do you ban this? It’s not part of swift or any us govt. backed global financial rails. If Iran(a sanctioned entity) supports this then this is more proof that the thing works.
I’m not gonna comment on if it’s a good idea or not, but the US government could make it illegal for any financial institution that does business in America interacting with crypto.
They could also make it illegal for any US financial institution to do business with any financial institution that interacts with crypto.
They could probably also make it a crime to buy/sell crypto in America.
They could do all those things. But they won't. This administration is all-in on crypto, it's a key mechanism for receiving gift. They're not gonna cut it off.
Its also trivial to turn your crypto into yuan and your yuan into $. So I'm not sure such a ban would be even remotely effective.
> They could do all those things. But they won't. This administration is all-in on crypto, it's a key mechanism for receiving gift. They're not gonna cut it off.
This comment chain starts with "Maybe after the mobster losers in the white House finally get kicked out we can just ban this thing forever."
America is not the world. They can’t go and sanction companies operating out of China or Japan who want a safe passage through hormuz. Especially now that the military power that supports the sovereign guarantee of US dollar is under siege.
I am a keralite and when I was growing up it was common to see old topless women. I don’t think the caste actually determined who could be topless or not. Mind you this was 1990s. This custom stopped altogether as that generation of old women passed away. Now you won’t find women swimming around in the public ponds or being topless.
Also I think it’s extremely liberating that women could be topless without being subjected to lecherous gestures or stares which is the case now.
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