It’s even worse on the phone.. there’s a running gag on IG with a lot of truth about “you might be at the bar with your friends at 12am but I’m locked in on German object splitting in half / other obscure betable ‘sports’“. It’s insane we let people do this to themselves and their families.
The Biden administration declared ZTE, Huawei and a few other small Chinese companies as supply chain risks and prohibited importing their hardware --- the Trump administration just declared every single router made overseas as a risk. If you can't tell the difference between those two things...
Unfortunately this is more interesting than a failed Diego Garcia attack — the late Ayatollah had a self-imposed range limit on the strikes or tests they would carry out. By using IRBMs in this fashion, it’s clear the new regime no longer feels bound by that restriction..
Which is notable since it’s about the same distance from Southern Iran to Diego Garcia (3,800km) as it is from Northern Iran to London.
They had a religious ruling on the range, and they also had a religious ruling on "not creating an atomic bomb."
The question of whether the world can assume its security on some religious rulings of some Ayatollas is still standing, as these rulings can apparently be changed or bypassed.
This "religious ruling" stuff is less interesting than it sounds. To begin with, while the Islamic Republic of Iran is a totalitarian state, the Twelver Shia hierarchy isn't unified. The supposed ban on nuclear weapons was Khamenei's, and binding only on his followers. But there are several other marja (marjas? marji?), with significant followings even in the security state & IRGC (al-Sistani being a good example).
More importantly, it's pretty clear that the geopolitical rulings are, well, geopolitical in nature. Iran is a nuclear threshold state; its strategy is to come as close to the breakout line as it can and extract concessions for not crossing it. The supposed nuclear fatwa is just public relations strategy. At the point Iran decided the cost/benefit/risk/reward of crossing the threshold made sense, it would be updated.
I agree with you, mostly. My read is that Twelver Shi’ism is not a unified hierarchy, and a marja’s fatwa normally binds that marja’s own followers rather than all Shi’a, so your institutional point is broadly right.[1][2] It is too strong, though, to say the anti-nuclear position was simply “invented for PR”: Khamenei did publicly describe it as a real fatwa.[3] At the same time, Iran’s enrichment posture _does_ fit the description of a threshold state, with large stocks of uranium enriched to 60%, so it is fair to say the ruling also had strategic and diplomatic value.[4]
The parts I would soften are the specific claim about Sistani having a significant following inside the IRGC, which MIGHT be true but is much harder to substantiate publicly (although, maybe you have some behind-the-scenes knowledge?), and the certainty of motive. Still, your last sentence is basically right: these rulings are not _immutable_. After Ali Khamenei’s death, Iran’s foreign minister said (quoting the Reuters article), “fatwas depend on the Islamic jurist issuing them,” and added he was “not yet in a position to judge the jurisprudential or political views of Mojtaba Khamenei…” This reinforces the point that doctrine can shift if the leadership chooses.[5]
[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Twelver Shi’ah.”
[2] Al-Islam.org, “Question 49: Difference between hukm and fatwa.”
[3] Leader.ir, “Ayatollah Khamenei in the Eid al-Fitr congregational prayers” and “Leader’s remarks on anti-Iran sanctions and Yemen aggressions by Saudi Arabia.”
[4] Arms Control Association, “The Status of Iran’s Nuclear Program,” and ACA analysis citing the IAEA’s 440.9 kg figure.
[5] Reuters, “Iran says nuclear doctrine unlikely to change, Hormuz Strait needs new protocol” (March 18, 2026).
There are lots of countries doing just the same but the West does not give a flying fuck about it. Most of the human rights violations they care about somehow related to countries that happened to have oil.
And if you tell me that US /Israel are bombing Iran to protect rights of oppressed then I have that wonderful bridge.
But that has nothing to do with this war. Like, nothing at all. Israel doing genocode in gaza and what seems like ethnical cleansing of lebanon does not have anyyhing with that either. USA threatening Greenland is also not a factor in this war.
Donald Trump does not care about protesters in Iran. His idea of regime change is "keep the regime and change head for someone who will pay me personally".
And Hegseth does not care either. He is proving his manhood.
And Israel have completely different goals, so.
It is not like Saudi were democrats. They have cut that journalist into pieces. They are violent dictatorship on their own right.
Everyone does, the problem is that every time the US came to deliver democracy to the Middle East they left the place in a much worse shape than it was... Also I don't believe for a second Trump or Israel give a single fuck about Iranian citizens
That’s the thing that annoys me the most about that post-hoc rationale - we’re supposed to pretend that Donald Trump cares at all about Muslim protesters on the other side of the world?
These were chemical weapons found in Iraq, the reason the new york times was interested in the story was the fact that ISIS has somehow developed chemical weapons using Iraq's existing infrastructure.
This means there were active facilities, materials and know how even after the war
We have Joe Kent on mic saying Iran was not building nukes and posed no threat to the US.
The only people saying Iran was just about to get nukes are the Israelis, who've been saying that every 5 years for the last 40 years, and the only people who fell for it are magatards
I don't understand how people fall for this shit after the Iraq war scam, which was essentially the exact same propaganda
Well, maybe you have a plausible explanation for why Iran needed 60%-grade enriched uranium -- now that we've firmly established that it clearly was not for building nukes.
Are you talking about the stuff he used to gas 100,000 Iranians in about 1984, or the stuff he used to gas 100,000 of his own citizens in 1988? Oh wait he didn't, it's all propaganda and war scam I guess.
The IRGC directly was mostly targeting US troops in Iraq (eg the 2020 Al Asad ballistic missile attack) and frequently responded to ‘Imperial Aggression’ with missile attacks on Israel - which peaked at 2,000km... They’d also been surprisingly consistent with limiting their proxies to SRBMs so that you wouldn’t get a random Hamas or Hezbolah missile into Central Europe.
Im really hoping they enforced those limits by not sending them IRBMs rather than sending them and ‘not letting’ them use the full range because I’m getting the sense their proxies would rather land some flashy strikes on soft targets instead of having everything swatted down over Israel.
Iran has always said a lot of things (mostly BS). This is worthless without evidence and I don't think anyone had evidence that their missiles were restricted to 2,000km. Certainly, I don't think anyone took their word for it. In fact this attack proves that there was no such limitation (although it is unclear to me if the missiles fired could actually jave reached Diego Garcia).
Now this may be a demonstration and veiled threat, on the other hand if Iran was to fire a missile at continental Europe I would hope that the consequence for them would be to be flattened, so...
You didn't have to take their word for it. It was self-evident from the fact they never did anything like this before, and now they are.
Notably, the previous guy issued a religious decree against the development of nuclear weapons. Despite American's favorite propaganda tool for manufacturing consent, "but the WMDs", we have no reason to believe that was ever actually being violated. But you'd better believe it will be now if they think they can pull it off.
There is a difference between not doing something and being unable to do something. Clearly there were able but only showed it now and their previous claim was BS (again, assuming those missiles did fly "far").
No-one believes that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, either... or that they wouldn't if they had developed the capability.
Like what is happening now, completely decimating their army, navy, and air force. If that isn't enough, destroy their only source of revenue (oil fields), or go even further and destroy their electrical grid and send the country back to the stone age.
Finally, if the regime does not surrender after all this, a nuke could still be used.
Think about what you're saying. That causes hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocent civilians. Suffering of millions. Weren't you supposed to help the Iranian people? This is the opposite.
We all know he doesn't care about civilians he just want Muslims to be killed in masses and that's it, and Israel/US are carrying his dream and 50% of Americans dream to annihilate the faith of people who don't like.
> On the other hand if Iran was to fire a missile at continental Europe I would hope that the consequence for them would be to be flattened
Iran have been attacking uninvolved NATO member Turkey for a while now and nothing happens. The USA is already fully engaged into this war while Europe can hardly deal together with Russia, it is doubtful they'd do anything even if it rained down on their territory
It should be noted that Iran has claimed to have sunk the USS Lincoln and to have captured several US soldiers, among other creative interpretations of reality
To take the claims at face value, local governments that has an interest to shift blame on Israel, do not believe Iran, due to their own radar data
It should be noted that, contrary to your, erm, creative interpretation of reality, that Iran has claimed to have struck the USS Lincoln, not sank it.
And where is the radar data that proves missiles were launched towards Diego Garcia, let alone from Iran? Iran BTW say this wasn't them - and as they say in advance where they'll strike, I'm more inclined to believe them than the deranged Trump, Netanyahu et al.
I was mistaken, sinking it was a claim by IRGC influence networks, not official statement. However official Iranian statements have claimed to have hit the USS Lincoln with 4 ballistic missiles, which is also an amazing lie considering these missiles accuracy and the state of the Lincoln.
My point still stands, the Iranian regime has a different standard of truth than most people. Its lies are wild and non-subtle, I wouldn't put a lot of faith on any of those.
Regarding radar data, these is the evidence countries have when approaching such a situation. You can safely assume that a country like Qatar or Turkey for example that finance Hamas, have no vested interest to believe Israel over Iran. The problem is even they have some limit to being spit on and calling it rain
Attacking as in a couple of rockets heading US bases which were intercepted. Of course nothing would happen, why would Turkey (or other European countries) join this pointless war?
This is an attack on Turkish territory regardless if there's a US base, and Iranian missiles usually miss the bases anyway.
Turkey is led by a strongman leader and these are very sensitive to acts of public humiliation. So that's unwise when thinking about any negligible strategic advantage they may gain from these attacks
Iran is Turkey's neighbor and had relatively good relations for very long time, even with the strongman it doesn't make a shred of sense to change this. Especially for USA which has a tendency to back stab Turkey in any occasion (They could not get away from the time when Turkey did not allow them to invade Iraq from north, the previous BS war)
Idk, I don’t think Europe has the capacity to do anything except launch their nukes. If missiles started falling on London they’d run to the UN and start writing letters. It would take months for NATO to start having planning meetings to figure out how to plan the response. I feel like the only military capability is maybe the SAS and nukes. There’s nothing in between.
That's ridiculous, but Europe has no reason to intervene in this craze. If attacked, things would change. Europe has participated in previous wars like Irak or Afghanistan, why wouldn't we be able to act now?
What incentive would Iran have to lie? Their entire security model revolves around believable deterrence—apparently far more believable than either Israel or the US understood.
> it’s clear the new regime no longer feels bound by that restriction..
Wait a minute... Are you implying the dude who just got his dad, wife, brother, son and many other relatives killed by their arch enemies is not bending the knee?
Whoever is in charge doesn't matter, I can guarantee you they're not in a more favorable mood than 4 weeks ago. They also killed one of only rational diplomatic Iranian officials, during active negociations, if you want to make it clear negociating with the US is useless that's exactly what you'd do
I don't see the relevance of history and mythology to the point I was making. I am suggesting that even within the Shia framework, if we were to take it at face value, the religious ruling that the GP mentioned is non-binding because they are allowed to lie out of expediency to life or existential threats to the Islamic establishment (Taqiyya); it won't count as a sin or hypocricy within their own framework, objectively.
Saying that your enemy "plans" to do something, is never justification for mass murdering civilians. It's interesting that this is basically the same playbook Zionists are currently using. Hurl some accusations, then start killing civilians.
Haman’s plans weren’t theoretical. He had taken steps to put them into action, just like Iran has taken steps for decades in attacking Israel. Likewise, the people that were killed weren’t civilians. They were supporters of Haman. Undoubtedly, some innocent people were killed. That’s just how war works.
This ratchet effect of partially righting the ship every four years followed by drunken sailors YOLOing further into a reef because the ‘responsible party’ didn’t fix things fast enough is unsustainable. No clue how it ends but it’s so much easier to destroy things than it is to build them, so the builders are always at a distinct disadvantage.
> so much easier to destroy things than it is to build them, so the builders are always at a distinct disadvantage
Tangentially related, there was a local property nearby that had these large, aesthetic trees in the yard. The house was sold, a developer cut them all and flipped the house for sale.
I really have a hard time understanding the analogy of the "responsible party" existing, when it was objectively the Biden administration that did the most damage to the average American.
COVID damaged the average American. The Biden administration (and the preceding Trump administration) did not perform perfectly by any means, but US inflation was below that of most other OECD countries. Real wages took a serious hit and I understand people being mad about that, but it’s hard to imagine a world where the supply chain disruptions don’t cause real living standards to fall at least a little bit.
I'm genuinely curious whether there are a substantial number of people out there who deal on a regular basis with dV's on such a minute scale. Who would that be, outside an asteriod-redirect program such as this? Satellite operators doing precision trajectory correction?
I found the meter per day conversion helpful. Through another lens, it's about 0.000036 km/hour (or about 1.5 inches per hour).
Okay but they didn't give it in meters per second, they gave it in micrometers per second. Converting to micrometers per second is exactly as much arithmetic as converting to meters per day.
Right this was in the context of Canadians visiting - they can’t deny entry if you’re a US citizen but they can certainly make the entry uncomfortable.
When I was living in SF, we had lived in the same apartment for 5 years and then our landlord sold the building. The new owner was doing a condo-conversion and so we got 'evicted' (in reality he paid us a small sum of money to move out since evictions are complex there).
My partner and I were both employed, we were going to be fine (although paying much higher rent) but there was this visceral, "The place that we thought was home is being taken and there's nothing we can do about it" unease in the pit of my stomach that stuck with me for months and months.
This really feels the same as that really unpleasant time.
Presumably it’ll end up like the NuScale one, raise a few billion for design and prototyping and then every 6 months or so increase the target wholesale price by 50% until it makes no sense at all economically to begin primary construction. They’ll reverse IPO along the way and manipulate the stock enough to get insiders paid out while the carcass of a company trundles along.
No. They have Bill Gates as a founder. Bill Gates understands that nuclear is a long game.
> They’ll reverse IPO along the way and manipulate the stock enough to get insiders paid out while the carcass of a company trundles along.
I'm not sure what "reverse IPO" means, maybe you mean they'll be acquired by a SPAC, like NuScale was. I doubt it. Bill Gates founded Terrapower in 2008, he is not looking for a quick buck.
Reverse IPO is a way for scammy companies to go public by being acquired by an already public penny stock - precursor to the later SPAC shell games to do the same. Basically all of these companies do it (NuScale, Oklo, Terrestrial Energy, etc) so I’m just waiting for TerraPower to do the same.
I hope you’re right and they stay focused on actual engineering instead of financial engineering but many of Gates’ other investments haven’t been so fortunate and went down the latter path. The billions of dollars in taxpayer funds and constantly shifting tech and demo projects gives me a lot of pause though. (MSR! TWR! Fast Reactor! Fujian! Hebei! Idaho! Hanford! Wyoming! UK!)
In theory, at least, they have finished their design, had it reviewed by the NRC, and had it approved, so there should be no significant design changes.
But that also applies for the current generation of reactors and nobody can build them to schedule or budget in the USA or Europe.
Yep. NuScale received design certification as well and still ended up with multiple huge revisions. It’s not easy to build any nuclear, much less a FOAK reactor.
But when that fails, you can just siphon up taxpayer money via your connections to the ruling cabal.
> so there should be no significant design changes
The NRC frequently changes requirements for reactors while they're under construction. The NRC does not waive the right to demand changes merely due to prior design approval. This is a novel (for the US) design, so there will be unanticipated changes as the project progresses.
Russia has been operating two sodium cooled fast reactors for decades. The BN-600 and BN-800 are both operating today. The early history of the BN-600 was... interesting, suffering (at least) 14 sodium fires due to leaks. This "Natrium" design is similar; a sodium pool with two sodium loops. They are taking on the additional challenge of storing a massive quantity of molten salt. It's going to take a lot of effort by many steely eyed missile people to make this happen.
Trump issued an EO in 2025 that's supposed to make the NRC more circumspect about requiring changes of approved designs. Then there is all the pull Gates has. Wyoming is no hotbed of anti-nuclear activism. So that's all to TerraPower's favor. But TerraPower will need to fully utilize all the tailwind it can find to make this work.
To reference Admiral Rickover's 'Paper Reactor' memo [1], TerraPower is now going to commence transforming their paper design into a practical reactor. Historically, this does not usually prove successful.
https://youtu.be/sMDppu-X1mY?si=MK7JGHYjW3u4iyBy
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