War with...Iran?

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I’m pretty sure

It's the political successors of the people who executed the asshole that ran his parents out of Cuba.

Rubio’s family just left during the Batista regime because they had better prospects in America and could afford the move.

This despite him always posturing as if Fidel Castro personally wronged him in some way, this presumably to curry favor with the Cuban diaspora population of people who collaborated with Batista or the US-backed plantation class.

 

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https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/19/politics/f-35-damage-iran-war

Someone mentioned it up above but they are now saying it was Iranian AA that hit the F-35. Iran posted footage from the targeting computer too, apparently.

1.5 trillion dollar weapons program hit by 25+ year old targeting equipment. That’s our healthcare. That’s a country-wide electric high speed rail. That’s, I don’t know, pick a cool thing we could’ve had instead of that fucking plane.

Also puts paid to any notion that the US has “complete air superiority” like they’ve been claiming.

 

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Honestly, the only path I can see to end in some sort of peace without catastrophic damage requires another major power intervene. The US has no offramp. Israel is full mask-off. The Gulf states seem intent on eliminating the competition.

Gun to my head, if someone was to ask me what I thought the quickest and least bloody end to this ridiculous war was- I’d say China should give Iran a Nuke and create a bilateral nuclear defense agreement with them.

Israel has US weapons and money, but their nuclear capabilities are ultimately what allows them to be so incredibly belligerent in the region.

 

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Mossadegh and Operation Ajax say hi. Not justifying anything, but these actions need to be viewed in the context of US meddling in internal affairs. Those actions set the stage for Khomeni to rise to power.

Mohammed Mossadegh was a good man and would’ve been a great leader for a liberalizing Iran had he been allowed to govern as he was elected to. Everything that followed in the country is the result of the CIA and MI6 toppling his popular regime for their handpicked puppet.

And for what? Because Britain was modernizing their coal-powered navy and needed the oil. And they wanted to control it, not buy it. Same story, different decade.

 

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I disagree. The threat to Israel is of the mullah's making. No doubt there will always be an islamic threat to Israel, I can't see that ending before islam itself ends. But a broken/fractured Iran consumed with infighting will not be able to direct 'nation state level' resources abroad to Israel's enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah or others. A coherent and unified Iranian state is far more dangerous than a factured state riven by civil war.

Thank Christ this type of position is becoming less and less common as more people in the west wake up to the reality of what capital interventionism has done to the ME. It’s always a shock to me, reading stuff like this.

Story time, there’s a very cute little bar close to my house where my friends and I are regulars, the owner is a chef and works the bar kitchen almost full time. He’s always got Bourdain on the TV. Last week I was there on a slow night sitting next to this guy who I pegged as a hog right away- Black Rifle Coffee hat, clean-ass cosplay work boots. I like to talk to people like that because I’ve got the right set of characteristics for those types to listen, white, male, and presenting a certain image of hegemonic masculinity due to my height and frame.

This time, I didn’t even really need to. Because the tv was playing Bourdain’s Israel/Palestine episode, and that’s an amazing episode. On one hand you’ve got a bunch of psychopaths from Philadelphia and NY pretending like they invented hummus and just saying the worst shit imaginable, and on the other you’ve got the full tapestry of Palestinian humanity and hospitality on display.

We just sat, drank, and watched. And the guy says at one point, “It’s a fucking shame what we’re doing to them.” “Who?” “The Palestinians.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah, and now Israel’s got us fucking with Iran too.” And he goes on to tell me both his younger brothers are looking at possible deployments and he’s worried they’re going to get killed over absolutely nothing.

 

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@karolus - what you see as a "war" I see as the latest skirmish in a centuries-old power struggle between two religions over pieces of geography they deem critically important. So, IMO, fundamentalism started this war. More importantly, fundamentalism enables it to be prolonged.

That’s certainly how western Christo-fascists and their capital backers would prefer you see this conflict.

 

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Now the proponents of AI in military applications will say that there will always be a human in the decision chain. But if they're generating hundreds or maybe even over a 1000 new targets in a day, how much hunan vetting and decision making could there be?

Reminds me of stuff I read about Lavender, a similarly grotesque AI targeting project which essentially served to “balance” civilian lives as collateral against possible strikes on low-level Hamas militants.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

The idea that death could randomly fall from the sky because some AI hallucinated a link between a militant and somebody in your apartment complex, or down the street, it’s just disgusting. It seems like something that we as a species should never have broached. It’s like, evil isn’t real, but the assholes that made tools like this are real so it’s all a bit of a wash, really.