I'm seeing people doubt that the Iranians will escalate further in their campaign against Gulf oil infrastructure because "it would be suicide" or "they'll destroy their own economy." What you need to understand is that our own record of perfidy during negotiations has demonstrated that making any kind of agreement with the United States is itself suicidal. We are now the most untrustworthy state in modern world history. Any perception of our respect for the norms of international relations has been torched permanently for the benefit of Israel.

The only reasonable Iranian option is to re-establish deterrence in a way that requires no treaty for us to violate, no trust for us to break. That means pushing us out of the region entirely if possible by denying us the ability to reclaim our bases and making this war so costly that the American public sours on the prospect of war in the Middle East for a generation.

Our hope for bringing this war to an end in remotely favorable terms is regime change, but there's zero indication so far that this is likely to happen. Our own ridiculously boneheaded actions have backed the Iranians into a corner and obliterated any chance of a negotiated settlement.

https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2029231167443030151

Iranian leadership now understands that even speaking to American negotiators by video call comes with a risk of death. Israeli influence has intentionally stacked every incentive on the side of never speaking to the United States ever again.

I'm going to explain this in detail for people aren't familiar with it. It's going to sound somewhat unbelievable because it's some of the most stone cold Sun Tsu Machiavelli shit of all time, but Sinwar openly described it in these terms.

First, put yourself in his shoes. Gaza is an open air concentration camp, and there's no indication this will ever change. The Israelis are gobbling up increasing amounts of Palestine outside of Gaza. They're also normalizing relations with the Sunni Arab states to an unprecedented degree. The Abraham Accords were signed in 2020, and Israeli relations with the entire Sunni world are on an upward trajectory.

The only faction within the region that could possibly come to your rescue is the Shia. The Iranians have huge military potential, but their strategy is to keep themselves at a distance while slowly attriting the Israeli axis with proxy forces, and this is having mixed results. The Iranians are under severe economic pressure and have no interest in a wider war. It looks unlikely that they'll be able to change the picture for the Palestinians if this continues.

So what do you do? First, you need to understand the mindset of all the factions involved: Israel, the US, Hezbollah, Iran, the Gulf monarchies, Egypt, Ansar Allah, and so on. The Israelis are almost as dissatisfied with the present situation as you are. While they're achieving diplomatic success, their goal is to fully ethnically cleanse Gaza and the rest of Palestine, and start gobbling up territory in Lebanon and Syria to drive towards a future Greater Israel. Even if their position is gradually improving with the Sunni states, ultimately they're nowhere close to their long term goals, and have serious regional enemies in the form of Hezbollah and Iran. And they have the largest military in the world at their disposal if they need it.

Sinwar's strategic decision was to force a "great battle," a "flood for Al-Aqsa." His calculus was that if Hamas initiated a massive, open attack on Israel, the Israelis would use it as a casus belli to implement their strategic goals with regard to Palestine. With relations still not fully normalized with the Arab states, this would heighten the contradictions within the Middle East and lead to a massive regional war. As the Israelis would be forced to go for broke, they'd attempt to also resolve their goals in Lebanon, which would of course suck in Hezbollah, and in turn suck in Iran.

Perhaps the most crucial second-order effect without which this plan could have failed is the reaction of Ansar Allah. Their actions in the Red Sea and decision to regularly lob missiles and drones at Israeli territory kept the situation from cooling off. If they hadn't been willing to take on the US Navy solo, the plan might have failed.

It's taken until this latest outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Iran to get the Iranians to fully break with their strategy of caution and de-escalation. Sinwar understood the US/Israeli relationship. The Israeli ability to wield the US military like a tool ensured that a direct American attack on Iran was inevitable, forcing the Iranians to adjust their posture.

This plan required a willingness to make enormous sacrifices. Gaza has been destroyed, Hezbollah is severely degraded, and the Iranians are now under existential threat. But much of the public worldwide is rapidly coming to grips with the true nature of the US/Israeli relationship. Support for Israel around the world is at a 70 year low. Tel Aviv has been hammered with hundreds of ballistic missiles in four separate True Promise operations, and there are active blockades in both the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. The US has openly abandoned its Gulf allies, paving the way for a total collapse of the geopolitical picture as it stood in October of 2023. The Israeli position is more tenuous than it's been in decades.

The most mind boggling thing is that Sinwar set all of this in motion and then took up a rifle and went out to meet the IDF head on. Once Al-Aqsa flood began, the situation, which would pull in dozens of countries, was beyond his control.

https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2028684948169773191

Another key way the plan could have failed is if the Egyptians had accepted the population of Gaza being pushed out into refugee camps on the Sinai. This was clearly the Israeli plan, and they've now abandoned it for a pipe dream based around deporting the Gazans to Somaliland.

I'm pretty sure most people don't know that the Battle of Mogadishu was planned by Mohamed Aidid from the beginning to inflict such a sudden and severe tactical defeat on the US that it would sour US public opinion and force a withdrawal. Aidid trained at an infantry school in Rome and was hand selected by the Soviets to attend the elite Frunze Military Academy in Moscow.

He calculated that a single prolonged engagement with the American forces in Mogadishu would get the US to withdraw from the county if it involved enough American casualties. He observed that the joint Delta/Ranger teams searching for him would use the exact same helicopter insertion, humvee exfiltration plan every time they raided a house looking for him. So all he had to do was let himself be seen somewhere and mass forces in the surrounding area to encircle the US forces, then set up roadblocks so the humvees wouldn't be able to reach the trapped Americans. Aidid's plan worked perfectly, and his prediction was 100% correct, because Clinton pulled our troops out less than two weeks after the "black hawk down" incident.

The bulk of the casualties on the Somali side were caused by random civilians picking up guns and charging out to fight the Americans. These people wanted revenge on the US force in Somalia because it had caused so much collateral damage and killed so many people during the hunt for Aidid. Aidid's forces tried desperately to get them to put down their weapons and go home because they were just getting in the way, but there were too many of them, and they refused to listen.

Aidid lost perhaps 100-200 fighters in the battle, which is an incredibly small price to pay to knock the world's foremost military power out of your country.

https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/1996407071923933323

This part of the story is more murky, but there's evidence to suggest Aidid grew concerned about causing *too many* American casualties, inviting a military response, and made the decision to open a corridor for the trapped US troops to exit the encirclement

For anyone still having trouble understanding Trump's motivations for the USAID purge, here's a thread. The foreign aid apparatus isn't exclusively about influencing foreign countries. Trump's first term was hamstrung by psyops funded through USAID grants. I'm referring to Russiagate, a major component of which was an effort to frame Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort through an expose published in Ukrainska Pravda by the Ukrainian journalist (now Rada representative) Sergey Leshchenko

The big risk here is not that Russia continues to dismantle Ukraine in response, but that they escalate deliveries of advanced missiles and AD systems to America's enemies in the Middle East

https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1858223725755445536

Ukraine likely has so few Western standoff weapons left that this is more of a symbolic middle finger than a change that will have any substantial strategic effect on the conflict itself

While I agree that America is not under threat of attack anytime soon, it's worth pointing out that five Shahed 136s, with their launch platform, fit into a box truck and cost as much to make as the average American's pickup truck

https://twitter.com/JohnH_BBT/status/1857773343899791403

Each one of those drones carries as much explosive mass as eight 155mm artillery shells and is accurate to within a few meters. It's like a cruise missile in a box. You could, theoretically, fit thousands of these containers on a cargo ship, and no one would have any idea

Thread on aviation industry scion, CIA cargo pilot, and alleged UFO disinformation agent John Lear. Lear's connections to US intelligence ran deep, but his reputation as a fabulist makes discerning truth from fiction difficult. Lear was born in 1942, to inventor Bill Lear and Moya Olsen, daughter of legendary vaudeville performer Ole Olsen. If the name Lear sounds familiar, it's because Bill was the founder of Learjet, and creator of the Learjet 23, the first mass produced business jet.