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Saturday, February 28, 2026
it is rational for the americans to want to take control of iran. as an anarchist, my solidarity is with the people on the ground fighting the regime. american air support is what anarchists have been asking for since the spanish revolution.
but the americans do not want a war in the region. even if the americans had the bestest of intentions, which is silly, allowing a war to develop would just be giving less sincere actors an ability to get in there.
i have been criticizing putin for years for not just pulling the trigger in ukraine. as time has developed, i've realized the russians were more cynical than i thought, and were carrying out a kind of byzantine barbarian management. putin's goal in ukraine is not conquest of kiev, but to bog the europeans down. the russian tactic is to have the inevitable war in ukraine now rather than in russia later. it's overly pessimistic, but it's also delusional in it's longterm optimism. even in terms of barbarian management, it made more sense for the russians to rapidly advance to the dnieper to cut the country in half and eliminate supplies.
in trying to control iran in a managerial, capitalistic manner (like it's a corporate takeover) rather than in an all out destructive orgy, trump is making the same error of restraint that putin made in ukraine, and the result is likely to be the same outcome.
i don't think that trying to incentivize iran to surrender is a very good strategy.
the action i support is an overwhelming obliteration in one blow, and that's not what the us is doing. they're trying to bully them into submission. that's just giving them an opportunity to plan a counter-offensive.
you can't reason with the faithful. trump doesn't believe in god, but the iranians do, and they think their god will protect them and deliver them. there is no way to rationalize with the psychosis of faith. if trump's deal-making is psychotic with a rational actor, it's idiotic with an irrational one.
it is easy to predict that if the americans try to do this methodically, target by target, negotiating with each one, it's just going to blow up in their face, and lead to a drawn out war. the russians are busy, but the chinese will slip in. the iranians will mobilize all kinds of crazy people.
the right tactic is overwhelming but pinpointed destruction intended to completely eliminate every aspect of the regime with no possibility for surrender, not careful negotiation and case by case litigation by force. you can't negotiate with the religious.
there was a way to do this that might have worked but they're not doing it and this looks like it's doomed to turn into an inescapable mess the americans can't get out of.