Selected writings of interest on the War on Iran:
A long-read on how Netanyahoo pushed Trump, against all other advice, into launching the war:
How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran (archived) – NY Times
In a series of Situation Room meetings, President Trump weighed his instincts against the deep concerns of his vice president and a pessimistic intelligence assessment. Here’s the inside story of how he made the fateful decision.
Mr. Netanyahu delivered his presentation in a confident monotone. It seemed to land well with the most important person in the room, the American president.
Sounds good to me, Mr. Trump told the prime minister. To Mr. Netanyahu, this signaled a likely green light for a joint U.S.-Israeli operation.
Lebanon emerges as potential spoiler to Iran deal – CBSnews
Multiple diplomatic sources told CBS News that President Trump had been told that the ceasefire announced Thursday would apply to the Middle East region, and he agreed that included Lebanon. Mediators believed the ceasefire to include Lebanon, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced that it did. Araghchi also said it was included.
On the day of the ceasefire, a White House official told CBS News that Israel had also agreed with the terms of the deal that Pakistan had helped to broker.
However, the U.S. position shifted following a phone call between Netanyahu and Mr. Trump. Two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News that the changing U.S. positions, and the disjointed remnant of the regime in Iran, are making the diplomacy highly complex.
Donald Trump is the war’s biggest loser (archived) – Economist
There is a reason he wants an exit from Iran
The war has shown that the value of America’s might is easy to overestimate. Its factories cannot resupply its armed forces fast enough, whereas Iran fought an asymmetric war with limited weapons. Too much testosterone leads to wretched judgments that confuse lethality with winning. Overwhelming firepower without a strategy saps American strength.
Non-Recourse National Strategy – Syncretica
They learn that hesitation is expensive, that deliberation is for people who don’t have conviction, and that the main failure mode is not swinging. They are, in the language of behavioral finance, calibrated to be systematically overconfident in their own ability to identify signal in noise, and structurally indifferent to path dependence because in their world, paths don’t particularly matter — if this startup dies, you do the next one. The option resets.
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What happens when you staff an entire executive branch with people whose entire professional formation has been as option holders?
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Exhibit B is the war in Iran. Heads you win and its regime change, tails…. uh did anyone think about tails? Apparently not – at least certainly not Kushner, Trump and Witkoff the real estate guys.This is where path dependence enters, and the administration appears constitutionally unable to see it.
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Countries that interact repeatedly — on trade, on security, on currency arrangements — are playing an iterated game, not a one-shot game. In iterated games, reputation is not a “nice to have” it drives how people play and outcomes. Your counterparty’s willingness to make concessions today is a direct function of what they believe you will do tomorrow, and that belief is formed by what you have done before. Defect once and your partner adjusts their priors.
The Insurgent Empire – Standoff War, Trashcanistans, and the Proliferation Trap – Big Serge
The American strategy, as articulated by various administration officials and as discernible from the pattern of operations, does not envision ground forces seizing and holding Iranian territory. What it does envision is something remarkably similar to the insurgent’s playbook, executed from the opposite end of the technological spectrum: make the Iranian regime’s existence as the governing authority of its own territory impossibly expensive; deny it the exercise of sovereign control over its own military and industrial assets; impose costs that accumulate faster than they can be absorbed; and through this sustained pressure, either compel behavioral change or create the conditions for the regime’s internal collapse.
Iran’s Schools and Hospitals in Ruins From U.S.-Israeli Strikes – NY Times
The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country’s primary humanitarian relief organization, said on April 2 that at least 763 schools and 316 health care facilities had been damaged or destroyed in the war.
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Schools and hospitals hold some of the strongest protections of all civilian infrastructure under international humanitarian law, and intentional attacks on them could be considered war crimes. Even strikes on military targets that damage nearby schools and hospitals can violate international law, experts say, and military commanders are expected to take stringent measures to prevent and minimize such harm.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other American officials have insisted that the U.S. military is acting with precision.
Hegseth, the Secretary for Warcrimes, is of course right. The U.S. military acts with precision when it intentionally bombs schools and hospitals in Iran.
Absurd and inhuman violence is spreading ferociously through the sacred places of the Christian East, profaned by the blasphemy of war and the brutality of business, with no regard for people’s lives, which are considered at most collateral damage of self-interest. But no gain can be worth the life of the weakest, children, or families. No cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood.
Two of the measures mutually agreed upon between the parties have yet to be implemented: a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets prior to the commencement of negotiations.
These two matters must be fulfilled before negotiations begin.
It is mostly about the War on Iran and relatively short. The U.S. has lost the war badly and Mearsheimer fears that Israel might go nuclear on Iran.