|
War On Iran: – There Isn’t Going To Be Another Ceasefire Deal
AlArabia has published what it claims is the:
Final draft of [the] preliminary US-Iran memorandum of understanding.
I am pretty sure it is not a draft Iran has seen or even in parts committed to.
It is a U.S. wishlist with lots of points that have no tangible outcome, process or date attached to them. It points to undefined “agreed upon arrangements” and “interim understandings”. Without those being written down and followed by the letter the whole thing is useless.
Excerpts:
- Reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to international navigation, guaranteeing the free passage of commercial vessels and oil tankers without additional transit fees, with the Iranian side committing to take the necessary technical and security measures to ensure the safety of navigation, including the removal of mines and maritime obstacles according to agreed-upon arrangements
- Enabling the Islamic Republic of Iran to resume the sale and export of oil within the framework of the interim understandings agreed upon by the two parties
- …
- Consideration will be given to suspending or easing some sanctions related to the Iranian oil sector in phases, in accordance with the implementation of mutual understandings and commitments
- The necessity of ending military operations and de-escalation on all regional fronts, including the Lebanese arena, will be emphasized, along with working towards establishing a comprehensive regional de-escalation
If that is the real state of the negotiations the whole thing will go nowhere.
Being in week twelve of his two week war on Iran there is no way left for Trump to escape the damage he has caused to the global economy and his own standing.
The best way out for him is for Congress to vote against the continuation of the war. It would give Trump the necessary excuse to recall the troops from the Middle East and to draw the attention elsewhere.
The Modern Right/Republican coalition becomes easy to understand when viewed through the lens of this taxonomy.
The coalition is essentially an alliance of evangelicals, Catholics, vitalists, & the techno optimistis, held together against institutional progressivism.
The glue between these factions is cultural:
a shared conviction that Western civilization is in decline & that some combination of technology, strength, & traditional values can reverse the trajectory.
The techno optimists provide the intellectual framework for this conviction. Translating populist anxiety & defense hawk ambition into a narrative about civilizational renewal through technological mastery (e.g. accelerationists & creating “God in a Box” thinking).
If it isn’t obvious, this is the political engine behind American tech supremacy. Pushing CHIPS through Congress, securing AI deregulation, driving defense tech integration, & staffing regulatory agencies with people who think in exponential curves & are aligned with the tech reindustri-AI-lazation of America.
The American edge in semiconductors, AI, & biotech is a function of political will, & that political will is the output of this coalition. Fracture it & you fracture the political sustainability of American tech dominance.
The big problem is that this coalition’s vulnerability is that it is bound by a shared enemy rather than shared values.
The techno optimists’s meaning claim, as outlined previously (that acceleration is sacred & regulation is demonic) is structurally incompatible with Catholic Christianity’s understanding of human dignity, labor, & the common good.
So the alliance holds only as long as each faction perceives the Progressive Left as a greater threat than its coalition partner.
The moment Catholic Christians begin to perceive the technology cult as the deeper threat to their values, the coalition fractures from the inside.
However, Pope Leo XIV’s papacy is calibrated, whether by strategic design or pastoral instinct, to produce exactly that perceptual shift.
This is precisely the reason for Peter Thiel’s recent series of Anti Christ lectures in Rome, Trump & the administrations frictions & diplomatic back & forth with the Vatican.
Consider that Thiel’s Anti Christ lecutures’ thesis: that AI regulation, climate governance, & any institutional brake on technological acceleration are preparations for the reign of the Antichrist, & that Silicon Valley’s builder class represents the true continuation of the Christian civilizational mission. Have been directly challenged & rejected by the Pope.
The lectures were originally scheduled at the Angelicum (the same Pontifical university where Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, wrote his doctoral thesis). When Italian media caught wind of this, the Angelicum severed all association. A papal adviser then published a theological rebuttal calling Thiel’s body of work an attempt to “put a Christian mask on a structurally pagan project”.
The Techno Optimists are now in a struggle to strike a Grand Bargain with the Pope/Vatican in order to keep the coalition alive.
The deeper structural problem, which I don’t think the Techno Optimist faction has grasped, is that the classical liberal political order: free markets, property rights, limited government, deregulation.. is what I would call an “expensive cultural technology”.
Historically, every society that has maintained this kind of order has rested on a Christian moral substrate.
Abstract principles like rule of law & individual rights only command allegiance among populations trained in religious ideals first. The deregulatory posture that American technological competitiveness depends upon &, the Techno Optimists are actively pursuing, is directly downstream of this substrate.
Thus, the Techno Optimists are in the paradoxical position of depending on a Christian foundation, which it is simultaneously undermining with a project the Vatican has now formally identified as pagan in structure..
The Pope’s 1st & recent Encyclical Letters: “Magnifica humanitas” is a clear affront to the Techno Optimist ideals, seeking to place limits & assert its control over the AI that is being created.
Just as there’s a big geopolitical Cold War between the US & China, there’s an underreported &, perhaps equally important, religious Cold War between the Techno Optimists & the Vatican that will determine the software & political future of America.
10Δ on X: “The Modern Right/Republican coalition becomes easy to understand when viewed through the lens of this taxonomy. The coalition is essentially an alliance of evangelicals, Catholics, vitalists, & the techno optimistis, held together against institutional progressivism. The glue” / X
Posted by: frito | May 27 2026 2:14 utc | 113
|
