Diplomatic breakthrough or military action?:
Trump's choice on Iran: Analysis
Posted By: Dreadnought, 6/18/2025 12:38:45 AM
As President Donald Trump huddled with his top advisers in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday, U.S. officials signaled that the next 24 to 48 hours would be critical in determining whether a diplomatic solution with Iran is possible -- or if the president might resort to military action instead. Trump significantly ramped up his rhetoric against the Iranian regime ahead of the meeting, asserting that the U.S. knew exactly where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was hiding. "He is an easy target, but is safe there -- We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don't want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers.
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President Donald Trump has set a two-week deadline to decide if the United States will strike Iran.
“Based on the fact that there is a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place in the near future, I will make my decision of whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday, reading a statement from the president to reporters.
Leavitt said Trump would prefer a diplomatic solution, but the president — in consultation with the National Security Council — is weighing U.S. military intervention to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,
As President Trump is contemplating potential U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, law enforcement officials have stepped up surveillance of Iran-backed operatives in the United States, multiple sources told CBS News.
FBI Director Kash Patel has increased efforts to monitor possible domestic sleeper cells linked to Hezbollah — a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization backed by Iran — since Israel's Operation Rising Lion offensive began earlier this month, U.S. officials said.
Both the White House and FBI declined to comment.
The threat from Iranian operatives has worried current and former administration officials since Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was assassinated on Mr. Trump's orders in January 2020.
A SpaceX Starship exploded at the company's Starbase launch site in Texas Wednesday night, bursting into a massive fireball. Video shows the explosion, which SpaceX said occurred as the Starship was preparing for an engine test firing.
The Starship "experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase," the company said in a post on X.
"A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for," SpaceX said.
We've talked about this topic before but as Nate Silver points out today, it probably gets less attention than it should. Let's just start with the chart so you can refer back to it. As the legend indicates, this is a 0-100 point scale where 100 is "excellent" and 0 is "poor." As you can see, conservatives are significantly happier than liberals in every subcategory of gender, race, age and education. And the chart keeps going with a look at income, religion, marriage, sexual orientation and political activity. Here's a bit of what Silver has to say about these results which come from a large survey with 60,000 respondents.
President Donald Trump is further delaying the executive branch’s enforcement of the TikTok ban after Congress passed legislation last year requiring the Chinese company that owns the platform to sell it or face a ban.
Trump signed an executive order Thursday postponing the TikTok ban until September 17, 2025, preventing the enforcement of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act for a third time since taking office.
“I’ve just signed the Executive Order extending the Deadline for the TikTok
Israel Destroys Iran's Arak Nuclear Reactor
14 replies
Wowza.
It's no surprise that Israel has destroyed Iran's Arak nuclear reactor. After all, it was a key element of Iran's program to build nuclear weaponry, and a very vulnerable target.
The only strategic reason not to attack it was the fact that it could have contained highly radioactive material, and Israel had to balance the benefit of denying its use to Iran against the consequences of releasing dangerous and long-lived radioactive material if the supposedly inactive reactor held fissionable material.
Israeli Defense Minister Says Ayatollah
‘Should Not Continue to Exist’ After
Iran Strikes Hospital 9 replies
‘Should Not Continue to Exist’ After
Iran Strikes Hospital 9 replies
Israel is promising to respond forcefully to Iran’s latest missile barrage after Tehran struck the largest hospital in southern Israel as the war between the two countries escalates.
An Iranian missile hit the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba on Thursday, causing significant damage to the hospital, one of numerous Iranian strikes on Israel that wounded an estimated 89 people across the country.
“The Iranian regime targeted Soroka Hospital in Beersheba with a ballistic missile—hitting a major medical center. We will not stand by.
Israel's remarkable early success in its campaign against Iran has clearly won over President Trump, who has now taken to using the term “we” when discussing the operation. This has increased the debate over whether — and to what extent — the U.S. should join the effort.
In under a week, Israel has achieved complete air supremacy, allowing its pilots to hit targets in Iran without fear of harassment. Though the conflict has taken a toll (Iran’s indiscriminate ballistic missile attacks have killed dozens of Israelis and injured hundreds more), the Iranian counterstrikes have not destroyed any significant strategic targets.
For political junkies who cut their teeth on “60 Minutes,” “Meet the Press,” CNN, and Fox News, longform podcasts were a godsend. Finally freed of commercial restraints and surface-level superficialities, longform podcasts took you beyond the talking points, treating audiences to a deep dive of a topic’s intricacies. Even when the podcast host had limited knowledge of the subject matter (Joe Rogan, I’m looking at you), the benefit of the longform platform was that it facilitated an open-ended, free-floating conversation where both sides learned more about the other.
But there was an important catch: It only worked when both sides were acting in good faith.
Democratic strategist James Carville said Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “The Will Cain Show” that the “Democratic Party has been the most effective political party in the history of the world.”
Host Will Cain said, “I think you’ve got a deeper problem in the way that the left is talking about America.”
Carville said, “If I take everything that they all said, it wouldn’t amount to what Mike Lee said, who’s actually a United States Senator who actually said something very harmful and very hurtful and is not apologize for it. So, I mean, we can go on. I mean, I’m not here to defend Whoopi Goldberg.
No MAGA Schism On Iran
7 replies
I wrote here that I didn’t expect the Iran-Israel war to seriously divide MAGA, and that I thought the “anti-Israel/pacifist wing of the right” would prove to be “barely discernible.” This survey by J.L. Partners supports that view:
* 58% of Republicans back U.S. military strikes on Iran, compared to just
25% opposed.
* Among MAGA Republicans, support jumps to 65%, with just 19% against. This is higher than among self-described Traditional Republicans (51% support).
Two striking things about these findings: 1) Most Republicans say they support U.S. military strikes on Iran, which so far are not on the table. And 2) MAGA Republicans are more likely to support
Democrats Now Begging to Be Arrested
8 replies
Democrats learned a lesson from Donald Trump's return to the White House: getting arrested is good politics.
It's for good reasons that Americans recoil when prominent political figures are manhandled, put in handcuffs, or have their mugshot taken live on camera. We all love the idea of politicians in handcuffs or being thrown into jail, but we rightly expect that this will only happen if they commit crimes.
Lawfare is incompatible with our values. Of course, Democrats engaged in a multi-year campaign of lawfare against Donald Trump and his associates, and it didn't work out so well for them. So, in an odd twist,
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The Earth could be doomed to breach the symbolic 1.5C warming limit in as little as three years at current levels of carbon dioxide emissions. That's the stark warning from more than 60 of the world's leading climate scientists in the most up-to-date assessment of the state of global warming. Nearly 200 countries agreed to try to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above levels of the late 1800s in a landmark agreement in 2015, with the aim of avoiding some of the worst impacts of climate change.
Democratic strategist James Carville said Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “The Will Cain Show” that the “Democratic Party has been the most effective political party in the history of the world.”
Host Will Cain said, “I think you’ve got a deeper problem in the way that the left is talking about America.”
Carville said, “If I take everything that they all said, it wouldn’t amount to what Mike Lee said, who’s actually a United States Senator who actually said something very harmful and very hurtful and is not apologize for it. So, I mean, we can go on. I mean, I’m not here to defend Whoopi Goldberg.
Carbon dioxide, we’ve been told over and again, is the enemy that must be subdued if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming. It is, however, a faulty premise. Physics, not politics, tells us that man’s CO2 emissions will not cause catastrophic climate change nor an increase in extreme weather.
“The common belief that CO2 is the main driver of climate change and the EPA Endangerment Finding assertion that ‘elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated’ to endanger the public health and welfare are scientifically false,” conclude the authors of a new paper.
Supreme Court upholds Tennessee law restricting
gender-affirming care for transgender minors 29 replies
gender-affirming care for transgender minors 29 replies
The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Tennessee law that restricts access to gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, clearing the way for the medical treatments for transgender youth to be limited in half of the country.
The high court ruled 6-3 in rejecting the challenge from the Biden administration, three families and a physician who had argued that Tennessee's law violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law. The court concluded that the state's measure, enacted in 2023, does not run afoul of the 14th Amendment.
For political junkies who cut their teeth on “60 Minutes,” “Meet the Press,” CNN, and Fox News, longform podcasts were a godsend. Finally freed of commercial restraints and surface-level superficialities, longform podcasts took you beyond the talking points, treating audiences to a deep dive of a topic’s intricacies. Even when the podcast host had limited knowledge of the subject matter (Joe Rogan, I’m looking at you), the benefit of the longform platform was that it facilitated an open-ended, free-floating conversation where both sides learned more about the other.
But there was an important catch: It only worked when both sides were acting in good faith.
Remember back when Bill Clinton was President and Hillary was his co-president?
Back then the ever-slavish media regularly referred to her as “the smartest woman in the room"?
That was never true. Not even close.
She was never a feminist heroine because she “was no Tammy Wynette” and did not “stay home and bake cookies and stand by her man.”
She was always just a mean, bitter, unattractive woman with narcissistic delusions of her own abilities.
And after all the intervening years, when she was Obama’s Secretary of State (a pity appointment because she lost the election to him – better to keep her inside the tent),
FRESNO, Calif. -- A new COVID-19 subvariant known as NB.1.8.1, or "Nimbus," is spreading across the United States and gaining traction in California, prompting health officials to urge the public to stay up to date on vaccinations. (Snip) One of the most talked-about symptoms of the new strain is what patients are calling "razor blade throat", a severe sore throat that some describe as feeling like swallowing shards of glass. "With this variant, we are seeing patients presenting with a very painful sore throat, cough, headache, and nasal congestion," said Dr. Trinidad Solis with the Fresno County Department of Public Health.
In Tehran, Iranians are reportedly chanting enthusiastically about the anticipated fall of the “Islamic Republic” regime and the potential return of the Crown Prince, heir to the ancient throne of Persia.
While it is unclear exactly the extent of the damage Israel has inflicted on Iran and whether or not the current genocidal regime will fall because of it, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi confirmed that Iranian soldiers and officials have reached out to him, and he urged the Iranian people to rise up, announcing he already has a plan for renewing Iran should he come to power again.
Clips are circulating online of Iranians chanting a slogan that has been translated:
Ex-CNN correspondent Jim Acosta joked in an interview posted Monday about President Donald Trump's deceased former wife's burial site and called her an example of an immigrant "doing the jobs that Americans don’t want to do."N Acosta, speaking on a "No Kings" Day episode of "The Contrarian" podcast with Jennifer Rubin, blasted Trump not only for the ICE raids, but argued he is a hypocrite on the immigration issue because of his immigrant wives, including his late first wife Ivana. "Where are the ICE raids at the Trump properties? Could somebody call ICE on the Trump golf course in Virginia?
The parade of clowns on the left, performing like circus monkeys for their base, continued Wednesday, when Reps. Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman, both Democrats from New York, were denied access to an ICE Court in lower Manhattan.
The building, located at 26 Federal Plaza, is the same facility in which New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested 24 hours earlier.
The ambiguously stray duo, as is the game plan these days, reminded people of their legal right and duty to inspect ICE detention facilities. They take this duty very seriously these days, although we don't recall any similar inspection efforts between January 20, 2021, and January 20, 2025.
Washington — Former President Joe Biden will be in Galveston, Texas, on Thursday to join a Juneteenth Celebration Service at a historic African Methodist Episcopal Church. The event will be held at the Reedy Chapel AME Church, one of the locations where an order announcing the end of slavery in Texas was read on June 19, 1865, two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, according to the church. In 2021, Biden signed into law a measure that made June 19, or Juneteenth, a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S. Called the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act
15-ton mega bomb needed to destroy Iran’s
last nuclear facility – here’s why
Israel can’t deliver it 20 replies
last nuclear facility – here’s why
Israel can’t deliver it 20 replies
Israel needs a 15-ton ‘bunker buster’ bomb to destroy the last untouched nuclear facility in Iran, but only the US has one.
Such a powerful weapon – the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal – is needed because the target, Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, is built some 300 feet inside a mountain near the city of Qom, two hours south of Tehran.
The heavyweight explosive is known as a GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator and was designed by Boeing for the United States Air Force.
Its huge weight means it can only be delivered with a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber – a jet Israel’s air force does not possess.
Comments:
W/Luis Martinez and Anne Flaherty.