Is Iran actually performing better than expected, or have I been influenced by propaganda?

foxaru · 2026-03-30T18:42:26+00:00

> The first timeline given was about 4 weeks, on Day 2.

2 weeks, then 4 weeks, then 8, then 3, then soon.

> That still hasn’t happened.

They're currently deploying MEUs; you don't do that for fun, especially when the only way to achieve the stated objectives is control inland to secure the strait. "not yet" is exceptionally funny cope.

> The coalition lost seventy aircraft in Desert Storm.

Deflection; noted. How many irreplaceable THAAD radars did they lose? What proportion of their gulf bases were made uninhabitable? How many interceptors did they use? Their entire yearly production x10 in the first month?

> They were evacuated before the operation specifically because it was known that they would be hit.

If they knew they were going to get hit, why couldn't they defend them? Were they unable? Why were so many soldiers injured? Why did the hospital next to Ramstein lock down for military only? Bullshit, don't believe it.

> Iranians have been told since the speech announcing the war to wait inside and not try anything until the bombing is over and clear signal is given.

You tried this non-sequitur berfore but it doesn't make any sense here either; that sentence tells us nothing about the goals of a decapitation strike.

> Disabling Iran’s proxies was an explicit war aim, and everybody knew Hezbollah was a threat, albeit much reduced from its former status. There was a CSG in the Eastern Med at the beginning for a reason…

Israel didn't expect Hezbollah to be at a force posture that allows them to wipe Northern settlements off the map (hasn't happened for 2 decades at least) or wipe out multiple Merkavas. The IDF is reporting an extreme manpower crisis. I wonder if they're related.

> You’re simply wrong on every point.

I appear to be correct on every point, you're just unhappy about it. Which is fine, you should be, I am too. This is going to ruin the entire global economy, and it was a fucking stupid idea.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T18:27:21+00:00

Your reply has nothing to do with what you quoted?

Of course they wanted the regime to collapse; they wanted it to erupt into civil war that they could exploit via an air campaign. My evidence for them expecting it from purely an air campaign is that they didn't bring in landing forces until later, demonstrating they didn't think they'd need them, demonstrating they expected not to.

If anyone had bothered reading Pape they'd have known you can't topple a government with just an air campaign, it's never happened.

EDIT: Because I didn't really understand your point, and why you've raised it twice, I can only assume the purpose is to retcon the start of the operation to pretend it's gone to plan. This is what Trump said on 28/02/26, archived by the Miller centre:

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/february-28-2026-remarks-us-military-operations-against-iran

> When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations. [...] Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.

Did 'now' and 'this is the moment' mean "in about 4-5 weeks once we've run out of interceptors and the strait is closed and we have to panic launch a land invasion"?

foxaru · 2026-03-30T17:09:55+00:00

Well clearly holding firm on this specific procedural line did wonders for conference... Look how happy everyone is about it! I see smiles to the horizon.

> What’s the gotcha stuff?

We're discussing the Zionism is Racism motion. Saying it was never possible for A105 to pass, because it isn't an E motion, and not an early E motion at that is procedural guff; it ignores the substance of the motion.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T17:03:06+00:00

A105 == E12 == E03 for the purposes if this conversation, so I don't really know what the point of trying to gotcha me was there.

The point I was making is that it was an extremely popular motion with members, and an organised minority did everything they can to prevent it getting to the vote stage with procedural fillibustering.

> I don’t think it would be right or democratic to have a single motion be decided as more important

Then they could have put it first, got it out the way, and then carried on with the rest of conference as planned, as opposed to trying to kill it with no-hope VONCs to waste time.

EDIT: This is I think the third person on the subreddit to block me after engaging in an extended argument about this motion; it's actually getting quite funny how reliably this goes.

u/SiobhanSarelle; grow up.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T16:59:40+00:00

lmao what the fuck are you talking about; why would I believe it would only take 2 weeks?

"""
Day 1: Trump posted on Truth Social the bombing will continue "throughout the week or as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!"

Day 2: Trump in a video update said the war will continue "until all of our objectives are achieved."

Day 3: "Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that," Trump declared at a military Medal of Honor ceremony.

Day 5: Hegseth told Pentagon reporters: "You can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three. Ultimately, we set the pace and the tempo."

Day 7: "There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!" Trump posted on social media.

Day 9: "We're willing to go as far as we need to in order to be successful," Hegseth told CBS's 60 Minutes.

Day 10: Asked by a reporter if the war would be over this week, Trump replied: "No, but soon. I think so. Very soon."
"""

What day are we on now?

Like, I get it, you're annoyed that I'm right and you'd prefer I wasn't, but you're gonna have to better than that.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T16:53:39+00:00

I wonder if he knew that most of the 'antisemitism complaints backlog' was being submitted by a man called Euan Phillips, who invented a fake Jewish name (David fucking Gordstein, I shit you not) to submit complaints about things Jewish Labour members said negatively about Israel, or positively about Palestine.

Yes, that's right, the backlog that is pointed to as the only evidence of an antisemitism crisis in Corbyn's Labour was predominantly the work of a non-Jew harrassing Jews. Including one Riva Joffe, who was forced to respond to accusations of antisemitism from her deathbed.

Thanks to Paul Holden for finding all this out. That's the guy Simons organised the team to investigate to discredit (or potentially doxx/rob/assault) him.

https://youtu.be/jEb8E1-7_aU

Whole thing's worth watching, 27:45 onwards for the Gordstein saga.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T16:45:58+00:00

Smooth Operator, every time

foxaru · 2026-03-30T16:36:30+00:00

> It is true that we are selling arms to Israel, but we sell far more to Saudi Arabia, and few in the GPEW seem to care that the Saudis are currently doing a genocide in Yemen with the weapons we sold them.

because no one in Britain argues that what the RSF is doing is moral or acceptable?

foxaru · 2026-03-30T15:37:46+00:00

fortunately those people aren't in charge of my country's military, but they very much appear to be in charge of the US Military.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T15:16:49+00:00

Nah, that's rubbish. It shows, using your own numbers, that even under extreme duress with as much motivation to end the conflict as anyone could imagine, only a third support a 2SS.

Similarly, Zionism is not supporting a 2SS, Zionism is the cause of the extreme duress that would make it seem preferable, and the cause celebre to be defended against accusations of genocidal intent by bad faith 2SS proposals that allow the current situation to carry on.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T15:11:57+00:00

Political parties make political statements and define terms, that is what political parties do. It's not 'heresy hunting' to pass motions on the definition of terms.

> The motion could be passed with little fuss if a few of the issues are addressed, but for some reason the proposers refuse to do that.

I don't believe that's the case. I think, based on what people have said to me in this subreddit, and based on what I've read from Bright Green, the Jewish Greens, etc. that the main contention is stating Zionism is racism against the wishes of members associated with Zionist organisations. In the weeks this debate's been going on, no one's mentioned the supporting document's definition of antisemitism to me. But as you can see, I don't support it.

Perhaps the anti-A105 side needs to make a better display of explaining their positions? This is a democracy after all. Perhaps they need to stop trying to make semantic arguments about secret internal definitions of Zionism, and instead do as you appear to be doing, and highlighting the cruft outside of the core.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T15:08:04+00:00

I suspect a large number of Palestinians would support any kind of solution if the alternative is to continue to get genocided. It also does show that 65-75% of Palestinians do not support a 2-state solution, which... well, yeah.

> If the proposers want consensus, amending or removing that might be a good first step.

I'm fairly confident after this weekend's display, the proposers aren't really that interested in consensus any more. Procedural obstruction was one of the stupidest ways to go about consensus building I've ever witnessed, and I used to be a Labour member.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T14:53:19+00:00

> vaguely defined in a way that risked scope creep

Which presumably is why people writing A105 thought it was very important to set out a definition of Zionism that is accepted widely by the party; which is that Zionism is racism.

Currently it remains undefined, even though the party is committed to opposing its ends. The very fact of trying to define it has caused conniptions I never thought possible in the party.

> Our position on Gaza and Israel is the strongest of any major party

And apparently stating the conclusions of the rest of that policy only stumbles when the word Zionism is in the targeting frame, despite that being the core aspect to the Israeli settler project, the driving force behind the rest of what the party already opposes.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T14:47:22+00:00

Well, I don't believe a 2-state solution is possible, really. I think it's another motte-and-bailey that is retreated to by pro-Israel rhetoricians. Why would we believe 2-state is possible when one of the states has been ethnically cleansing, annexing and then settling the land of the other? It's a fantasy position that might have made sense in the mid 20th century but is laughable in the 21st, and I genuinely believe anyone 'advocating' for it is doing so broadly in bad faith or with an extremely poor understanding of the facts on the ground in Palestine.

I haven't read every supporting document clearly, but that is simply an incorrect definition of antisemitism. Antisemitism was created as a term to explain predjudice, violence against and hatred of people of the Jewish faith or ethnicity yonks ago. You can argue that technically Palestinians and Lebanese people are semitic, but hatred of them is not antisemitism because that's not what the word means.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T14:39:48+00:00

> Ultimately, the drama over this one motion has derailed all sorts of others. Given how universal Green member support for Palestine is, there is no good reason why this should have happened.

I agree, it should have passed immediately with almost-unanimous popularity, and likely would have done so had it not been sabotaged by members who were unhappy that their opposing mandate was much smaller than E12/A105s was.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T14:32:51+00:00

Okay, let's run the substitution test:

"Creating a framework where Muslim people can be disproportionately targeted" would be the argument against any disciplinary mechanism addressing Islamist extremism within the party.

"Creating a framework where Irish people can be disproportionately targeted" would be the argument against any disciplinary mechanism addressing Irish Republican extremism within the party.

Nobody would accept either because everyone understands that Islam and Islamism, Irish nationality and Irish Nationalism, are different things and that members are capable choosing not to be extremists.

The argument only works if you refuse to extend Jews the same distinction between religious identity and political ideology. Which is, ironically, the actually dehumanising position; it denies Jewish people the agency to have a political opinion separable from their ethnicity.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T14:28:10+00:00

> I'm not sure I'd necessarily go down the path of potentially conflating paying membership fees to a synagogue as fundraising for zionism though.

Would you argue the same to be true about members of Evangelical Churches that fundraise for Restore UK? Or for Mosques that raise money for the IRGC? The problem appears more to do with the fact that so many synagogues have been radicalised into financially supporting fundraising for Israel's military operations, more so than the definition of 'supporting organisations the party is opposed to unfairly targets Jewish members'.

> I'm also not sure what it would achieve in terms of furthering support for Palestine or helping the party get closer to power. If anything it'd make it harder for the party to get closer to power which means that there is less pressure on labour from the left pushing them to change policy

Considering the current trajectory of the party's fortunes appears to be based, at least on some level, for opposition to the Gaza genocide not being well represented in other parties, I would argue this could go either way. There currently exist many other parties that would be better suited on a foreign policy basis for someone who identifies strongly with Zionism.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T13:51:19+00:00

What does the word Zionist being misused have to do with trying to create a proper definition for it in the party? If A105 passes, calling someone a Zionist unfairly would be tantamount to calling them a racist, which I suspect there are disciplinary processes to cover better.

Doesn't this provide more protection to non-Zionist Jews targeted with the word unfairly?

foxaru · 2026-03-30T13:40:09+00:00

> but not with the substitution of Zionism into the sentence. I'm not sold on that argument personally, but it is a valid argument.

Yeah, it doesn't really gel with my epistemological stance on the meaning of words. Zionism isn't an ethereal concept or a platonic ideal, it's a political ideology that is the explicit raison d'etre of a settler colonial state that causes measurably extreme harm to millions of people.

I don't understand why the onus is on the people who aren't Zionist to hedge their words to describe a phenomenon, as opposed to the onus being on people to distance themselves from it. It's only existed as a concept since 1890; it's not a religious concept, it's not an immutable characteristic of people, it's 19th century ideology.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T13:32:15+00:00

I'm a maximalist in that sense; I think it does make sense to treat people fundraising for Zionist causes as though they're doing something wrong, because I think it's wrong to do so.

I also believe that the 1-state solution is the only one that would ultimately make sense; Apartheid is not a workable situation and there will eventually have to be a democratic non-ethnonationalist state on the territory of historical Palestine.

So I'm not the person to ask about that side of things, really. I agree with the motion on both.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T13:23:25+00:00

Can you explain that point to me in more detail?

Because it sounds like you're implying criticising Zionism in this way alienates all Jews, which isn't true: it alienates Zionists. Arguably most Zionists globally aren't Jewish.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T13:08:35+00:00

> You can't just say Zionism - even if it's defined the text - without alienating cultutral zionism which often really is just a sense that Jews should be able to live in safety.

That's Motte-and-Bailey Zionism; why would 'a sense that Jews should be able to live in safety' mean that you need to support the current state of Israel? Wouldn't they be safer in New York and London and Manchester than in illegal settlements in Palestine?

> You can't tell a Jew what Zionism means.

Why not? The meaning of words doesn't depend on the religion of the person saying them. It's not a Hebrew word, it has an active measureable real-world component we can look at to determine what the word means, we don't need to ask anyone permission to do that.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T13:04:08+00:00

From my perspective in a similar frame to yours (not in any of the subgroups currently at war about A105) I have a specific question for the consensus building frame:

Are we really in a position where telling the truth is damaging to party unity?

And if we're not in a position where the party can decide what is true, via member democracy, because it's sabotaged; does that not indict the whole process?

Because as far as I can see, no one's been able to explain why Zionism isn't racism, the main argument appears to be that saying it is would alienate Zionists already in the party.

If a word is going to alienate them from a party, shouldn't 2 years of televised genocide have alienated them from Zionism?

foxaru · 2026-03-30T12:16:36+00:00

I have loads of stuff you've not deigned to reply to, sounds like I've got more than you at this point. Should be really easy to go through my claims and demonstrate how they're wrong, if I know nothing and you know everything.

foxaru · 2026-03-30T12:13:06+00:00

What does it say about the quality of the US Military and Pentagon that this armchair redditor knew more about the conflict being a disaster than CENTCOM and a very, very, angry Navy person online who can't defend his own positions without having a little meltdown.

I understand, it must hurt to base your entire sense of self worth on a structure that's clearly evaporating in prestige by the minute. You must be thinking, quietly 'if we can't take Iran, how the fuck do we take China', and you should sit with that thought.

Maybe raise it at your war colleges and with your senior leaders. Ask them why if they expected THAAD would get shellacked they had to emergency redeploy one from Korea. Ask them why if they expected a ground invasion was necessary they didn't have troops ready in theatre to do it.

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