On 19 March 2026, I was on “Breaking Points” with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti talking about the evolving war in Iran, which goes from bad to worse on a daily basis.
Well, lets first open up the rest of the Epstein Files: many so-called ‘leader’ now involved in the Iran-US-Isreali war will be confronted with their own corrupt way of handling things …?
I value Brian Berletic's view that the attack on Iran is 100% a US initiative against China by drastically limiting China's oil supply. Israel functions as a decoy to hide this strategic move against China from the world.
The straights of Hormuz are open free and safe, just not to ships settling contracts in USD. If the contracts are settled in Yuan, there is safe passage, no?
The blunder framing and the necessity framing are not mutually exclusive. Allowing Israel to set the timeline and the pretext is a legitimate failure of strategic discipline. But the underlying variable — a nuclear Iran permanently closing the military option — was real regardless of who applied the pressure. The error may be in the execution, not the objective. A doctrine can be correct and still be mishandled.
but after this illegal, immoral war on the Persians, you can bet your ignorant Western ass they, along with other countries, will definitely be working to get themselves the deterrent of nukes ... another self-fulfilling prophecy brought to the world thanks to the corrupt, treasonous U.S. government and their terrorist organization (the biggest & most dangerous), the Criminally Insane Agency
Indeed. There is ZERO oversight on i$r@el nukes and they like it that way. They want total control of the ME. Guess who saw this coming back in the day and (perhaps) paid the price for his outspokenness. JFK…. He knew the recklessness would evolve and it has. Iran is not the fear-based country of nuke hungry bombs they’ve been painted as. Today’s war is a paranoid fantasy playing out with horrific consequences and peace is not in the handbook.
Who are we to determine who’s nuclear? As far as I’m concerned we are the only ones to ever use that weapon on anyone (whether they were immoral or not). The message that has been sent by this war is be like North Korea and get nukes, Iran and all of the US & Israel’s adversaries will now begin that pursuit.
The proliferation incentive argument is real and cannot be dismissed. But it cuts both ways. The alternative — allowing Iran to cross the threshold unmolested — sends an equally powerful message: if you pursue nuclear capability long enough, you will eventually be accommodated. North Korea proved that lesson. The question is not which message is sent. A message is sent either way. The question is which outcome is more manageable — an Iran that was struck and now recalibrates, or a nuclear Iran that anchors a proliferated Middle East for the next fifty years.
As for "who are we to determine who goes nuclear" — that question assumes a rules-based international order that applies equally to all actors. It does not exist and never has. A rule that applies only to those without the power to refuse it is not a rule. It is a preference held by the powerful and imposed on the weak. The United States is not enforcing a neutral legal principle here. It is enforcing a coercive preference — and the honest position is to say so openly rather than dress it in institutional language. Power determines who goes nuclear. It always has. The question is simply whose power and toward what end.
You twists logic. The reality is that Iran was willing in the last round of negotiations to commit to not developing nuclear weapons. Trump broke off the negotiations and launched a war from which he will emerge very badly damaged, and Israel even worse off.
The negotiation claim requires scrutiny. Iran's commitment was to not developing weapons — while maintaining 60% enriched uranium stockpiles the IAEA explicitly stated had no civilian justification. A commitment to not cross the final threshold while preserving the infrastructure to cross it in weeks is not denuclearization. It is a pause with optionality retained. The window argument does not rest on Iranian bad faith alone. It rests on the irreversibility of the capability itself. Once the infrastructure exists at that enrichment level, the decision to weaponize becomes a matter of weeks regardless of prior commitments. Commitments made by governments are only as durable as the governments that make them.
The NPT allows all signatories the right to unlimited % enrichment FOR PEACEFUL PURPOSES. Iran demanded that right be honoured by the 'rules based order'... which has been demonstrated as thinly veiled 'might makes right'. Iran allowed 'inspectors' who were really Israeli/US-controlled spies.
The failing US Armada proves the Zionists controlling the US/EU/NATO and Zio-Israel have been able to 'call the tune' unimpeded... until now.
Don't be fooled. Iran was willing in the last round of negotiations to commit to not developing nuclear weapons. Trump broke off the negotiations and launched a war from which he will emerge very badly damaged, and Israel even worse off.
Who cares though. A proliferated middle east is a middle east safe from American and Israeli aggression that’s literally what we have proven in this conflict. I think the fundamental issue here is that the left does not agree with the principle that power determines who goes nuclear. That is almost reaffirming what Netanyahu said about Genghis Khan and evil defeating good. Yes, historically power has determined who goes nuclear but we fully have the ability to change that fact and spend the $200bn that the pentagon just requested on things like feeding our children and providing our people with health care.
Notice what just happened. You opened with a strategic argument — proliferation creates instability. A legitimate concern worth engaging, and I engaged it seriously.
When that argument was answered, you shifted to a different position entirely: a proliferated Middle East is actually safer because it constrains American and Israeli power. That is not a strategic analysis. It is a political preference — and it contradicts your opening premise. You cannot simultaneously argue that proliferation is dangerous and that proliferation is desirable when it inconveniences the right governments.
You then conceded the core point — "historically power has determined who goes nuclear" — and pivoted to healthcare spending. That is a third position, unrelated to the first two. This is the Solution Illusion in action: replace a hard strategic problem with a more comfortable moral one, as though choosing between missile strikes and pediatric care is how defense allocation actually works.
The dishonesty is in the framing. You are not making a security argument. You are making a political argument about which powers you prefer to see constrained — and dressing it in the language of strategic concern. Those are different conversations. The first deserves serious engagement. The second is simply a statement of whose side you are on.
Power determines outcomes. You acknowledged it. The question was never whether that is morally satisfying. It never is. The question is what follows from it — and wishing it were otherwise is not an answer.
Such mad props to the Iranians who are willing to put themselves on the line, including nukes, in order to do what it takes to end US hegemony while we in the US are too chickenshit to do anything similarly because we are afraid of going to prison.
It is a bit rich blaming that genocidal occupied terrortory for the attack on Iran…trying to deflect responsibility as and when they choose, the obeisance of the American people to ‘authority’ totally eclipses any previous understanding of Stockholm Syndrome. Get rid of that orange felon immediately. Like YESTERDAY.
As you mentioned, Trump erroneously believed he could “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Meanwhile, the Iranians seem poised to execute Ali’s “rope-a-dope” strategy.
The rope-a-dope scenario is the most serious counterargument to the doctrine. It rests on one variable: whether Iranian nuclear infrastructure can survive sustained strikes long enough for American political will to collapse. Today's Diego Garcia strike complicates that calculation. Iran just revealed a capability it had concealed — which means the rope-a-dope assumes a patience Iran may not actually possess. An adversary that reveals its strategic hand under pressure is not floating like a butterfly.
The US has retreated every time its precious military was threatened. Launching a couple warning shots at Diego Garcia was a display of capability.
So if the carrier groups think they were safely parked just beyond a certain distance, not so much. Russian and Chinese ISR is the old 'tide going out to see who's naked'.
The US is finding the limits of its gunboat diplomacy.
The retreat pattern is historically grounded and the ISR point is legitimate — Russian and Chinese surveillance of carrier group positioning is a real variable that American naval doctrine has not fully reckoned with. But the pattern argument contains a fallacy worth naming: past retreats occurred under different presidents with different strategic doctrines and different domestic political constraints. A behavioral pattern established under Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden is not automatically predictive under a president whose explicit doctrine is the restoration of coercive primacy before a closing window. Patterns require constant variables. The variable of leadership is not constant here.
The Diego Garcia strike adds another complication. Iran did not deploy a known capability — it revealed a concealed one at 4,000 km, double its declared range. That is not disciplined rope-a-dope patience. An adversary that shows its hand under pressure is telling you something about its internal calculus. The tide going out cuts both ways — it also reveals what Iran has been hiding.
It is often said that a people is the result of its conception of God. Jewish theology conceives of its God as a partisan, jealous, and vengeful God, who chose one of all the peoples of the world. From this specific theology, only the political theology we observe in present-day Israel and its rabbinocracy can be generated. An exclusivist, racist policy that considers all other peoples as inferior.
Who is a Jew? “One born of a Jewish woman.” A biological definition. No one who does not meet this exclusionary principle can be Jewish. Conversion is not accepted, as in the other major religions. With these foundations, the Jewish nation is condemned to historical failure every time it has attempted to succeed. Judaism is incapable of incorporating new members, of making converts, and therefore of growing as a mass. No nation in the world has managed to establish itself in history based on principles like those of the Jews.
For fundamentalist Judaism, which holds sway in Israel, everything non-Jewish is an existential threat that must be destroyed. Politics doesn't exist. Compromises and agreements are not even considered. If they are accepted at some point, it's only because there's no other option. But when the opportunity arises, they will be discarded.
This encapsulates the impolitical politics of the State of Israel. Only total power, like Yahweh's, provides security. Where are these madmen headed with such principles? To the tragic fate of exile in the Diaspora and persecution. They have no other horizon.
Zio-Judaism would not have the grip it enjoys worldwide if Christians did not acquiesce in scripture and militarism to Rothschild-Israel's illegitimate claims to The Holy Land™.
Why do 8 billion of us give a rat's ass about what the Oligarch-driven Zio-terrorist sliver of the Jewish 0.2% of the world's population want? About time someone called them out over their "Jews deserve a homeland", Greater Israel bullshit.
WAKE UP CHRISTIANS, if 0.2% Jews 'deserve' a homeland, how about the 30% Christians? Not that ANY religion 'deserves' a homeland.
John, many are listening to you daily as the voice of reason and rationality. Thank you for your decades of unveiling the truth on the Israel Lobby.
Need to take a can opener to Mossad, and the UK and US intel, and dump it all into the garbage disposal. Then we can open the Epstein files.
Trump can get as mad as he wants, but he doesn't control this war. The Israeli's and the American Zionists do.
Iran does
No, the Iranians are in control. The Zio-terrorists are now in 'reaction mode'.
Well, lets first open up the rest of the Epstein Files: many so-called ‘leader’ now involved in the Iran-US-Isreali war will be confronted with their own corrupt way of handling things …?
I value Brian Berletic's view that the attack on Iran is 100% a US initiative against China by drastically limiting China's oil supply. Israel functions as a decoy to hide this strategic move against China from the world.
The straights of Hormuz are open free and safe, just not to ships settling contracts in USD. If the contracts are settled in Yuan, there is safe passage, no?
King of the wooooorld.
DiCaprio style...
The blunder framing and the necessity framing are not mutually exclusive. Allowing Israel to set the timeline and the pretext is a legitimate failure of strategic discipline. But the underlying variable — a nuclear Iran permanently closing the military option — was real regardless of who applied the pressure. The error may be in the execution, not the objective. A doctrine can be correct and still be mishandled.
"a nuclear Iran"
don't be a useful idiot
https://www.aol.com/articles/intel-chief-gabbard-declines-iran-192604956.html
https://nordictimes.com/analysis/the-myth-of-irans-nuclear-weapons/
but after this illegal, immoral war on the Persians, you can bet your ignorant Western ass they, along with other countries, will definitely be working to get themselves the deterrent of nukes ... another self-fulfilling prophecy brought to the world thanks to the corrupt, treasonous U.S. government and their terrorist organization (the biggest & most dangerous), the Criminally Insane Agency
Indeed. There is ZERO oversight on i$r@el nukes and they like it that way. They want total control of the ME. Guess who saw this coming back in the day and (perhaps) paid the price for his outspokenness. JFK…. He knew the recklessness would evolve and it has. Iran is not the fear-based country of nuke hungry bombs they’ve been painted as. Today’s war is a paranoid fantasy playing out with horrific consequences and peace is not in the handbook.
🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
Who are we to determine who’s nuclear? As far as I’m concerned we are the only ones to ever use that weapon on anyone (whether they were immoral or not). The message that has been sent by this war is be like North Korea and get nukes, Iran and all of the US & Israel’s adversaries will now begin that pursuit.
The proliferation incentive argument is real and cannot be dismissed. But it cuts both ways. The alternative — allowing Iran to cross the threshold unmolested — sends an equally powerful message: if you pursue nuclear capability long enough, you will eventually be accommodated. North Korea proved that lesson. The question is not which message is sent. A message is sent either way. The question is which outcome is more manageable — an Iran that was struck and now recalibrates, or a nuclear Iran that anchors a proliferated Middle East for the next fifty years.
As for "who are we to determine who goes nuclear" — that question assumes a rules-based international order that applies equally to all actors. It does not exist and never has. A rule that applies only to those without the power to refuse it is not a rule. It is a preference held by the powerful and imposed on the weak. The United States is not enforcing a neutral legal principle here. It is enforcing a coercive preference — and the honest position is to say so openly rather than dress it in institutional language. Power determines who goes nuclear. It always has. The question is simply whose power and toward what end.
You twists logic. The reality is that Iran was willing in the last round of negotiations to commit to not developing nuclear weapons. Trump broke off the negotiations and launched a war from which he will emerge very badly damaged, and Israel even worse off.
The negotiation claim requires scrutiny. Iran's commitment was to not developing weapons — while maintaining 60% enriched uranium stockpiles the IAEA explicitly stated had no civilian justification. A commitment to not cross the final threshold while preserving the infrastructure to cross it in weeks is not denuclearization. It is a pause with optionality retained. The window argument does not rest on Iranian bad faith alone. It rests on the irreversibility of the capability itself. Once the infrastructure exists at that enrichment level, the decision to weaponize becomes a matter of weeks regardless of prior commitments. Commitments made by governments are only as durable as the governments that make them.
The NPT allows all signatories the right to unlimited % enrichment FOR PEACEFUL PURPOSES. Iran demanded that right be honoured by the 'rules based order'... which has been demonstrated as thinly veiled 'might makes right'. Iran allowed 'inspectors' who were really Israeli/US-controlled spies.
The failing US Armada proves the Zionists controlling the US/EU/NATO and Zio-Israel have been able to 'call the tune' unimpeded... until now.
Don't be fooled. Iran was willing in the last round of negotiations to commit to not developing nuclear weapons. Trump broke off the negotiations and launched a war from which he will emerge very badly damaged, and Israel even worse off.
Who cares though. A proliferated middle east is a middle east safe from American and Israeli aggression that’s literally what we have proven in this conflict. I think the fundamental issue here is that the left does not agree with the principle that power determines who goes nuclear. That is almost reaffirming what Netanyahu said about Genghis Khan and evil defeating good. Yes, historically power has determined who goes nuclear but we fully have the ability to change that fact and spend the $200bn that the pentagon just requested on things like feeding our children and providing our people with health care.
Notice what just happened. You opened with a strategic argument — proliferation creates instability. A legitimate concern worth engaging, and I engaged it seriously.
When that argument was answered, you shifted to a different position entirely: a proliferated Middle East is actually safer because it constrains American and Israeli power. That is not a strategic analysis. It is a political preference — and it contradicts your opening premise. You cannot simultaneously argue that proliferation is dangerous and that proliferation is desirable when it inconveniences the right governments.
You then conceded the core point — "historically power has determined who goes nuclear" — and pivoted to healthcare spending. That is a third position, unrelated to the first two. This is the Solution Illusion in action: replace a hard strategic problem with a more comfortable moral one, as though choosing between missile strikes and pediatric care is how defense allocation actually works.
The dishonesty is in the framing. You are not making a security argument. You are making a political argument about which powers you prefer to see constrained — and dressing it in the language of strategic concern. Those are different conversations. The first deserves serious engagement. The second is simply a statement of whose side you are on.
Power determines outcomes. You acknowledged it. The question was never whether that is morally satisfying. It never is. The question is what follows from it — and wishing it were otherwise is not an answer.
Here’s a great map without a single narrative to explain it
https://substack.com/@jonathancook/note/c-231161447?r=khorh&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I can see Richard Jaffee is on the line. I think he is a humanoid so do not pay IT no attention.
Such mad props to the Iranians who are willing to put themselves on the line, including nukes, in order to do what it takes to end US hegemony while we in the US are too chickenshit to do anything similarly because we are afraid of going to prison.
Strrategy is an unknown word in D.C. (District of Corruption).
Thank you good Professor John Mearsheimer.
The iceberg ahead? He will probably try to bomb it and/or plant the flag on it.
It is a bit rich blaming that genocidal occupied terrortory for the attack on Iran…trying to deflect responsibility as and when they choose, the obeisance of the American people to ‘authority’ totally eclipses any previous understanding of Stockholm Syndrome. Get rid of that orange felon immediately. Like YESTERDAY.
As you mentioned, Trump erroneously believed he could “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Meanwhile, the Iranians seem poised to execute Ali’s “rope-a-dope” strategy.
The rope-a-dope scenario is the most serious counterargument to the doctrine. It rests on one variable: whether Iranian nuclear infrastructure can survive sustained strikes long enough for American political will to collapse. Today's Diego Garcia strike complicates that calculation. Iran just revealed a capability it had concealed — which means the rope-a-dope assumes a patience Iran may not actually possess. An adversary that reveals its strategic hand under pressure is not floating like a butterfly.
The US has retreated every time its precious military was threatened. Launching a couple warning shots at Diego Garcia was a display of capability.
So if the carrier groups think they were safely parked just beyond a certain distance, not so much. Russian and Chinese ISR is the old 'tide going out to see who's naked'.
The US is finding the limits of its gunboat diplomacy.
The retreat pattern is historically grounded and the ISR point is legitimate — Russian and Chinese surveillance of carrier group positioning is a real variable that American naval doctrine has not fully reckoned with. But the pattern argument contains a fallacy worth naming: past retreats occurred under different presidents with different strategic doctrines and different domestic political constraints. A behavioral pattern established under Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden is not automatically predictive under a president whose explicit doctrine is the restoration of coercive primacy before a closing window. Patterns require constant variables. The variable of leadership is not constant here.
The Diego Garcia strike adds another complication. Iran did not deploy a known capability — it revealed a concealed one at 4,000 km, double its declared range. That is not disciplined rope-a-dope patience. An adversary that shows its hand under pressure is telling you something about its internal calculus. The tide going out cuts both ways — it also reveals what Iran has been hiding.
It is often said that a people is the result of its conception of God. Jewish theology conceives of its God as a partisan, jealous, and vengeful God, who chose one of all the peoples of the world. From this specific theology, only the political theology we observe in present-day Israel and its rabbinocracy can be generated. An exclusivist, racist policy that considers all other peoples as inferior.
Who is a Jew? “One born of a Jewish woman.” A biological definition. No one who does not meet this exclusionary principle can be Jewish. Conversion is not accepted, as in the other major religions. With these foundations, the Jewish nation is condemned to historical failure every time it has attempted to succeed. Judaism is incapable of incorporating new members, of making converts, and therefore of growing as a mass. No nation in the world has managed to establish itself in history based on principles like those of the Jews.
For fundamentalist Judaism, which holds sway in Israel, everything non-Jewish is an existential threat that must be destroyed. Politics doesn't exist. Compromises and agreements are not even considered. If they are accepted at some point, it's only because there's no other option. But when the opportunity arises, they will be discarded.
This encapsulates the impolitical politics of the State of Israel. Only total power, like Yahweh's, provides security. Where are these madmen headed with such principles? To the tragic fate of exile in the Diaspora and persecution. They have no other horizon.
Zio-Judaism would not have the grip it enjoys worldwide if Christians did not acquiesce in scripture and militarism to Rothschild-Israel's illegitimate claims to The Holy Land™.
Why do 8 billion of us give a rat's ass about what the Oligarch-driven Zio-terrorist sliver of the Jewish 0.2% of the world's population want? About time someone called them out over their "Jews deserve a homeland", Greater Israel bullshit.
WAKE UP CHRISTIANS, if 0.2% Jews 'deserve' a homeland, how about the 30% Christians? Not that ANY religion 'deserves' a homeland.
You're being played...