What if the reason Trump hasn't attacked is because Iran is supplying Russia with the drones they need in Ukraine?
Yeah but the benefit of the US and other powers blowing through all their air defense missiles in another conflict with Iran would be so massive to Putin that in my opinion that is a major reason Trump is pushing this war.
Iran wouldn't blow through a serious fraction of US air defense. The main threats from Iran would be torpedo's and water based mines from hidden/small launch sites. Their drone attacks would probably land a couple hits early on, due to sheer volume, but they wouldn't get to launch waves like Russia is able to in Ukraine. There wouldn't be enough launch sites remaining after the first two weeks.
The bigger issues would be what other countries do in reaction. China and Russia at the top of that list.
Iran wouldn’t blow through a serious fraction of US air defense.
Iran already did in the 12 day war with Israel? What? Are you kidding? Air defense missile production capacity in the west was shown to be completely incapable of sustaining a complete blanket defense against a barrage of Iranian missiles and it has been a discussion since about how to address that. The air defenses work, clearly, but they run out quick.
In order to continue challenging air defenses, there has to be someplace left to launch an air attack from. And since Iran has nothing to stop US air attacks, that becomes an issue long before US air defense runs out.
No doubt Russia will move if a regional war kicks off, maybe even China. Which is no doubt why the Russian agents are getting so much pushback against attacking Iran.
The timing of the nuclear sabre rattling from the Kremlin is suspicious too.
Total crackpot armchair hypothesis: is this what it would look like if Russia's plan was to escalate the war against Ukraine and Europe, and to do it while the United States is too occupied with other problems?
The CIA has consistently reported that not only do Russian strategists and leaders not have the intention to invade more of Europe, they also do not have the capability and capacity to do so.
So yes, it's a crackpot hypothesis because it doesn't match reality as we know it.
Social credit +20
Believabilty -1,000
That's an argument, not proof.
LoL. Can you all not see how obvious it is that your analysis is fundamentally flawed? You both think Trump is doing Russia's bidding and come to exact opposite conclusions that are both totally backed by your assumptions.
I mean, I couldn't have asked for a better 2-comment encapsulation of the problem with this analysis.
I don't feel gotcha'd here at all, the way I see it the most important, vital aide that can be given to Ukraine right now are missile interceptors/air defense, and it is politically awkward and costly for Trump to completely gum the works up and give nothing to Ukraine, same story repeated in other European nations harboring radical rightwing elements, so thus an easy solution for shitty people like Trump is to bomb Iran, get Iran to attack Israel and then print money for military industrial companies by utterly depleting air defense stocks for years among NATO powers while panicking about it.
Then... there is no political cost to withholding crucial air defense missiles to Ukraine because there aren't any and the question of helping Ukraine can be turned against the need to protect the home country blah blah blah.
The logic is pretty straightforward in my mind? All that matters is that you assume Putin is Trump's daddy, and I think we can all agree on that right?
US missile companies sure as hell aren't going to lobby against this sequence of events either...
But this analysis requires entirely cutting out all context that might complicate your analysis.
For instance, Trump was the first US president to authorize weapons transfers to Ukraine.
Second, Iran is the last country on the list of 7 countries the US intended to invade as revealed by General Wesley Clark. That list of 7 countries was formulated under the GWBush administration, and the 7 countries that were on that list were:
So the conflict with Iran is at least 20+ years in the making and the plan has been followed not just by GW and Trump but also Obama/Clinton. The Biden administration continued the inter-administration policies in Syria, specifically the covert cultivation of the ISIS terrorist who eventually became the leader of Syria.
History didn't start when Trump took office. The US has vested interests in the region and Trump is presiding over the administration of those interests. Just like Venezuela, the showboating may be influenced by Trump, but the development of the aggression against Venezuela started in 1999 and continued through every administration since then, Republic and Democrat.
The analysis that everything bad Trump does is because he's really an extension of Russia is very clear example of a retreat to innocence. These are US decisions that have decades of history behind them, not idiosyncratic acts of a single president who is actually not part of US interests but actually is part of our enemy's interests.
It's such a reductive way of ignoring all of the years of effort that has gone in to US regime change planning and preparation and leaves us with the totally incorrect understanding that if only we elected someone else that none of this would be happening. It's entirely possible that it wouldn't be happening in precisely this way, with the particular PR, rhetoric, and media spin. But these operations span administrations and the president is operating, as all presidents generally do, on the basis of recommendations from the JCOS.
The analysis that everything bad Trump does is because he’s really an extension of Russia is very clear example of a retreat to innocence. These are US decisions that have decades of history behind them, not idiosyncratic acts of a single president who is actually not part of US interests but actually is part of our enemy’s interests.
Yeah, you are definitely projecting it on to me that I am someone that would disagree with that, the US needing to bomb Iran is one of the more rabid devotions of US foreign policy over many decades and administrations.
That doesn't mean Putin isn't Trump's daddy?
Stop trying to lecture me about a belief I don't hold, I don't at all think the fucked up relationship the US has towards Iran started with Trump or is the result of some Russian conspiracy.
Nope, it is just there are two shit sandwhiches here aligning in the sky above us in a total eclipse of rationality.
So if you understand the role the conflict plays in the continuity of US policy, attempting to analyze whether it will or won't happen on the basis of Trump being owned by Putin is mostly useless. If the national security apparatus is still functioning enough to maintain this level of continuity, then how did it allow for a known adversary to take the presidency. If a known adversary took the presidency, why are his actions still continuous with the last several decades of foreign policy?
If the national security apparatus is still functioning enough to maintain this level of continuity, then how did it allow for a known adversary to take the presidency.
Who said the ruling class of the US are really the enemies of Russia? Like kind of, but in reality it is more about money and making deals than anything else so yeah... om my answer to the above quote is very easily, all it took was buckets of incompetence, collusion and people saying "not my problem!".
Who said the ruling class of the US are really the enemies of Russia?
So then are you saying Trump is a puppet of Russia or are you saying that the ruling class of the USA is and has been collaborating with Russia for some time, in which case, Trump is not a puppet but rather just another bog standard member of the ruling class?
Both to a degree.
What you are asking is how could the current situation be probable given my estimation of the motivations behind the important actors involved, relying on some kind of Newtonian perfect estimation of how one thing will bounce off another and I am saying these people are unbelievably incompetent, they absolutely would and did elect a complete traitor to have power over them. They make existentially conflicting strategic choices all of the damn time. You can't evaluate the shitshow that is US power politics without adding in a massive dose of idiot juice, otherwise it will endlessly confound you that sometimes the decisions that are made don't even seem to benefit the people who are in power making them.
Putin is Trump's daddy, that doesn't mean I am attributing the follies of US foreign policy all to some elaborate Russian conspiracy, I am just stating the obvious, Putin is Trump's daddy, it is clear from his behavior.
Putin is Trump's daddy, that doesn't mean I am attributing the follies of US foreign policy all to some elaborate Russian conspiracy, I am just stating the obvious, Putin is Trump's daddy, it is clear from his behavior.
Yeah but the benefit of the US and other powers blowing through all their air defense missiles in another conflict with Iran would be so massive to Putin that in my opinion that is a major reason Trump is pushing this war.
Which is it? Your opinion is that Trump is pushing this war to deliberately weaken the US military establishment so that Russia can take military advantage of the situation because Trump personally has a submissive relationship with Putin personally? Or you don't attribute the foibles of US foreign policy to some elaborate Russian conspiracy?
From the outside, your words look entirely contradictory
Both!!! The subject we are speaking of is inherently contradictory.
Why are we talking about Putin. There's a gap in the Epstein Files missing around the 9/11 Twin Tower incident. It's Israel. It's Bibi. Netanyahu is Trumps daddy.
You call it contradictory. I call it over determination. Everything the US government is doing it would do even if Trump wasn't acting at the direction of Putin. We've seen proxy wars before. We've seen how the US manages them. Ukraine is entirely explainable through the calculus of historical US proxy wars, and particularly proxy wars with Russia/USSR. The conflict with Iran is explain able without an appeal to Russian conspiracy.
This is over determination at it's most essential. It becomes contradictory and irrational when you add in the puppet conspiracy. Without that conspiracy, it's all explainable with what we know about the US bureaucracy, military strategy, and geopolitical conditions.
Did you miss the part about US helping Putin into power and keeping him there!?
I think with so many puzzle pieces missing you may just be grasping at straws.
I do agree with your general premise though.
The US also helped put Saddam Hussein in power and look what they did? This is just more confirmation bias and selective reading of history. Yes, GWB said he looked into the eyes of Putin and saw in his soul that he was a good man. But Cheney is an anti-Trumper. So which is it? Trump is a personal puppet of Putin? The entire Republican party is individually or collectively controlled by Putin? Or the US (and its European a forebears) have always seen Russia as a prize to be conquered and ending communism was not enough for the US to change positions on that?
If Russia is a long standing enemy, everything the US is doing is consistent with that thesis without needing to also establish that some significant portion of effective leadership is actually working for Putin. The waffling with the Ukrainian weapon support is classic North Atlantic proxy war behavior and does not require an entire 5th Column of Russian actors to explain.
Yeah, I see the problem. You are failing to separate propaganda from facts, but maybe you are just commenting that no one else can seem to do this either. If it is the later I agree. If it is the former you need to stop taking anything at face value.
Russia is not an enemy, nor is China. These military conflicts are just a way for the Industrial Military Complexes of the world to use up expiring ordinance and have a reason to make more.
That is my two cents at least. Cheers!
You need to read history. Russia has been a target of Europe for a very long time. They want the natural resources under their control. Napoleon invaded Russia in an attempt to dominate it and control who it could trade with. The US and the Allies invaded Russia in 1918 to stop the communists from taking over. Hitler invaded Russia intending to enslave everyone and control all their resources. And Western Europe was pretty bullish on that idea. Many American business leaders supported Hitler, as did many English political leaders and business leaders.
When Russia was dismantled, Bill Clinton held NATO meetings with Yeltsin and Yeltsin made it clear that, following years of rapprochement with the USA, Russia would be a good capitalist ally. Clinton instead chose to expand NATO, a transnational nuclear military with no democratic accountability that was designed specifically to counter Russian military capabilities and staffed by Nazi officers specifically because they were trained on anti-Russian strategies and tactics. That choice demonstrated a US and European consensus to continue having a violently oppositional posture towards Russia and indeed enhance that posture over time. Putin continued to enrich Yeltsin's position of economic and military cooperation with the West, thinking that the expansion of NATO was just precautionary and eventually the West would accept Russia into the club. But after multiple failures of repeated attempts to integrate their Russian security framework with the West's, it became abundantly clear that the West would never accept anything less than total Russian subjugation.
Oh I missed the .ml my apologies.
Yes, it was the former. There is so much propaganda here I don't even know where to begin.
Go for it. Pick a single thing that you think is false or spun in a way that leads to incorrect conclusions.
Sure, Billy the molestor Clinton championed Eastern block nations joining Nato, but it wasn't ever his decision as it required buy in from Eastern block countries to agree to as well as Nato members (a real sore spot for nationalist Russian assholes)
The expansion of NATO is the propaganda (along with stopping "nazification") that Putin the mass murderer used to justify invading Ukraine costing well over a million casualties now. This is particularly distasteful because of how close Ukraine was with Russia. They were brothers and sisters forced to kill each other by murderous fascist pigs.
That is the problem with .ml squatters, they will tell you that China's fascism tastes better than US fascism with a straight face. It is okay when their team kills millions of people. It makes me sick.
Also, the US and Russia ended up being great trading partners increasing trade dramatically every year until 2008. Propaganda always has a little truth sprinkled in and a lot of big lies.
While it is true that countries have to elect to join NATO, it's obvious how that has been manipulated. NATO attacked Yugoslavia, claiming it was for humanitarian reasons, then dropped depleted uranium bombs on the country. Meanwhile, NATO's decades-long program of cultivating neo-nazi and fascist militias became a good starting point for manipulating the politics of these countries. But then of course the US spent hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the region further manipulating the politics of the region.
It's true that countries elect to be part of NATO, but that's the grain of truth in the pro-Western propaganda.
The expansion of NATO into Ukraine is why the Russians took Crimea. The invasion of the Donbas was caused by some intelligence analysis that we don't have access to. In 2013, a few months before Euromaidan, NATO and Ukraine did their first ever fully join exercise. Between 2014 and 2022, NATO and Ukraine ran simulated invasions of Russian territory together. The idea that NATO poses no threat to anyone is propaganda. NATO has violated it's doctrine of defense-only multiple times at the behest of the US in Libya and Afghanistan, two countries completely out of the scope of NATOs remit and purely offensive campaigns run by the US.
NATO is a transnational nuclear military with supply chain and logistics across all of Europe, led by the USA, the country with the longest track record of consistent offensive wars, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and open support for Nazis and neo-nazis. The same US that saved 10k Nazis from justice through collaboration with the Vatican and moved them all over the Western hemisphere, protecting them, giving them jobs, integrating them into politics and the military. The same US that selected Nazi officers right after WW2 to staff NATO and rebuilt West Germany and watched and even supported former Nazi politicians in running for and attaining office.
Yugoslavia was engaging in ethnic cleansing having killed over ten thousand civilians which lead to the displacement of almost a million people. That is the definition of a fucking genocide son.
Where in the fuck you think this was okay and didn't need an intervention I am not sure. The NATO bombing was criticized for killing a lot of civilians and destroying infrastructure. Was it the right call? I guess we will never know for sure.
What we do know is Yugoslavia was murdering far more civilians than NATO did. The intervention also lead to a peace agreement.
Ukraine HAS NOT JOINED NATO. Why spread lies to justify murder. It really makes you look like a piece of shit.
NATO has never invaded another country in a war of conquest, guess who has!? Fucking Russia.
If Russia put down it arms today and dismantled its military you think NATO would invade it!? That they would violate their commitments just like Russia ALREADY DID WITH UKRAINE.
Is NATO representative of the fascist fucks in the US? Certainly. We all known the US is responsible for the most deaths in human history.
That has nothing to do with the death and destruction Russia has brought on Ukraine in what can only be described as a war crime of unbelievable magnitude. They have forced their countrymen to die for literally nothing. Killing their closest ally in a sick game of propaganda.
And here you are parroting their lies. Pretty pathetic.
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/