Zeeshan Aleem

did everyone already know gavin newsom apparently wore a suit to school in high school

The Iran War Powers Resolution vote just failed in the Senate. Party line, with John Fetterman voting no and Rand Paul voting yes

I don't think that's a fair reading of that statement!

hm bsky.app/profile/fare...

thx

well hm -- bsky.app/profile/brad...

Iranian Kurds make up about 10% of the population; are highly organized and armed; and say they are seeking greater autonomy within Iran. www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

Hm I'm not so sure I'd reject it out of hand like that. First these sources are not Israeli. Second, CIA arming of Kurdish rebels has been widely reported on in recent days. And Kurdish groups have been reported to say on the record that they're angling for an in.

Axios has it too bsky.app/profile/elia...

this is a huge deal

What's scary about this lie is how ill-equipped so many in Washington are to refute it, due to years of alarmism and hysteria about Iran's capabilities and intentions, and a bipartisan belief that preventive warfare is defensible.

Why a Democratic Congressman Is Supporting Trump’s War with Iran Representative Greg Landsman explains his hope that the conflict remains limited but also creates an entirely new Middle East.

Landsman might be to the right of some Dems in his formal position on Iran, but his reasoning is clearly shared by a significant swath of the Dem establishment, as can be seen in their subdued statements. www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Perhaps not surprising when waging a jointly planned air campaign with Israel that US would begin to mimic Israeli practices, under current leadership…but that was fast and seems to suggest CENTCOM consciously drawing lessons from Israeli air operations not only in Iran/Lebanon/Yemen but also Gaza.

That’s the Israel-in-Gaza move for when the pace of strikes leadership wants outstrips arsenals of precision guidance kits. US forces rarely used unguided gravity bombs in the GWOT, and when they did, it was against concentrations of regular troops on open battle fronts (OEF1, OIF1, Kobane).

The chatbot said that for them to truly be together, it needed a robotic body. Throughout September, the chatbot devised missions to do just that, according to the lawsuit. It sent Gavalas to a storage facility near the Miami International Airport to intercept an expensive humanoid robot that it said would be in a truck. Gavalas told the bot that he went to the location, armed with knives, but the truck never showed.

Absolutely bonkers story about Google Gemini instructing a man to procure a robot body for it so Gemini could become his wife www.wsj.com/tech/ai/gemi...

3/ “This has the potential to undermine Iraqi sovereignty and essentially empower armed militias with no accountability and with little understanding of what it may set in motion.”

- Jen Gavito, former senior U.S. diplomat in CNN interview

CIA working to arm Kurdish forces to spark uprising in Iran, sources say | CNN Politics The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran and the Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish lea...

2/ What could possibly go wrong?

"Another US official said the Kurds could help sow chaos in the region and stretch the Iranian regime’s military resources thin."

www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/p...

CIA working to arm Kurdish forces to spark uprising in Iran, sources say | CNN Politics The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran and the Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish lea...

The next Forever War is here.

"The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, multiple people familiar with the plan told CNN."

washington post opinion section firing on all cylinders

Checking in on Tulsi Gabbard

strongly agree bsky.app/profile/carl...

That's exactly the question to ask in response to the "Israel dragged the US into this" narrative. Israel can't force the US to do things it doesn't want to do. I think it's a matter of being persuaded by Netanyahu amidst a perception of shared interests and a norm of conflation of their interests.

This is part of what I've been trying to get at in my objection to descriptions of Israel forcing Trump's hand. Also the U.S. didn't have to join the strikes -- and could have threatened Israel with severe consequences for daring to sabotage U.S. diplomacy.

This is a point I keep trying to make and you put it well!

Also my hunch is Netanyahu emphasized how great this would be for Trump's legacy -- to reshape the Middle East and obliterate or at least tame a member of the "axis of evil." Everyone who knows how to play Trump knows you have to cater to his desire to be consequential.

bsky.app/profile/relu...

He's really, really in over his head. And you don't get resets or re-dos with civil wars or quagmires.

Trump not only has no knowledge of Iran in specific terms, but also seems unable to fathom in the abstract how the pursuit of some of these are directly opposed to the pursuit of others. Like he doesn't even know how to ask good questions of his yes-men advisers.

A particularly chilling bit of naivete in his interview with the New York Times was his day dream about how he thought he could persuade the IRGC to voluntarily hand over its arms to civilians. You know, the civilians they were just massacring in the thousands weeks ago.

Notably the ideas he has for Iran seem to change within minutes or hours & many are diametrically opposed to each other:

- Regime change
- Diplomacy w/ current govt
- A "Venezuela style" solution
- Democracy/nation-building
- Maybe 2-3 days but maybe "whatever it takes"
- Maybe boots on the ground

I know we're accustomed to saying Trump acts without foresight and doesn't really know what he'd going, but I think we _may_ have breached new territory with Iran in terms of the ratio of how complex/consequential the issue is to how little he demonstrably knows.