Agreed on your points. This conflict, just validated the North Korea style of strategy to all regimes out there. It does the opposite of what it is intended.
I hope things do get de-escalated soon, as this is not good for any party (apart Israel and Russia, which are the main gainers of all this mess).
But it didn't really. Iran is poorer than it was before, even more of a problem than it was before. NK has two very special advantages (Seoul is within artillery range, and it is literally in the backyard of one or two relevant superpowers over the decades) whereas Tehran's "force projection" is mostly through proxies and affecting global commodity trade.
Without NK's hard deterrence (and without being next door to its allies)
Tehran is an easy target up until the last second. And even then what's going to happen if they detonate a nuclear bomb? Everyone will sit back and let them build as many more as they feel?
> Iran is poorer than it was before, even more of a problem than it was before.
Iran seemingly is coming out of this mess stronger than it was before.
The regime remains unchanged, and is likely less willing to make concessions now. Hell, even sanctions on it being able to sell oil have been lifted, which is a boon to their economy.
They are in effective control of the strait, and justified in exercising it now. Yeah, other gulf countries may try to circumvent it with pipelines and whatnot, depending on how poorly they come out of this war - and it is not like you create a pipeline in a few days. Those are big engineering projects.
If I were a betting man, which I am not, I think they will just resume their nuclear weapons program unchallenged after this, and will likely achieve it. It is clear that no one can stop them doing so.
And frankly, they should. Every country that can have nuclear weapons should develop them, that much is very clear, as the last decade taught everyone.
> Iran seemingly is coming out of this mess stronger than it was before.
This is a wild take. Their top leaders and generals have been killed, they have no control over their own airspace, have their military and civilian infrastructure completely at the mercy of their enemies, and have no navy/airforce any more.
Yeah, and for some reason this place that has "military and civilian infrastructure" completely at the mercy of their enemies is right now exercising full control of one extremely important sea trade route, and is wreaking havoc on all gulf states allied to the US, and is successfully hitting targets on Israel.
Facts have this annoying tendency of getting in the way of propaganda.
1) What defense? They have been punching back but have been unable to stop enemy strikes. Do you understand what the word "defense" means?
2) That happened before the war, and the protesters have been told to hold off for now. Its completely irrelevant to this war.
3) They control it for now. We'll see how long they can continue threatening global trade. My money is not for long. [1]
4) Attacking radar systems is not weakening the US presence in gulf countries. What they have succeeded in doing is attacking almost every gulf country souring relations.
5) This makes no difference since they were selling to russia and china regardless
6) This makes no sense, as they had operational Nuclear facilities up until the moment Israel/US blew them up. There is no reason to think we wouldn't do it again.
> They are not afraid to spend money (and blood) on a problem, even if it turns out to be bigger than expected. How much? We'll see.
I agree, but it is unclear if "more money" is the answer here. Iran is a much tougher nut to crack than Afghanistan. Afghanistan is barely a country. Iran is an actual, functioning country, with a territory that is geographically very defensible. And on top of that, they have actually been preparing for this for decades.
The ironic bit is that I thought the Iranian regime was on an irreversible decline, as the unrest amongst the population was growing in recent years.
The analysis I have read point out that this attack actually further legitimizes the regime and takes steam away from internal unrest, especially if Iran comes out on top.
Every authoritarian government needs an enemy. The US-Israel axis provided a very real, tangible one.
> The analysis I have read point out that this attack actually further legitimizes the regime and takes steam away from internal unrest, especially if Iran comes out on top.
Yes. Unfortunately both things can be true (irreversible decline) and solidified regime due to any external intervention.
You know the Red Sea is a different body of water than the Persian Gulf/Strait of Hormuz? Iran does not control the Red Sea directly, but most likely by funding the Houthis.
You can’t say that. Trump is very inconsistent and a consummated liar, so plenty of people didn’t believe on his promises to deliver fascism. And plenty of people did believe on his promise to end wars. /s
Whether your little black heart wishes concentration camps or you’re just hoping your paycheck goes a bit further, voting for a con man is a terrible idea.
It is to benefit Israel (so it can anex more territory in Lebanon), and it has no benefit to the US. The US had already a deal with Iran, which didn't threat its own interests directly. It is like leave a snake alone, but once you step into it, it will bite you.
This war is only to benefit Israel, and right now indirectly Russia (due to the rising prices). Basically, the US is the main loser/sucker in this war, and we are all poorer for doing it.
why would israel want to annex territory in Lebanon? Israel has fought in southern lebanon at least 2 times since I have been alive to fight hezbullah, they always go in, try to remove hezbullah and go back. From a geopolitical perspective what would israel gain by permanently annexing a this area?
these two issues are completely different. judea and samaria do not equal lebanon, ideologically or geopolitically whatsoever.
Israeli military launching incursions into lebanon to fight hezbullah and prevent them from launching rockets randomly into israel (these rockets killing many arabs as well), is not the same as the squabbles of a small minority of civilians in disputed territory within israel proper.
Did you even read it? He mentions that, and also He says that the regime is 'odious' right in the beginning, and is looking more from the US self interest and strategic perspective.
"It certainly did not help that the United States had stood idle while the regime slaughtered tens of thousands of its opponents, before making the attempt,"
"Now, before we go forward, I want to clarify a few things. First, none of this is a defense of the Iranian regime, which is odious. That said, there are many odious regimes in the world and we do not go to war with all of them. Second, this is a post fundamentally about American strategy or the lack thereof and thus not a post"
The information on the number of confirmed deaths in Iran is so easy to find, I am a bit miffed that he wrote 'tens of thousands'. We have the number of confirmed deaths, we have a number of death still to verify, if he wanted he could have added both number, it would have been close to the truth imho.
I hate how pendantic and useless some of the features of swift being pushed down by academics that don't write apps or services themselves.
Simple example:
Objective-C
if myObject {
}
in swift
if myObject != nil {
}
Also opitionals in swift could have totally be avoided if they adopted a prototype based langue (basically object are never nil). Lua did this, and it is very elegant
But meanwhile, we got a half backed optional system, which is backwards (similiar to Java), and didn't help with the practicality of the language at all, and meanwhile you still can crash an app doing myArray[1]
I love Obj-C, but the Swift version isn't as bad as you say:
if let myObject {
// myObject is non-nil in here
}
The Swift version is also usingfirst-class optionals. In Obj-C there is very small chance you'll confuse `NULL` with `nil` or `0`. Or that you'll message `nil` resulting in `nil`.. and in well-built software you have to guard against that.
Aside: Obj-C is narrowly focused on adding objects (in the Smalltalk sense) to C whereas Swift is trying to deliver a compiler and language with memory safety _guarantees_... Turns out that means you need a lot more language. Not to mention the `async` syntax/feature explosion.
Obj-C is "hippie" and Swift is "corporate suit" + "we're doing serious work here!"
Finally I want to say: I believe Obj-C was a huge competitive advantage and secret weapon that let Apple deliver an OS with so much more built-in functionality than any competitor for years and years. (Obj-C is great for system APIs) That's under-appreciated.
Even with that there is nothing from you accidentally using [i]. Also there are just a ton of Swift APIS and bridge API that take an index and then crash… for full coverage you would need hundreds of safe wrappers… (doing what you propose though at least gives you. Some peace of mind..
Also Swift has a lot of other areas where it just lacks any safeguards… Memory issues are still a thing. It’s using ARC under the hood after all.
Infinite recursion is still a thing (not sure if this would even detectable - probably not).
Misuse of APIs.
And it introduces new issues: which methods are being called depends on your imports.
In my experience Swift lulls you into a false sense of safety while adding more potential safety issues and “only” solving some of the less important ones. objc has null ability as well. Which can warn u if used appropriately. objc also has lightweight generics. In practice this is all you need.
> And it introduces new issues: which methods are being called depends on your imports.
also depending on how you casted it, it will call the method of the cast, not the actual one in the instance (which completely caught be off-guard when i started swift)
> objc also has lightweight generics. In practice this is all you need.
i feel this too sometimes; sometimes simple really is best... tho i think some of these decisions around complexity is to allow for more optimization so c++ can be chucked away at some point...
This was doesn't benefit the US whatsoever. I am getting tired of our taxes going to another useless war, like the Iraq one, that only benefits a foreign entity, aka Israel.
Iran could have been contained and Obama was right on his approach. We don't know the details of the strikes, but I hope it doesn't go into a full blown war, but this will be another Iraq like disaster, and american people are getting tired of doing the bidding of Isreal, a country that is already mirred into doing a genocide. This war is already unpopular in pools. Iran's regime is terrible to its people, but this has the potential to be another disaster where countless of people could die.
>We don't know the details of the strikes, but I hope it doesn't go into a full blown war
Well, if the Chinese are smart, they will capitalize on this opportunity. They can prop up the Iranian regime with intelligence, weapons, and financial support the same way US & EU prop up Ukraine. The purpose would be to bleed US munitions stocks even faster than they already are, as well as increase attritional losses in platforms and personnel. China's stranglehold on rare earths and their export restrictions are making it more difficult for the US to restore its weapons stockpile. I'm sure China can crunch some numbers to identify the point of maximum weakness if the US is forced to sustain an anti-Iran air and naval campaign 30/60/90+ days. Then Xi can try to overlap that window of weakness with one of the two invasion windows against Taiwan (mostly due to weather in the Taiwan Strait). I don't think the PLA is dumb enough to try a full amphibious assault, but they could definitely initiate their blockade then.
I don’t believe China has any intention to support anyone by military means. Best case they will keep on trading and that’s it. Iran is alone. Maybe Turkey makes a crazy move to support seeing it sees itself as next in line if Iran falls. This is the biggest present to European powers, which I think will be hoping that it will keep US busy for rest of Trump’s presidency. They have the Ukraine excuse to distance themselves and let everyone get weaker while they arm themselves up. Internal political tensions in US will also give them leeway to more actively influence American politics and these will be even worse with a long war pitched against a scandal background. Then again, Trump may be a genius, get this done in a couple of months and leave everyone grasping for a new strategy.
If China didn't anticipate the US attacking Iran after Maduro was deposed and the resulting impacts on their oil supplies, then they are asleep at the wheel.
It won't go to a full blown war. They will bomb some stuff and declare victory. Once they sailed two carrier battle groups over there an attack of some sort was a foregone conclusion.
I might be convinced that the Administration was concerned about people being forced to live under Islamic rule if it was as eager for war with Saudi Arabia as it is with Iran.
(I wouldn't support it any more in that case, but I would be more inclined to believe that its motivation might actually have anything to do with "Islamic rule".)
No. There are dozens of countries with despotic regimes, including Israel. And I also have no interest in zionist or any religious ideals exported either. If this were justification we would also be bombing Israel, which has committed far worse crimes than Iran.
lol... people that complain about XCode don't know how well they have compare to what it was before.
I started my work on the J2ME era as well. Had to use textpad for development, and maybe eclipse at some point (which was pretty decent). Tools and simulators were all over the place.
It’s so funny when people complain about the $99 fee for the Apple development program being developer-unfriendly. Back in the day, RIM/BlackBerry wasn’t so much developer-unfriendly as much as actively hostile towards developers. Basically, if you weren’t a fortune 500 company you could fuck right off.
I hope things do get de-escalated soon, as this is not good for any party (apart Israel and Russia, which are the main gainers of all this mess).
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