Rob Rakove

Opinion | Trump says Iranians should rise up. Regime change isn't that simple. Kelly J. Shannon: The administration's message for regime change was undercut by its own actions.

I know this was posted a few days ago, but here’s my op ed on Iran. In all of the noise from overnight Iran “experts,” as a historian of US-Iran relations, I’m trying to center the Iranian people. Hopefully this is helpful for readers.

www.ms.now/opinion/iran...

For America, the Iran war has been 50 years in the making Donald Trump is of a generation still scarred by the embassy hostage crisis in 1979 that defined US-Iranian enmity. It was a humiliation he has never forgotten

Ben MacIntyre documents Trump's four decade obsession with the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. It is not impossible that this explains the war

www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

His own rhetoric was part of that problem – once played, the Hitler card can't be unplayed.

Quite the exodus

🧵Feels like shouting into the void, but it is essential to note that the Trump/Rubio gutting of the State Department and blowtorching of US diplomatic capacity and credibility is an accelerant to this spiraling war and will seriously undercut US/allied efforts to pick up the pieces after. 1/

It’s been oddly surreal to hear the news framing the news around regime change in Iran and Cuba as the culmination of decades of shared agreement when Obama did significantly change US policy towards both in pretty recent memory.

H1 Writers: ABSOLUTELY NO SEQUELS, THE STORY IS DONE.
H2 Writers: Ah, so they were in fact space aliens

Also, it helps if you think that each "heh" is actually in the script.

In other media, that leads inexorably to insanity.

I like to think that he pronounces the Highlander catch phrase somewhat differently in each viewing

That is the late, great Michael Kamen you're talking about, buddy

The 90s overthought villainy, while the 80s were the high age of cackling.

The screenwriters' rebuke to Bernhard Goetz

I think this inspired the hotel sequence in Marty Supreme

Clancy Brown's Twitter account was one of the olde site's best. All lost in time, like tears in the rain.

I suppose if Connor can abide centuries, I can wait an extra 24 hours on this thread.

Hegseth's best men are scouring Mogadishu for used technicals

. . . for not that much added distance.

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to forget or airbrush the 2017-20 period.

The hero we deserve

Our policy toward Ukraine is not only shameful but also very, very stupid.

This is actually worse than the Duffy one I keep digging up.

You don't think this is too recent a reference for her?

This is really an important statement from Rep. Foster, confirming that even at the classified level, the administration has no plan at all to secure Iran's several bombs' worth of HEU. That's a huge danger to U.S. security -- from Iran, or from "loose nukes."

Missile defense?

Congratulations to Mark. Also to Wayne.

You go to war with the Colby you have, not the Colby you might want.

I don't think, until now, I've fully grasped the extent of his sadism.

Would trade him for Bainbridge Colby at this point.

The notion that they could conjure up something on the order of (say) the Bay of Pigs seemed really farfetched. Not on this timetable, at least.