Comment by 3eb7988a1663
19 hours ago
"We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated."
The ten point plan which had previously been rejected outright? The 10-point plan which leaves Iran in an incredibly better financial position? So, apart from blowing up children, what did the US gain out of this?
> what did the US gain out of this
Market manipulation and the media largely forgetting about a certain set of files that reference many people in powerful positions.
Yeah the friends and family made a fortune from this, and we are teed up for the WTI options date which is… two weeks from today.
How much did Iran make? There’s plenty of unregulated futures markets for them to make a massive short bet on oil.
Less oil on the market meaning higher fuel prices with the US being a net exporter.
Not sure that was the plan but it looks like a benefit.
> looks like a benefit
To who? I don't think the people paying half again as much at the pump feel like it benefited them.
9 replies →
Giving the oil companies, some of the richest companies on the planet, MORE money is a benefit? Is that your idea of good governance? You don't think there's better uses of that money that's coming right out of your pocket and everybody elses?
2 replies →
Are you talking about the Epstein files that he is in?
His insider buddies bought the dip so it's time to pump. It's all about enriching themselves with inside information
I think this 10 point plan drops the need for US to pay reparations instead relying on transit fees which will be split with Oman.
Missiles are still flying so it’s hard to say who has really agreed to what.
I’ve heard rumors that Iran has agreed to dilute its highly enriched uranium so maybe the US could count that as a win. Given they’ve demonstrated sufficient conventional deterrence they may feel that they don’t need the nukes, especially if they can get some sort of Chinese backed security guarantee. But that might be a trial balloon or wishful thinking.
IIRC they had already agreed to dilute the HEU during the negotiations ongoing at the time Trump launched the most recent war / not war / excursion.
Yeah, the US overplayed its hand and is in a weak bargaining position and will likely have to accept less than what it could have had. Now with TACO Tuesday who could take his maximalist carpet nuking threats seriously anymore. I hope to be wrong but I doubt the ceasefire holds.
Under Obama's plan they agreed to reduce its Uranium 97% and keep it well under weapons grade and got $2B for the assets that were seized after the revolution.
Here they stand to make $100B a year on tolling the gulf and get to keep their weapons grade Uranium that they stockpiled after Trump pulled us out of that agreement.
Just so much winning
2 replies →
FWIW, money is the easiest term to agree to. We have lots and lots. I agree, it will never be called "reparations", but you can trivially structure it in a zillion ways that just look like foreign aid or debt forgiveness or whatever. The WHO forgives some loans or the UN agrees to build some infrastructure, and we coincidentally make a new fund of about the same size, etc...
I think it’s less about the money and more about a formal declaration who won the conflict. The loser sues for peace / pays reparations.
1 reply →
What if Iran refuses payment in USD? For reparations, tolls, or for future sale of oil?
Its only a 2 week ceasefire. Maybe after 2 weeks the sides stay settled down. Maybe they go back to shooting each other. I wouldn't call it over yet.
As far as the geopolitical consequences of all this, i think its still pretty unclear where the chips will fall, but whether a win or a loss for usa, i think the consequences of this war will be significant.
some people got very very rich. like rich - that their great grandkids don't have to work.
that's the price of "freedom".
both sides get to save face - Trump says they won, his cronies n himself got rich. Iran gets a better deal than before. Israel gets rid of US bases in the Middle East via Iran.
of course the poor and downtrodden get shifted - that never changes.
Honestly? I presume Trump and Iran both gain the ability to kick the can... which they both want. That ten-point plan is 'unrealistic' but he gets to beat his cheats and it looks like both sides are 'claiming' victory here. That this isn't a workable long-term solution seems almost irrelevant. We're at a point where our bargaining frictions are so high, that we'd both rather remain in this standoff as long as possible even if we don't actually resolve it, because resolving it means serious pain on both sides, whereas the US has about a week before the pain really starts hitting consumers and investors.
"What Causes Wars: An Introduction to Crisis Bargaining Theory", by William Spaniel, PHD and professor, specializing in game-theory and specifically crisis bargaining theory: https://youtu.be/xjKVcl_lDfo?si=NFHvjOdWbLbPOOvA
> That this isn't a workable long-term solution
IMHO that's bad analysis. This is a VERY good solution from Iran's perspective. They stared down a superpower and won. They've gone from an international pariah and nuissance to a genuine regional overlord in a single tweet.
"Whoah there, folks. Stop your tankers please. Thanks. Last year was rough for our farmers. We're increasing tolls on the straight again. Don't like it? Come on over and bomb us again you infidel fucks. See how your precious stock market likes that."
If it holds they’ll be a regional hegemon instead of Israel, which is why Israel will not let it hold. They put everything on the line and they’re not going to give up now.
6 replies →
Until they are able to rebuild their country, they are actually in a very, very bad position. Saving face is great and all, but rockets are still hitting much of their infrastructure anyway.
My point is that their demands are not realistic. That the can has been kicked is good for Iran, it's also good for Trump. Conflict here is bad for both parties, the problem is there I currently don't see a way to step back from the precipice at this point.
10 replies →
> We're increasing tolls on the straight again.
They're increasing tolls on the strait again. This strait isn't particularly straight.
No available evidence suggests that Trump and Hegseth don't just like blowing up children.
Trump's partial to more than that.
[flagged]
Well it's a good thing we blew up those children before they could blow up those children I guess...
A least Iran isn't poised to come out of this in a stronger position than it started.
It's possible for both parties in a conflict to be horrible.
Whatabouting the "other guy" doesn't make any kind of cogent point here.
The Ayatollah was fucking awful. Trump is awful. Hegseth is awful. They are/were all three fucking awful.
I don’t know, but I hear the Trump boys are going to be doing a JV on some gold plated Persian toll booths. That family has unreal foresight.
The US got what it actually needed in the Obama area nuclear deal. Trump wont get much more useful stuff.
> Trump wont get much more useful stuff.
If Iran can kickback 8- or 9-figures of the strait tolls to Trump's personal accounts, he'll find it very useful.
Trump kept his name in the headlines, for a narcissist that's all that matters.
It successfully pushed the Epstein files out of the news cycle for an entire month.
The war began because the Epstein compromising material will likely be made public soon. Once that material is public it ceases to have any value to those who were holding it over various people. Those people in turn were ensuring US military support of a certain country. The logic of the war is that it had to happen now, before that material is released, because after that there is some chance the USA would no longer support said country.
> what did the US gain out of this?
The best steelman argument[1] is that it was a failed gamble. The protests of a few months back (also the improbable success in Venezuela) made them think they could topple the regime. They couldn't.
It's been clear for weeks now that the US has lost this war. The only question was how long it would take Trump to disengage and what the trigger would be.
And the answers appear to be "two more weeks" and "when one plausibly genocidal gaffe went too far and fractured his domestic coalition".
[1] Which... I mean, steelman analysis has its place. But really no, this was just dumb.
> Which... I mean, steelman analysis has its place. But really no, this was just dumb.
I rarely hear people use the term "steelman" while arguing in good faith. It's basically a tacit admission that you are either advancing a position that you don't actually hold (why...?), or more likely you know it's an unpopular position and you want to argue it while having plausible deniability that you may not actually hold it (which is just cowardly).
Stepping through other peoples logic to understand why they may have a position that you do not understand/agree with is sensible for sure. But if you do that in conversation with others so often that you need to preface it with a special term I'm going to be suspicious that you're just trying to obfuscate your actual opinions.
(see also: "just playing devil's advocate here, but...")
You'd be right to be suspicious.
The term "steelman" arose from people who misunderstand the term "strawman". Such people coined it out of the idea thinking that a strawman was an an attempt to make an opponents argument look weaker than it is, while a "steelman" elevates it to it's highest state before attacking it.
In reality, a steelman is just another strawman. A strawman was never simply a matter of making your opponent's argument look weak, they're about making a separate argument that your opponent isn't even arguing, and attacking that to make it look like you're winning the argument while not actually addressing the opponent's actual argument/position. A steelman does the same. In other words, they're about fabricating an argument and making it look like it came from the opponent, before attempting to prove it fallacious. They're both failures in logic - a fallacy of relevance.
What are the chances Claude was used on both sides of this negotiation?
This thread is not about Claude or LLMs.