Then there's an element of extremist Christian ideology from Pete H. etc.

Hormuz has little to do with it, it's just an excuse to destroy Iran.

Trump has been convinced that the Iranians are after him, plus there's the Epstein kompromat that the Israelis have on him. He's the only US president compromised enough to destroy Iran for them, war crimes and all.

Right, however that narrow point of essentially (overwhelming) technological superiority and 'efficiency' can be made using a very large number of science fiction. The Culture explores specific themes that make it what it is. If you completely dismiss them, I am not sure you are left with even a whiff of Iain Banks' Culture.

And to be clear, the point I am specifically making is that a lot of what the US is currently doing is not exactly rational, or even a supper efficient way to achieve their stated goals and a lot of it seems to be made up as they go along.

That does not feel like The Culture to me.

But he does perfectly demonstrate that you can't have operational efficiency if you're ignorant about your enemies because you're being advised by religious fanatics, if your goals are constantly shifting and your motives are purely selfish.

So not sure I buy the analogy.

Given the tactics employed by ICE, it's a true shock and horror that most people have more humanity than that.

But I guess a person who can't form a grammatically correct sentence is an example of the sort of people who can rest easy,

1 - https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-flow/rog-flow-z13-2025/

What's your point?

Except that's not happening and is complete BS. It also assumes these proxies have no agency and would not have acted on their own.

> It's not theoretically wrong. Just antiquated, destructive and–in the trade-based modern world–increasingly counterproductive. (You're trashing and alienating your natural trading partners.)

Guess what would allow Iran to peacefully trade with Israel. The end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. The reason Iran cannot simply ignore that occupation is because it would loose the moral high ground in the Shia/Muslim world. And having that moral high ground (i.e. its support for the Palestinian cause) is also part of its power projection strategy.

> If your neighbour is developing ballistic missiles and explicitly calling for your anihilation, you're not going to "simply sit back and let [your]self be attacked.

Given that Israel does indeed have ballistic missiles and is explicitly calling for for the annihilation of Palestinians, or even 'Arabs' in general, does that in your mind justify October 7th?

> Iran isn't a material threat to Israel's power projection into Gaza and the West Bank.

Not Iran itself, but Israel insists that Iran support for 'proxies' is. Maybe not to Israeli power projection, but to its security at least.

I want to avoid linking particular sources because I know it's easy to call this or that biased etc. but it's easy to look up even in Israeli sources.

Are you seriously arguing that Hitler was rational for preemptively attacking Russia because AFTER Hitler attacked Russia, Russia did not simply sit back and let itself be attacked but in fact started defending itself? And are you arguing that Israel doing the same is rational because AFTER Israel attacked Iran, Iran launched some missiles towards Israel IN RESPONSE TO THE ISRAELI ATTACK, therefore proving Israel right that Iran is going to attack them?

> that same one whose anihiliation the former has been chanting for since its revolution.

Oh and Israel has been nothing but wishing them happy Ramadan?

The reason Israel does not want the current Iranian system to survive is because it sees it as the only possible threat to its eternal domination of the Palestinians and its ability to dictate its borders in the Middle East.

Or perhaps there's still worse things we cannot imagine? With these people, one can never be too sure.