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Radio War Nerd EP #606 — World of Wars: Iran War Standoff, Maskirovka, Israeli Rapists... (Patreon)

Published:
2026-05-14 02:17:12
Imported:
2026-05
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Recorded: May 13, 2026

Torpedoed, Russian cargo ship...Iran war standoff + signs of economic chaos...Iranian maskirovka...NY Times reports Israel's rape-torture policy against Palestinian prisoners...

Total time: 1:06:01Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Buy & review John Dolan's new book, They Should Have Been Hanged: War Nerd Essays on the U.S. Civil War

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Comments

JoR

Only thing about Trump throwing Israel under bus: can this happen with their “potential “ Epstein blackmail? I know that can be seen as conspiratorial, but I genuinely think parts of Israel have their dirt on guys like Trump. I don’t think it drives policy, but I do think it’s a fail safe

Ander Pierce

Plausible, but then again, Trump could kill someone on a public street and retain support, he's said as much and he wasn't wrong. Even if they had him on 4k doing heinous shit, he could just deny and deflect

Kawaii Leonard

Speaking of expelling talented foreigners to disastrous effect… Qian Xuesen was a KMT liberal capitalist at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena who we expelled because he was Chinese. He then founded the Chinese nuclear and space programs in the PRC where he wasn’t shunned

Yairo Martis

Iran must be saving their super-cavitating torpedoes for American troop ships/landing ships. "Come closer"

Avtomatt

The blackmail theory doesn't make sense in light of the files being released. It's pretty clear that Trump and everyone in his orbit is implicated, and they haven't suffered any consequences for it. Even the Brits managed to arrest a royal; the Americans haven't gone after anyone involved.

Schaeffer Mallory

My guess is that Trump continues to do nothing and the global economy craters for 2.5 years and then he leaves office saying he won the war

Duncan Shepherd

I feel like something that isn't mentioned enough is that cutting off the strait doesn't just create an energy crisis, it also creates a materials crisis, since all plastic is simply a byproduct of oil and gas production, creating a shortage of one necessarily creates a shortage of the other.

blazed uncle

Will Menaker recently contrasted Trump’s incoherence with Iranian officials regularly saying the coolest thing you’ve ever heard and “come closer” might be the peak example of the latter

Mao Zedong Superstar

The Serbs shooting down the f117 is one of ~special~ interests and I got my hands on what i think is an original print of the poster you referenced. It says “Sorry, we didn’t know it was invisible” And has 3 silhouetted nighthawks crossed out beneath it. The pilot who flew the nighthawk that got shot down did an interview recently and said another nighthawk was hit and rendered unfixable when it got back to base. Rumors of a 3rd hit but the one on the poster is likely referencing the F16 they shot down as well.

Alex

Mark - on your comments @46:00 - I'm in Spain and the local shopkeeper said to me, "For us it's quite obvious this is the end of America." It's harder to see things clearly when you're going through it I think... but to the rest of the world, this seems clear. Also I'm not sure if you have any thoughts on Arnold Toynbee, but in his Collapse of Civilization books, he says a collapsing society usually fractures into two parts. One looks towards the past (MAGA) and one looks towards the future (Paypal mafia/technocracy), but that neither will work because neither approach is rooted in the reality of the present. Thought that was interesting but I don't know what you guys think of Toynbee.

xnfec

Not to mention Helium. Whose laughing now;)

etienne

I'd say the energy policy of China isn't so much that they're big on Green Energy more than they just needs as much power as possible no matter what, so printing solar panels to get electricity out of the sky is very attractive to them, in tandem with strip-mining Australia of all its coal, etc

Terry Dunk

Yeah, it may be a canary in the coal mine even if it is a day late and a dollar short to say the least if the best they can do is eek out a Kristoff op-ed years after this was first reported on, full of equivocations about how "Hamas does this too! They did it first even, actually!!" Meanwhile, the UN report they cite in evidence - in the piece - plainly states they had "specific challenges in gathering and verifying information" on the alleged rapes due to "limited number of and access to survivors/victims" and "the lack of trust by survivors ... in international organizations such as the UN" such that, ultimately, "it *did not meet with any survivor/victim of sexual violence from 7 October despite concerted efforts* encouraging them to come forward." Furthermore, "the absence of comprehensive forensic evidence limited the team's ability to draw definitive forensic conclusions in many instances" and "inaccurate and unreliable forensic interpretations by some non-professionals also represented a challenge." In short, the whole thing was shot full of holes from the outset and they concluded that sexual violence "probably" occurred because they were under immense pressure to do so right after 10/7 when Israel still had the world's sympathy.

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Insane western chauvinism. It’s attractive for them because they do not want to keep using coal because of its environmental impacts and on the population and they don’t want their sovereignty stripped by US imperialism through oil/gas flows. John is correct about the “two birds with one stone” analogy even though Mark dismissed it. Green products are produced through oil. Venezuela, Russia and now Iran are the major oil/gas flows to a population of 1.5 Billion people who are rapidly developing. You should try reading their policy on environmentalism. It is not some propaganda. They are deeply serious about climate change.

etienne

that article says about the same thing I did sure sure I agree, thanks

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No it doesn’t

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It is also not lost on me that the first leftist podcast that actually talked about China being a reason for this Iran war came from an elder leftist who I respect so much who has seen post ww2 American empire in action for decades. It was much appreciated. I’ve been laser focused on this because I think it’s super important for western leftists to understand. Thanks John.

etienne

it's like okay they need a whole shit ton of electricity while importing as little stuff as possible because it could cause problem so they do domestic green energy, plus a whole shit ton of jerk off tankie bullshit I don't give a fuck about and is typical of the average fucking psycho rwn listener, but fine, whatever, I don't care

etienne

"we don't like coal because it's actually kinda low key bad for us; ngl" what a landmark statement of socialist revolutionary thought

.

Oh shit are you that chapo guest who goes on there to talk about US elections? Or is it just a play on his name? Lol yeah you’re actually a child calling people psycho tankies for just laying out what is happening in China and their development. Sucks to suck but hopefully nobody reads your stupid shit anymore. Being honest about the situation isn’t being a tankie. But to be clear the PRC never called me a tankie so I’m more good with them than freaks like you. Try reading that article again loser. Look at the sources.

Alex

I too was thinking that a true Machiavellian move by Trump would be him pulling an about-face by arresting Netanyahu as a singular figure to blame for all of these troubles. That would diffuse opposition against him, and could be a negotiating chip with the Israelis and Iranians for peace

Erik

might be better to keep your thoughts to yourself on the future

Erik

It wasn't just outside pressure, the NYT has plenty of inside pressure to support the Israeli scum

Aidan Coffey

Don't know if I missed this during the discussion on dummies but one commentator said the iranian dummies give off heat signatures to mimick real assets to trick the AI. Another glorious win for Silicon Valley.

Mark Ames

That's grim about the Spanish shopkeeper. He'd never get a job in a DC thinktank with that attitude. But yeah, it's often easier to see the obvious when you're outside looking in. My time in Russia was very helpful in that way, especially in the Bush years. Haven't read Toynbee. I am sort of fascinated by attempts to systematize collapsing civilizations, but I hadn't heard that theory (would need to see how it works out by example). Some of the theories I've come across are of the sort that are useful, but not airtight. I kind of like Peter Turchin's theory about radically shrinking opportunities for the upper-middle classes as precursor to profound destabilization or revolution. Not airtight, but useful.