Tea at Trianon: Iran: Necessity and Opportunity

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Iran: Necessity and Opportunity

From The Reactionary:

The cease-fire between Israel and Iran holds, for now. Both sides got their final shots – Iran with a few missiles and an Israeli retaliation against an Iranian radar system – but it holds. The “12 Day War” is potentially over. At least the first stage of it.
It’s tough to disagree with the success of the Israeli strikes, even if you are opposed to the strikes themselves. (Not that we’re opposed.) After years of planning and months of covert operations inside Iran, Israeli drones – launched from within Iran with the support of Israeli forces on the ground – struck surface-to-air missile launchers and Iranian air defenses, allowing Israeli aircraft to strike more than 100 military and infrastructure targets, including Iran’s “main nuclear [uranium enrichment] facility in Natanz,” damaging its underground structures, enrichment capabilities (allegedly), and overall infrastructure.
There is an interesting question of whether Iran’s imminent development of nuclear weapons served as the basis for the strikes. After the campaign commenced, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified the actions in stating “Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time” – which he explained “could be a year. It could be within a few months.”
Now, that may be true. But given warnings and predictions about Iran’s nuclear trajectory over the years – they’ve been months away from nuclear weapons for years – it’s hard to assume that’s true. In 2012, Netanyahu warned that “Iran would reach the brink of being able to build a nuclear bomb in just six or seven months.” Others have made similar statements. The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (or ISIS, the group that picked what would become the most unfortunate acronym) issued a report in 2013 that Iran had “significantly shortened the time needed” to develop a nuclear bomb and could “enrich enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear bomb in about a month.” And those are just a couple examples of many. (Read more.)