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- NYT: ‘Why Does No One Care About the World Cup This Year?’
- Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists
- Autumn Gold: Secrecy, Time, and the Recovery of Truth
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- Ben Mezrich: Mythographer of Disruption
- The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility
- Carl von Clausewitz: An Intellectual Biography
- The Translator: David Klinghoffer and the Argument Against Materialism
- The Norm Explainers
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- The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth
- Richard B. Spencer: The Man Who Branded the Alt-Right
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* ‘I’m So Trained’: How The Credential Society Burned Down the Palisades (12-28-25)
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Category Archives: Iran
The Most Important Variable In The Iran War
Michael Doran posts: What’s the most important factor that will determine who wins the war with Iran? Not whatever is in the headlines and not what the pundits on TV are talking about the loudest. The U.S. military released the … Continue reading
Decoding The Center for Strategic & International Studies
The Center for Strategic and International Studies is a hub in the blob (Washington foreign policy ecosystem). It is less a neutral research institution than a coordination node where several elite coalitions within the blob (the foreign policy establishment) meet … Continue reading
The Economist: ‘The Iran war has been a stunning operational success’
The article says the current logic of the campaign emphasizes speed and the total suppression of Iranian retaliation. “The military campaign evinces careful planning, massive firepower and overwhelming success.” Air Superiority: On March 4th, an Israeli F-35 pilot recorded the … Continue reading
Academics on the Iran War: ‘I Would Like To Think That Trump Did X, Y, Z’
When academics say something like “I would like to think that Trump did X, Y, Z…” in discussions of the Iran war, they are using a very specific rhetorical move. Through David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, that phrase is a prestige-protecting … Continue reading
Decoding The Middle East Studies Network
To decode the academic Middle East studies network through David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, it helps to see universities as a separate prestige market from the Washington think-tank world. They interact constantly, but the incentives are different. First is the coalition … Continue reading
Decoding The Middle East Institute
What looks like policy analysis coming out of Washington’s Middle East think tanks is actually a prestige contest. Different alliances are competing to define what the Iran war means and who gets to interpret the post-Khamenei Middle East. The Middle … Continue reading
Military Analyst Patricia Marins Tries To Salvage Her Reputation
Patricia Marins shift in tone is a classic example of reputation hedging by a middle-tier analyst who realized that her initial “independent” status was becoming a liability as the military reality on the ground diverged from her early “disaster” narrative. … Continue reading
The Kurdish Lever
The most significant movement toward a Mullah regime collapse scenario is occurring at the geographic periphery. The Kurdish Offensive: On March 2, 2026, a new coalition of five major Iranian Kurdish parties urged security personnel to “choose the side of … Continue reading
Establishment Narratives Shift On The Iran War
There are some small movements inside the blob and the Middle East expert community, but they are limited and uneven. What you mostly see right now is adjustment at the margins, not a wholesale shift in consensus. Here are the … Continue reading
Is Turkey The New Iran (Islamist Autocracy)?
The claim that “Turkey is the new Iran” is less a factual description than an alliance signal circulating inside Western policy debates. Alliance Theory helps explain why that frame appears and who benefits from it. First look at the coalitions … Continue reading