NOTE TO READERS: The next week will be a busy one for me: I have to prepare for a big podcast; we’re expecting Vashti’s second brood to hatch (we are going to try to rehab mother and ducklings since I don’t want to lose a third brood in the pond), and I have a big writing assignment to deal with. For the next week or so posting may be limited to Hili Dialogues, readers’ wildlife, and perhaps some persiflage. Bear with me; I do my best.
Welcome to a Hump Day (“হাম্প ডে (সপ্তাহের মাঝের দিন)” in Bengali): Wednesday, June 10, 2026 and National Black Cow Day, referring not to melanistic bovids but to the drink—usually a “root beer float“: root beer with ice cream. They’re very good, and a speciality of the A&W Root Beer chains. Some info from the first link:
Today we celebrate the black cow, which in many locations is simply another name for a root beer float—a drink consisting of root beer and vanilla ice cream. They are sometimes called chocolate cows or brown cows when chocolate ice cream is used in place of vanilla. In some locations, a black or brown cow is made with cola instead of root beer. In other locations, root beer and ice cream are mixed together, instead of the ice cream sitting on top.
Frank J. Wisner, owner Cripple Creek Brewing in Colorado, made the first black cow on August 19, 1893, after observing the snow caps of Cow Mountain the night before, and thinking they looked like ice cream scoops on top of soda. The first drinks were made by combining Myers Avenue Red root beer and vanilla ice cream. He soon began making the drink using cola, and it became known as the Black Cow Mountain drink. It is said that children shortened the name to the black cow.
See below for an appropriate song. It’s also Ballpoint Pen Day (it was on it was on June 10, 1943, that László Bíró applied for a patent for his pen). National Herb and Spice Day, and National Iced Tea Day, celebrating what’s fondly called “the table wine of the South.”
And Steely Dan’s song, “Black cow”:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 10 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Breaking Nooz, ripped from the headlines: After an Iranian drone shot down a U.S. Army Apache helicopter (both pilots were saved from the water by a drone boat), the U.S. launched attacks on Iran. Iran retaliated with strikes on U.S. bases in Iran. Iran also fired at U.S. targets in Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait
The United States and Iran traded strikes across the Middle East early Wednesday after the U.S. accused Iran of downing an American helicopter, threatening a fragile two-month cease-fire and challenging President Trump’s repeated claims that the countries are close to a deal to end the war.
The U.S. military said its jets struck Iranian targets, including air defenses and radar sites, near the Persian Gulf. Iran said it had retaliated by launching drone attacks against U.S. naval targets in Bahrain, and firing missiles at American military facilities in Jordan. It was unclear whether the new clashes could be contained.
. . . The Jordanian military said it had intercepted five missiles launched from Iran toward a region that includes Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti base, which has been used for U.S. air operations and was also targeted in the early days of the war. Bahrain’s military said it had taken out several Iranian drones and missiles. And the Kuwait Army said its air defenses intercepted hostile targets.
This war is not going to go gentle into that good cease-fire. . .
*After the WaPo reported that Israel and Lebanon agreed on Monday to stop attacking each other, the NYT reports that Israel attacked Lebanon yesterday morning.
First from the WaPo:
After trading volleys of long-range missile strikes that defied calls for restraint from President Donald Trump and threatened to tip the region back into all-out war, Israel and Iran signaled Monday that the attacks had concluded for now.
That lasted exactly one day. From the NYT:
The Israeli military struck areas across southern Lebanon on Tuesday, testing the shaky two-month cease-fire again, just a day after direct hostilities between Iran and Israel threatened to unravel the truce.
At least eight people were killed and dozens more wounded in an attack on Tyre, one of southern Lebanon’s largest cities, Lebanon’s health ministry said. The latest attacks underlined how Lebanon has emerged as a major wedge issue in efforts to negotiate an end to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
Tehran has insisted that any peace agreement include security for Lebanon, while Israel has rejected any such link, insisting it will keep striking there to target the Iran-allied Hezbollah militia. After an Israeli strike near the Lebanese capital, Beirut, set off a brief round of clashes with Iran on Sunday and Monday, Tehran warned that it would attack Israel again if it resumed its “aggression and hostile acts,” including in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah, for its part, has rejected any cease-fire with Israel, and has continued firing on Israel from its positions in southern Lebanon. Israel has occupied large parts of southern Lebanon, arguing that it is needed to defend itself against Hezbollah attacks, and the Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings in the region early Tuesday, warning of imminent strikes. Some of the attacks were in areas that were not covered by evacuation warnings, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency.
President Trump said early Tuesday that both Iran and Israel had agreed to stop their attacks on each other, and that “a very, very good deal” between the United States and Iran could be finalized within days.
Yeah, well let’s see what Trump’s conception of “very, very good deal” is. Lebanon agreed to stop the attacks by Hezbollah, but of course Lebanon (and the UN) are powerless to do it, so who else but Israel. And any deal that leaves Hezbollah in place is a very bad deal indeed—just like Trump’s “peace plan” for Gaza that has so far left Hamas in power. The demand by Iran that Hezbollah stay in power shows, clearer than anything else, that it wants to continue fostering terrorism in the Middle East through its proxies.
*The NYT also describes how both Iran and the U.S. need to construct a peace deal that allows both sides to claim victory.
For weeks, the parameters of a preliminary agreement to end the war between the United States and Iran have been clear to its negotiators. The hang-up? How to devise a deal so each side can claim a win.
Washington and Tehran — both neither fully victorious nor completely defeated in the war — badly want a deal. But they also need something they can present as favorable to the hawks and hard-liners back home.
Added to this fundamental dispute are the peculiarities of the two countries’ leaders. One of them is in hiding and slow to sign off on any proposal; the other is so unpredictable, his own envoys struggle to negotiate on his behalf.
Unsuccessful efforts at devising this alchemy of wording have mired the two sides in a state of neither war nor peace. They have left the global economy in limbo, too, as both sides continue their blockades of the vital Strait of Hormuz.
The longer this uncertainty persists, mediators warn, the higher the risk the whole peace process will be derailed. The tenuous nature of it all was reinforced on Monday when Israel and Iran exchanged strikes for the first time since the April cease-fire, bringing the Middle East back to the precipice of full-blown war before both sides backed down.
Any framework for a peace agreement is likely to require Iran to allow normal maritime traffic through the strait and the United States to halt its blockade of Iranian vessels. It is also likely to include a pledge to hold a second phase of negotiations culminating in Iran’s giving up its highly enriched uranium stockpile and Washington’s easing economic sanctions in return. And any deal is widely expected — perhaps most problematically for President Trump — to unlock some of Iran’s frozen assets.
The dilemma is how to sequence the terms, said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House.
“The U.S. wants to get everything and not give too much at the beginning,” she said. “And the Iranians want to get things at the beginning and give things along the way.”
*And Amit Segal weighs the same question at It’s Noon in Israel in a piece called “Israel vs Iran: Aftermath“, with the subtitle “Who won the latest exchange?”
Choosing sovereignty, Israel struck early yesterday, destroying air defense assets and a Mahshahr petrochemical plant producing missile materials. The strike proved to the free world that Tehran is not shielded from consequences, even in an era of Trump diplomacy. However, Iran refused to back down, firing another barrage of missiles by morning. Ultimately, Donald Trump’s 12:30 p.m. tweet demanding an immediate halt to the Israeli strikes ensured that Tehran landed the final blow.
According to Army Radio’s Doron Kadosh, the Israeli defense establishment had spent the night preparing a massive afternoon follow-up aimed at broader national infrastructure to cripple the regime economically. The plan was aborted on the tarmac by Trump’s declaration of peace. Whether this second wave was purely a contingency plan in case of an Iranian response or whether it was the second part of Israel’s initial strike remains unknown.
Militarily and strategically, this brief exchange was neither a resounding victory nor a crushing defeat for either side. For Israel, it was simply the baseline response. So, back to the initial question: who won?
We still don’t know.
The silence of the ceasefire has quickly been filled by opposing narratives, kicking off what is now a staple of Middle East ceasefires: firing and testing for responses. So far, Hezbollah has been quiet regarding declarations of resistance, but its patron sought to establish a clear red line. Iran warned that any further Israeli aggression—specifically “including in southern Lebanon”—would be met with “much more severe and crushing measures.”
Israel swiftly and explicitly rejected this attempt to link Lebanese territory to Iranian deterrence. Defense Minister Israel Katz declared that the IDF will continue its operations against Hezbollah, warning that any Iranian reprisal will be met with the same “great force” demonstrated yesterday. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s president issued a call for diplomatic engagement—a declaration whose impact is as significant as the rest of the Lebanese state’s actions in this conflict: non-existent.
I guess Israel has no choice but to do what Trump says. but that’s tying its hands. Lebanon is none of Trump’s business, but it’s been made his business by Iran. I would have preferred that Israel enact its “massive afternoon followup. . . to cripple the regime economically.” What does Trump have to lose by that? (A cease-fire with Iran, I suppose.) But once again Israel is not allowed to win a war; the only country, says Sam Harris, subject to such strictures.
*The Iranian/French graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, just died at the young age of 56. The Free Press honors her as “The woman who warned the world about Iran” with her series of graphic novels called Persepolis. And the article is by our own Masih Alinejad!
Before Persepolis, Iran was a headline. The Revolution. The hostage crisis. The long war with Iraq. The nuclear standoff. The name Iran had fused, in the Western imagination, with images of burning flags and chanting crowds. It was a country of events, not of people. A problem to be managed, not a civilization to be understood.
The Islamic Republic worked to keep it that way, sending articulate diplomats to Western capitals, managing media access carefully, making sure that even serious newsrooms published a version of Iran that was, in effect, sanitized. Where was the story of the women who had never agreed to any of this? In the years before social media, those voices had almost no path to the outside world.
Long before morality police became a phrase that Western journalists knew, long before millions of people took to the streets under the banner of Women, Life, Freedom, one woman sat down with ink and paper and did something that had not been done before.
Through her book, which followed her coming of age story in Iran, exile in Europe, and yearslong struggle to say goodbye to a country slipping off a cliff into brutal oppression, people in the West learned that women in Iran were being stopped on the street, beaten, arrested, imprisoned for the way they wore (or didn’t) a piece of cloth on their head. They learned that the hijab in Iran was not a cultural expression, or faith freely worn. It was a law, enforced by men with authority and batons, by a government that had decided women’s bodies belonged to the state.
No wonder the novel was censored in Iran. But the regime couldn’t stop its truth from reaching the world: Marjane Satrapi was the first person to make compulsory hijab a global story.
. . .There is a video of her, in Persian, that I keep returning to. She recites the rules, the ones every Iranian girl absorbs before she absorbs anything else. “A good woman never does this. A real woman always behaves like that.” The list is long. And after reciting every rule, she declares that she intends to do exactly as she pleases. That if the price of freedom is being called impolite or difficult, then she will pay it, and gladly.
“I would rather be impolite,” she says, “than a woman who is not free.”
It is like a manifesto for women like me.
Based on this, I’ve just ordered the first two graphic books of Persepolis from U Chicago’s interlibrary loan. I’m looking forward to reading them, and yes, they were banned not just in Iran, but in many places in America.
*From the AP’s reliable “oddities” section, we learn about cockroach smuggling in Australia!
More than 100,000 live cockroaches illegal to keep in Australia were confiscated from a single breeder in the country’s largest-ever seizure of exotic invertebrates, officials said Friday.
The haul of Madagascar hissing cockroaches and dubia cockroaches, worth 200,000 Australian dollars ($142,000), was seized in May from a commercial breeder in the city of Bathurst in New South Wales state, according to Australia’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water.
The Madagascar hissing species is one of the world’s biggest cockroaches, measuring 2 to 3 inches (5 to 8 centimeters) in length. Photos released by the department showed a shiny, brown invertebrate larger than a person’s finger.
It’s much bigger than the country’s common Australian cockroach, which measures between 0.9 and 1.4 inches (2.3 and 3.6 centimeters) long. Cockroaches flourish in Australia due to its sub-tropical climates and the country is home to hundreds of species.
ADBathurst snake catcher Stefanie Lesser told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the larger exotic species were likely being sold as as a cost-effective reptile food because their large size meant fewer insects were needed. Officials urged pet owners to seek out crickets or wood roaches to feed their lizards instead.
When I was at Harvard in graduate school, I kept about five or six tarantulas as pets, and every once in a while I’d walk over to the BioLabs, where they kept a giant breeding colony of hissing cockroaches, Gromphadorhina portentosa (don’t ask me why). The little ones were good food for tarantulas. And yes, the cockroaches hiss (through their spiracles); see the video below. It’s clearly an antipredator adaptation. Why is keeping them illegal in Australia? Guess! (Think about cane toads and rabbits.)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the upstairs d*g is temporarily sequestered upstairs:
Szaron: Freedom has returned.
Hili: That’s true, but it’s limited.
In Polish:
Szaron: Wróciła wolność.
Hili: To prawda, ale jest limitowana.
*******************
From Meow Incorporated:
From Terrible Maps: U.S. counties bordering on four or more states:
From CinEmma:
From Masih; Afghan women being shot at by the Taliban for wanting an education:
Today, women in Afghanistan are being shot in the streets simply for anting an education, wanting a job. Wanting to work and wanting to walk outside without a man’s permission.
Taliban security forces killed one person and several wounded. Dozens arrested including women and… https://t.co/rijPlCXjyr pic.twitter.com/oy1ae9QcYn
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) June 9, 2026
Luana sent a video (yes, from Tommy Robinson) showing a man in trying to behead someone in the street in Belfast. Apparently he gouged the victim’s eyes out as well. I can’t embed the video but you can see it here (WARNING: blood!). Two locals beat the guy off. You can read the story at Reuters: the guy survived–plus the accused attacker, a Sudanese national, was apprehended.
The suspect, a 30-year-old Sudanese national, has been detained on suspicion of attempted murder.Police said it was understood he lived locally, having been granted leave to remain in the UK in September 2023 after claiming asylum. He had travelled to Belfast in February that year by bus from Dublin, having flown there from Paris on an unknown date. Two posts from Emma on this:
Like, he sawed.
Not a gun. Not a chopping axe, flailing. No self defence.
A knife, life as a steak.
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) June 9, 2026
Also from Luana, a rescue of a street dog from Thaliand (Luana is a dog fan). There are more heartening tweets about the dog at the site.
I called her Dolly Parton and told her we’d build her back up.
She slept 23.5 hours a day for literally 6 weeks (3/6) pic.twitter.com/bJRpqoV9wS
— Niall Harbison (@NiallHarbison) June 9, 2026
Two from my feed. First a repentant gorilla (he’s much bigger than his wife!):
In Japan, a gorilla named Kiyomasa got into a fight with his mate. She kicked him out of their enclosure at the zoo, and he was later spotted sitting alone, seemingly rethinking his life choices pic.twitter.com/5FbIrCfEKF
— Nature Unedited (@NatureUnedited) June 9, 2026
Dog ablutions, self-petting, or both?
Clearly, this is not the first time he’s done this 😅pic.twitter.com/MHe43KwYB4
— Community Notes & Violations (@CNviolations) June 9, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 13 years old, and had she lived, today would have been her birthday.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-06-10T10:12:00.771Z
And one from Dr. Cobb, on hols for a while. Of the video he says, “They even self-eject”:
They even self eject 😂😂😂www.jalopnik.com/hot-wheels-h…
A war’s end where both sides can claim victory would be unusual. Certainly, only American’s enemies would find it useful for Iran to “win”.
The door in the car wash is hilariously. The best scritches ever.
Apparently, root beer is not widely sold in Europe, so most over there will never know the admittedly strange joy of a root beer float during a hot summer day.
I can remember my first root beer in Canada some 39 years ago in an A&W. I took a sip and passed it to my wife and said, “Taste it, Germolene.”
Germolene is an antiseptic cream in the UK.
Apparently, the connection is methyl salicylate.
On trip from England to the USA I tried a Root Beer. Just the once.
During my travels, I have met many Brits. I have never met a single one who likes the taste of root beer. If there are any British participants here who like root beer, I would love to hear about an exception.
No big deal, in any event. I don’t know many Americans (not sure about Canadians) who like the taste of Marmite.
Now like, more-or-less, in a very thin layer over a solvent substrate (butter or margarine). Definitely an acquired taste. And apparently many native Marmite fans are not at all keen on Vegemite, and vice versa. Go figure.
Yes, root beer floats, and that particular album, bring back fond memories.
My father, a professor of biology, got hold of some Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches when I was a child, and kept them in the basement. My mother was not a fan. He donated a few to my high school biology teacher, who made me hold one in front of the class because she figured I’d be fine with it. I wasn’t at first, but honestly, the thing was kind of cute – like a giant pill bug. They don’t bite, and their little legs just kind of tickled my palm.
I keep a few in a tank; I agree, they are kind of cute in an odd way. They are placid and slow, unlike the zippy little cockroaches you see running around as pests. I have a colleague who uses them in an animal-behavior class, and I usually take a couple when she’s done with them.
Ahhh, A&W root beer floats. In the city in which I (supposedly) grew up, A&W was sold at drive-ins. Every so often, our family would pull up to the drive-in, and the car-hop would bring out the floats on a tray. We would not get the food, even the kids in the family regarded it as far too greasy, but the root beer—plain or as a float, was the best. The A&W later sold in cans was not close to being the same.
the best thing was that the root beer would come in a “frosty mug”, a thick glassed mug that was not quite ice-cold. And every so often, my folks would let us keep the mugs, for which they had to pay, of course.
The taste of that is one of the things from my childhood that now exists only in my memory.
Thank you for reminding me of a special part of my young life. There was nothing as nice as a frosty cold mug of root beer on a hot summer day.
What I was going to write, but I often get here late.
I’m way late too, but in the summertime, we would play outdoor basketball under the lights until midnight. We’d then head to the A&W for a quart of root beer. It came in a card board inverted cone, and that was also the shape of the root beer stand!
Israel is allowed to win. It just has to do it on its own. Since it cannot do this without help, Israel is dependent on allies who have different priorities.
It is a bad situation and I would welcome more support, but I would reject the claim of Israel not being allowed to win – let alone being the only country to suffer this fate.
In regards to UNIFIL, I would cut them.some slack. Their mandate is merely to observe and support the Lebanese and their numbers are small. They are a trip wire force. On top the UN probably only got soldiers to send under the condition that those soldiers wouldn’t fight.
No, Israel isn’t allowed to win in Gaza, even though it did it on its own because the world won’t let Israel finish the job.
Please don’t tell me how I should “cut slack” to UNIFIL. There are 7500 soldiers there and they run away when they see the IDF.
Because Iran expanded the theater beyond Hezbollah targets in Beirut to “southern Lebanon” more broadly, Israel had to push back by attacking Hezbollah targets in the south. Israel cannot allow Tehran to set the terms of the war (or of any supposed agreement). If Iran attacks Israeli or U.S. targets or assets because of Israel’s efforts to curtail Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, Israel will have to respond vigorously, even if Trump doesn’t like it. Israel’s job is to protect Israel. Israel also needs to make clear to the U.S. that it will not cede its sovereignty to American interests. Hence, Israel will continue to defend itself.
The Iranian downing of the American helicopter is an interesting development. When that happened, Trump immediately pronounced that the U.S. would respond—and it did. Now Trump understands why Israel had to respond to the Iranian attacks on Israel a few days ago. Maybe he’ll stop trying to hold Israel back now that the U.S. was put into the same position by an Iranian attack and the U.S. had no choice but to respond.
In my humble opinion, all of this stuff about an imminent deal that needs to be protected is bullsh*t. Even if a deal emerges, Iran cannot be trusted and the deal will be nothing more than a signed piece of paper. By continuing it provocations, Iran is showing no interest in making a real deal. Israel and the U.S. need to restart the war in order to end it.
And, of course, Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches are very cool. They are big, and they hiss, and the hiss is startling! Everyone jumps when one of them hisses, even if it hisses predictably because someone pokes at it. There were always a few of these critters around in Bob Silberglied’s (z”ll) lab at Harvard. He was a lepidopterist, but he was fond of all kinds of arthropods. He was a walking encyclopedia of biology.
Thanks to Max, Mike and Leslie for their thoughtful responses to my “Opiates all the time” pain management message yesterday.
Having tarantulas as pets is a tad unusual but very cool, especially for a young man in college. Although, not sure they provide much… emotional reward as regular pets. 🙂
So many questions: How does one get around the danger of being the “Spider Guy”?
Do you need to bathe them? Don’t they live, like a decade or something?
D.A.
NYC
Long term (it will take a while) the Arab countries will build pipeline to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. This will hurt Iran (more or less permanently). This process started in 1948 (yes, 1948) and has continued since then.
I saw you and some members of your posse stalking the pond with nets on the pond cam this am. Putting that together with what you wrote, I assume that you were hunting Vashti, in order to relocate her and her nest. Where to?
I’ll be sorry to be unable to follow the duckling’s growth in your posts and on the pond cam this year.
Yes, “our” side* (US/Israel) needs to win this war convincingly, which means achieving the war aims without giving any up. There is no inherent reason why Iran should get anything it can call a win. Iran itself wants that, of course, but they’re the enemy. Other than understanding motivation, “we”* shouldn’t care what they want.
Negotiation by the stronger side (if in good faith**) indicates weakness. It concedes to the enemy that you have resigned yourself to being unable or unwilling to get all of what you wanted through force. You hope now to get some of what you want by giving up something else you wanted badly enough to go to war for, but know now you can’t get. It suggests a miscalculation about what you could achieve with war. You’re reduced to hoping to salvage some gains through negotiation with a resilient enemy. Because you’ve given your enemy some trumps to play which he didn’t have when you were fighting him, the negotiation can’t give you all of what you want. Maybe none of it, except a face-saving promise from the enemy not to harass your retreat, who then does so anyway because he knows you have no stomach for further confrontation.
For the attacked, defending party to have got the attacker to negotiate is already a victory, because it knows that whatever else happens it won’t be conquered. Negotiation for him is a sign of strength. Its survival assured, the regime knows a stymied United States will eventually lose interest and sail away, leaving Iran to carry on as before. Once it can get its oil out to market, the money will heal everything. Then it will resume enriching uranium.
So whence cometh America’s weakness? Why does it feel it has to negotiate? Why can’t America, with its overwhelming military and economic superiority, simply impose its demands as a condition of ceasing hostilities, including blockade? What ties President Trump’s hands as Head of State? I don’t believe it’s simply his dissipated, irresolute ADHD character. Someone is telling him something fundamentally and uncomfortably true about his position external to himself. What might that be?.
(* Scare quotes because my country wants America and Israel to lose. Just so you know…)
(** i.e., not just to kill time while the blockade bites.)
“Negotiation by the stronger side (…) indicates weakness.” That is certainly the case here.
Your questions are good ones:
“Why does (our side) feel it has to negotiate? Why can’t America, with its overwhelming military and economic superiority, simply impose its demands as a condition of ceasing hostilities, including blockade? What ties President Trump’s hands as Head of State?”
I don’t get it. If Trump wants to end the war quickly, one would think that he could attack the enemy vigorously and win, thereby ending the war. There is something in his calculations that I can’t fathom. He has said that he doesn’t want loss of life, and that a major attack on Iran would bring about loss of life. That may be true, but how much loss of life will there be if Iran is allowed to continue to do what it’s doing: killing its own citizens, killing through its proxies, killing by supporting terror around the world, and doing that in perpetuity? Trump is holding back. As you ask: “Why might that be?”
So whence cometh America’s weakness? Why does it feel it has to negotiate?…What ties President Trump’s hands as Head of State…?Someone is telling him something fundamentally and uncomfortably true about his position external to himself. What might that be?
I’ve been assuming it’s the fact that pursuing a decisive win would mean troops on the ground, and very few Americans, or their representatives, have the stomach for that.
Even Republicans are queasy about it; Google AI tells me that “A Quinnipiac University Poll noted that a slight majority of Republicans (52%) actually oppose sending U.S. ground troops into Iran.”
So that’s where we’re at. Stuck in the sand, again.
My guess is that America’s goals (and Israel’s) won’t be fully realized without an all out invasion. And with that, there are too many unknowns. I’m assuming the only goal right now is to get all the uranium out of Iran. If Iran doesn’t give it up freely, which they won’t, it will have to be taken by force. There was some initial talk about a special operation to go into one of the mountain fortresses. Who knows if that’s feasible…sounds very risky to me. And who knows where the uranium is right now.
The world was shocked to learn how large and sophisticated the Hamas tunnel complex was under Gaza. What’s going on underground in Iran?
So again, I think Trump has been told that to ensure we get the uranium we’ll have to take the plunge, and he doesn’t want to do that.
And I’m 100% prepared to be 100% wrong on everything I wrote.
Having read the Persepolis graphic novels and seen the animated movie, I’d encourage you to check out the movie afterwards. They’re both good and the movie has some music that helps set her mood, especially as an angry young woman.
I used to care for a couple of large colonies of hissing cockroaches for the University of Texas Dept of Biological Sciences. There wasn’t much competition for that task. Imagine a seething mass of dog food crumbs, giant cockroaches, and feces….I like insects (I even raised a human botfly in my arm) but these roaches never seemed cute to me.