Quote of the Day
I want the American people to understand that if it was not an imminent threat, it was a solidly, aggressively patient threat waiting to pounce at any moment to do great damage to American interests.
Nazee Moinian
March 11, 2026
Iranian-born scholar warns regime was an ‘aggressively patient threat waiting to pounce’ on America
The contribution of Iran to the U.S. war in Iraq in the 2000s was far beyond “patient” and “waiting.” I personally know servicemen killed and severely maimed by Iranian supplied weapons.
I don’t talk about work much for various reasons, but I will say that cyber-attacks from Iran on U.S. critical infrastructure are, for all intents and purposes, continuous. I cannot imagine the attacks are any less frequent on U.S. allies. The attacks have mixed success, but it only takes the right one to cause great harm.
Hence, Moinian is only wrong to the extent which she implies Iran had not yet done or attempted significant damage to U.S. interests.
To be fair, it’s not like we have exactly been leaving them alone for the last half-century, nor are they the only ones attacking US interests. Various cyber attacks on US companies, governments, and culture from Russia, Israel, China, and a host of other smaller nations and non-nation actors are more or less continuous, too. AI will only make that problem worse.
A while back Gab was having a problem with constant porn posting and cyber attacks. They looked at the sources. They then blocked all incoming traffic with IP addresses from a single well-known middle-eastern “Greatest Ally,” and they had a drop of more than 90% in such problems. Obviously, it wasn’t Iran.
Yes, Iran is/has bad actors. But they are far from the only problem, and are looking more like a failed state propped up to act as an ongoing boogie-man for an Orwellian “forever war” that was never meant to be won, only fought (and used as an excuse / cover for lots of other activities). Of course, it’s total tinfoil-hat-land to even suspect such a thing, and I’m totally sure our government would NEVER lie to us about anything related to war or war proxies. It’s all totally legit, and our politicians are the most honest in the world, comrade.
We shall see.
After eleven years in cyber security for U.S. critical infrastructure company, nine of that cyber threat intelligence, I have never seen an attack attributed to Israel. I have never heard of then attacking any U.S. infrastructure. We directly share data with many different companies. Indirectly we get attack information on thousands of U.S. companies. To the best of my knowledge Israel has never come up.
The Gab story sounds fishy. We never attribute the nation of origin of a threat actor group on the basis of the IP address presenting itself to us. Everyone uses an IP geographical different from their true location. And blocking an IP, at best, will buy you a few minutes. You have to block on behavior or some other “signature.”
My first thought was “of course you wouldn’t see it, you don’t attack something you already control,” but of course I have no evidence of that. (please note that “control” is not directly equivalent to “has board seats”). I assume most major US companies are compromised or have critical people leveraged, as they are clearly not doing things good for the people of the country, or even the corporation long-term.
My second thought was that obviously the attack vectors and priority for an upstart social media company which allows free speech would be different than a large physical infrastructure corp, especially to a nation that depends on narrative-engineering more than physical direct command-and-control.
My third thought was that we are shaped by our experience, and we also have blinders based on what we haven’t seen happen to us, personally. “Not seen” doesn’t mean “not happening.”
For the most part, we are all just watching the shadows dancing across the back of Plato’s cave, and making out best guesses at what’s going on by the fire. From where I sit, there appear to be a lot of dancers, but some are definitely more important than others, but they are not always the ones making the most obvious movements.
Ah, yes, “the Jews control everything”.
No further discussion is useful on the topic, in my experience. We experience different realities without sufficient overlap.
At least one of those realities is significantly imaginary. Some days, I hope it’s both.
Much like “the US,” the “US government,” the “average private citizen of the US,” and “the intelligence services of various US government agencies” have overlap but are not synonymous, Israel and “the jews” are not a monolithic entity, either.
Many of them are clueless puppets, too. They are not all at the top of a shadowy cabal. But it would be foolish to believe their PR spokes-weasels and think that none of them are screwing everyone over they can for personal interests, or that they are on average doing good things for average US peoples. It’s clear that ethnicity has VERY outsized influence on any number of our institutions to our freedom’s detriment.
As the old saying goes, “to know who rules over you, know who you are not allowed to criticize.”
“It’s clear that ethnicity has VERY outsized influence on any number of our institutions to our freedom’s detriment.”
Well, on that I agree, though almost certainly not AT ALL in the way you mean.
I would really like it if everyone stopped hating based on skin color or perceived race.
“Ethnicity” is a deliberately muddying term – does it mean “culture”, which includes things like values and judgements that make of “content of character” and thus something to judge? Is it race, and thus immutable and something to ignore? It tries to get all the problems of the first given the protections of the second.
“As the old saying goes, “to know who rules over you, know who you are not allowed to criticize.””
Well, obviously not Jews in general or Israel in specific, then. They are both criticized the absolute MOST, even more than those evil white males.
Trans, gays, blacks, and Muslims, in varying order depending on the week and which part of the world, would be our rulers by that metric, and it’s not close.
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I would have invaded Iran at same time as Iraq invasion, Iran was openly fighting us forces all over Iraq,. Iranians would have welcomed us as liberators
You can argue till hell freezes over whether or not the US is justified in taking out the Iranian mullahs. But what is NOT open to debate is what they had been seeking and were planning. They have been working DILIGENTLY for DECADES to acquire and perfect nuclear warheads. And they have been OPENLY stating that their goal for existing was to destroy Israel, the US and all the rest of the western world. If left unmolested they eventually would have succeeded. So it is quite reasonable and rational for the US to have acted now rather than to wait till a few cities were turned into copies of Nagasaki. Many, perhaps most, Americans are unaware of this reality…because our perfidious media whores have diligently worked to keep that truth from being publicized.
From Dan, above:
“And they have been OPENLY stating that their goal for existing was to destroy Israel, the US and all the rest of the western world. “
Agreed.
So….how far down the ranks of Islam does this intent extend, and what is to be done about it?
Please contact that Iranian scholar and have him publish something about Twelver Shia Islam as practice in Iran and their intent to use Nuclear weapons to bring about a world wide war.