I'm not discounting that Trump is thinking he could back another Pahlavi and restore the Peacock Throne.

IRGC or whatever succeed next should wise themselves and stop hedging about whatever next deal with US/EU.

I think the biggest problem of IRGC is that they grabbed a large share of economy but spent a lot of that in geopolitical expansion for the last 1-2 decades. This in turn contributed to a more fragile Iranian economy and high inflation, which makes them extremely unpopular among the people.

Then Hegseth and Caine must be prepared to face the next Taiwan strait crisis with depleted munitions.

>Delcy-style swaparoo,

I think IRGCs are much more robust and zealous than whatever Maduro had.

Obviously. They would have kidnapped or assassinated leadership many decades ago otherwise. They have tried and failed many times. They're talking about trying to break the state though, which isn't something the US tried in Vz. This'll be much harder.

Many folks said that if the supreme leader got killed then it's all over. I honestly skeptical since IRGC folks would take over and I think they are much more militant than the Supreme Leader.

You are right to be skeptical. Khomeini died and now Khamenei is supreme leader. He too will have a successor if he dies (or is dead as Isreal clamed a moment ago). Iran has spent the last few weeks picking out successors four deep for each office. It's been the main news besides the "negotiations".

> generational effort to fix

You imply that there are folks that willing to fix or even recognize that things are broken in the first place

That's a convoluted way of saying "You have a freedom of speech but not after the speech"

It's more like the content of the speech matters. If you tell someone you're going to kill them, it becomes self defense if they kill you before that happens.

"Your law enforcement is censorship, while my censorship is law enforcement "

Got it

I tried accessing betfair site. It's not your ISP or govt blocks it but betfair themselves blocks traffic from countries they are not legally have business.

> We need to produce fewer PhDs and provide better support for those we do produce.

You'll have gluts of Masters then and so on.

US State Department already asked for social media accounts. Chinese visa applications dont.