BTBall

if you have an interest in IU or Chicago sports and/or sane politics, you might not find my timeline annoying.

[Covie @covie_93]

BREAKING: United States becomes the first country in history to pay $300 billion to a country they defeated 50 times in one war.

[Neil Bar @NeilMegas]

יאמר לזכותו של טראמפ שהוא באמת אמר שלא יקבל שום הסכם מלבד כניעה מלאה, הוא פשוט לא ציין של מי

[Jamie Bonkiewicz @JamieBonkiewicz]

JD Vance promoting his book about finding his way back to faith while helping manage Situation Room meetings on how to cover up for pedophiles is about as Republican as it gets.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Trump said he demanded unconditional surrender, we just didn’t know he meant America’s.

[Alex גדעון בן װעלװל @JewishWonk]

This is an unmitigated disaster. Trump launched a half baked war against Iran and is now going to be bankrolling their regional terrorism

[Alex גדעון בן װעלװל @JewishWonk]

Babe are you ok? You've barely touched your Iran deal

We pay $300B in "reparations," unfreeze $24B, lift sanctions, drop the blockade, & Iran pinky swears no nukes while funding for terrorism continues

It's from the guy who called Obama's $400M payment to Iran a "ransom"

Babe?

[Alex גדעון בן װעלװל @JewishWonk]

This is a sober and diplomatic Israeli perspective on the deal.

The trouble is the politics that arose during this war and will persist after. Quick thread.

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

“Michelle Obama is a man” shouted on the White House lawn in a ring sponsored by Bud Light only available on Larry Ellison’s Paramount Plus. What a way to celebrate America 250 and the twilight of liberal democracy.

[Adam Fisher @AdamRFisher]

The world is still fixated on Israel’s refusal of a mass Palestinian refugee return after 1948.

That’s not unusual.

What’s truly unusual is that this tiny, embattled new state took any back at all in the absence of a peace treaty.

That’s right. In the early 1950s, this tiny new state of 800,000 ran family reunification programs allowing ~35,000 Palestinian Arabs to return and become full Israeli citizens (whose descendants likely number 150K today Israeli citizens today).

35K was controversial at the time, as it amounted to ~4% of the Israel's total population, even as the country simultaneously absorbed hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and Europe.

Compare that to other 20th-century partitions and displacement due to war:

• India and Pakistan had no comparable programs after 1947.
• Cyprus and Northern Cyprus did nothing after 1974.
• Europe offered no return for the millions of expelled ethnic Germans.
• And no Arab state ever created family reunification schemes for the 850,000 Jews they drove out.

The real historical anomaly isn’t “Why didn’t Israel let everyone back?” It’s why, amid ongoing war, security threats, and zero reciprocity, it let anyone back at all?

Part of the reason came from UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (Dec 1948), which became the bedrock of both UNRWA and the so-called "right of return" demand.

This non-binding resolution is highly unique in UN history and remains so:

• Passed during the height of the war, not after it.
• Not reciprocal (even as Jews were expelled from Jerusalem's Old City and other areas)
• Focused solely on Arab refugees "wishing to live at peace with their neighbors" with no reference to borders, citizenship or Jewish refugees.

Yet Israel actively sought to end the conflict.

At the 1949 Lausanne Conference, Israel offered to accept 100,000 Palestinian refugees in exchange for peace. It was rejected by the Arabs in favor of perpetual state of war and exile.

In retrospect, the timing of Resolution 194 in the middle of the war was disastrous for the Palestinians. By the end of the war, the Arab states had powerful international leverage to demand large-scale demographic reversal as a precondition to any peace talks. They never came.

Israel remains the only country singled out like this, which is why the Palestinian refugee situation remains "unresolved" in the minds of the UN and its member states, which affirm Resolution 194 every year since as if something is going to change.

[BTBall @BTBall88]

@rich_goldberg Good grief. Put your partisanship aside and call this what it is. If you expect for people to take you seriously, be honest about what’s happening here. This is an abject disaster and it’s embarrassing to pretend otherwise.

[BTBall @BTBall88]

@HanShawnity @JonahDispatch Incomprehensible? This is who Trump is and always has been. Anyone who relies on him for anything is a fool.

[Dan Shapiro @DanielBShapiro]

Until the text of the US-Iran deal is signed and released, there is going to be a lot of spin on both sides. But here is my initial take.

This war was a mistake, and it needs to end. The President thought that the Iranian regime would collapse quickly, but it did not. In fact, it has been strengthened strategically by its survival against a heavy US-Israeli assault and carrying out some effective counterstrikes. Many countries in the region are now courting Iran and looking to deescalate and rebuild ties. A sign of which way the wind is blowing.

Getting the Strait of Hormuz open is the most important outcome of this MOU. Of course, the Strait was open before the war. Now we are paying to reopen it with sanctions relief. Iran has taken a theoretical point of leverage and turned it into a very real and powerful one, imposing costs across the global economy and rattling President Trump.

As for the nuclear issues, there really is no agreement, other than to negotiate over the HEU stockpile and an enrichment moratorium. Iran knows how to drag out those negotiations, and try to pocket concessions along the way. It is possible that no deal will every be reached, and very likely that if one is reached, it will be worse than what we could have achieved through diplomacy before the war.

Iran is not likely to take seriously that the US would return to war, certainly before the US midterms. So that means we will be conducting diplomacy without a credible threat of force.

If any agreement ultimately reached actually safely puts Iran's nuclear ambitions out of reach, I'll acknowledge it. It's just too early to make that judgment.

Trump is mainly focused on comparing his deal favorably to the JCPOA. But we are a long way from being able to make that comparison, and it may end up no better, or weaker than that deal.

But in some ways, Trump's deal and the JCPOA are already similar. Nothing on ballistic missiles, nothing on proxies, nothing on weakening the regime or helping the Iranian people. And plenty of sanctions relief that will strengthen the regime, and be poured into the missile program and proxy network. Honest critics of the JCPOA will not twist themselves into pretzels to defend Trump's approach.

Israelis are deeply disappointed in this outcome, but they should not be surprised. After some initial overlap of Trump's and Netanyahu's interests, there was a strong divergence. The United States needed this war to end. Netanyahu wanted to continue.

Trump's claim to include Lebanon in the ceasefire and his harsh shutting down Israeli attacks on Hezbollah is also a win for Iran. After the JCPOA was signed, Obama and Netanyahu worked together to strengthen Israel's campaign of strikes in Syria to intercept Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

So let's hope we see the removal of Iran's enriched uranium and a long-term suspension of enrichment, with full verification. But to achieve those goals, Trump's team is going to need to engage in far more sophisticated diplomacy, backed by qualified experts, than they have to date. If it is a phase one splash with no follow-up on implementation of later phases, like in Gaza, we will be much worse off after, and because of, this war.

[BTBall @BTBall88]

@JonahDispatch It doesn’t. These are serious times and this is a critical moment that demands serious people. Trump and Hegseth are woefully unfit which is of course obvious but important context.

[Alex גדעון בן װעלװל @JewishWonk]

Bibi's entire career has been antagonizing Democrats, courting Republicans, and claiming that he alone can ensure Israeli security.

Now he has alienated Dems and has a GOP president pulling his leash when Hezbollah bombs Israel.

Hope Israeli voters learn they don't need him.

[Jamie Metzl @JamieMetzl]

Join me in once again calling for the resignation of @TheLancet editor Richard Horton.

Publishing a petition calling for the boycott of the Israeli Medical Association is an absolute disgrace. Medicine should bring physicians together in service of patients, not weaponize professional organizations for political campaigns.

Just as it failed the public on the #COVID19 origins debate, The Lancet is again positioning itself as a political actor rather than a medical journal.

[Eylon Levy @EylonALevy]

The United States must not capitulate to the IRGC’s blackmail.

Hezbollah is firing rockets and drones at Israeli families.

The US would never describe a jihadist army’s rocket fire at American towns as “small and meaningless”.

We definitely won’t.

[John Jackson @hissgoescobra]

I I’ll never forgive people who voted for Trump. This is on them. The Lincoln Memorial is hallowed ground. Where our greatest president, who gave his life to end slavery, is commentated. Where the Gettysburg Address is written. We live as graffiti now.

[Senator Jeff Merkley @SenJeffMerkley]

Wait, is this for real? Trump spent $60 million of our taxpayer funds to host a UFC fight and then is selling UFC coin to line his family’s pockets. The Trump corruption swamp is a mile deep. https://t.co/jUtLu4cTaz

[John Jackson @hissgoescobra]

I want to give you guys some facts about General Chappie James. He wasn’t a “DEI” hire—he was a complete badass that had to overcome MORE than any white pilot. Did 178 combat missions—that’s like 7 bomber tours on a B-17 in WWII.

His medal count? Impeccable. 3 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 14 Air Medals, Two Legions of Merit, and a Defense Distinguished Service Medal. One of the original Tuskegee Airmen, the first four-star African American General.

Hegseth couldn’t sniff the level of soldiering and warrior that was in Chappie’s DNA. God bless him. And Hegseth took down his picture from a hallway like a racist little child, which is what he is.

[ian bremmer @ianbremmer]

original iran nuclear deal:
“under no circumstances will iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapon.”