ʀɪʟᴇʏ ʀɪᴀɴ

Smiley-eyed wonder-filled ponder-monger attempting to fly off into the wide-blue yonder
@jalandalam_ 's mama

[ʀɪʟᴇʏ ʀɪᴀɴ @rileydrian]

One thing I believe I can learn
To see my enemy as my brother
Then we could be free, truly
Then love could wash away all the sorrows
I'm not afraid to bleed
If it means, we'll make a better today not tomorrow

[MP Arizona☀️🏳️‍🌈💙🌵🐕🐕‍🦺🫂💦🏜🐟🌴🎙🌎🌻♍️🌊 @AzPetrich]

In Iran, if a 12 year-old girl is forcefully impregnated by her father, she must carry the baby to term or spend life in prison.
Oops! My bad. I meant Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama.

[D. @Lush_Beauty1]

Everything is urgent in corporate, except recognition and salary increases.

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Israel now occupies more of Lebanon than Russia occupies of Ukraine.

But of course that's a 'good' invasion.

So there is silence.

[MA LE BO @Melo_Malebo]

Never forget how the world can cooperate to get oil through the Strait of Hormuz but couldn't cooperate to get food into Gaza.

Everything is a choice.

[🇵🇸🇯🇵 Thoton Akimoto @AkimotoThn]

At a gas station in Japan.

It says: “Sorry… Out of Gasoline Because of Trump.”

Not photoshopped.

[𝙎👼🏻 @SZade15]

America will bomb your country until there's nothing left, then go back 20 years later and make a movie about how depressed their soldiers got from doing it.

[sarah @sahouraxo]

Israel killed every single paramedic in this photo today in South Lebanon.

12 paramedics slaughtered in one Israeli strike.

Israel DELIBERATELY targeted their medical center.

Killing medics is a war crime.

Killing medics is a crime against humanity.

This is medicide.

[Kawaii 🫆 @kawaiibsfr]

@Iran_HD

[Daniel Lambert @dlLambo]

Oman’s foreign minister says Iran agreed to “zero enriched uranium stockpiling.”

Within hours, Israel and the USA attacked them.

It was never about peace or uranium but about acting out Netanyahu's biggest bloodthirsty fantasy.

[Carlos Latuff @LatuffCartoons]

This cartoon is 16 years old.
And it remains relevant today, unfortunately.

[Greg Stoker @gregjstoker]

If you are in the US military you are not currently fighting for your country - you’re fighting for a small group of inhumanly rich transnational billionaires who do not believe in nation-states in the same way you do.

I’m 4th gen Army. Deprogramming is difficult, you got this!

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a diplomatic aide in the Sultanate of Oman's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

My job is logistics. When two countries that cannot speak to each other need to speak to each other, I book the rooms. I prepare the briefing materials. I make sure the water glasses are the right distance apart. You would be surprised how much of diplomacy is water glasses. Too close and it feels informal. Too far and it feels like a tribunal. I have a chart.

We had a very good month.

Since January, Oman has been mediating indirect talks between the United States and Iran on Iran's nuclear program. The talks were held in Muscat and in Geneva. The Americans would sit in one room. The Iranians would sit in another room. I would walk between them. My Fitbit says I averaged fourteen thousand steps on negotiation days. The hallway between the two rooms at the Royal Opera House conference center is forty-seven meters. I walked it two hundred and twelve times in February. This is good for my cardiovascular health. It was less good for my knees. Both are in the service of peace.

By mid-February, we had something.

Iran agreed to zero stockpiling of enriched uranium. Not reduced stockpiling. Zero. They agreed to down-blend existing stockpiles to the lowest possible level. They agreed to convert them into irreversible fuel. They agreed to full IAEA verification with potential US inspector access. They agreed, in the Foreign Minister's phrase, to "never, ever" possess nuclear material for a bomb. I have worked in diplomacy for seven years. I have never seen a country agree to this many things this quickly. I made a spreadsheet of the concessions. It had fourteen rows. I color-coded it. Green for confirmed. Yellow for pending. By February 21 the spreadsheet was entirely green. I printed it. It is on my desk in Muscat. It is still green.

That phrase took eleven days. "Never, ever." The Iranians initially offered "not seek to." The Americans wanted "will not under any circumstances." We landed on "never, ever" at 2:14 AM on a Tuesday in Muscat. I typed the final version myself. I used Times New Roman because Geneva prefers it. The document was fourteen pages. I was proud of every comma.

Here is what they said, in the order they said it.

February 24: "We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity." — The Foreign Minister, private briefing to Gulf Cooperation Council ambassadors. I prepared the slide deck. Slide 14 was the implementation timeline. Slide 15 was the signing ceremony logistics. I had reserved the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Room XX. It seats four hundred. We discussed pen brands for the signing. The Iranians preferred Montblanc. The Americans had no preference. I ordered twelve Montblanc Meisterstucks at six hundred and thirty dollars each. They arrive on Tuesday.

February 27, 8:30 AM EST: "The deal is within our reach." — The Foreign Minister, CBS Face the Nation. He sat across from Margaret Brennan. He said broad political terms could be agreed "tomorrow" with ninety days for technical implementation in Vienna. He said, and I wrote this line for the briefing card he carried in his breast pocket: "If we just allow diplomacy the space it needs." He praised the American envoys by name. Steve Witkoff. Jared Kushner. He said both had been constructive.

I watched from the Four Seasons Georgetown. The minibar had cashews. I ate the cashews. They were nineteen dollars. The most expensive cashew I have ever eaten. But it was a good morning and we were within our reach.

February 27, 2:00 PM EST: Meeting with Vice President Vance, Washington. The Foreign Minister presented our progress. Zero stockpiling. Full verification. Irreversible conversion. "Never, ever." The Vice President used the word "encouraging." His aide took notes on an iPad. The aide did not make eye contact for the last nine minutes of the meeting. I noticed this. Noticing things is the only part of my job that is not water glasses.

February 27, 4:00 PM EST: "Not happy with the pace." — President Trump, to reporters.

Not happy with the pace.

We had achieved zero stockpiling. Full IAEA verification. Irreversible fuel conversion. Inspector access. And the phrase "never, ever," which took eleven days and cost me two hundred and twelve trips down a forty-seven-meter hallway.

Every American president since Carter has failed to get Iran to agree to this. Forty-five years.

Not happy with the pace.

February 27, 9:47 PM EST: The Foreign Minister's flight departs Dulles for Muscat. I am in the seat behind him. He is reviewing Slide 14 on his laptop. The implementation timeline. Vienna technical sessions. The signing ceremony. The pens.

I fall asleep over the Atlantic. I dream about water glasses.

February 28, 6:00 AM GST: I wake up to push notifications.

February 28: "The United States has begun major combat operations in Iran." — President Trump.

Operation Epic Fury. Coordinated airstrikes. The United States and Israel. Tehran. Isfahan. Qom. Karaj. Kermanshah. Nuclear facilities. IRGC bases. Sites near the Supreme Leader's office. Israel called their half Operation Roaring Lion. Someone in both governments spent time choosing these names. Epic Fury. Roaring Lion. I spent eleven days on "never, ever." They spent it on branding. The President said Iran had "rejected American calls to halt its nuclear weapons production."

Rejected.

Iran had agreed to zero stockpiling. Iran had agreed to full verification. Iran had agreed to "never, ever." Iran had agreed to everything in a fourteen-page document that I typed in Times New Roman.

The President said they rejected it.

I do not know which document the President was reading. I know which one I typed.

February 28, 18:45 UTC: Iran internet connectivity: four percent. — NetBlocks, confirmed by Cloudflare. Ninety-six percent of a country went dark. You cannot negotiate with a country at four percent connectivity. You cannot negotiate with a country that is being struck. You cannot negotiate. This is not a political opinion. This is a logistics assessment.

February 28: The governor of Minab reported forty girls killed at an elementary school.

I do not have logistics for that. There is no slide for that. The water glass chart does not cover that.

February 28: Lockheed Martin: up. Northrop Grumman: up. RTX: up. Dow futures: down six hundred and twenty-two points. Gold: five thousand two hundred and ninety-six dollars. An analyst at AInvest published a note titled "Iran Strikes: Tactical Plays." The note recommended positions in oil, defense stocks, and gold.

The most expensive cashew I have ever eaten was nineteen dollars. The most expensive pen I have ever ordered was six hundred and thirty dollars. The math suggests I have been working in the wrong industry. Defense stocks do not require water glasses. Defense stocks do not require eleven days. Defense stocks require one morning.

February 28: Israel closed its airspace and its schools. Iran launched retaliatory missiles toward US bases in the Gulf. The Supreme Leader promised a "crushing response." Israel's defense minister declared a permanent state of emergency. Everyone is using words I recognize in an order I do not. I recognize "permanent." I recognize "emergency." I do not recognize them next to each other. In diplomacy, nothing is permanent and everything is an emergency. In war it is the reverse.

February 28: The Foreign Minister has not made a public statement.

The briefing card is still in his breast pocket. It still says "within our reach."

[Cyrus Janssen @thecyrusjanssen]

An Iranian man left this comment on my YouTube channel. This is without a doubt the single best explanation of the reality facing Iranian people today👇

"As an Iranian, I can tell you the situation is no longer just political—it's existential. We are trapped between two collapsing structures: one internal, one external. On one hand, we face a deeply dysfunctional government, led by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s unelected institutions.

Decades of economic mismanagement, suppression of dissent, and brutal ideological control have alienated multiple generations. No one believes in reform anymore—because every attempt has either been co-opted or crushed. But here's the paradox: We are also terrified of regime collapse—because we've watched the aftermath of Western intervention in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Each was promised freedom; each descended into chaos, civil war, or foreign occupation.

So no, we don't trust the U.S. or Israel. Not because we support our regime—but because we know how imperial powers treat ‘liberated’ nations in the Middle East.

Freedom, in their language, often means vacuum, fire, and permanent instability. Right now, many Iranians live with three truths at once: The Islamic Republic is morally and politically bankrupt. The alternatives offered by foreign actors are not liberation—they’re collapse.

A bad government is survivable. No government is not. We are not silent because we agree. We are cautious because we’ve learned—too well—what happens when superpowers decide to "help." In a sentence: Iran is a nation held hostage by its own regime, but haunted by the fate of its neighbors. We are stuck in a house we hate, surrounded by fires we fear more."

[China pulse 🇨🇳 @Eng_china5]

CHINA:

"The US is a war addict. Throughout its over 240-year history, it has been at war for all but 16 years.

The US has 800 overseas military bases in over 80 countries and regions.

The US is the main cause of international disorder, global turbulence, and regional instability."

[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

Bombing Iran in the middle of negotiations, while starving Cuba, while genociding Palestinians, while threatening to invade Greenland… the US and Israel are the single greatest threat to humanity and it’s not even close. We are all forced to live in the nightmare they create.

[Bougie Bae 🥀💋✨ @starseedneenee1]

This retrograde is showing you who never deserved full access to you.

[👾 @astrixliberty]

Do Malay supremacists realise that if a Malaysian is naturalised as a citizen of another country, they would enjoy equal rights under the law like any other citizen?

[ACD MMA @acdmma_]

🚨 Paddy McCorry (who is from West Belfast) just defeated Israeli fighter Shuki Farage at #CW189, raised the Palestine flag and said “Free Palestine!”

🎥 @CageWarriors

[. @ViggyStrdust]

Rig Veda includes references to dual-sexed beings and praises diversity in creation.

Tritiya prakriti appears in ancient Sanskrit texts and legal codes.

Hijras hold formal roles in courts, even during Islamic rule in India.

Ideology Anti-LGBTQ kau tu budaya barat.