Odds and Ends — 23 June 2025

Iran could slowly recover, its surviving nuclear scientists could take their skills underground and the country could follow the pathway lit by North Korea, with a race to build a bomb.
Today, North Korea has 60 or more nuclear weapons by some intelligence estimates, an arsenal that likely makes it too powerful to attack. That, Iran may conclude, is the only pathway to keep larger, hostile powers at bay, and to prevent the United States and Israel from carrying out an operation like the one that lit up the Iranian skies on Sunday morning.

https://twitter.com/DMichaelTripi/status/1936829874737697163

The Unknown Unknowns Lurk in Iran

In the run-up to the war in Iraq, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked in 2002 whether there was any evidence that Saddam Hussein’s government was actually attempting to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. His response was evasive but memorable.
Said Rumsfeld: “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”
Now, one generation later, the U.S. is again in an undeclared war in the Middle East. Much about it is very different — more on that in a moment. But right now, the known unknowns vastly outnumber the known knowns, while the unknown unknowns lurk around the corner.

https://twitter.com/factpostnews/status/1936819257565692256

Trump is in danger of repeating Bush’s Middle East mistakes

Attacks on U.S. bases would require the United States to respond in kind. And there we’d have it: another big Mideast war, unfolding amid the American public’s exhaustion with wars in the region. … And yet another generation of U.S. service members would devote their lives to unnecessary conflict.

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1936893564308292054
https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1936909871548674421

Cammack doesn’t fault the Florida law for her experience. Instead, she accuses the left of scaring medical professionals with messaging that stressed that they could face criminal charges for violating the law.

Republican in South Carolina arrested over distribution of child sexual abuse material