I don’t know where I was going to go with today’s blog post. I had a few ideas. As regular readers of this blog know, I am a regular listener of Ezra Klein’s podcast, as well as the New York Times' “The Daily,” and sometimes I listen to “Today Explained” or “On Point” with Meghna Chakrabarti, all shows aired that have been aired on NPR.

A few thoughts. I haven’t followed the news cycle of late very closely, although I listened to recent podcasts as I was intrigued to understand Iran better. I’m no foreign policy expert, but feel like I have a better grasp of it than many, if not most Americans. While I fully condemn Trump and Netanyahu provoking conflict, and see both leaders as truly evil, reprehensible men, it’s worth noting the silver lining. I saw a report that many Iranians around the world justifiably celebrated the Ayatollah’s killing, especially in hopes of potential future family reunification. I was glad to see the Iranian regime momentarily destabilized. Fuck violent religious fascism or oppression in any form. According to the Ezra Klein podcast I listened to with guest Ben Rhodes–a senior advisor to President Obama, who helped work on the Iran Nuclear Deal–supposedly most Iranians don’t support the regime by about 80/20. Fuck the religious right wing 20% of Iranians that do. Similarly, fuck the minority of Americans that support January 6th Insurrectionists. Same shit, different toilet. Anyways, the worst part is the new Iranian Supreme Leader sounds like just as much of a piece of shit, from the little I saw. I hoped the fleeting celebration would be a precursor to a better outcome. If Trump does one thing that has a positive outcome, I’ll still praise it, even if I hate everything else. But as history seems to teach us over and over again, power vacuums rarely ever have positive outcomes.

Besides an argument for disarmament, the best point I heard from Klein’s conversation with Rhodes (and I’m paraphrasing here but not by much), is that like with nukes, we need a de-escalatory disarmament race, rather than an escalatory arms race.

Most importantly: choosing to not attack a country does NOT mean we approve of their authoritarian regime at all. We can feel sorry for the mostly good people of Iran, and also not get caught up in armed conflict. War should be an absolute last resort. Very rarely in history has it actually been necessary for humanity’s greater good.

From an U.S. immigration perspective, not only is there a visa ban to Iranians, outside of the U.S. at the State Department, but also for Iranians inside the U.S. seeking immigration benefits from USCIS. Like with many Mexicans, there is all too often long term long term or indefinite family separations. The longstanding Iranian regime seemed mostly to blame, although the U.S. government has not exactly made legal Iranian immigration easy. While outright country bans are nothing but racist nonsense, that said, people do need to be vetted. The negative effects of uncontrolled migration and open borders would be very real. I get that. I take a progressive left position on immigration, never a far-left anarchist one. But Canada’s immigration system, while far from perfect, is light years better and more sensible in every detail I’ve read.

I also think there’s some layer of intentionality by the powers that be, in making it difficult or dangerous for Middle Easterners and Westerners to visit each others' very different countries and cultures. After all, if in lieu of propaganda, people from different cultures could firsthandly see and understand the humanity of each other, we’d be less likely to support armed conflict towards the other.

Point being, anything that helps lessen international family separations is a win in my book. It’s something even liberal media doesn’t seem to emphasize enough, if at all. I think most Iranians, Mexicans, Americans, and really most people from most places, even from opposite cultures, are still more similar than different. I think most humans just want to live their lives in peace, and with enough means and dignity to support themselves, their families, and their communities. It’s crazy to think of what a human construct it all is, not just government repression, but nation states and borders.

From an self-serving American perspective though, military action against Iran so dumb beyond belief. Why get involved now? Iran hasn’t attacked us! We fortunately haven’t suffered a major foreign terrorist attack in a quarter century. The number one priority should be preventing terrorism, not attacking other nations, unprovoked. We flushed the Iran nuclear deal down the toilet so stupidly and for nothing! Why risk further entrenching anti-American sentiment among extremists in that region? It doesn’t exactly sound like it’d make our homeland any more “secure.” Hypocritically, somehow it didn’t matter for the U.S. to intervene when the Iranian regime gunned down thousands of peaceful protesters earlier in 2026, but now it’s fine, since Netanyahu has Trump by the balls now? And who the fuck is Israel to be the morality police of Iran, when they have arguably committed full-blown genocide in Gaza, starving and killing magnitudes more innocent civilians than Hamas terrorists, most of whom had absolutely nothing to do with depraved October 7th terrorist attack? Not to mention, the U.S. has no shortage of very real, domestic crises here at home.

I think of Reza Azlan’s premise in his book “How To Win a Cosmic War” which is to refuse to fight one (I haven’t read the whole thing, only the intro, but its thesis is on point). Similarly, I’ve heard scholars on nuclear proliferation say the best thing to do is to not have an arms race, but a disarmament race. Can’t imagine the same analogy doesn’t apply here, given the above-mentioned ethos of most humans just wanting to live their lives in peace around the world.

Let’s hope things get better eventually.