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by grafmax 71 days ago
> In the fog of war, it is hard to tell what's exaggerated and what's not.

Honestly it's more than that. Propaganda and lies put out by ALL actors in this conflict. If you want to understand what's going on I think you have the expose yourself to as many competing sources as you can find. And still you're going to end up with a very shoddy picture. The term for this is epistemic collapse.
2 comments
awesome_dude 71 days ago
This.

One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.

I like to think that I live in a free/liberal democratic portion of the world, but seeing the "other side" being more honest really puts a dent in things.

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oa335 71 days ago
> One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.

Can you please expand on this with some examples?

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awesome_dude 71 days ago
The most recent example - I have been seeing reels/tik toks fronted by young women, that push Iranian talking points, they were saying that Trump's announcements on the conflict were timed to manipulate markets, and to "watch tomorrow"

They were referring to a Sunday before the Markets opened, and right on cue President Trump started making announcements that had a massive effect on market movements

Previously the USA government were downplaying (then retaliatory) Iranian drone attacks on bases in the middle east, claiming zero damage, and laughing at the attackers, the Iranians provided footage that showed real damage, and the US military released statement(s) that agreed with the Iranian claims.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that the Iranian regime is anything but a steaming pile of ew, but the lesson we were supposed to learn from the Vietnam war, and the Iraq war (II), was that hearts and minds are the key to "winning", and that's built on trust, which is built on transparency and honesty.

edit: and the Afghanistan invasion

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lejalv 71 days ago
not only that, one big fact is that the Trump administration attacked twice Iran during negotiations. That sort of backstabbing gives you a sense of what their word is worth.
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technion 71 days ago
The easy example is that meta was full of influencers confirming the war was over, with the us having won, at a time Iran's own statements declared otherwise. That was a while back.
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brobdingnagians 71 days ago
The open letter to Americans from Iran:

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/full-text-of-...

Vs Trump's speech:

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-transcript-address-i...

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ndsipa_pomu 71 days ago
One of those appears to be written by a sensible adult and the other one by a boastful teenager.
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s3r3nity 71 days ago
>One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.

Kek. Tell me you live in a bubble without telling me you live in a bubble.

"Both are doing propaganda, but one side's propaganda is totally less propaganda" gave me a good laugh today, thank you

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roenxi 71 days ago
The multiple sources don't know either, the reason the picture is shoddy is it is necessarily composed of the primary information that is coming from ... people with the strongest incentive to lie. There aren't a lot of independent ways to assess the situation. And of course that is part of the fog of war - even the militairy struggles to put together a picture of what is going on. I'd imagine that defining where the front-line is presents a complex and uncertain exercise for the commanders involved.

The only thing I think can be said reliably is that this has been going on for weeks, the Strait seems to be more closed than open, Trump is clearly out of his depth and the US is sending more units to the area. All of those point to a serious problem for the US military.

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XorNot 71 days ago
No the problem is that operational security necessarily biases what you see.

Drones, unlike many other systems produce a lot of kill footage and due to the specific users a lot of that is getting uploaded right now.

Successful sorties get uploaded, unsuccessful ones do not (if only because it's boring media).

No other system does this: artillery and missiles don't, manned systems worry about opsec, etc.

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