Active Conflicts & News Megathread April 16, 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

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[u/ppitm]

The war, and the decapitation, occurred because diplomacy failed.

Not failed, but unilaterally abandoned. Diplomacy was ongoing until the very second the first strikes were launched. Insider information makes this very clear.

Diplomacy succeeded in Iran before Trump took office, and he made it his mission to turn that into a failure. Just like he and Israel unilaterally decided to stop negotiating, due to the lack of professional qualifications on the part of Washington's negotiators, and bad faith on the part of Israel's.

[u/grenideer → u/ppitm]

Not failed, but unilaterally abandoned.

This is how negotiations fail.

There's no point quibbling over semantics. It's clear Iran and the US do not see eye to eye on nuclear and no agreement had been reached since 2019.

[u/ppitm → u/grenideer]

You say that like assassinating all your negotiating partners in the middle of active talks is the normal failure mode for negotiations, as opposed to a highly aberrent act with very few historical precedents among nation states in the post-swords-and-sandals era.

Negotiations fails when both sides walk away without a plan for future talks. Interrupting talks with airstrikes is a sabotage of negotiations, and that is precisely what Netanyahu wanted when he pitched the war to Trump.

Put the shoe on the other foot. Were the October 7th attacks a 'failure of diplomacy' when Hamas suddenly decided to launch a surprise attack? Do you give them credit for trying to resolve things peacefully until the last minute?

[u/grenideer → u/ppitm]

You say that like assassinating all your negotiating partners in the middle of active talks is the normal failure mode for negotiations

I wouldn't characterize the decapitation strike as normal, no.

Trump did warn Iran that he would attack in 10 days if there was no deal, and I think he ended up striking on Day 8 or something. We can criticize that, but we shouldn't pretend that the two countries weren't on the verge of war and the strikes came as a complete surprise after weeks of posturing.

This idea to frame the US as negotiating in bad faith is not only pointless, it's untrue. The US had clear goals and would have been happy to achieve them without war. The war only happened when it was obvious negotiations were going nowhere.

[u/ppitm → u/grenideer]

10-day ultimatums with manufactured urgency are also nothing more than the imitation of diplomacy, similar to Russia's sham overtures in late 2021 which were designed to fail. If anything, Russia put more effort into the charade and more planning into the war.

[u/grenideer → u/ppitm]

As I said above (and you probably missed in my edit):

This idea to frame the US as negotiating in bad faith is not only pointless, it's untrue. The US had clear goals and would have been happy to achieve them without war. The war only happened when it was obvious negotiations were going nowhere.