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Iran Ready for War if Talks Fail – The Wednesday AM Quickie 2/18/26

By Whitney Curry Wimbish —

Good morning. Please send thoughts/prayers and/or presents/donuts: I’m at the tripping/falling/bruising/hobbling stage of my 5k to 10k program. Gotta go buy an ice pack, see you next week. Corey’s back tomorrow. - Whitney

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THE BIG NEWS

Iran Ready for War if Nuclear Talks with US Fail 

Iranian and US officials ended a second round of nuclear talks in Geneva Tuesday with an “understanding” on principles to guide future discussions, Drop Site News, the Financial Times and NBC News reported. If the talks fail, however, Iranian leaders say the nation is ready for war. “Even the world’s most powerful armies can be struck in such a way that they are unable to stand back up,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech Tuesday. He suggested that Iran’s armed forces could deliver “powerful retaliatory strikes” and that any attempt to depose his government would fail. He also said Trump “admitted that the US had tried to bring down the theocratic establishment in Iran since the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution but has failed,” Al Jazeera reported. Per AJ:

“This is a good confession. You will not be able to do this either,” Khamenei said in an apparent reference to the US president telling reporters this week that a change in government would be “the best thing that could happen” in Iran.

The head of the Iranian delegation, Abbas Araghchi, gave more conciliatory remarks. “I believe we made good progress,” he told Iranian state media. “The path toward an agreement has started but we will not reach it quickly.” The US and Iran will each draft texts before the next round of negotiations, which will take place in the next two weeks. Representing the US are Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Vice President JD Vance “gave a mixed review of the talks,” NBC News reported. “In some ways, it went well. They agreed to meet afterwards,” the fake povvo said. “But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through. So we’re going to keep on working it.”

The talks ended as Trump continues to built up military might in the region. The BBC used satellite imagery to locate the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea near Iran; the US has also sent in the world’s largest warship, the USS Gerald R. Ford, along with “US destroyers, combat ships and fighter jets.” Araghchi said in a social media post that Iran would work to “achieve a fair and equitable deal.” But “what is not on the table: submission before threats.” 

AI Private School Harms Kids, ChatGPT Enables Stalkers 

A national K-12 private school company that uses artificial intelligence to create lessons and tests and that won rapturous praise from the Trump administration is failing students so hard that they struggle to advance to the next grade, 404 Media reported. Alpha School is giving students false, confusing, and illogical AI-generated materials, failing to teach them critical thinking skills, and leaving them unprepared for standardized tests, all while charging up to $65,000 a year. 404 Media also found that Alpha School collects “massive amounts of data” on students, “including videos of them,” and stores it all in a Google Drive folder that anyone with the link can access. 

Meanwhile, Futurism reported on a disturbing trend that expands further the “AI psychosis” that can affect some chatbot users and destroy their lives by encouraging destructive and all-encompassing obsessions. The tech news outlet identified at least ten instances where ChatGPT and other chatbots feed users’ obsession with another real person, “fueling the false idea that the two shared a special or even ‘divine’ bond, roping the user into conspiratorial delusions, or insisting to a would-be stalker that they’d been gravely wronged by their target. In some cases, our reporting found, ChatGPT continued to stoke users’ obsessions as they descended into unwanted harassment, abusive stalking behavior, or domestic abuse, traumatizing victims and profoundly altering lives.” 

New Mexico Lawmakers Open Investigation into Epstein Ranch

State representatives unanimously voted to investigate sex trafficking at dead convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, a 7,600-acre property outside Santa Fe, NBC and the Santa Fe New Mexican reported. The bipartisan “truth commission” seeks testimony from survivors and from locals; the $2.5 million probe has subpoena power and “aims to close gaps in New Mexico law that may have allowed Epstein to operate in the state.” Lawmakers began work yesterday and plan to deliver interim findings in July. They’ll deliver a final report by the end of the year. The investigation comes after Trump’s Department of Justice published millions of Epstein files, which show connections to a pair of former New Mexico governors and one of the state’s ex-attorneys general. The New Mexican uncovered late last week that the ranch is now owned by Texas political candidate Don Huffines, who describes himself as a “MAGA Trump Republican” and who bought the property in 2023 using a limited liability company to hide his identity. He also changed its name to San Rafael Ranch and its address from 49 Zorro Ranch Road to 49 Rancho San Rafael Road. Huffines says he’ll cooperate with the investigation.

QUICKEST QUICKIES

  • DHS Still Closed; White House Rejects Democrats Latest Offer “With Congress on a weeklong recess and lawmakers scattered around the world and the nation, chances for approval of a funding agreement this week remained remote since members would have to return to Washington to pass it and the negotiations were not showing any movement.” Must be nice to go on vacation all the time. via the NYT. 
  • Israel Blocks Medics’ Entry to Gaza for Discussing the Genocide “I’m not military. I don’t carry anything. I’m no different to the colleagues who have gone in. The only difference is that they haven’t spoken up as much,” said one of the surgeons Israel barred. via The Guardian.  
  • RFK Jr. Turns His Pestilential Gaze to Baby Formula The man destroying public safeguards against preventable childhood diseases is planning to propose revamped baby formula regulation this spring; doctors and manufacturers warn that “sweeping changes to infant-formula standards risk negative consequences if not rooted in science,” which is the polite way of saying RFK Jr. is going to harm yet more kids. via the WSJ.
  • Scientist in Norway Blasts Self with ‘Havana Syndrome’ Machine, Feels Terrible The unidentified government worker suffered neurological symptoms after he built a machine that emits pulses of microwave energy and used it on himself in 2024; the Norwegian government told the CIA, “prompting at least two visits” by US officials. via the Washington Post. 

SOME NUMBER

600

That’s the minimum number of people fired from their jobs or punished for talking about gun rights activist Charlie Kirk, who got shot in the neck and died. 

ON THE SHOW TODAY

2/18: Emma is growing more powerful each day she hosts solo. Today her guests are Assaad Razzouk, host of The Angry Clean Energy Guy Podcast, on to discuss China decarbonizing, and Nida Allam, vice chair of the Durham County Board of Commissioners running for Congress in North Carolina's 4th district. Comedian and Bitchuation Room host Francesca Fiorentini will join for the Fun Half.

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

AOC Warns That Billionaires Are A National Security Threat

Democrat leaders, please understand that this is a winning policy position.

Ana Kasparian's Pivot Right Gets Worse...

I guess her return to reality was just a day trip.

PARTING WORDS

“I think that Donald Trump is worried that we’re about to flip Texas… This is the party that ran against cancel culture and now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture. The kind that comes from the top.”

-- Texas State Democratic Rep. James Talarico, who is running for US Senate, talking to Stephen Colbert in an interview CBS censored from Monday night’s broadcast because it might anger the Trump administration. Colbert ran the interview instead on YouTube. 

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