Angry Planet

Recorded March 24, 2026. Subscribe at angryplanetpod.com to hear episodes first and commercial free.

Last week an article published in Al Jazeera by an academic at the University of Doha in Qatar proposed something that felt crazy to some western war watchers: America and Israel’s strategy in Iran is working.

On this episode of Angry Planet, author Muhanad Seloom is here to explain his position. Seloom is an assistant professor of international politics and security at the University of Doha. He’s also an Iraqi who lived through the Iran-Iraq war and both US invasions. From his perspective, the US has degraded Iran’s ability to hurt its neighbors in the long term and changed the regime.
What comes next is a more complicated question.

Why did this war even start?
Setting aside morality and legality to look at ground truths
“Iran is much weaker”
Missile production, missile range
The highly enriched uranium is in one place
“The regime has changed. Whether we like it or not, the regime has changed.”
The case against the new Khamenei
What is it like to live nextdoor to Iran?
There’s a reason no one is standing up for Iran
Why isn’t the GCC doing more?
What happens if we pick up and leave?
What’s the plan for what happens next?
“It’s not easy to rise up.”
Charging tolls on Hormuz
“I have to say this: I am against the war in any way.”
What about the JCPOA?
A great unanswered question of history
Air campaigns don’t win wars
…did America really lose in Afghanistan and Iraq?
“War is hell.”

Labelling Ethno-Political Groups as Terrorists

The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why
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America went to war in Iran, we’re told, because the idea of the country developing nuclear weapons was intolerable. Nukes are complicated and technical weapons that require scientists and experts to build, maintain, and manage. Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is core to the design and unless all of Iran’s HEU is accounted for the threat of it becoming a nuclear power will linger.

So what would it take to get rid of Iran’s stockpile HEU?

François Diaz-Maurin is on Angry Planet today to answer that question. Diaz-Maurin is editor for nuclear affairs at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists where he recently published an article outlining what it would take for US troops to neutralize Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

How a civil engineer becomes a nuclear journalist
“You can’t bomb away nuclear material.”
“Technically, it’s nearly Mission Impossible.”
How much highly enriched uranium (HEU) was left after last year’s strikes?
Moving HEU around Iran
What we can learn from satellite photos and the International Atomic Energy Agency
Why 60%?
Managing scuba tanks full of gaseous toxins in a war zone
Why blowing up the cylinders won’t work
“Let me throw something weird at you.”
Downblending versus exporting
We’re living in the third nuclear age
Deterrence works and that’s, maybe, not great?

Trump may send US troops to neutralize Iran’s highly enriched uranium. There are no good options

Netanyahu says Iran no longer has uranium enrichment capacity

Iran willing to dilute uranium stockpile as fresh protests erupt
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AI enthusiasts love to say that the technology is as revolutionary and important as nuclear weapons. Even the Trump administration has adopted the metaphor. The President and the Department of Energy have repeatedly referred to the development of AI in the US as “Manhattan Project 2.0.”

But is the buildout of LLMs and machine learning systems really as important as the development of the atom bomb? And what are the lessons from the atomic age that AI scientists should then learn? Do we need an AI Non Proliferation Treaty? An AI International Atomic Energy Agency?

On this episode of Angry Planet, Ankit Panda comes on to talk about the uses and limitations of the “AI as nuclear weapons” metaphor. Panda is an expert in nukes and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He’s been sharing his extended thoughts on the AI-nuclear connection at his Nukesletter Substack.

Stanislav Petrov
AI as nuclear weapons
Why nuclear weapons resonate with people in the AI field
The Strategic Air Command story
That time we spilled nuclear material all over Greenland and Spain
NNSA and Anthropic
AI as the next Manhattan Project
A massive infrastructure project
Fissile material as silicon
What’s the AI version of an NPT and IAEA?
AI and nuclear are both dual use
On AI winters
What AI is actually being used for, what it might be used for
The socialization around AI will change.

AI Arms and Influence: Frontier Models Exhibit Sophisticated Reasoning in Simulated Nuclear Crisis
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Things have gotten very surreal in the dark corners of the internet. AI-generated prophets are preaching jihad in Facebook groups, Minecraft servers host digital caliphates, and school shooting fandoms gather to study their heroes and plot how to up beat their score. It’s a double bill on this episode of Angry Planet as two experts from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a nonprofit that studies and works to mitigate violent extremists, discuss the brave new world of online-born violence.

First up is Milo Comerford, the co-author of a study about nihilistic violence. Then we’ve got Moustafa Ayad to talk about how the Islamic State is circumventing bans and pushing its message on social media.

Staying sane on the internet
Violence without ideology
The Comm
764
True Crime Community
Saints Culture
When fandom becomes a killing
An aesthetics driven movement
Online and offline have merged
Moderation is impossible
You don’t have to hand it to ISIS
Broken text posting
Copyright strikes and the Islamic State
Facebook professional as the gold standard
AI resurrects dead influencers
Jihad influencers
Even IS is obsessed with the Epstein files
Virtual caliphates in Roblox and Minecraft
“We must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Once again, it all comes back to 4chan
Saying nice things about twitter dot com

Beyond Extremism

‘The Comm’: The Group Linked to a Nationwide Swatting Rampage

How the True Crime Community generates its own killers
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America spent most of the 19th century at war with itself. It conquered its western expanse then collapsed into civil war. Once the North beat the South, partisan politics consumed the country for a generation. A string of assassinations, progressive firebrands, and civil service reforms burned people out on domestic politics and a bored and febrile nation began to search for meaning beyond its borders. It noticed the Spanish Empire was awfully close.

In Splendid Liberators, award winning journalist Joe Jackson chronicles the beginning of the American myth of the “good war.” He’s on the show today to talk to us about Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and a general who lay in state at the Alamo.

Recurring patterns in American history
Roscoe Conkling jumpscare
Remnants of the Spanish-American War in South Carolina
What did liberty mean in the 19th century?
Clara Barton, Leonard Wood and the dual American personality
The first modern concentration camps
The Battleship of Maine
When Congress used to fight, physically
Drones won’t win a war
The US in the Philippines
‘The water cure’
American historians facing reality in the Philippines
Teddy, finally
Laying in state at the Alamo

Buy Splendid Liberators

A Defense of General Funston
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