The progressive Left, and its media and podcasts, keep invoking the likelihood of “nuclear escalation” in Eurasia, because they can’t emotionally accept a simple and practical solution: surrender by Iran and Ukraine. One reason is political partisanship, because surrender by Iran means that President Trump is successful. It is cognitive dissonance by the political left: they want peace, but will accept war if they believe it can lead to domestic political retribution. The second reason is because the Iran war, and the Ukraine war, are both seen by the progressive left as moral symbols that serve to confirm their own biases against the U.S., Israel and the larger West. No one wins a mutual nuclear exchange and there is no coherent first strike doctrine.